Phrike is impossible. I despise this game.

[River Victor]

Seriously. I'm on the verge of smashing my controller. I f*cking cannot see how I can defeat this sh*t. I had revive, I used Ether to restore and respawn pot. I brought extra HP. Each time I f*cking need to go in, I had to sweep the entire map for any good upgrades for weapons and the weapon I got f*cking sucks. How many times do I have to do this? Sweep the map. Get sh*t upgrade. Die at the last health bar. Sweep the map again. Each sweep take one f*cking hour and you can't practice at boss. How many f*cking times do I have to do this? Challenging experience, mike hunt.

[2cide]

watch out for triple slap
that is certainly the most brutal move

[Gessar]

just run to the left or right? then dodge when he charges. lel

[Scruffy McGuffy]

There are many YT guides which should help you through (basically, keep distance, and time your dodge away from him when he lunges, don't melee him back, just go back to distance and keep firing).

Do try to be carrying a datacube, since you're doing most of the map anyway. That way you'll be able to get two of the three available datacubes in biome 1 (the fourth needs an upgrade from biome 6), and then you don't need to beat him again for ages unless you have another datacube you want to bank.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Returnal/comments/n384q7/datacube_locations/

[PsyBlade]

Once in this fight the game starts to look and run worse with every second. A minute or so into it the fight the game is a blurry stutterfest. So basically I not only have to deal with a boss that's a lot tougher then the normal enemies, I have to outdamage the bugs too. By the time I have drained two bars I basically can't dodge any more. I have no idea how I'm supposed to beat this.

Outside of this I don't have problems, nice job hiding the crappy programming a few hours in so people can't refund. "So nie" ("never like that" / "never this way") indeed.

[jagerx]

All of us have been there. I've rage quit several times. Keep at it, I guarantee simply by playing the game over and over you WILL have a breakthrough and it'll get much easier. Soon you won't even be hit by phrike and you'll wonder how you ever struggled.

[GTCv Deimos]

So.... here's the thing about Phrike, and Returnal as a whole: it's not that hard, but it's good at TRICKING you into feeling like it's hard. The game loves, Loves, LOVES to fill the screen with clouds of deadly photon attacks, lasers and go full "the floor is lava" on you.

But when you get right down to it, especially with Phrike... avoiding damage is commonly as easy as... strafe left (plus, he likes to dash up after those red rings). It can be tough, cuz Returnal is a game that repeatedly buffs you for success, and screws you over for every little mistake you make. But the game is not nearly as insurmountable as it likes to pretend to be. Frankly, if you can complete a stage of Super Mario Bros, Phrike should be cake.

[River Victor]

Originally posted by GTCv Deimos:

So.... here's the thing about Phrike, and Returnal as a whole: it's not that hard, but it's good at TRICKING you into feeling like it's hard. The game loves, Loves, LOVES to fill the screen with clouds of deadly photon attacks, lasers and go full "the floor is lava" on you.

But when you get right down to it, especially with Phrike... avoiding damage is commonly as easy as... strafe left (plus, he likes to dash up after those red rings). It can be tough, cuz Returnal is a game that repeatedly buffs you for success, and screws you over for every little mistake you make. But the game is not nearly as insurmountable as it likes to pretend to be. Frankly, if you can complete a stage of Super Mario Bros, Phrike should be cake.

Thank you for the advice, along with everyone else who have been constructive. I've been way past this already. I've already completed Act 3, which means I've beaten this game so many times I'm past caring about Phrike anymore. I'm up to collecting my last collectibles already. There's only Log #21 that's still missing. And about 13 Xenoglyph Ciphers. Can't get my last one to spawn in the Abyssal Scar.

[GTCv Deimos]

lol. I guess it's like Jag said :)

If there's one thing to be said about Returnal, it's that it's consistently more than meets-the-eye.

[T0AD]

Originally posted by GTCv Deimos:

So.... here's the thing about Phrike, and Returnal as a whole: it's not that hard, but it's good at TRICKING you into feeling like it's hard. The game loves, Loves, LOVES to fill the screen with clouds of deadly photon attacks, lasers and go full "the floor is lava" on you.

But when you get right down to it, especially with Phrike... avoiding damage is commonly as easy as... strafe left (plus, he likes to dash up after those red rings). It can be tough, cuz Returnal is a game that repeatedly buffs you for success, and screws you over for every little mistake you make. But the game is not nearly as insurmountable as it likes to pretend to be. Frankly, if you can complete a stage of Super Mario Bros, Phrike should be cake.

Yeah I can agree with this post. Once I learned to turn auto-run on in the options and started to make sure i was always strafing, the damage I took dramatically decreased.

[Old Man Donkey]

I save scum the bosses and have zero shame precisely for the reasons you mention: boss fights are just rote memorization, making you go through the entire biome every time before you get to learn some more of that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥'s moveset is just cheap and completely misses the mark as far as what works for roguelites and what doesn't.

[I'm cucked]

I beat a suped up hard-mode General Radahn today in co-op after my duo died before the second phase.

If I can do that, you can do this.