True Final Boss is bugged and can't be completed

[Exception]

I'm not sure if anyone else has run into this issue, but... during the last phase of the True Final Boss with Super Sonic, there's a part where it begins to spit fireballs out at you. The game is supposed to lock on to these fireballs with a homing attack. You homing attack the fireballs to get closer to the boss, but the game refuses to lock on to the second one correctly, making it really difficult/impossible to actually get close enough to hit it. Rings do not spawn during this section either (likely intentional), besides when your friends come in to drop some, and they already take roughly 30 seconds to even spawn in each time. I thought maybe I was doing something wrong the first few times I reached that section, but I watched two videos of the boss and the lock on seems to work normally for them. Could be an issue with the PC port specifically.

The boss itself is already pretty tedious to do, taking 6+ minutes each time to even be able to reach the fireball section. It always waits like 5+ seconds before doing an attack, and you can't even damage it during half of those attacks. There's one specifically where it rolls into a ball and goes across the screen from different angles (kind of slowly might I add), and there's no way to hurt it as it's doing that. The second phase is a little more bearable by the fact that it only has ONE attack where you can't damage it, but the attack isn't that long. Regardless, this boss really likes to waste your time, which is really annoying. I was at it for maybe 3 hours last night after beating Trip's Story. The only possible solution I can think of right now is to TRY and dodge the fireballs that don't lock on, because I've managed to avoid the second one and the third one does lock on properly but i get too distracted with trying to avoid the second one and by the time it's close to me, it's too late to properly hit it.

I haven't been able to find anyone else online that seems to be having the same issue, which is why I'm making a post about this. I don't know if there's a solution related to the settings or anything like that, like maybe it's because of the DLC I have installed? I really don't know, and it's pretty frustrating.

[Lloyd]

i have this exact same issue. also, it seems like your friend's spawns sometimes get eaten by the boss doing their breath attack due to the perspective change. incredibly frustrating

[Exception]

Originally posted by Lloyd:

i have this exact same issue. also, it seems like your friend's spawns sometimes get eaten by the boss doing their breath attack due to the perspective change. incredibly frustrating

Yeah, that's something that happened quite a bit to me when I was playing it. It's also possible for the friend spawns to happen DURING the transition to Phase 2, which is ridiculous. You have to somehow time your friends to spawn in at the right times by purposefully avoiding hitting the boss, or letting the boss transition cutscene play out for a bit before skipping it. The boss overall is just very frustrating and not fun to play.

[Hiro-sofT]

I was posting this in a similar thread, hope that it will be useful for anyone looking for strats to beat this bad boss fight:

Originally posted by Hiro-sofT:

Just did this fight for my older brother on the swtich... as he was stuck on it and beat the whole rest of the game, which took quite a bit of strength off him.

I have to say, as someone, who already hates super sonic boss fights, this was the MOST UNINTUITIVE super sonic boss i ever played (i fought the likes of Dark Gaia, Time Eater, Doomsday Zone, Perfect Chaos, Final Lizard and even True Area 53 from advance 2). Dark Gaia is challenging (the normal sonic segment form the ps3 game), yes... its probably harder than this, but this is a different type of hard...

Whoever tells me the game is "easy"... you haven't seen anything!

The fight itself is, like most people noticed, heavy on RNG with the rings... i saw my brother (who is older and much much more skilled in games than me) being frustrated at the fight and being completely devastated at the countless attempts he had to made with no progress (he made it a few times to the very end part but no dice).

I later offered my help and put on my analytics glasses and studied a bit. I later came up with some sort of list of strats that doesn't make you win 100%, but gives you fairly good chances.

So, since i just have most of it fresh in my head, here are most of my notes:

In the first part, watch when the blue meteor is coming out, since the number when it gets spit out is the number when it appears (for example when it comes third the third spawn is the blue one). Its sometimes hard to tell where it will spawn (left or right) but try not moving too much as they will spawn nearby (just scroll the screen a bit to spread the other ones away from it).

The most important part is to survive, which RNG is a big part of. However, there are ways to maximize what you can get. It doesn't matter at all how much we travel left or right, so instead of dashing to one side, i just flew a sideways figure 8 pattern on like 2 screens worth of width and to the bottom and top of the screen. This is done to respawn the rings which just pop into existence (doesn't matter that much as long as they were offscreen). Also, not moving constantly left or right helps with seeing your partners better, as they can sometimes spawn in such a way that they move into the direction you fly currently and effectively aren't there. The up and down from the sideways figure 8 pattern helps also with ring spawn and visibility.

The crystal attack where the whole room is filled, don't bother dodging just collect rings and find helpers. Getting hit by it means just knockback, no death or anything.

The dark holes are awful, as they are 1 hit deaths. You can save yourself with a dash out of them but dashing eats valuable rings, so only do that if absolutely needed!! Sometimes there is bad luck and you will hit the boss at the chest level at its weakspot, get flung backwards into a fresh spawned hole and instantly die (which i assume is unintentional)... that is just bad luck at that point. Flying a bit lower than the middle of the screen during that part should help with dodging most holes (it felt like a blind spot for a lot of times), however its no 100% guarantee for that one. Careful, after the first time, the beginning shot, when getting into the sidways perspective, always generates TWO darkholes to dodge at the beginning from now on!

Also, try getting either behind him after hitting him in the sideways passage or go backwards for more rings (as you make more rings spawn by flying around).

During the purple ball attack, just try to collect rings and find partners again. Even if you get hit, its just more knockback. I should also mention that you SHOULD TOUCH THE PARTNER CHARACTERS FOR EXTRA RINGS (very very important to do that). Which way the boss comes from is telegraphed both by background and purple glimmer at the screen edges.

Tails is indicated by the airplane sound if he is on screen, Knuckles is gliding and drops down after a while... Trip and Amy are too rare and never appeared for me, but they do give big 10 ring monitors so are PRIO to get!

The more you hit him, the harder it gets (just faster, certain attacks no longer appear or swapped out for others).

Then there is phase 2, which is mostly easier...

For the Hand Attack, i always try to distance myself enough so when it stops that it lands exactly on me. The reason for that is if it hits me and lands and stops directly on me, Sonic will hit it and the boss while himself just being knocked back by it. The first Hand Attack is the hardest since its hard to judge the distance it travels. For the next times, the boss will use both hands, so i used the first as measurement and hit the second one with the same strat.

The fire breath is simple mostly... he tracks your height and always tries to spit where you are. Go up and move downwards towards his weakpoint, it felt somehow easier that way. Also, sometimes when you hit him, you can get hit by invisible fire (which luckly only knockbacks, unlike the darkhole). Same with before, try to get rings after hitting him (by going behind or away from him).

If he does the green circles, don't bother dodging too much. Try get rings and partners in this one as getting hit by it is just knockback (no instant death, phew).

Stuff gets increasingly more difficult from here on... after enough hits, we get into the final part and ring starvation phase. Only partners can show up here and they REALLY can distract you. When the boss starts firing meteors into the front, you will have to wait for the blue ring marker to align with the white ring on it and press dash precisely when they overlap with each other (TIMING IS VERY STRICT HERE, careful!). Concentrate on the QTE and try to not get distracted by rings or partners during this (which is easier said than done). You have to do this a few times to get it to go into its laser attack. This attack, unfortunately looks like complete RNG to me how it goes. Pray you get lucky or a partner can save you with rings if you fail to dodge it. Getting hit by anything in this part of the fight resets it back to the QTE meteors, so having enough rings up here is essential (which is why we try to maximize our ring count early on with as little dashes as possible). After the laser, you have to time one final circle marker (same as meteors) and... then you got it!

It took me forever to realize you only have to tap the dash button every time the marker shows up and lines up. If you press it correctly first and start to hold it, the next one won't appear at all, making it looked bugged (which i first thought was the case).

I hope these strats can help people getting through this actually terrible designed final boss. Its now my least favorite and i would say worst super sonic final boss up to date.

Good luck, you need it.