Gary is impossible for me

[The Purple Guy]

The most rng garbage I've ever seen. So matter what I do 1 or 2 seals will always completely block me so Gary can kill me

[MegaMan]

Guides only really help normal/casual players who are trying to beat bosses for the first time. They don't help GCB runners since deaths are due to unavoidable RNG, not being able to dodge attacks.

[Fabmaster2000]

A bit more of what I noticed on the seals. I don’t know the exact mechanics behind how they spawn, but with my surface level observations they spawn in the direction you’re facing. You could try to bait the spawns so you can more easily get around them. If two do spawn together to block you off you can try to squeeze past them. I did already say it in the what I posted earlier, but you can walk behind the seals. You can get as close as you can to them to the point they overlap you’re legs. Same for walking in front of them until John’s waist gets to roughly just below the middle, that’s about how close you can hug the seals. They’re might be more room to squeeze around one or two seals that cut you off. As for RNG manipulation, I’m not familiar with game code, so someone else would have to elaborate on that if you wanted to make sure the seals never spawn in your way. If you still need help feel free to respond to me.

[TheKingmario2]

in complete honesty: i was thrilled when the game finally came out, bought dead-on dayone with the intention of get a platinum on it. All the game went smooth until 2 parts: one were i tried to get "father garcia's death" ending in chapter 2 (i didn't want to get him killed in first phase, so second phase was hell for me on trying to get him killed, Miriam just pass straight inside him without harming him and killed me tons of times, that is how i got the 100 deaths achievement), but that was a me problem for not getting garcia killed in phase one, and then.........Gary second phase fight:

The game should have been called: The Unholy Duo, for how stoopid difficult was dealing with gary and malphas at the same time. Not only that "normal human being" of Gary has sh*tton of HPs, but also moves fast enough to force you to back off for a bit and then fire your cross at bits, making the battle a legit war of friction every single time. Not to mention the not possible to predict actions of gary when it stops, you don't know if he is going to lunge at you or if he is going to zig zag the room, leaving you with very little time to react. Cherry on top of the pie: the random spawing sigils that blocks your movements, making the fight with gary even more clustered and tedious.......then malphas kicks in, and makes the fight even more tedious, because he steals you space to move, shots arrows you must dodge between gary, the sigils and the fireplaces (yes, i got burned something like 3 times while trying to dodge that sh*t) and also sometimes tries to land on you.....

I managed to defeat them in the end, when Gary and Malphas merged into miriam, creating the unholy trinity, the fight became a cakewalk. You gain THEN 10 HPs, and for someone who got platinum on the binding of isaac repentance that is alot of health! Super Miriam had no chance on beating me.

I was thrilled to get the Good Christian Boy achievement, but then i suddently seen the whole text of the mission and my balls dropped cold on the floor: WITHOUT DYING?! Are you yanking my dong? do you want a 0 deaths run in a game with tank controls and RNG dependants behavior from some bosses? Hell no.....im not gonna take on this achievement until the game gets rebalanced, that would be suicidial.

[SaturdayMonk]

Originally posted by TheKingmario2:

in complete honesty: i was thrilled when the game finally came out, bought dead-on dayone with the intention of get a platinum on it. All the game went smooth until 2 parts: one were i tried to get "father garcia's death" ending in chapter 2 (i didn't want to get him killed in first phase, so second phase was hell for me on trying to get him killed, Miriam just pass straight inside him without harming him and killed me tons of times, that is how i got the 100 deaths achievement), but that was a me problem for not getting garcia killed in phase one, and then.........Gary second phase fight:

The game should have been called: The Unholy Duo, for how stoopid difficult was dealing with gary and malphas at the same time. Not only that "normal human being" of Gary has sh*tton of HPs, but also moves fast enough to force you to back off for a bit and then fire your cross at bits, making the battle a legit war of friction every single time. Not to mention the not possible to predict actions of gary when it stops, you don't know if he is going to lunge at you or if he is going to zig zag the room, leaving you with very little time to react. Cherry on top of the pie: the random spawing sigils that blocks your movements, making the fight with gary even more clustered and tedious.......then malphas kicks in, and makes the fight even more tedious, because he steals you space to move, shots arrows you must dodge between gary, the sigils and the fireplaces (yes, i got burned something like 3 times while trying to dodge that sh*t) and also sometimes tries to land on you.....

I managed to defeat them in the end, when Gary and Malphas merged into miriam, creating the unholy trinity, the fight became a cakewalk. You gain THEN 10 HPs, and for someone who got platinum on the binding of isaac repentance that is alot of health! Super Miriam had no chance on beating me.

I was thrilled to get the Good Christian Boy achievement, but then i suddently seen the whole text of the mission and my balls dropped cold on the floor: WITHOUT DYING?! Are you yanking my dong? do you want a 0 deaths run in a game with tank controls and RNG dependants behavior from some bosses? Hell no.....im not gonna take on this achievement until the game gets rebalanced, that would be suicidial.

100%, first I thought it was just getting all the good endings in the marathon mode but whoops. The achievement should stay as it is, it should be really hard to get, but at least without having to deal with bs rng mechanics.

[MegaMan]

My thoughts on balancing things, maybe these could only apply during a marathon run.

-For the rejected vessel fight, make the vessel start a charge in a direction that is both away from you and where it has to go in a direction where it'd take as long as possible to hit a wall. This will ensure the player has enough time to see what direction it is going and have a chance at dodging. Also, clearly outline the edges of the room so you know when to expect a bounce. Even with a sidebar background enabled in the options menu, it still doesn't mark the edges of the arena.

-Gary phase 1: make the cross spawn further away depending on how many hits you've taken so far. Alternately, have Gary appear on the opposite side of the arena from you and/or the cross instead of always at the top of the screen, since if the cross appears in an upper corner you're boned unless you were hit there to begin with.

-Gary phase 2 & final boss: Either increase the distance seals can appear from the player, or make divine intervention carry over between the fights. So instead of 1 hit on phase 2 Gary and 10 on Miriam, you have 10 hits total for both. A sloppy phase 2 fight will mean you have less room for error against Miriam.

[Packet ( ﾟ ヮﾟ) Overflow]

Originally posted by MegaMan:

My thoughts on balancing things, maybe these could only apply during a marathon run.

-For the rejected vessel fight, make the vessel start a charge in a direction that is both away from you and where it has to go in a direction where it'd take as long as possible to hit a wall. This will ensure the player has enough time to see what direction it is going and have a chance at dodging. Also, clearly outline the edges of the room so you know when to expect a bounce. Even with a sidebar background enabled in the options menu, it still doesn't mark the edges of the arena.

-Gary phase 1: make the cross spawn further away depending on how many hits you've taken so far. Alternately, have Gary appear on the opposite side of the arena from you and/or the cross instead of always at the top of the screen, since if the cross appears in an upper corner you're boned unless you were hit there to begin with.

-Gary phase 2 & final boss: Either increase the distance seals can appear from the player, or make divine intervention carry over between the fights. So instead of 1 hit on phase 2 Gary and 10 on Miriam, you have 10 hits total for both. A sloppy phase 2 fight will mean you have less room for error against Miriam.

Agree with all of these. I think there are the simplest changes that would fix these fights. I think you can do actually even smaller and simpler changes to completely fix this issue.

rejected vessel: Never charges towards the player if the player is within a set radius of the boss. (aka no more impossible dodges)

gary phase 1: Cross spawns in a set radius from player which grows with every hit. (Gary can actually stay in the top since the player can just learn this fact and simply play in the bottom half of the arena. Gary's spawn isn't RNG)

gary phase 2: Seals should be spawned as FUTURE obstacles not immediate ones. Seals cannot appear within a certain radius of the player.

[TheKingmario2]

many of the bosses attacks would be easier to dodge if only they would "notify" you on their intention.

for example: the main hinderance i had with Tiffany (the regected vessel), is her teleport. Sometimes she flat out teleports behind you and gives little time to the player to react, and her weird hitbox dosen't help the cause surely. Her charge despite how bullsh*t it seems is quite dodgeable (she do that only when you damaged her enough, and the bouncing pattern is quite legibile, the problem is her bouncing speed that paired with John's slow movements and her crappy hitbox makes her a treat). With Tiffany the solution is to make the teleport anticipated by a flicker of a second or on her sprite or a catchphrase that can notify the player of her incoming teleport, and for the bounce after a certain damage treshold a slight speed nerf should be applied. Polishing touch: nerf the HPs a little bit and you are done, Tiffany is balanced again.

gary first encounter is kinda gimmicky. getting hit by him sometimes is a good way to gain some frames to dispel him, but kinda risky if the crucifix you must grab before the killing blow by him is delivered is on the complete opposite way of the room, if tha happens you are virtually scr*wed, because Gary will quickly speed up at you. This fight isn't that difficult, but when gary drops you, he should give you some extra seconds before he charges at you. Another good change would be making Gary's sprite flicker a second before the charge or give gary's a catchphrase before the attack.

gary's second encounter is the main problem here: he is large, his hitbox is weird and getting blocked in a corner by him or one of his sigils is very likely, and to makes things even worse: he has basicly 2 attacks, and both are extremely similar (the zig zag in the room is kinda dodgeable, but the lunge attack oh boy.....that thing can be short or can makes gary instantly aim-assist kill you) Gary's second form has also a stupidly large health pool which makes the fight a war of friction, which gets even more escruciating once malphas shows up. The solution here beside the need of an health nerf, is to make a middling animation for the sigils, so you know already that one of those is spawning, but you still are able to walk on them freely until them "evolves" in full sigils. Since Gary's attacks are similar (and one of the two is more deadly than the other) he should emit a shirek/phrase before doing that, so the player can be prepared to dodge the incoming attack (knowing which of the two would be performed by gary). Cherry on top of the cake: once malphas shows up gary should be unable to summon other sigils (this can be avoided if the sigils have the middling animation that warns the player) in order to make the room less chaotic. Also, the suggestion to carry on from the beginning of the fight with gary the 10 HPs of Super Miriam fight is a solution, this makes both the fights more balanced (since Super Miriam in the end is a joke compared to Gary + Malphas).

Sadly there is nothing that can be done to makes hitboxes on bosses more obvious, but giving the player more awareness is a way to rectify this problem.

[Dr. Freeman]

As someone who has the GCB achievement, I completely agree. I did find ways after extensive testing to make the fights as reliable as they can be, but ultimately it comes down to a lot of metagaming (memorizing the spawn timers for the seals and deliberately confusing the ray tracing that they use to spawn in, counting the number of steps Gary takes before he lunges (24), standing in a very specific spot during Rain of Spiders so you can recover your crucifix from any position, etc).

Metagaming as the only viable strat for a boss means that it's too overtuned, and in this case too reliant on both unpredictable and unreactable modifiers. I strongly encourage anyone going for this achievement wait for a nerf, if one is indeed coming.

[The Purple Guy]

Finally beat Gary. Came down to hoping seals wouldn't block me, Gary wouldn't do the direct charge attack, and malphas not doing the stomp.

[Blipnblop]

Damn, people. I know Gary's not easy, but isn't that the point? It serves the atmosphere and narrative greatly, that the main character beats the unforgiving odds while being just an everyday human being. It took me aroung 10 tries, but it felt exstatic to finally overcome the obstacle.

As for the achievment - i mean, isn't it supposed to be hard? That's why it is an achievment, it's in the word. It doesn't block you from any story-related things, so why not leave it to people, who are eager to invest time into it?

[MegaMan]

Originally posted by Blipnblop:

Damn, people. I know Gary's not easy, but isn't that the point? It serves the atmosphere and narrative greatly, that the main character beats the unforgiving odds while being just an everyday human being. It took me aroung 10 tries, but it felt exstatic to finally overcome the obstacle.

As for the achievment - i mean, isn't it supposed to be hard? That's why it is an achievment, it's in the word. It doesn't block you from any story-related things, so why not leave it to people, who are eager to invest time into it?

Have you not read anything in the topic so far?

The achievement is luck based. That's the problem everyone is having with it. There are some boss behaviors that will just outright kill you and there's nothing you can do about it. The actual fight itself isn't too bad when you can keep trying and a favorable pattern eventually happens, but when one bad roll of RNG invalidates all your work, that's a problem.

[The Purple Guy]

Originally posted by Blipnblop:

Damn, people. I know Gary's not easy, but isn't that the point? It serves the atmosphere and narrative greatly, that the main character beats the unforgiving odds while being just an everyday human being. It took me aroung 10 tries, but it felt exstatic to finally overcome the obstacle.

As for the achievment - i mean, isn't it supposed to be hard? That's why it is an achievment, it's in the word. It doesn't block you from any story-related things, so why not leave it to people, who are eager to invest time into it?

Using this logic I have determined if you don't hit the jackpot on a slot machine it's a skill issue

[Blipnblop]

Originally posted by MegaMan:

Originally posted by Blipnblop:

Damn, people. I know Gary's not easy, but isn't that the point? It serves the atmosphere and narrative greatly, that the main character beats the unforgiving odds while being just an everyday human being. It took me aroung 10 tries, but it felt exstatic to finally overcome the obstacle.

As for the achievment - i mean, isn't it supposed to be hard? That's why it is an achievment, it's in the word. It doesn't block you from any story-related things, so why not leave it to people, who are eager to invest time into it?

Have you not read anything in the topic so far?

The achievement is luck based. That's the problem everyone is having with it. There are some boss behaviors that will just outright kill you and there's nothing you can do about it. The actual fight itself isn't too bad when you can keep trying and a favorable pattern eventually happens, but when one bad roll of RNG invalidates all your work, that's a problem.

My bad, see it now.
But i don't believe it is as random as people claim it to be tbh. It's mostly about positioning and not being greedy with every single window for damage.
Sure, the conditions for the achievment are quite unforgiving, but the fight it's not as random as a slot machine. We're talking about the final boss, right?

[Blipnblop]

Originally posted by Arkosh:

Originally posted by Blipnblop:

Damn, people. I know Gary's not easy, but isn't that the point? It serves the atmosphere and narrative greatly, that the main character beats the unforgiving odds while being just an everyday human being. It took me aroung 10 tries, but it felt exstatic to finally overcome the obstacle.

As for the achievment - i mean, isn't it supposed to be hard? That's why it is an achievment, it's in the word. It doesn't block you from any story-related things, so why not leave it to people, who are eager to invest time into it?

Using this logic I have determined if you don't hit the jackpot on a slot machine it's a skill issue

My brother in Christ, analogy is not an argument. You're relaying the context based discussion point on the unrelated case just by some of the shared attributes.

[Blipnblop]

Originally posted by MegaMan:

Originally posted by Blipnblop:

Damn, people. I know Gary's not easy, but isn't that the point? It serves the atmosphere and narrative greatly, that the main character beats the unforgiving odds while being just an everyday human being. It took me aroung 10 tries, but it felt exstatic to finally overcome the obstacle.

As for the achievment - i mean, isn't it supposed to be hard? That's why it is an achievment, it's in the word. It doesn't block you from any story-related things, so why not leave it to people, who are eager to invest time into it?

Have you not read anything in the topic so far?

The achievement is luck based. That's the problem everyone is having with it. There are some boss behaviors that will just outright kill you and there's nothing you can do about it. The actual fight itself isn't too bad when you can keep trying and a favorable pattern eventually happens, but when one bad roll of RNG invalidates all your work, that's a problem.

After following your advice and reading people's expiriense on randomness of the boss, i see that i may have gotten lucky in some desicive points of the fight. So yeah, my bad, maybe it is much more unfair than i have thought!