Last Boss really worsens the game

[Chezz]

Was having such a good experience until finding the last boss. What an absolute crapfest. I have been gaming for 30 years and I swear I have to really think hard to remember something so utterly unbalanced in any game.

When you need to resort to cheese like camping his spawning point and use specific comps with specific skills and memories to even have a chance, it's a symptom you did something really really wrong.

I am not sure I am even going to try to attempt it again, it totally killed any motivation to keep playing. And it's a shame, because the rest of the game was beautifully crafted, from the story to graphics or OST. But finishing with such a disgrace leaves such a bad taste in the mouth, I rather just watch the ending cutscene at Youtube.

Rant over.

[Loot Hunter]

That's why it's called Suffering!

[White Shadow]

Sincerely agree with the OP. I also loved the whole game right up until the final boss. All the missions and previous bosses felt rewarding, overwhelming you with enemy numbers so you thought hard about every move and giving bosses really smart behaviours so you learned from your mistakes.

But that last boss was just too sudden of a difficulty spike, where you'd find missions leading up to him on the easy side, and even his first form being too easy, and then suddenly his final form comes and it's off the charts unfair. It clearly just encourages grinding, so going back and doing the missions that by now I am finding too easy, which I don't really feel like doing again and again. 4-5 actions in a turn AND pushing your daughters back on a timeline so he can have another 4 - 10 actions in a row AND moving himself further away from you so you have to waste APs to get closer AND making himself immune to the first melee attack each turn AND having an ability to instantly kill one of your daughters. It was a major disappointment and left me with a foul taste after an otherwise great experience.

[[open slot]]

Yeah, had to rely on cheesing strategy. Take two gunners, two scythes (lvl 15 with the damage on all map ultimate ability), and an other daughter (I guess that whatever you take would do the trick). Equip your daughters with delaying remembrances (you have to farm a little the last era to get 25 units delaying remembrances).
In the first phase, just spam the ultimate ability of your scythes, and camp the point where the 2nd form of the boss will spawn.

Deal with the spawning daughters. You can even farm with the scythe ability which grants her a +15% damage for the combat if you kill a targeted enemy within a turn.

When the egg is ready to explode, either finish it quickly or just ignore it (your daughters should be able to soak that amount of damage if they start at full health). But most importantly the spawn point of the 2nd form of the boss must be at range (7) to your gunners. There, use shadow on gunners, and spam the 2nd form of the boss. If you correctly set up your attack, the boss will be continuously delayed, and will die before being able to move.

If you try to play legit, the boss will end up with a similar strategy on your daughters, and it is not fun to see them die one after the other without being able to act.

[Sovereign246]

I'll be honest, i'm finding the bosses in general to be very unfun. Constant free moves, aoe that they use after every attack so you have no openings, sudden timeline shifts that then cause those aoe to go off instantly. Bosses are useally my favorite part of games, but after defeating the surgeon and experiancing the deacon i'm really not looking forward to what the other 3 are going to bring to the table.

Like with the surgeon my first attempt (i beat him but still) i killed his minions he moves instantly and kills my shieldbearer from over half hp. And just there with the deacon he aoes, i moved out, he uses it, moves, attacks and kills a blademaster then sets up another aoe. i move my shield bearer to get a backstab with another blademaster, attack him once to do some damage he moves instantly rooting and damaging everyone while also moving up the timeline meaning that the aoe goes off killing my soulslinger and shieldbearer.

I stick around with the last blademaster to see what else he does and find that he gets a teleport, a pushback reaction that never wears off and another aoe that again he sets up every time he moves. They get to do everything in a single turn with absolutly no drawback (they dont suffer from burst like the daughters do) . and its not like they suffer on damage either, the decaon halfed the hp of my shield bearer from full health with one attack then killed her with the aoe. And thats with the plus 15 and 30 hp remebreances active.

and its not even a first time thing, i still found the surgeon very unfun to engage even with over leveled daughters on my second attempt.

[White Shadow]

Originally posted by predator246:

I'll be honest, i'm finding the bosses in general to be very unfun. Constant free moves, aoe that they use after every attack so you have no openings, sudden timeline shifts that then cause those aoe to go off instantly. Bosses are useally my favorite part of games, but after defeating the surgeon and experiancing the deacon i'm really not looking forward to what the other 3 are going to bring to the table.

The Surgeon was indeed a bit of a sudden difficulty spike. I ended up beating him on the second go by keeping him in his first form (keeping at least 1 minion alive) till he was down by half HP, and then when he went into his super aggressive mode, I just quickly finished him off as his defence just fell to zero. For Deacon, I brought in blademasters with sidestep as two of the four daughters, so even if he traps them in place, they can still use sidestep to move. But yeah, totally see what you mean about sudden free moves and AoEs after his HP drops a certain amount. With him I think getting his HP down gradually might be a safer strategy.

I think bosses in 3rd and 4th eras were the best in the game as they had some clear and crisp strategies and their AoEs were always clearly marked and delayed, so you could get daughters out of danger in time so long as you didn't go into burst. Hopefully you'll also find them better than Surgeon and Deacon.

[Sovereign246]

Originally posted by White Shadow:

Originally posted by predator246:

I'll be honest, i'm finding the bosses in general to be very unfun. Constant free moves, aoe that they use after every attack so you have no openings, sudden timeline shifts that then cause those aoe to go off instantly. Bosses are useally my favorite part of games, but after defeating the surgeon and experiancing the deacon i'm really not looking forward to what the other 3 are going to bring to the table.

The Surgeon was indeed a bit of a sudden difficulty spike. I ended up beating him on the second go by keeping him in his first form (keeping at least 1 minion alive) till he was down by half HP, and then when he went into his super aggressive mode, I just quickly finished him off as his defence just fell to zero. For Deacon, I brought in blademasters with sidestep as two of the four daughters, so even if he traps them in place, they can still use sidestep to move. But yeah, totally see what you mean about sudden free moves and AoEs after his HP drops a certain amount. With him I think getting his HP down gradually might be a safer strategy.

I think bosses in 3rd and 4th eras were the best in the game as they had some clear and crisp strategies and their AoEs were always clearly marked and delayed, so you could get daughters out of danger in time so long as you didn't go into burst. Hopefully you'll also find them better than Surgeon and Deacon.

I enjoy the core gameplay enough to finish it i think, i hope i have similar feelings towards boss 3 and 4 that you do. I'm grinding some levels just now and tbf to the game my blademaster and soulslinger were not at full health when i fought the deacon so even though i feel like the way they died was bs i should be fine on the second attempt.

Thank you btw for an actual response, i was honestly expecting a "git gud" post to be the only response i would get.

[G\[T]/]

Come on it is very straightforward with even three 15 lvl souls. Second form didn't take its turn at all, killed upon appearance.

[White Shadow]

Originally posted by predator246:

I enjoy the core gameplay enough to finish it i think, i hope i have similar feelings towards boss 3 and 4 that you do. I'm grinding some levels just now and tbf to the game my blademaster and soulslinger were not at full health when i fought the deacon so even though i feel like the way they died was bs i should be fine on the second attempt.

Thank you btw for an actual response, i was honestly expecting a "git gud" post to be the only response i would get.

Yeah, I agree. The core gameplay is great. I think with the recollections system it's quite nice, because you can come back and fight a boss with more bonuses. And you're welcome. I think it's a lot more fun when people discuss strategies rather than just tell each other to git gud.

[InquisitorM]

It would be less annoying if the last boss wasn't 10% acting and 90% waiting for the animations to play out. I can see *how* you beat it, but that first time is a huge Negative Play Experience.

I'm not motivated to bother giving it a second go.

[Smoke]

Well, I found someone who wrote exactly what I was thinking.
This last boss.. seriously, thrash. You either cheese him out or not let him act at all? What the hell is that?
And yes, the animations, over and over and over again. "The Suffering" honors its name.

I don't think I even want to watch the ending on youtube. Why did they had to ♥♥♥♥ all over the last part of the game?

[Geo]

I enjoyed the game but I have to agree, I beat the boss with just chain spamming the reaction attacks since disruptions dont work and the boss moves so much, all i did was set 3 blades masters to reaction swipe (or whatever its called) and used 2 gunslingers to spam turn boost.
I think they made the fatal mistake of trying to make a boss more difficult by giving it game breaking mechanics (like not being able to interrupt attacks), and just giving it extremely high speed. It would have been far better if the boss had been a more difficult version of older ones, in a sense, many stages, many many attacks that you need to carefully plan around, unfortunately it seems quite cheesy as you said