Keter realization is way too hard

[ebola]

I just finished the game, and I gotta say I don't enjoy the second and final Keter realization fights. All of the fights after the realization are fine but the Heart of Aspiration and Silent Girl are way too hard. I get that the gimmick for the Heart fight is to use Learn on C when she's using her block counter dice to get cheesy staggers, but without doing that it feels like the fight is just impossible. And the only way I got through the Silent Girl fight is by blitzing the boss in her 2nd phase through her 9 protection with a lot of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Slash power stacking. Even then I failed to kill her five times before I was able to do it. In hindsight maybe I could have beaten Silent Girl by abusing Learn on the two tentacles in the back, but because they respawn anyway it seems hopeless.

I think the Heart fight would be better if the amount of strength the boss gets wasn't always a lot more than you could reasonably hope to win against, no matter what you do. That, or if it didn't heal massively after hitting you with its attacks. I think the Silent Girl fight would be better if the minions in phase 2 didn't respawn, since they're already extremely hard to kill, and you start off with a time limit. The devs are good with balance on the other fights, so just in general I think these two phases should get looked at.

[Senran]

Originally posted by Flygoniaks:

I've heard that the Heart phase apparently got nerfed this update, apparently. Were there ways to reduce "Hankering" that you noticed? Even before the nerf, on my fight against her (which only had a small amount of cheesing) the most Hankering it got at once was 8, which frankly wasn't the end of the world (most of my librarians beat the Mass Attack anyway).

There are two ways you can reduce Hankering I remember of : if the enemy that increases Hankering on hit doesn't manage to do any damage during the turn, it lowers Hankering by 2. There's also a combat page that increases Hankering on Hit. If it doesnt manage to do so at least once, however, it decreases Hankering by 1. iirc it's not affected by power changes but I'm not sure. That combat page doesn't seem to be restricted to one specific enemy however so multiple enemies can use it during one scene.

Originally posted by Flygoniaks:

I STILL don't get what the deal is with the back tentacles. 90% of the time they do nothing, and the other 10% of the time they come out with extremely powerful attacks with no warning. Even a description of their behavior as a passive would be helpful. I swear I even had a time where one back tentacle was attacking, while the other still did nothing...

I'm not sure myself, and it only happened to me once I started ignoring the back tentacles to focus on Remorse after getting rid of the ones at the front. That would fit with what @CarThief said :

Originally posted by CarThief:

The final phase could stand to give the back hands a warning though. Supposedly they start attacking if left undamaged for 3 turns. Yet, nothing tells you that, you have to find that out yourself.

Can't confirm for sure though. A warning on it would be really needed, it killed one of my nuggets out of nowhere and would have obliterated a second if she didn't have a revival effect.

[Flygoniaks]

Originally posted by Senran:

There are two ways you can reduce Hankering I remember of : if the enemy that increases Hankering on hit doesn't manage to do any damage during the turn, it lowers Hankering by 2. There's also a combat page that increases Hankering on Hit. If it doesnt manage to do so at least once, however, it decreases Hankering by 1. iirc it's not affected by power changes but I'm not sure. That combat page doesn't seem to be restricted to one specific enemy however so multiple enemies can use it during one scene.

Yeah, that's new. Those features weren't a thing when I played the phase last week.

[ebola]

Originally posted by Flygoniaks:

...you JUST said that your main complaint is not that the Keter Realization is hard in general, but that it's HARDER than the Distorted Ensemble. And now you're saying that you LIKE the Distorted Ensemble being easy, which implies that you want the Keter Realization to be easy as well?

No, my complaint right now is that it's harder than Black Silence. I decided that wasn't an issue when you mentioned that it was an intentional move to make Distorted Ensemble easy.

Originally posted by Flygoniaks:

I STILL don't get what the deal is with the back tentacles. 90% of the time they do nothing, and the other 10% of the time they come out with extremely powerful attacks with no warning.

They're passive, only using counter dice for a few scenes (I think 3) and then they start using actual combat pages. They have a different passive than the front tentacles which gives them increased dice power based on the guilt cost in hand.

Originally posted by Senran:

Heart ended up at +5 on my first try

This was almost impossible to achieve when I made this post (minimum was essentially 12 back then), so it's possible they've nerfed HoA since. Has anyone else fought HoA / Silent Girl on this patch? What were your experiences?

EDIT: Just read the previous posts. Yes, it looks like HoA was nerfed. The fight seems a lot more doable from the looks of it.

[Flygoniaks]

Originally posted by ebola:

I agree it should be hard, but the fights felt hopeless. What should be considered here is that the fight immediately after it pales in comparison to the difficulty of the realization before it.

Originally posted by ebola:

What I dislike about it isn't that it's hard, but that specifically it's way harder than the content after it.

Originally posted by ebola:

Originally posted by Flygoniaks:

...you JUST said that your main complaint is not that the Keter Realization is hard in general, but that it's HARDER than the Distorted Ensemble. And now you're saying that you LIKE the Distorted Ensemble being easy, which implies that you want the Keter Realization to be easy as well?

No, my complaint is that it's harder than Black Silence.

No comment, just gonna let this speak for itself.

Originally posted by ebola:

This was almost impossible to achieve when I made this post (minimum was essentially 12 back then)

Again, even BEFORE the nerf, the MOST Hankering it got on my successful attempt (which was only like the 2nd or 3rd try) was 8. This was with minimal amounts of cheesing, and I didn't even change the passives on my Key Pages (only the decks were switched slightly).

[ebola]

Originally posted by Flygoniaks:

No comment, just gonna let this speak for itself.

Read the edit.

[Flygoniaks]

Originally posted by ebola:

Read the edit.

Originally posted by ebola:

Black Silence deserves to be the hardest fight in the game I think. Right now Silent Girl is. I agree though, I enjoyed the Distorted Ensemble fight being easy. I would be okay with Keter Realization being hard if it was at least an interesting fight or cool. It's just a slog to get through Silent Girl's first phase, and the best way to do it is just by ignoring the mechanic. The problem with the Keter Realization fights being so difficult is they far overstay their welcome.

IDK man, it really seems like you spent half of this thread talking about how this should be easier than the Distorted Ensemble and completely reversed direction as soon as I pointed out said Ensemble wasn't meant to be difficult, suddenly acting like that was your opinion the entire time (and immediately the Black Silence became the point of comparison instead).

No offense, but it's a little difficult for me to believe you when your opinions appear turn on a dime like that. You gotta be careful with stuff like this or others won't take you seriously.

[ebola]

Originally posted by Flygoniaks:

No offense, but it's a little difficult for me to believe you when your opinions appear turn on a dime like that. You gotta be careful with stuff like this or others won't take you seriously.

There's not an argument here. You were right, the fight was meant to be easy, so I changed my opinion. I don't understand what's wrong with that.

[Flygoniaks]

Originally posted by ebola:

There's not an argument here. You were right, the fight was meant to be easy, so I changed my opinion. I don't understand what's wrong with that.

That's fine, it's perfectly acceptable to be convinced by other people's arguments. It's just that in a text-based forum, you gotta emphasize when your opinions change because of someone else. If you do it too suddenly, it could end up looking like you're just trying to "win" whatever the "argument" is by changing your viewpoint to something that is more powerful. It's kinda hard to describe, but if done wrong, people get confused and won't trust whatever you say afterwards. I believe you, but making it clearer next time could help others.

[DemonchanSama (Lilyia)]

Originally posted by Flygoniaks:

Originally posted by Senran:

Got to finally do the Keter Realization today after weeks of procrastination, and Heart seems far more manageable than what it used to be according to the posts there. Heart ended up at +5 on my first try, and given her low initial rolls it's pretty easy to deal with with such boosts. Didn't have Xiao who seems rather suited here, so I'm sure it's possible to drop her lower without it.

I've heard that the Heart phase apparently got nerfed this week's update. Were there ways to reduce "Hankering" that you noticed? Even before the nerf, on my fight against her (which only had a small amount of cheesing) the most Hankering it got at once was 8, which frankly wasn't the end of the world (most of my librarians beat the Mass Attack anyway).

Originally posted by Senran:

However the tentacles at the back really needed a warning about their attack pattern, there's 0 warning about it and after 5 turns it comes as a punch in the gut.

I STILL don't get what the deal is with the back tentacles. 90% of the time they do nothing, and the other 10% of the time they come out with extremely powerful attacks with no warning. Even a description of their behavior as a passive would be helpful. I swear I even had a time where one back tentacle was attacking, while the other still did nothing...

This is probably a bug with counter dice, I made a post concerning it when I kept encountering this with Punishing Bird, everyone kept telling me "don't hit the bird" and I wasn't, this is the same bug.

It probably happens a lot more than anyone realizes but due to the nature of the fights when there is a lot going on its hard to realize it as it can be brushed off as just a regular attack roll.

During fights like this, it hits hard and without prompt that's why we realize it. Same with PB.

AFAIK the back tentacles do not have any other cards other than counter dice ones.

You can read about it here.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1256670/discussions/0/3001052925611271247/

[Senran]

Originally posted by Whisper:

This is probably a bug with counter dice, I made a post concerning it when I kept encountering this with Punishing Bird, everyone kept telling me "don't hit the bird" and I wasn't, this is the same bug.

This has nothing to do with counter dices. The dices the tentacles used when they decided to finally make a move weren't yellow but red, meaning they're regular attack dices.

[Flygoniaks]

Originally posted by Senran:

This has nothing to do with counter dices. The dices the tentacles used when they decided to finally make a move weren't yellow but red, meaning they're regular attack dices.

Correct. Those tentacles mostly play counter dice for almost the entire phase, but suddenly start using extremely powerful offensive pages (WITHOUT counter dice) without any pattern as far as I could tell. And if there is a pattern, the game should at least explain what it is.

[Senran]

Originally posted by Flygoniaks:

Originally posted by Senran:

This has nothing to do with counter dices. The dices the tentacles used when they decided to finally make a move weren't yellow but red, meaning they're regular attack dices.

Correct. Those tentacles mostly play counter dice for almost the entire phase, but suddenly start using extremely powerful offensive pages (WITHOUT counter dice) without any pattern as far as I could tell. And if there is a pattern, the game should at least explain what it is.

By the way, do you happen to remember what the cards were specifically ? When I did the Remorse fight I hadn't even checked their cards during the round they switched to offense, assuming they were still the counter ones (leading to "unfortunate" results). I'd be curious to know how massive the damage actually was.

[DemonchanSama (Lilyia)]

Originally posted by Senran:

Originally posted by Whisper:

This is probably a bug with counter dice, I made a post concerning it when I kept encountering this with Punishing Bird, everyone kept telling me "don't hit the bird" and I wasn't, this is the same bug.

This has nothing to do with counter dices. The dices the tentacles used when they decided to finally make a move weren't yellow but red, meaning they're regular attack dices.

Hmm, oversight on my part then, I was told they only have counter dice cards and should never use offensive cards.

[Flygoniaks]

Originally posted by Senran:

By the way, do you happen to remember what the cards were specifically ? When I did the Remorse fight I hadn't even checked their cards during the round they switched to offense, assuming they were still the counter ones (leading to "unfortunate" results). I'd be curious to know how massive the damage actually was.

I believe that whenever they went on the offensive (so to speak) they used one of the extremely powerful pages that lost all of its dice if you won the first clash, and destroyed all YOUR dice if it won the clash (this page also inflicts tons of bleed and deals bonus damage based on the cost of "Guilt" on its target). They also played two of those 3-dice pages that deal a bunch of stagger damage. I got so paranoid that I checked their pages every scene...

[Sieg]

Why would Black Silence deserve to be the hardest fight in the game? It's the final boss of the normal path.

Angela's realization and Distorted Ensemble are fought only if you unlock True End and step onto it's path. Keter Realization is our "day 47-49" the fandom's been praying for for the entire Early Access period, just as Keter Suppression was in LobCorp

A bonus boss to get the True Ending deserves to be harder than the boss that lets you get an ending at all, I think.