It took me 7 hours, but finally beat the secret boss last night, so I'm ready to clear the game [SPOILERS]

[Fenrir]

Now I kinda understand why people make one shot builds for this guy, lol. I'm glad I was able to do it legitimately, but man... SO many conditions have to be met for you to win against him, it's absolutely ridiculous. There were so many instances where Maelle's level 3 didn't do enough damage because RNG decided to screw me and deal like 1.5M instead of 15M or something, lol.

So, he'd reach 40% HP and just nuke our entire party, forcing a loss. You have to do a certain amount of damage, but not TOO much, and you have to break at specific moments, AND make sure that mark is up when Maelle is ready to use her level 3, AND she needs to be in a proper stance.

I thought Fromsoft games more or less prepared me for difficulty (hell, even playing AI Limit recently made me think I knew what difficulty was), but that was all a lie, lol. Simon makes even someone like Malenia look like a ***** and I'm not even kidding.

I don't envy anyone else who attempts to do this without a one shot build and I sure as hell won't blame anyone for saying "screw this" or "I give up" after trying to fight this guy, lol. I'm just glad it's finally over.

For those who come after.

EDIT: Also, just as a heads up, but do NOT equip Simon's sword if you plan on going to the final dungeon afterwards. I cleared the game earlier and was wondering why the hell my performance significantly dropped when running around in the area (it was below 30fps and even changing it to low settings did nothing to help). I finally looked online in hopes of finding a solution and found a handful of threads talking about how the sword is bugged at the moment.

Sure enough, I unequipped the sword, went outside, went back to camp and saved it, reloaded the game just to be safe, then when I went back inside the dungeon, the fps was back to normal and I didn't encounter a single stutter since then. I thought it was really weird how the game's performance just suddenly TANKED for some reason when it had been fine this whole time, even on epic settings.

It's absolutely insane to me that a sword can cause this, even though it's not even showing outside of battle, so I'm not even sure WHAT could be causing the issue. Regardless, I figured I'd edit the thread just to give a heads up in case someone else sees this later.

[Platapoop]

What do you mean nuke your entire party forcing a loss? You are expected to clean up with your reserve team, that's the intended mechanic. Sounds like you didn't beat him "legitimately" :^)

I'm just kidding though about the legit portion, good work

[Jee Em]

Yeah, I was so happy when I got him down to a sliver of health and then his 3rd phase started and he nuked my primary team.

I thought cool, I manage with my reserve team, he only has like 500k HP left.
MF had now two follow up attacks and I died immediately, lol.

I managed to nuke him, later on with Maelle close to 50% HP, but man, what a fight.

[Fenrir]

Originally posted by Platapoop:

What do you mean nuke your entire party forcing a loss? You are expected to clean up with your reserve team, that's the intended mechanic. Sounds like you didn't beat him "legitimately" :^)

I'm just kidding though about the legit portion, good work

Yeah, I built Verso, Maelle, and Lune the entire time (though, there was a portion of the game where the party was split, so that sucked, lol). Monoco and Sciel's lumina was under 100 while everyone else was 350+, so yeah... There was absolutely no way I could build a "reserve team". I've never had to use one anyway, so whenever the expedition failed, I always just clicked 'no', then just loaded my save and tried again.

I just got so sick and tired of seeing Maelle waste 15-20M damage on phase 1, yet she'd only do like 1-5M on phase 2, when I REALLY needed the damage to count the most. Alternatively, I'd have her build up to level 3 with her void skill, then just open with her level 3, and she'd take off 15-20M early on in the fight and screw us over, lol.

[Fenrir]

Just bumping the thread because of the important edit added to the OP. It's more or less game breaking, since it turns the game into a slideshow, so it's definitely something people should be aware of (if they aren't already).