The Minotaur is a diet-leviathan in the worst ways

[Hook Master]

Violence is probably my current favorite layer and has some of the highest highs and lowest lows I've seen from the game so far.
Not to mention the massive increase in the machine presence and infighting in hell, something I've been hoping to see for years.

However, 7-1's boss is a bit lackluster at the end of the day. In terms of artistic design he's amazing, a fun take on the classic idea of a minotaur. However in terms of gameplay he leaves a lot to be desired. Similar to the leviathan, he's covered in armor and is fought on a platform moving through a tunnel, the design of the leviathan fight versus the Minotaur's fight shows that the minotaur's faces 3 severe problems

1. Static, boring healing
2. Difficult to consistently damage
3. Near impossible to gain consistent style off

1. Due to the minotaur's armor covering, the healing for his initial bossfight is supplemented by lesser demons being ferried in every once in a while. This half baked solution creates artificial tension that hasn't been present in any boss for the entire game up to this point. It's always been a game of risk and reward when it comes to health management. The leviathan had similar design but also had a giant, accessible flesh part which could be used for healing, along with parries. You cannot parry any of the minotaur's attacks (which are already very slow) and the only part you can actually damage is unable to be healed off of because it's below the boss, and the boss is constantly on a moving floor that hurts you so you cannot get close without being hurt and thrown into the air. This compounds with the already difficult task of damaging the damn thing.

2. The Leviathan's armor plating was pretty obvious, shoot it in the mouth or the giant flesh bit. The minotaur has his bottom half exposed, which makes sense in terms of him "falling apart". However, this bottom half is blocked by his midsection, causing many projectiles to miss completely or bounce off of his top portion of plating or head when he moves. The boss's constant moving model and the constantly moving stage around him already make it difficult to hit him, making tight window even tighter for no discernible reason. The Leviathan at least was large and had large windups for much bigger attacks, which allowed hitting him to be more up to the player as you had several opportunities to attack the giant weakspot, or even close in on it if you were feeling ballsy. The minotaur's cramped arena already cripples player creativity, and the inconsistency of the minotaur's ability to be damaged just adds a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ layer to that.

3. The style aspect is important in scoring and is crucial in the design of bosses. This is easily made a non-issue by most bosses being just open to all of your attacks, with the tradeoff of them being fast and damaging, causing every boss to feel like an open-ended challenge where you decide how to take it down, no preset or required tools. The minotaur breaks this by having such an inconsistent hit area that you need ultraprecise weapons just to hit it as most explosions will hit the ground instead of the "guts" and travel back on the moving floor. This diverges from the leviathan fight in that the leviathan was huge, could be hit with anything, and had a massive hit point that was open to any number of combos and could be approached at all angles. The minotaur can only be approached from the front, there is a severe lack of creative input from the player during the tram fight.
This is rectified in his second encounter, though.

How could he be fixed? Eh, three ideas.

1. Make the model bigger
A simple size increase would do wonders in making his fight feel a lot more involved as he'd be easier to hit and by proxy his attacks would be more threatening. Speaking of:
2. Make his attacks faster
For how small his attacks are they have a large windup and very, very small area of damage. If he's only swinging that admittedly very small hammer around, he should be swinging it faster.
3. Make the acid gut a projectile
Adds a parry and allows a good alternative to mandatory hazard on stage, rewards active player engagement and makes way more sense than him slamming it down like a playing card.

At the end of it all the minotaur is a sour note in an otherwise interesting chapter. It's not the worst but it's definitely the worst boss of the roster and had much more potential than was shown in its encounter.

[Cocyx The Gay Skeleton]

agree that its a lil confusing where his weak points actually are, but his attacks are so easy to dodge that u can just projectile boost his belly to death pretty quickly so i never had any issues. which explosions were you using?

[Hook Master]

Originally posted by Cocyx The Gay Skeleton:

agree that its a lil confusing where his weak points actually are, but his attacks are so easy to dodge that u can just projectile boost his belly to death pretty quickly so i never had any issues. which explosions were you using?

Mostly malicious cannon but it's a hitscan beam and I'm willing to take the skill issue on missing that one, I switched to screwdriver after a bit. I do agree he's easy as hell (haha) and easy to cheese but that factors hard into the major difficulty in styling on him

[Cocyx The Gay Skeleton]

Originally posted by StaticSpark:

Originally posted by Cocyx The Gay Skeleton:

agree that its a lil confusing where his weak points actually are, but his attacks are so easy to dodge that u can just projectile boost his belly to death pretty quickly so i never had any issues. which explosions were you using?

Mostly malicious cannon but it's a hitscan beam and I'm willing to take the skill issue on missing that one, I switched to screwdriver after a bit. I do agree he's easy as hell (haha) and easy to cheese but that factors hard into the major difficulty in styling on him

ahh, i never use that thing, i tend to stick to the original blue railgun. projectile boost swapping between the two shotguns while airborne still gives an absurd amount of style points, but yeah i can't really think of any other viable option for style. i don't mind it too much though considering he's at the end of a long level where you should have loads of style already

[Hook Master]

Originally posted by Cocyx The Gay Skeleton:

Originally posted by StaticSpark:

Mostly malicious cannon but it's a hitscan beam and I'm willing to take the skill issue on missing that one, I switched to screwdriver after a bit. I do agree he's easy as hell (haha) and easy to cheese but that factors hard into the major difficulty in styling on him

ahh, i never use that thing, i tend to stick to the original blue railgun. projectile boost swapping between the two shotguns while airborne still gives an absurd amount of style points, but yeah i can't really think of any other viable option for style. i don't mind it too much though considering he's at the end of a long level where you should have loads of style already

True, though the mannequins are naturally style deterrent the way they separate and blitz around the room, and the only other enemies are 2 of those angel balls and 1 malicious face, along with a few fodder demons in the tunnels
Definitely a replay heavy level for P-ranks which sucks considering it's a bit of a drag already with the door shenanigans

[Cocyx The Gay Skeleton]

Originally posted by StaticSpark:

Originally posted by Cocyx The Gay Skeleton:

ahh, i never use that thing, i tend to stick to the original blue railgun. projectile boost swapping between the two shotguns while airborne still gives an absurd amount of style points, but yeah i can't really think of any other viable option for style. i don't mind it too much though considering he's at the end of a long level where you should have loads of style already

True, though the mannequins are naturally style deterrent the way they separate and blitz around the room, and the only other enemies are 2 of those angel balls and 1 malicious face, along with a few fodder demons in the tunnels
Definitely a replay heavy level for P-ranks which sucks considering it's a bit of a drag already with the door shenanigans

my playstyle tends to involve hopping around and projectile boosting + coin shooting + parrying the homing balls, so i p-ranked that level on my 2nd try. the coins make very quick work of the mannequins from my experience, sometimes i have to double take like oh they're all dead already