Zhang Liang i WAY too hard for a first boss

[Dannyboi]

Look I get it, this dev is notorious for making insanely difficult games and bosses. And I get that he is meant to teach you to deflect and not dodge, I get that, bu the first boss? Really? A two phaser? While you only get 3 healing bottles and most will be used in the first fight? Doesn't honestly seem all that fair for first boss. I've even leveled up several times and even practiced deflecting on weaker mobs before the boss area, and I still cant beat Zhang Liang.

[Orphen]

Didn't even have to use 1 healing to beat him. All you have to do is grind your gauge to 25 and hes super simple. Recommend getting buff skills as well like attack and healing. I beat him super fast.

[Tiasmoon]

Zhang Liang was nerfed compared to the demo. He is pretty easy. Even easier if you use the Polearm against him. (it does a lot of health damage, a lot of spirit damage, and deflecting costs less spirit) You can find one in a chest in I think the fire area, and as drop from one of the mobs I forget which.

[Dannyboi]

Originally posted by Orphen:

Didn't even have to use 1 healing to beat him. All you have to do is grind your gauge to 25 and hes super simple. Recommend getting buff skills as well like attack and healing. I beat him super fast.

I farmed until i was at 28 morale and i still couldn't do it

[Dannyboi]

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

Zhang Liang was nerfed compared to the demo. He is pretty easy. Even easier if you use the Polearm against him. You can find one in a chest in I think the fire area, and as drop from one of the mobs I forget which.

I have 6....

[Tiasmoon]

Originally posted by DannyBoi:

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

Zhang Liang was nerfed compared to the demo. He is pretty easy. Even easier if you use the Polearm against him. You can find one in a chest in I think the fire area, and as drop from one of the mobs I forget which.

I have 6....

And you used it and still failed? This boss is much easier then Nioh 1's first post tutorial mandatory boss btw.

[Master]

this will sound unpleasant, obnoxious but its the way i did it. Need to keep getting better. i kept practicing with his 1st phase until i got the hang of it without using a single heal. For the 2nd phase, if you manage to get him to certain hp %, game will prompt you to press buttons. do it to summon divine beast and end the fight.

i got so focused that i just killed him normally.

[Dannyboi]

Originally posted by Master:

this will sound unpleasant, obnoxious but its the way i did it. Need to keep getting better. i kept practicing with his 1st phase until i got the hang of it without using a single heal. For the 2nd phase, if you manage to get him to certain hp %, game will prompt you to press buttons. do it to summon divine beast and end the fight.

i got so focused that i just killed him normally.

I've attempted him about 10 times now and I'm about to just give up and refund the game

[Dregora]

Originally posted by DannyBoi:

Originally posted by Orphen:

Didn't even have to use 1 healing to beat him. All you have to do is grind your gauge to 25 and hes super simple. Recommend getting buff skills as well like attack and healing. I beat him super fast.

I farmed until i was at 28 morale and i still couldn't do it

Then it's 100% a skill issue. I hate to be that guy, but 28 moral is freakishly high. Maybe it's just not your type of game.

[Omni]

First boss is blocking tutorial. You only have to learn block in time. Died very often before i got it :)

[TheGamingNot]

Originally posted by Master:

this will sound unpleasant, obnoxious but its the way i did it. Need to keep getting better. i kept practicing with his 1st phase until i got the hang of it without using a single heal. For the 2nd phase, if you manage to get him to certain hp %, game will prompt you to press buttons. do it to summon divine beast and end the fight.

i got so focused that i just killed him normally.

i had to do this too, 2 hrs it took went to bed at 4 am

[Merik Lobo]

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

Zhang Liang was nerfed compared to the demo. He is pretty easy. Even easier if you use the Polearm against him. (it does a lot of health damage, a lot of spirit damage, and deflecting costs less spirit) You can find one in a chest in I think the fire area, and as drop from one of the mobs I forget which.

the polearm costs more spirit to deflect, not less. just tested that. It seems the higher that value is the less it costs, which is why higher is listed as blue. doesn't make much sense.

[Master]

Originally posted by DannyBoi:

Originally posted by Master:

this will sound unpleasant, obnoxious but its the way i did it. Need to keep getting better. i kept practicing with his 1st phase until i got the hang of it without using a single heal. For the 2nd phase, if you manage to get him to certain hp %, game will prompt you to press buttons. do it to summon divine beast and end the fight.

i got so focused that i just killed him normally.

I've attempted him about 10 times now and I'm about to just give up and refund the game

this game requires persistence. Took at least 20 tries for me. Nioh, dark souls elden ring etc similar games all require persistence.

[Elvarsi]

the balance is certainly off. I died like 30 times to him, 5 times against the next one, never against the third one and one time against the fourth

[Dannyboi]

Originally posted by Master:

Originally posted by DannyBoi:

I've attempted him about 10 times now and I'm about to just give up and refund the game

this game requires persistence. Took at least 20 tries for me. Nioh, dark souls elden ring etc similar games all require persistence.

The deflect doesn't work half the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ time

[MangoTangoFox]

I got smashed so hard. I'm used to how Dark Souls works, and I have no experience with Sekiro (which this game is more like).

I was trying to exclusively parry every attack because the double tap to dodge honestly didn't feel very fluid, and one mistake usually led to getting comboed. I could first-try parry all of the earlier enemies easy, but the boss is a huge ramp up in speed and weird movements and long combos.

THEN I realized that like Dark Souls, you can just hold your guard/shield up (left bumper) as a fallback for if you get the timing of the parry/dodge wrong. After I learned that I beat the 2-phase boss within 2 attempts. While blocking, you only lose part of your stance meter and are not damaged or stunned, and only when you lose ALL of your stance meter does it finally stun you. If you can land even some of the parry attempts (B button), you build your stance meter back up so it shouldn't hit the bottom.

Another tip. I was using the polearm, and it's RB+X skill has an insanely long charge up time, so if you use it at any time other than when the boss is fully stunned, he'll just quickly bash you out of it before you can stagger him. But if you wait for those longer stun windows before starting it, you can land like a 20 hit combo on him with just the single press of RB+X.

Also, use Y when you get the filled-in red circle on the boss for a huge chunk of damage. Then at the final stage, it wants you to use a new 3rd special ability using Y+B. I'm on ultrawidescreen so I didn't initially see the note on the far left side of the screen telling me what the combo was, so I looked at how the UI was shaped and presumed it was RB+B, and it just wouldn't activate and I was very confused, thinking I didn't have enough mana/energy for it or whatever.