Balteus is harder than Malenia, don't get discouraged.

[Not Isaiah]

Balteus is like fighting Malenia.

Except you only have three heals, that don't do full healing to begin with. Except you can't use your melee or magic, you have to use firebombs to break her constantly regenerating shield. Except she can move across the arena, and then AoE spam you from afar. Except the game has the same invincibility frames as low adaptability in the second Dark Souls game, so dodging doesn't work half the time.

Except the typical copy paste Fromsoft camera doesn't work if you're moving fast, side to side, up and down, or any other direction that isn't forward, and the lock on is useless, so she'll strafe behind you and AoE you before you can turn the camera, or you just lose track of her entirely so you waste your window of opportunity. Except you have a voice in your ear, telling you she's about to do a huge AoE in the first opportunity you get to actually do damage with her, but the voice comes as the attack is going off so it's not really a warning, and the charge-up is instant, and also looks like the other thing where he renews his shield.

Except your build may or may not be good against her, and if you don't have the build you need, you have to leave the area, get the weapons you need, replay the area, re-fight Loretta, go into the fight and intentionally die to restore your three estus, then start the fight over, all while learning the new play-style of the weapons you may or may not like.

I'm at a point where I feel like, and this is a weird thing to say, that the game needed to be more gamefied if they insist on taking this difficulty on players who may be new to the genre, or series in general.

Heal restorations at certain points in boss fights like this, exploitable weak points after damaging him, destructible limbs, environmental effects, literally anything to help the fight not feel like a total slog, especially so early into the game where your resources and skill are limited.

If you're getting your butt kicked, don't be too let down. As an AC vet, this is not normal difficult.

As a Dark Souls vet, this is not normal difficulty. I genuinely don't know how reviewers managed to beat this game with their track record regarding difficulty, because they should've been filtered faster than anyone on this forum.

[MeldinX2]

That boss is really beating me hard. Died like 12 times on it already. But i don't think it's really a badly designed fight. I just need to change my mech probably and learn to dodge/avoid some of it's super annoying attacks. I really hate that single shot rocket he does. Always catches me off guard. xD

[MetalHev]

There's literally zero chance of gaming journalists beating that boss legitimatelly, I can only assume the press patch was tuned differently.

[Talbrys]

Originally posted by Rueben:

I genuinely don't know how reviewers managed to beat this game with their track record regarding difficulty, because they should've been filtered faster than anyone on this forum.

Reviewer versions are a thing...

[ninjacarl (dk)]

He is not harder than Malenia, but the shield regeneration does remind me of Malenia's ability to regenerate health when hitting.

[This PC]

none of the challenges I've encountered in this game are harder than any of the mainline bosses in elden ring. Game strongly emphasizes the need to adapt in the tutorials, and once you do, you realize game ain't so hard. ^^

[Caramel_Clown]

not even close

[ninjacarl (dk)]

Originally posted by This PC:

none of the challenges I've encountered in this game are harder than any of the mainline bosses in elden ring.

They certainly were for me (to be clear i found the vast majority of the bosses in Elden Ring easy). It depends on the person.

[This PC]

Originally posted by ninjacarl (dk):

They certainly were for me (to be clear i found the vast majority of the bosses in Elden Ring easy). It depends on the person.

I might be more tuned to this kind of challenges, yeah, I don't know. ^^''
You're right, it's an opinion.

[This PC]

One thing I can say is I immediately felt 10x better when I switched to kb&m, felt a lot more in control.

[Crystal]

I beat it by just brute force. Fast and agile mech, assault armor, the plasma sword, missiles and linear rifle (I think, if not then the small machine gun).

At start of fight, assault boost straight into it -> sword x2 -> assault armor (its shield should go down) -> spam missiles and weapons, sword when possible.

After this point, it should have a regular stamina metre for a bit. Similar rotation:

Assault boost -> kick (and keep repeating this to stagger) -> sword x2 -> other weapons. Shoot your missles constantly for both impact and normal damage. Kicks are quite OP when you can land them often (i didn't realise that the target assist doesn't work well if you touch the right stick so don't do that). If you spam your boost/kick, you can deal lots of stagger damage and hopefully get through things.

Then it'll get it's shield again. If you have another assault armor ready, now's the time. If you don't / its not unlocked, then honestly just keep doing your rotation without the kicks.

These rotations do a lot of damage, the aim is to just brute force the boss, ignore its BS mechanics and just end the stupid fight as soon as possible. I learned that even if you try to learn the fight, your damage is so miniscule and your mistakes / game jank are so punishing that the attempts are way slower. With what I just described you can get to phase 2 a bit quicker and if you get lucky like I did you can win.

I honestly hate the bosses in this game. I loved the mission layouts and the focus on replayability, but honestly I don't think I'm going to go for a second playthrough of this game. I hate every single non-mech boss. Mech bosses can be hard, but it feels more in the spirit of the game and gives you inspiration for your own builds. These giant bosses are just stupid.

They learned too much from Elden Ring, and I hated the bosses in that too. 5 backflips, 3 ranged attacks, a heal punish and delayed heavies all woven into a 15 string combo with animation cancels and input reading was not the kind of boss mechanics I adored in FS's games.

I think the only boss that is okay is the very beginning helicopter boss because it just feels like a big standard enemy, and the juggernaut fight because of the fact you get help with the first phase and also 'hit it from behind' is quite easy to recognise and do, with no/little differences between phases.

[Lahoo Eckbert]

I wouldn't say he is harder as of yet. I did 2 attempts and yes he seems impossibly hard. But then I did like 30+ attempts on malenia back in the day and never beat her without a spirit summon.

[Zheppon]

balteus is so easy when you use tank and 2 grenade launcher and 2 laser shoulder

i use that loadout after dying to it maybe more than 10 times

[BKo]

Balteus isn't even harder than Margit

[DCyfr]

Definitely not harder than Melania. Melania is a powerhouse that can one-shot you if you out of nowhere.

Balteus can do insane damage quickly, but rarely it's a one-shot and unlike Melania, you get plenty of chances to breath if you're not constantly rushing into it. The issue is that if your DPS isn't high enough, it effectively has infinite HP, as you're going to run out of ammo before you down its shield for the fifth time (I've literally gone past that point on one of my attempts).

Frankly, unless if you get caught out without energy at a bad time, you can reduce the incoming damage quite a bit without proper reading and under a bit of a panic.

But really it's quite doable. Many people (including me) have beaten it using a heavy tank build. And I've read that the pulse gun is a godsend against its shields (it even has a stat that gives a multiplier damage against PA).

It took me over two hours, but I beat it. Don't bash your head against it, but keep watching its movements, keep trying new builds. Leave and grind some money to buy new gear if it's still not working well. There's several great farming missions available in the first chapter if you need it.

Balteus is not a hard wall. You can overcome it if you get creative and patient enough.

[Sitri]

I brute forced it after an hour of trying. Double Bubble Gun for fast shield destroying, spaming two shoulder rocketlaunchers. The last 30% I had to slugg that damn bastard down because ammo was empty. Fists are actually pretty decent and getting close and personal with that boss seemed to work well