Hard to believe the same people who made Aguni boss fight also made the rest of the bosses

[็]

Before anybody gets defensive, this isn't a "This is too hard" post or a "How do I beat this boss?" post. There's no point to those since I've already beaten the game twice. This is just a discussion post to see if anybody else shares my thoughts.

I've beaten this game twice now, once on Hard then on Hell, and both times I've played this game, my enjoyment of the bosses range from "Wow this boss is awesome" at best to "Kind of annoying, but not bad" at worst. That is, with the exception of Aguni. I cannot believe what a nosedive in quality the Aguni boss fight is compared to literally every other boss. It's almost as if the developer decided to ask his younger bother who knew nothing about game design to make this boss. Just a culmination of multiple awful design choices that seemingly run contrarian to one another.

So we have a boss that:

- Has only one weak point, which is the eye. Hitting the rest of the body doesn't do anything except build ST. Fair enough.
- Constantly flies around, making it harder to hit the weak spot
- Puts up a circle of fire orbs around his weak spot for half the fight which have some of the jankiest hitboxes I've ever seen, so I'm playing pretty reserved most of the fight compared to most other bosses in the game
- A complete damage sponge

None of the above points are that bad on their own, but put together, it makes for a boss fight that I wouldn't consider difficult because it's genuinely a challenge (seriously, the boss only cycles through like 3 or 4 moves lol), but because it just drags on and on and on. I honestly do feel like most of the bosses in this game have a little too much health, but it is only really egregious with Aguni given all of the other stuff he has going for him during his boss fight.

Personally, I think this is probably the worst boss fight I think I've ever played, finally surpassing the Bed of Chaos from Dark Souls 1 for me. Am I the only one who feels similarly?

[็]

Originally posted by nesoukefka:

Originally posted by ็:

This still sounds extremely exaggerated to me.



I did the exact same things you listed here on both playthroughs, and never once have I managed to push Aguni's health down far enough to hit the second phase by the second attack in its cycle. Literally up in his eye spamming attacks and magic nearly nonstop as soon as his fireballs loses its hurtbox and I'd lucky to drop his health down by 1/5.



I shouldn't have to use anything besides the weapon I want. The mark of good boss is immediately lost the second I "should" be using a specific weapon/build. If I "should" be using a specific weapon to make the boss not tedious, then it's not a good boss.

It really not exagerate, you can just do crazy damage in this game, here's a video of this boss :

https://youtu.be/UgUjRxJHFBo

This is a video on Impossible at LV5 and without GROW, and as you can see I still beat him in about 2 minutes, despite my disadvantage with the weapon speed.
This boss is really a noob trap, he kicks your ass the first but when you know how to deal with him he really isn't that bad.

Looks like I stand corrected. I'm still a bit confused as to how you're doing so much more damage to him than I did despite the fact that you didn't use GROW and were underleveled for the fight. I could not dish out nearly this much damage at all despite playing practically identically to you in this video.

[Nyu]

Originally posted by ็:

Originally posted by nesoukefka:

It really not exagerate, you can just do crazy damage in this game, here's a video of this boss :

https://youtu.be/UgUjRxJHFBo

This is a video on Impossible at LV5 and without GROW, and as you can see I still beat him in about 2 minutes, despite my disadvantage with the weapon speed.
This boss is really a noob trap, he kicks your ass the first but when you know how to deal with him he really isn't that bad.

Looks like I stand corrected. I'm still a bit confused as to how you're doing so much more damage to him than I did despite the fact that you didn't use GROW and were underleveled for the fight. I could not dish out nearly this much damage at all despite playing practically identically to you in this video.

BERSERK

[nesoukefka]

Originally posted by ็:

Originally posted by nesoukefka:

It really not exagerate, you can just do crazy damage in this game, here's a video of this boss :

https://youtu.be/UgUjRxJHFBo

This is a video on Impossible at LV5 and without GROW, and as you can see I still beat him in about 2 minutes, despite my disadvantage with the weapon speed.
This boss is really a noob trap, he kicks your ass the first but when you know how to deal with him he really isn't that bad.

Looks like I stand corrected. I'm still a bit confused as to how you're doing so much more damage to him than I did despite the fact that you didn't use GROW and were underleveled for the fight. I could not dish out nearly this much damage at all despite playing practically identically to you in this video.

The Berserk ability triple your physical damage, also making sure you have most Attack Power on the Libra, as well as exploiting the boss's weakness with the corresponding Karon's ability (not the case here for the main boss, which is weak to Light, but is the case for the Fire Shield, since I use an Ice Elemental weapon with Undine that's double damage on the Shield).

With GROW you should at this point have the Sylpheed possession which gives you a buff that increase your speed, which improve your DPS further.
Alternativly you can go for the Magic Build as some people mentionned, I recommend in that case using the Lightning Staff, while where the Lightning strike are random it completly bypass the Shield, and use Possession Skill such has Soaring Bird, or Shark with good timing they can deal a ton of damage, when he drop his shield switch to the Holy Elemental Staff since that's the boss weakness, this is probably safer overall as you don't need to get closer to the boss with this method, assuming you execute the physical strat perfectly it's a bit slower but can still kill him in about 2 minutes on Impossible.

[็]

Just redid the fight again on Impossible but with Berserk this time, and yeah he was substantially faster to kill time around. Then I redid the fight again without Berserk, and while I didn't quite hit the 10 minute mark like before, it still took much longer than my attempt with Berserk, which IMO is a problem. To be using Berserk at this point, the expectation on a new player would be that they:

- Have unlocked Berserk, which not everybody would unlock by this point the first time around in a blind playthrough unless you got lucky, looked up the skill online, or you're the type to unlock every weapon and armor's skill during the same chapter (I'm not)
- Knew how powerful Berserk actually was. Unless the player deliberately looked up the fact that it does 3x your attack power or tested and witnessed the efficacy of the spell firsthand, it isn't uncommon to choose to neglect it for something else

It all boils down to the fact that none of the bosses before Aguni (and even a bit after him) felt this tanky without Berserk. All of them felt more or less adequate for their given placement in the story without Berserk, so why is Aguni such an outlier?

We can all sit here and talk about the optimal ways to beat Aguni since we've beaten the game already, but I'm talking about the perspective of a new player going into the boss blind, and in that scenario, I still hold the opinion that Aguni is a poorly designed boss.

[Nyu]

Originally posted by ็:

Just redid the fight again on Impossible but with Berserk this time, and yeah he was substantially faster to kill time around. Then I redid the fight again without Berserk, and while I didn't quite hit the 10 minute mark like before, it still took much longer than my attempt with Berserk, which IMO is a problem. To be using Berserk at this point, the expectation on a new player would be that they:

- Have unlocked Berserk, which not everybody would unlock by this point the first time around in a blind playthrough unless you got lucky, looked up the skill online, or you're the type to unlock every weapon and armor's skill during the same chapter (I'm not)
- Knew how powerful Berserk actually was. Unless the player deliberately looked up the fact that it does 3x your attack power or tested and witnessed the efficacy of the spell firsthand, it isn't uncommon to choose to neglect it for something else

It all boils down to the fact that none of the bosses before Aguni (and even a bit after him) felt this tanky without Berserk. All of them felt more or less adequate for their given placement in the story without Berserk, so why is Aguni such an outlier?

We can all sit here and talk about the optimal ways to beat Aguni since we've beaten the game already, but I'm talking about the perspective of a new player going into the boss blind, and in that scenario, I still hold the opinion that Aguni is a poorly designed boss.

wtf are you on? you never need to use berserk.
why does a boss need to be melted in secounds?

how can you not read that berserk does 3 times damage
can you just stop blaming the game for your lack of skill?

everyone knows this boss is a knowledge check if you understand the fireballs.
just the fact you need 10 minutes secound time playing without berserk... i still think you got no knowledge.

so pls stop.
its already clear this boss is a newbiebuster and also not for his tankyness but for the fireballs being destroyable.

[็]

I'm not really sure where all this vitriol is coming from, but none of your points addressed anything I said. In fact, in your anger I think you misunderstood nearly everything I said.

wtf are you on? you never need to use berserk.

You should reread the post you replied to. If what you took away from that post was that Berserk was necessary for Aguni, then you completely misunderstood my post...by a lot.

why does a boss need to be melted in secounds?

It doesn't need to be melted in seconds. I didn't expect any of the other bosses in the game to be "melted in seconds", so why would I expect that of Aguni? This is a complete strawman.

how can you not read that berserk does 3 times damage

Go back into the game and check the skill description again. The in-game description does not state that Berserk does 3 times damage. All it says is that it increases physical damage; in other words, an unspecified amount. The only way to find out it does 3x damage is by looking it up. Not that this point actually matters since it's pretty much just semantics.

can you just stop blaming the game for your lack of skill?

I think you forgot what this thread was about. I think I've made it pretty clear now that I do not have any trouble with Aguni at this point. In fact, he's the only boss I can defeat flawlessly in the game regardless of difficulty. This post was to discuss why I thought he was a bad boss. That was it. You just gravitating towards "skill issue" instead of providing anything substantive is very telling that you honestly have nothing of value to say.

[Nyu]

you are salty and a newbie

maybe learn to read the ingame description of skills, before you try to give stinky comments like: Go back into the game and check the skill description again.
______________________
Berserk:
Attack power increased by 3x, but you will die in one hit.
Does not overlap with other damage multiplying skills.
______________________

very unclear 3 times the damage.
you lost all right to even argue.

[Minneyar]

Originally posted by ็:

Hard to believe the same people who made Aguni boss fight

I just want to point out, and I think the context is important here, that the entire game, with the exception of the music and some art assets, was made by one person over the span of over 15 years, and the first five chapters were released incrementally before the rest of the game was released as an entire package.

I feel like it's pretty natural for the stage and boss design to both have experimental changes and improve over time.

[Nyu]

Originally posted by tsjanith:

tl;dr: i am an incel

just to confirm it, the skill description says its 3times the damage.
in the old english patch and the reworked one.

why this newbie here stalks me in several forums and writting nonesense i dont know.

[TokTheGod]

The game is a 10/10 to me and my new favourite game, but I agree, the Agni boss fight is horrible. There are a few other horrible ones, mostly the ones including Mech spam. But other than these, no complaints.