King of Puppets unbelievable

[B a q z i ツ]

first phase fully fine but romeo could be a single phase standalone boss, what the ♥♥♥♥ you want us to do how can you beat every boss in game without spectre in <10 tries but this guy is like malenia x 2

[Thunder_Pika]

Originally posted by B a q z i ツ:

first phase fully fine but romeo could be a single phase standalone boss, what the ♥♥♥♥ you want us to do how can you beat every boss in game without spectre in <10 tries but this guy is like malenia x 2

git gud

[Tourette's Guy]

If King of Puppets looks hard to you, wait until you face the Green Monster...

[Kitoshi]

Originally posted by Kitoshi:

Romeo has a flaw in it's attack AI, if you dodge diagonally right forward you can kinda break his AI a little bit because a lot of his attacks have a tonne of forward momentum. He can't turn fast enough to keep his combo chains going because he has to make a big arc to loop around back to the player char.

It only really works diagonally right and not left because his attack arcs start on his left and then arc to the right so you dodge into his attacks meaning you get the path that means you have minimal "contact" with his attacks. It will require some timing off course but this worked for me.

Because this thread is so active I am quoting myself. I just beat romeo on NG+1 and he was so easy it was a joke. Just diagonal right forward dodges with some timing and you can pretty much beat him so easily that he's more or less a normal enemy. It works on his huge fire combo as well, just time your dodges and go diagonally right forward and gg, easiest win in the game.

[HypetheKomodo]

Originally posted by DexC:

also people who have beaten him, can you tell how much points is needed in stamina to successfully evade that fire chain attack ? ( let's say you got full stamina when he starts it

I had 15 when I beat the King. After spending hours on the boss on my first character I rerolled and went with a Motivity/Advance build with the Electric Coil Stick which has been my go-to weapon for this entire run so far. I got it within 20 minutes. Barely survived the Not-Quite-Waterfoul Dance combo but that's the biggest hurdle.

Dodging is recommended but I got by with just blocks/perfect blocks. His attacks don't drain much stamina and you usually get ample chance to recover the HP on everything but his Not-Quite-Waterfoul Dance.

And don't sleep on throwables. Even with modest stats a lot of them hit like dumpster trucks.

[Zyrconia]

Originally posted by Kitoshi:

Originally posted by Kitoshi:

Romeo has a flaw in it's attack AI, if you dodge diagonally right forward you can kinda break his AI a little bit because a lot of his attacks have a tonne of forward momentum. He can't turn fast enough to keep his combo chains going because he has to make a big arc to loop around back to the player char.

It only really works diagonally right and not left because his attack arcs start on his left and then arc to the right so you dodge into his attacks meaning you get the path that means you have minimal "contact" with his attacks. It will require some timing off course but this worked for me.

Because this thread is so active I am quoting myself. I just beat romeo on NG+1 and he was so easy it was a joke. Just diagonal right forward dodges with some timing and you can pretty much beat him so easily that he's more or less a normal enemy. It works on his huge fire combo as well, just time your dodges and go diagonally right forward and gg, easiest win in the game.

That doesn't help me at all. The problem with this boss is that he is so fast and unpredictable that eventually he will hit you and the chip damage will kill you. And every time you go in there is like a 30-50% chance that you'll end up trading. If you go in for one hit. If you try to get in 2 hits, the chance is is like 80% you'll get hit.

So I wait, parry his stuff, eventually miss enough parries that I die. Now, with you method, I wait, dodge, eventually miss enough dodges and I die. Same thing.

But, this time I get no staggers on the boss. So you just made the fight harder for me.

Look, there isn't a single bit of correct numerical balancing in this game. not one. Under no way shape or form can I take this boss on a straight fight, a slow paced fight where I just occasionally hit the boss, a battle of attrition. He is way to fast and unpredictable and if the battle of attrition won't get you, you sometimes make a mistake and eat the whole combo. Which leads you dead. I need those big stagger damages to stand a very low chance of beating him. I also need to be aggressive and take some risks.

If this was a standalone boss, like it should have been, but no, because we have ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ devs, who have not managed to set a proper value for anything numerical in the game, that would be fine, since you could practice the boss. Imagine this boss after 30 back to back attempts on him. I would easily beat him and gain valuable skills not just for this game, but all future soul games.

But instead we need to go through the immensely infuriating first phase boss every single time. A very lengthy fight. It it super infuriating because I almost flawless the first phase of the first boss (the game still has problems with chip damage, it needs some sort of mechanic early game where you recover more damage than you block on a cool down or something to mitigate the chip damage), but in the second phase it all goes to ♥♥♥♥.

I don't know what my "DPS' is in the first phase, but for the sake of arguments let's say 300. If it is 300, in the second phase it is more like 30. Here is how the second phase goes: I sprint in, because the boss jumped away or used an aoe, he attacks before I can reach him, so I parry. The parry flashes red and all, still staggers me, so there is a small period in which my inputs don't work and can't do anything. I sprint in, he attacks, I parry, get staggered. Repeat 2-3 more times. finally I get 1-3 hits in, the boss jumps away. Repeat until he dies. And I do make mistakes and occasionally get hit. It is simple math really: if you have a X% chance to get hit, you can quite accurately estimate the moment you'll die. and there is almost nothing you can do about it. Applies to boss 1 and 2. On boss 1 I just end up wasting some resources so I reach the Romeo fight with only 2 heals.

So in conclusion:
- Consider me defeated. I will eventually beat do boss, I give it 5-10 attempts/day until I do, but beating a boss is not about actually beating the boss but about the spirit of the endeavor. and my spirit is broken.
- This is still one of my favorite games this year and in the hands of competent developers has immense potential. Any other game I would have given up long time before, not because of the difficulty, but because I lack a total respect for the skill of the developers in balancing the game and numerical values. I do not agree with a single design choice they made when it comes to bosses and the associated numbers. And this is only boss number 6 or so. I heard what comes is worse.

One day this franchise could be better than souls, if it was in the hands of better devs.

This game doesn't need patching, it needs miracle patching. But sill not impossible. Like I said in another thread, I could fix this game over the week-end. The miracle does not consist in the effort needed, which is low and relatively straight forward but actually getting the devs to realize what is needed to change and the magnitude of it.

I'll bet you serious money they think they pretty much nailed the balancing and their vision is intact. Souls is hard after all, right? Clearly as long as things are hard, how you got to the difficulty isn't important. You can have cheap bosses in a souls, right?

[Ncs]

First run Romeo took me about 4 hours. NG+ today it was 20 minutes. The game is great and the bosses are all very doable in this stage. Some of them are a bit spongy but still fine.

[Lukas]

Originally posted by Zyrconia:

Originally posted by Kitoshi:

Because this thread is so active I am quoting myself. I just beat romeo on NG+1 and he was so easy it was a joke. Just diagonal right forward dodges with some timing and you can pretty much beat him so easily that he's more or less a normal enemy. It works on his huge fire combo as well, just time your dodges and go diagonally right forward and gg, easiest win in the game.

That doesn't help me at all. The problem with this boss is that he is so fast and unpredictable that eventually he will hit you and the chip damage will kill you. And every time you go in there is like a 30-50% chance that you'll end up trading. If you go in for one hit. If you try to get in 2 hits, the chance is is like 80% you'll get hit.

So I wait, parry his stuff, eventually miss enough parries that I die. Now, with you method, I wait, dodge, eventually miss enough dodges and I die. Same thing.

But, this time I get no staggers on the boss. So you just made the fight harder for me.

Look, there isn't a single bit of correct numerical balancing in this game. not one. Under no way shape or form can I take this boss on a straight fight, a slow paced fight where I just occasionally hit the boss, a battle of attrition. He is way to fast and unpredictable and if the battle of attrition won't get you, you sometimes make a mistake and eat the whole combo. Which leads you dead. I need those big stagger damages to stand a very low chance of beating him. I also need to be aggressive and take some risks.

If this was a standalone boss, like it should have been, but no, because we have ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ devs, who have not managed to set a proper value for anything numerical in the game, that would be fine, since you could practice the boss. Imagine this boss after 30 back to back attempts on him. I would easily beat him and gain valuable skills not just for this game, but all future soul games.

But instead we need to go through the immensely infuriating first phase boss every single time. A very lengthy fight. It it super infuriating because I almost flawless the first phase of the first boss (the game still has problems with chip damage, it needs some sort of mechanic early game where you recover more damage than you block on a cool down or something to mitigate the chip damage), but in the second phase it all goes to ♥♥♥♥.

I don't know what my "DPS' is in the first phase, but for the sake of arguments let's say 300. If it is 300, in the second phase it is more like 30. Here is how the second phase goes: I sprint in, because the boss jumped away or used an aoe, he attacks before I can reach him, so I parry. The parry flashes red and all, still staggers me, so there is a small period in which my inputs don't work and can't do anything. I sprint in, he attacks, I parry, get staggered. Repeat 2-3 more times. finally I get 1-3 hits in, the boss jumps away. Repeat until he dies. And I do make mistakes and occasionally get hit. It is simple math really: if you have a X% chance to get hit, you can quite accurately estimate the moment you'll die. and there is almost nothing you can do about it. Applies to boss 1 and 2. On boss 1 I just end up wasting some resources so I reach the Romeo fight with only 2 heals.

So in conclusion:
- Consider me defeated. I will eventually beat do boss, I give it 5-10 attempts/day until I do, but beating a boss is not about actually beating the boss but about the spirit of the endeavor. and my spirit is broken.
- This is still one of my favorite games this year and in the hands of competent developers has immense potential. Any other game I would have given up long time before, not because of the difficulty, but because I lack a total respect for the skill of the developers in balancing the game and numerical values. I do not agree with a single design choice they made when it comes to bosses and the associated numbers. And this is only boss number 6 or so. I heard what comes is worse.

One day this franchise could be better than souls, if it was in the hands of better devs.

This game doesn't need patching, it needs miracle patching. But sill not impossible. Like I said in another thread, I could fix this game over the week-end. The miracle does not consist in the effort needed, which is low and relatively straight forward but actually getting the devs to realize what is needed to change and the magnitude of it.

I'll bet you serious money they think they pretty much nailed the balancing and their vision is intact. Souls is hard after all, right? Clearly as long as things are hard, how you got to the difficulty isn't important. You can have cheap bosses in a souls, right?

He is not unpredictable, he actually had 5-6 move and thats it. The most dangerous one is when he charge his weapon in fire, he can do a pretty long and quick combo that is indeed hard to either parry or dodge, but you can interrupt him from beginning such combo if you charge heavy attack the moment he imbue his weapon in fire.

You are probably having issues because you keep your distance from him while you should do the opposite, aggressive but not too greedy behaviour.

He run around and does a singolar spin attack, simply press the dodge button and then hit him once. If he jumps at you, avoid him and avoid again, as he will do a red attack right after he lands. If he run towards you, he will try to grab you with his weapon, avoid it 3 times. And last, he will do a 3 hit combo, which you can avoid it easily on the side.

[lazymagpie]

King of Puppets Phase 2 is a weird fight.
On the one hand, there's more aggressive bosses in the game (hello nameless puppet and brotherhood rematch), and if you position yourself correctly, you can avoid some of his flurry moves by leisurely strafing around him while he does his blender impression.

On the other hand, due to having the worst case of the zoomies, positioning is kinda hard and unpredictable against him, and his flurries definitely are hard to PG against consistently. His axe kick red attack has also a really weird timing, and sometimes you can just walk outside it and be fine, and other times you get hit despite him not being in the same area code as your model.

[The Royal Pain]

I've gone on record here as saying it's not that bad a fight, and after just getting done I have to say that.

I'm slightly retracting. The first phase did need some of that chonk cut off considering how simple it was. As far as Romeo, I'm still kind of divided on whether I want to revise my statement or not. Maybe I got hideously lucky but there weren't any real fire puddles this time. He *is* a bit too nutso at times though, I'm pretty sure the flurries were where I was praying I was either far away or totally on point for.

Basically, glad the King got the HP cut, but I still don't think he's a total brick wall prior. For being what's effectively the climax boss before you start digging into the other mystery in the game, the whole fight is kind of. Fitting. Same vibe as leaving Yhorm for last, y'know? Big, bombastic, cuckoo nuts comparing both phases.

[JP]

My first playthough probably took me 100 attempts to beat it. My second playthough I beat It on the first attempt. There is a very steep learning curve but once you figure this boss out you will clap its cheeks.

Keep trying! you got this. Take breaks if necessary. Sometimes you just gotta walk away from the game for a meal or a day.

my strategy was to perfect guard my way through phase 1, and phase 2 I switch to dodging. Trying to perfect guard Romeo is doable but very difficult because of the scythe and move-set.

[rapha_bg]

I took me like almost two hours to beat him on my first run. Now on NG+, I beat him so easily, I wondered what I missed at my first try.

[mayhem523]

Originally posted by rapha_bg:

I took me like almost two hours to beat him on my first run. Now on NG+, I beat him so easily, I wondered what I missed at my first try.

Probably lots of levels, p organ upgrades, weapon upgrades, already being familiar with his moveset and a boss nerf patch. Those might have something to do with it.

[Shindig73]

I died many times on this boss trying all weapons until I used that brown blitz bat/mace you get early in the game. I upgraded it and beat him first try. I used the shock arm with it and a load of blitz grenades. Throwables are your best friend in this game.

[Kan3da.]

Is his weapon breakable? If not highliting it during parry is plainly misleading.

[Deathwing1306]

Originally posted by Kan3da.:

Is his weapon breakable? If not highliting it during parry is plainly misleading.

It is breakable but afaik, it takes around 25 perfect blocks I think...