Double GRAD/camera fight is no fun

[Vessalius]

So I love this game so much I decided to do a revengence no sub-weapons, no secondary weapons, no upgrades, no nanopaste, no ripper mode run. I fully understand that these enemies are not meant to be nearly this hard, planning on doing one fully upgraded after just to have a power trip lol.

Something to note; there are a few enemies I have a new flavour of hate for, mostly the gorillas and raptors. Especially when you have to fight multiple of either, or god forbid a mix of them. There is one fight though I'm currently at which is making me want to commit die, the double GRAD miniboss after the mini-gekko section.

Lemme preface this with perfect parries are EVERYTHING, you'll see any all S-ranked revengence playthroughs spamming this goodness. Usually puts any enemy in zandatsuable mode, vnice. Unfortunately in this fight it only does ~15% to them, but it's a lot more than the normal attacks, plus some other ♥♥♥♥ I'll get to.

Now, H-o-l-y s-h-i-t, this fight can eat my ass. Enemies have RETARDED amounts of health, but that's to be expected, and I'm used to it by now. first issue is the very first attack of the fight, the main GRAD will take a swing at you, but he'll always come short. This means to parry it you need to ninja run to it, not a huge issues, but super awkward and annoying. Now the real problem with this attack, you get hit by it way before the animation shows it touching you (I have seen this in slowmo enough times to be certain), meaning you have to parry well in advance. This applies to all of their melee attacks. also I'm pretty sure you can't perfect parry the spin attack.
*EDIT* This is 100% the most infuriating part of this fight, feels almost impossible to perfect parry with everything else on top of this. If the fight was everything else minus this, it would probably be not nearly as difficult.
But since this doesn't align with the animation well, it's pretty inconsistent. Since it's early enough I just restart if I miss it, but it wears on the mental a little bit. There's two outcomes if you succeed, either his armour plating gets weak enough for it to trigger a zandatsu event, or it's op ass gun becomes unbreakable. In either case it'll run away and try to shoot it's op ass gun (don't try to break it before it runs, you can't). Now you'll be tempted to run in under it for safety and break the gun with blade mode, but you have such a short amount of time in blade mode (no energy upgrades, harder difficulty), it's pretty unreliable. If you run in front to guarantee you can slash it, it pulls back the gun so it won't work. To salt the wound now blade mode won't work cause you don't have max energy. This is annoying, but it basically boils down to perfect parry then run.

Time for the real ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ part 1, the terrain. There's these stupid propane tanks everywhere that explode into smaller pieces when the GRAD's hit them, which also explode. They only do 3.75%, so no big deal right? No. nononononono, no. These things are spread over a large portion of the stage, meaning that it's hard to stay away from them. It doesn't help that when the second GRAD appears, he spreads a bunch of the smaller pieces all over the back of the arena. OK, I hear you say, but they're small right? Just stay closer to the centre. Well 1.) the pieces are small as in smaller than the propane tank, their still massive. Big enough in fact that ninja running over them is pretty difficult, and sometimes doesn't work (since they aren't stable environment pieces). Also they stun, which is fun. 2.)

The camera, mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Man this camera sometimes. I'm sure everyone who's played this game enough knows the camera isn't your friend, but it's definitely not your enemy either. Not here. Since there's a lot of walls from the propane tanks, it likes to swing around a lot, making not only parrying harder, but even telling if you need to parry hard as well. Especially when these skatey ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ spin around you like ballerinas. This makes staying in the middle really hard as you'll have a hard time keeping both of them on one side of you. There is one saving grace though, which is if you run to the back left corner, they'll clear an ok amount of the tanks and give you a bit of breathing room on that wall.

The final thing of this fight is these GRAD's are chicken ♥♥♥♥♥. Skatin away from you constantly, shooting their stupid guns. The one gun that stuns you will do ~93%, but that's a death sentence, especially if you got/get hit by a propane tank piece.

I'm sure I'll be super satisfied when I beat this fight, just needed to vent a little lol. Definitely recommend this kind of run to anyone who wants to get a way more intimate experience with the game.

[Vessalius]

Ok so update, I beat it (woo!). This took me about 7 hours to do. Now some things need addressing:

"Now the real problem with this attack, you get hit by it way before the animation shows it touching you"
This is not the case, it's actually it's gun shooting right before it swings, so you actually need to parry that bullet (I didn't even know you could, but good cause this would be basically impossible otherwise).

I just looked at a my video and I have no idea anymore

"This applies to all of their melee attacks."
No they don't, I was just tilted

"also I'm pretty sure you can't perfect parry the spin attack."
Still pretty sure. Sometimes they like to spam this too so that's fun.

"There's two outcomes if you succeed, either his armour plating gets weak enough for it to trigger a zandatsu event, or it's op ass gun becomes unbreakable"
Just restart if you don't break the gun, you NEED to do this as quickly as possible, and this is a guaranteed set up to get it. The clap attack is the only one that makes the gun breakable, and they don't do it often.

"If you run in front to guarantee you can slash it, it pulls back the gun so it won't work."
This actually happens cause it's firing it's gun, you just need to wait or time it well. Be careful after you break it as it will sometimes shoot a phantom bullet.

"but it basically boils down to perfect parry then run."
DON'T DO THIS. You want to break the gun and then immediately run to the other GRAD. He will quickly try to swing at you, perfect parry this or restart.

For the rest of the fight you want to keep your camera locked on the sub-GRAD (the one with the unbroken gun). This guy only needs to be perfect parried 3 times, while the main-GRAD takes 6-7. Try and keep the sub-GRAD between you and the main-GRAD so you can use it as a shield, as well as to keep the main-GRAD in the camera easier.
the barrage of mini-missiles are deflectable with ninja run, but their explosion when they hit the ground can hurt you and won't stun you. Not run ending, but take too many stray hits before you get the sub-GRAD down to one parry left, and it's basically gg.
An important note is that, when you're executing it in blade mode, you want to use as little energy when slashing up the sub-GRAD as possible. This is because you can't rip out it's G-Fuel until you let go of blade mode the first time (for some reason GRAD's have 2 phases to their executions). So when it prompts you to hit Y and X, don't hold R2 until after Raiden jumps (just tap it), then mash the right stick up and try and get that sweet G-Fuel. This should make up for any stray damage from mini-missiles or terrain, giving you more leeway with the second phase.

"the terrain"
This is still pretty bs, but you get a better sense for it the more tries you do. The amount of garbage also decreases as the battle goes on, and keeping the main-GRAD on the other side of the sub-GRAD causes it to clean up most of the field.

"The camera"
The mini-map . This is how you tell where the other GRAD is when you aren't able to keep the monkey in the middle. Trust me, these skatey ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ out-speed the ♥♥♥♥ out of you, so it's gonna happen. It also helps to make sure you haven't accidentally become the monkey, or to kite the main-GRAD. Be careful though, as sometimes this can distract you from the sub-GRAD comin at you with a sweep attack, or it's op ass gun, or some slow flying missiles. Also if you see the other GRAD moving REALLY fast on the mini-map, it's probably coming to do a drive-by smack, so be ready.

"This makes staying in the middle really hard"
Turns out, you mostly wanna stay against the wall.

"There is one saving grace though, which is if you run to the back left corner"
No.

"The final thing of this fight is these GRAD's are chicken ♥♥♥♥♥"
Oh yeah they are. They love to just stare at you while they zoom into your face or out of it, doing nothing but shooting their rapid-fire weapons.

"I'm sure I'll be super satisfied when I beat this fight"
I was shaking.

One nice thing to know is you only actually need to get the main-GRAD to 10%, so that helps.

I am having too much fun/pain from doing this.

[SlendyMawn]

What's quite possibly worse about those little propane chunks is that they STUN.