Bartender is the worst designed enemy in the game.

[scrunt]

I played this pre-1.0 and came back post 1.0 to check it out and it honestly feels like most of the ♥♥♥♥ they added since i last played made the game worse and the bartender is the biggest example of this. Makes the game a total slog.

[ShinryuEXE]

I mean, you can just hunt down the Bartender at the beginning of the fight.
I really don't think it's a bad enemy.

[scrunt]

Originally posted by ShinryuEXE:

I mean, you can just hunt down the Bartender at the beginning of the fight.
I really don't think it's a bad enemy.

The problem is how easily they can outrun you especially if they summon security to get in your way
encounters often become a long slog with them involved

[Twelvefield]

The dev gets a gold wristwatch every time the Bartender is the Informant (so I hear).

[ShinryuEXE]

Originally posted by papy dage:

Originally posted by ShinryuEXE:

I mean, you can just hunt down the Bartender at the beginning of the fight.
I really don't think it's a bad enemy.

The problem is how easily they can outrun you especially if they summon security to get in your way
encounters often become a long slog with them involved

I haven't felt that way. You can corner them pretty easily and in general if you're having trouble catching up to them you may just need to be drafting more movement options, whether that's actual movement cards or attacks that advance, or even the Enhacements that give extra move cards.

As far as security being summoned, only one of their attacks does that so it's not super common, and you don't need to kill any of the summoned security, just the regular enemies.

So I dunno, I see what you're saying but it just hasn't been my experience.

[TerrestrialXtra]

LOL Love the Bartender! Hate that guy so much.

[Fang]

Bartender can be a pain for slower decks. It took me forever with a counter deck (which I hated and found overall terrible anyway). Grappler also took a while to reach him.
Those debuffs are really annoying, especially when palm strike suddenly becomes useless because it does 0 damage and therefore does not stun.
At least you do not have to finish all spawned grunts.
Faster decks like trickster and aggressive had no problem.

[Zephyr]

Bartender, like a bunch of things in this game, depends a lot of your deck for how you can deal with it. If you have throws, stun and a lot of big damage cards, like aggressive or grappler? Great. If you have so so offense, like balanced often does, it may be tricky. If you are slasher or counter, you're going to suffer, because in one case, your bleed won't work fast enough to allows you to not have to deal with the debuffs for a long time, but in both cases, chances are you aren't going to be able to neutralise him and you will have anemic offense. The barman also never attacks, so for counter decks, this is obviously a problem...

And yeah, bartenders informants... Hope you didn't plan to ALSO get the "beat the fight in X turns" reward.

[fri_freeman]

Here's a tips about bartender informant.

Ever seen The Departed? A Better Tomorrow? Internal Affairs?

Spoiler: you can look at the informant in their eyes, grab their shoulder, and whisper to them, "This is for the greater good" before you suplex them out of the balcony. Shed a tear for them after the mission, but sometimes, informants have to die for the good of the mission.

[Zephyr]

Spoiler: The bartender will never step near the balcony. He will camp in a corner of the room and smirk knowingly.

[Overlord Byron]

Originally posted by ShinryuEXE:

I mean, you can just hunt down the Bartender at the beginning of the fight.
I really don't think it's a bad enemy.

How? Between their summoned security, reducing your actions to 1, reducing your attack by 4, their whopping 54 HP, eliminating your combo, their immunity to friendly fire, and their auto-flee AI, you'll be chasing them around the map dealing no damage to their already substantial health pool, all the while getting pegged for your trouble.

They shut down the game whenever they appear, and unlike most of the challenges in the game they're not tactical, because they *remove* all your tactical options. The game's really well-designed in general, but I agree with papy doge on this one; the bartender was a bad idea executed poorly.

[ShinryuEXE]

Originally posted by Overlord Byron:

Originally posted by ShinryuEXE:

I mean, you can just hunt down the Bartender at the beginning of the fight.
I really don't think it's a bad enemy.

How? Between their summoned security, reducing your actions to 1, reducing your attack by 4, their whopping 54 HP, eliminating your combo, their immunity to friendly fire, and their auto-flee AI, you'll be chasing them around the map dealing no damage to their already substantial health pool, all the while getting pegged for your trouble.

They shut down the game whenever they appear, and unlike most of the challenges in the game they're not tactical, because they *remove* all your tactical options. The game's really well-designed in general, but I agree with papy doge on this one; the bartender was a bad idea executed poorly.

They can only do one of those actions each turn though.

1. Summoned security aren't very tough opponents and even if you let multiple get summoned they'll more or less get in each other's way.

2. Doesn't it just give -1 to Momentum, not set your Momentum to 1? So you'll have a worse turn, sure, but doesn't mean you can't do anything on your turn.

3. Reducing attack only lasts for a turn, so you can wait it out if need be. Or use attacks that have a high base damage. Sure, they'll do less damage still, but they can still output reasonable damage even with the penalty. Plus any collision damage you inflict upon them is unaffected by the debuff.

4. Any deck relying on combo should be reasonably able to generate combo quickly, so having your combo reset shouldn't be that big a deal, especially since you can see that it's going to happen ahead of time so you can make use of any cards that expend combo on that turn knowing that it will be gone either way.

5. Sure, they run away. Eventually they get backed into a corner, and by the nature of the titular tight spaces of the fights, that usually happens pretty quickly so you can often just make a beeline for them and kill them in a round or two.

The game gives enough tools to mitigate all of the problems that a Bartender throws at you. Sure, they are meant to be impactful, otherwise you'd just altogether ignore the enemy, but I don't think its abilities are oppressive.

[Plumber]

bartender wouldn't be annoying if timed objectives didn't exist; he's actually pretty fun in the rare few stages that don't involve any

[Home]

By the stage you've gotten to the bartender, you should have hopefully built up a little extra momentum (you're going to have a really tough time anyway if you don't).

At that point, if I can, I prioritise him first, and take him out. If not, I ignore him and deal with everyone else first, THEN him. Whilst it's true about him being a force multiplier for the enemies in a way, it's very handy that he himself has no direct attacks.

Any stuns or take-downs are naturally useful against him since they nullify his next attack (and IIRC, he has no armour to block stuns). His combo breaking isn't too bad (as others said, if you're on a combo heavy deck, I'd definitely recommend cards that built it up again quickly like Jolt or Combo), security call in is usually manageable (plus they don't actually need to be taken out to finish the level), his other two attacks (damage and momentum down) can be a pain.

[Air Master Burst]

Either focus him down or Grapple/Shove him to an edge and toss him. If you can't do either of those things then you need to build your deck better next time.

[hermanJnr.]

I don't find him very tough, however the important bonus objectives like "Kill all enemies by X turns" seems extremely unbalanced at times.

For example, there's a prison fight where there's a ton of tables, a Doctor mini boss and a bunch of shield dudes and it's something like 7 enemies you have to beat in...8 turns. Lolwut. There's not even room to get them to friendly fire each other and you don't have high level damage cards so early on.

The Bartender is the same thing. You'll beat him but it just takes a while and you can kiss goodbye to any time dependent bonuses 90% of the time.