Can't take final boss past half HP

[coordi]

I've fought this battle at least 30 times now. I've watched videos of people beating the boss and I literally can't do enough damage to take his shield down, after killing the crystal, before it respawns and refills the shield. I'd like to think I'm missing something here, but I've seen people beat the boss and they aren't doing anything special. It's really tainting my view of what I thought was a good game up to this point.

[Neuromaniac]

I wonder what's your level, gears, stats and skills ??

[MimicMachine]

I used to have that issue

your choices would be either to level more
or in most cases
you have to hit the boss whenever you can at that point
and you can hit it at far more times than it seems


using air lightning and down ice you can hit the boss during most of its phases even when it pulls its tentacles back (with some wall jump help)

this is made even easier with the double jump if you don't have it yet, but just try hitting the FB whenever you can, the crystal only comes back if you take too long (according to the game)

[myhr2]

When you have to take down the shields, use everything you have available. Use magic buffs, Grace of Light and the elemental weapon buffs come to mind. Also, use Focus Mode, and do not use your Focus Finisher immediatly, use it only after 5ish seconds. Assists also do increased damage against shields, spam one like Bolverk, assist damage + attack buff in one package.

[sekai]

I ran into this problem on my very first play through.

The flaw in this game is that it far more often than not, highly rewards and encourages player to min-max damage output and blow through the game with very high damage, then playing the way you want or playing smart.

All of the boss fights are timed and player performance is determined by DPS, with those who can finish the boss the fastest get to have the best rewards. Then the game is balanced around these people who stat-check, so that even those who S rank every boss would still have some challenge cutting down the final one. All of this contribute to the situation of the very last boss that you could easily find yourself unable to do even the slightest damage on them, just because you have not completed the rest of the game via power-creeping like the game encourages you to.

On my first character which I did not do min-maxing, I had to defeat True Anemone over a slugfest of something like ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ FORTY MINUTE. It was absolutely aggravating. But yeah.

It's a good game, but to really go anywhere you have to play its meta and go damage creep, which also unfortunately cheapens all the other aspect of the game like playing to the bosses' pattern when the game's meta play style is to just min-max super damage and mindless smash buttons to instantly kill the boss because your damage is so ludicrously high. This is worsen by the fact bosses also get increasingly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ by the later stages of the game where they often have the tendency to spam the entire boss room full of nonsense, making the only most practical way of beating bosses is to simply kill them within a minute (the pinnacle of this is the hidden boss Leilodin, her design of inflicting you with like 3-4 different status effects for her every attack, the boos room itself doing DoT to you via freezing temperature, and her second phase revolving entirely around her a lion running around the room with the boss jumping around and spamming map-wide projectiles, etc, making it so you basically have to just beat her with OP damage and end the fight via facerolling with not much, if any other options out there).

[sekai]

The fight with Anemone in a nutshell, is just about you destroying the 2 crystals and removing all of the minion ferals in the room (who may be hiding, such as the purple crabs) during the time the boss goes to sleep; once you do so the boss would jump back up and you can fight and damage it. You can also lit the mana heater at the top of the map, which would last a minute; it's useful so you you won't have to battle the cold constantly.

If you have the skills and knowledge to execute the plan and still have issues because you're just not doing enough damage. Then it's a build problem and the stat-check bias this game has as discussed above.

........

And SPOILER: That is not the final boss, there is another one after that; I notice that you seem to not actually be at the very final boss, but the second last one. The final one is extremely painful if you can't deal enough damage given the boss's phases are timed and there are also only a very small window of opportunity to deal damage to the boss in each phase, so it's about finishing each phase as fast as possible. In other words, if you can't do enough damage to cycle through some of its phases that requires you doing high DPS, you may be stuck in the boss fight for over half an hour.

To give you a heads up, the final fight is about hitting tentacle to jump up and hit the boss's face, hitting the balls showing up when it reaches a phase with 2 tornados on the side so they will fly to the bosses's face, and hitting the large crystal if it shows up at some point. The entire fight rotate between these 3 phases until the boss is dead.

[myhr2]

Originally posted by Crunchyroll:

The flaw in this game is that it far more often than not, highly rewards and encourages player to min-max damage output and blow through the game with very high damage, then playing the way you want or playing smart.

Only partially true. The game indeed rewards offense way more than defense, but more precisely, it rewards any kind of offense, but only reward active defense. Passive defense is kinda left behind, which, in a sense, is the lazy way to build your character : more Health, Armor, and Resist.

Other kind of defensive options can be ridiculously powerful. Skill cancels, obviously, but they can be used both for offense and defense, so you may argue it's more an hybrid option than just a defensive one. But blocking, parrying, life and/or mana drain, and anti-staggering are very powerful defensive options.

Plus, there are a lot of tricks that can make Boss fights, and even regular ennemies, way easier than what they appear at first, like the water pipes during the Dhistan fight, or wall jumping on Ruckjal's head, or True Anemone's shield weakness to assists attacks.

So I wouldn't say you're not rewarded for playing smart. On the contrary, you're rewarded for playing proactively, and often punished when you are passive. So yeah, if this is what you want, you will have a hard time.

[sekai]

Originally posted by myhr2:

Originally posted by Crunchyroll:

The flaw in this game is that it far more often than not, highly rewards and encourages player to min-max damage output and blow through the game with very high damage, then playing the way you want or playing smart.

Only partially true. The game indeed rewards offense way more than defense, but more precisely, it rewards any kind of offense, but only reward active defense. Passive defense is kinda left behind, which, in a sense, is the lazy way to build your character : more Health, Armor, and Resist.

Other kind of defensive options can be ridiculously powerful. Skill cancels, obviously, but they can be used both for offense and defense, so you may argue it's more an hybrid option than just a defensive one. But blocking, parrying, life and/or mana drain, and anti-staggering are very powerful defensive options.

Plus, there are a lot of tricks that can make Boss fights, and even regular ennemies, way easier than what they appear at first, like the water pipes during the Dhistan fight, or wall jumping on Ruckjal's head, or True Anemone's shield weakness to assists attacks.

So I wouldn't say you're not rewarded for playing smart. On the contrary, you're rewarded for playing proactively, and often punished when you are passive. So yeah, if this is what you want, you will have a hard time.

The problem is mostly that after the mid game, the later boss fight are basically all stat-check based. Most of the time the fight strategies in later stages are either obvious without much depth and so it just comes down to whether you have enough stats to kill the boss quickly enough; or the boss just chuck ♥♥♥♥ at you and you just gotta put up with it, such as say Leilodin, the fight has so much ♥♥♥♥ it may as well be impossible if your character isn't built to just rush in and stat-check the boss (and indeed the Godslayer S rank run of this on yourube is just someone running in to stat-check the boss while playing using simple tactics or outright like a moron for the entirety of the fight). It also doesn't help that, as previously pointed out, the only major metric of high boss reward is if have high DPS given it's crucial for both the time trial and player performance of the boss fight ranking; this creates an exponential reward and power curve for stat-check playstyle while the rest are put into the backburner.

Towards the end of the game, the extremely disproportionate reward between playing smart and simply playing stat-check, with a heavy bias towards the latter, becomes extremely obvious. It does kill the enjoyment over the whole product when you reach the end of the game and then all you got is a choice between painful mindblowing slugfests hiking up a cliff if you don't have high enough of stats or a breeze button mash faceroll if you min-max stats.

My guess is them running out of dev time and just rushed it, or that the face-rush meta has always been intended. Either way, game is still good, but it could've been better. I guess.

In my personal opinion, the boss fight that I have the most fun in the game is someone like Jahzracht. The fight is not asking you to button mash stat-check nor is the boss overwhelming you with so much nonsense and you just have to suck it up; it's like a good mix of all the good bits in the game (and nice little interactions with some of the ice spells) and super fun to try and get 0 hit. Maybe it's just a personal taste thing, but I wish the game has more fights like this.

[myhr2]

Later Boss fights are not stat checks, you can beat them with unoptimized builds, there even is an achievement for finishing the game with the base gear.

Now, you are required to optimize if you want these S-ranks, and I agree that with the way the bonuses on gear are designed, it is snowbally, as it is percentage based, and one more stat point can make a lot of difference. For S-ranks. Not for beating the game.

I think what titilliate certain players is that the game doesn't lend itself well to a mentality where you are trying to S-rank all bosses, but not really dedicated to it. Like "hey, I got a C-rank for this boss, but I'll do better next boss and get that S-rank". It's a bit "S-rank them all, or don't bother". And I understand that this can be frustrating.

Now, on the other hand, if you don't have an optimized build, that is precisely when you should play smart, since you can't "stat-check". And believe me, I've finished the game with sub-par builds, aimed at optimization but that were lacking.

As for the bosses :
- Anemone : the less damage your build deals, the more strictly you have to respect the strategy : destroy the crystals as soon as they respawn, activate the mana-heater, take your time against the adds. The fact is, Anemone will change phases when she reached certain Health treshold, and she may heal all the damage you dealt, but the phase progression will not be reset, which means you can always make progress as long as you're patient and determined. So you only really need to destroy the crystal when you're fighting her, not the adds (but since some adds spawn near the crystals, destroy them on the way anyway).
- True Anemone : there is only one thing you should really master in this fight, and it's tentacle-climbing. If you know how to destroy tentacles quickly, then you have much more time to wail at the shield. And yes, a high damage build will have an easier time. But tentacles can be backstabbed, and you only need to kill the middle and the higher one, so be smart about it! This is not just a matter of stat-check, this is only a check on your game's knowledge and mastery.
Also, using Ice pillars during the orb phase, and attack directly the head when there is an opening. Again, play smart. Optimized builds require less smarts and discipline, but still require some, and if you have an optimized build, then you should try to be smarter and have more focus.
- Leilodin : it's the frigging ultimate optional boss. What are you doing trying to beat her with an unoptimized build? Are you insane?

Also, one last point about "playing smart". Build-planning and understanding the game's mechanics are also forms of intelligence. Do you think that knowledge came naturally and whitout trials and errors? This is the flipside of your argument. Yes, the game is designed in a certain way, and I understand that it is not always to your liking. Problem is, it is to the liking of others. That's why I try to share my knowledge about the game in the hope that it will help you enjoy the things we both enjoy. I loved the fact that I had to plan ahead, and come up with interesting and potent synergies. And yeah, it means that I didn't finish a couple playthroughs, because my current build wasn't working well enough. Not that it was impossible for me to finish the game, as I said earlier, I also finished the game with sub-par builds, and the basic gameplay is enough to beat the game. But yeah, there are certain times where I was "mmmh, no, not enjoying this run, back to the drawing board."

But there is a lot to learn about this game. This is why when someone comes and says "ho, the devs were just lazy", I can't help myself but to facepalm . Maybe you don't like it. Maybe some elements are not working as well as they should. But ask me, just ask me for some help about the game's mechanics, about a clever way to design your character with what you have available, about a little trick about a specific boss pattern, and I'm confident I'll be able to at the least give you an advice.

[Neuromaniac]

Originally posted by Crunchyroll:

Originally posted by myhr2:

Only partially true. The game indeed rewards offense way more than defense, but more precisely, it rewards any kind of offense, but only reward active defense. Passive defense is kinda left behind, which, in a sense, is the lazy way to build your character : more Health, Armor, and Resist.

Other kind of defensive options can be ridiculously powerful. Skill cancels, obviously, but they can be used both for offense and defense, so you may argue it's more an hybrid option than just a defensive one. But blocking, parrying, life and/or mana drain, and anti-staggering are very powerful defensive options.

Plus, there are a lot of tricks that can make Boss fights, and even regular ennemies, way easier than what they appear at first, like the water pipes during the Dhistan fight, or wall jumping on Ruckjal's head, or True Anemone's shield weakness to assists attacks.

So I wouldn't say you're not rewarded for playing smart. On the contrary, you're rewarded for playing proactively, and often punished when you are passive. So yeah, if this is what you want, you will have a hard time.

The problem is mostly that after the mid game, the later boss fight are basically all stat-check based. Most of the time the fight strategies in later stages are either obvious without much depth and so it just comes down to whether you have enough stats to kill the boss quickly enough; or the boss just chuck ♥♥♥♥ at you and you just gotta put up with it, such as say Leilodin, the fight has so much ♥♥♥♥ it may as well be impossible if your character isn't built to just rush in and stat-check the boss (and indeed the Godslayer S rank run of this on yourube is just someone running in to stat-check the boss while playing using simple tactics or outright like a moron for the entirety of the fight). It also doesn't help that, as previously pointed out, the only major metric of high boss reward is if have high DPS given it's crucial for both the time trial and player performance of the boss fight ranking; this creates an exponential reward and power curve for stat-check playstyle while the rest are put into the backburner.

Towards the end of the game, the extremely disproportionate reward between playing smart and simply playing stat-check, with a heavy bias towards the latter, becomes extremely obvious. It does kill the enjoyment over the whole product when you reach the end of the game and then all you got is a choice between painful mindblowing slugfests hiking up a cliff if you don't have high enough of stats or a breeze button mash faceroll if you min-max stats.

My guess is them running out of dev time and just rushed it, or that the face-rush meta has always been intended. Either way, game is still good, but it could've been better. I guess.

In my personal opinion, the boss fight that I have the most fun in the game is someone like Jahzracht. The fight is not asking you to button mash stat-check nor is the boss overwhelming you with so much nonsense and you just have to suck it up; it's like a good mix of all the good bits in the game (and nice little interactions with some of the ice spells) and super fun to try and get 0 hit. Maybe it's just a personal taste thing, but I wish the game has more fights like this.

I don't understand what is your point
to grind or not to grind
you can easily choose what fits you best
no pressure
isn't that great ??
it's because in both cases you must know what you are doing
(like strength of your weapon and spells, weakness of your enemy, how to avoid debuffs or even become immune)
so, when you saing "lazy devs, run out of time", then there is only one problem, and it has been said:

Originally posted by myhr2:

But there is a lot to learn about this game.

[ุReshy]

Use electricity's aerial ability to grab onto the bosses's face to skip the tentacle gimmick. If you can, get double jump and use that and bounce off the wall to get in range of their face, then the Seraph Blades to aerial combo as much as possible as the boss is always an airborne target. When the boss's shield breaks, smack the orbs around it's body if you aren't massively invested into strength (else just grapple onto their face until they die). Remember to end the Seraph Blade's combo with the heavy attack, as that will give you a slight amount of vertical height to reduce the amount you fall afterwards, so you can combo for longer. All else fails, there's a respec in the first town, takes some of the stone drops to do so, it's relatively cheap.

This is what I beat it with:
https://steamcommunity.com/id/Reshy/screenshot/996889770565138660 https://steamcommunity.com/id/Reshy/screenshot/996889770565138329


I assume this is normal difficulty, if not I dunno if I can help you, I got A on normal with Wyatt. I was too lazy to replay the boss since it didn't give any benefits at that point.

[coordi]

Thanks for all the replies!

I eventually gave up and went back and did some grinding. I think my main issue was missing the Teachings of Life Blade .

[myhr2]

Oooooops, yeah, forgot about that, it is indeed very usefull. Glad you were able to beat the boss!

[No More FG's for me -Linux-]

Originally posted by coordi:

Thanks for all the replies!

I eventually gave up and went back and did some grinding. I think my main issue was missing the Teachings of Life Blade .

Something I always say about this game is, the game rewards to the explorers. If you arent a explorer, your first run will be pure pain!!