Campaign mission 8 really throws off the difficulty curve.

[TheJesster]

I was cruising along through the campaign missions in this game having only mild to moderate difficulty with anything the game threw at me, then I hit chapter 8...

Actually, this mission is not so much difficult as grueling. I finally managed to beat that damn sumo after a marathon session that probably lasted 30-40 minutes (where most other missions probably take me 5-10 minutes.) I was sweating my ass off and more than a little motion sick from having to constantly hop around so much (normally the movement in this game doesn't get to me too badly, but this was an exception).

I get that this is supposed to be a major story break so you want to bump up the difficulty a bit, but I feel you've gone a bit overboard with this guy. I would suggest you do one or both of the following.

1. Tone down the sumo's health a bit. He can be tough, but he doesn't have to be THAT tough. For a long time I felt like I wasn't even damaging him because his health bar ticks down so slowly, it's difficult to even see the difference. Once you figure out a pattern to avoid his charges and plink away at his health, it's not too hard, but it IS tedious.

2. Limit the spawn rate of other enemies, nothing makes slowly chipping away at the health of one big enemy even more frustrating then to have to stop every so often to run around and clear out the mooks who keep peppering me with shotgun blasts and the like.

One other thing you could consider. Instead of whittling his health down to 2/3 then 1/3 than dead. You could give him 1/3 the health, but have him regenerate back to full after each of the first two phases. That way, you would at least be able to better see your progress as you chip away at his health bar instead of it looking like you're not damaging him at all.

[dwmr]

Thanks for your thoughts on the boss fight, we'll take that into consideration - there'll be some rescaling of his health across the different difficulty levels and reinforcements will be reduced.