Guide for Furier difficulty

A guide with some tips and tricks to help you git gud and beat the game on Furier difficulty.

General tips

General changes from Furi to Furier:
On Furier difficulty, boss health remains the same, but nearly all of them now come with new sets of attacks. Generally speaking, this means most bosses will attack faster and have additional projectiles to dodge through; most of these will be larger attacks so your timing window to dodge is far less. Most close quarters phases remain the same however, melee attack patterns are one of the few things that won’t change on Furier, so if you memorise the number of combos the boss uses, parrying melee attacks should be a piece of cake.

Shoot and parry:
You’ll want to make a habit of shooting and parrying at the same time to maximise your DPS. Being able to shoot the boss while they perform a melee combo on you lets you deal huge amounts of damage to them. This can be used to skip some phases entirely and get through the boss faster, for example you can skip the cloning part of The Scale if you do enough damage to him during the 5th phase.

Avoid using 4 hit combos:
With the exception of when you are in close quarters, bosses will outright prevent you from doing a 4 hit combo to knock them down. When using melee in normal gameplay, you’ll want to do 2 quick slashes and follow up with a half charged slash (press attack twice then release.) The exception to this will be in close quarters phases, with the exception of The Burst and The Edge, you can still perform a 4 hit combo which may be desirable if you want to perform a boost to get more damage out of your next attack.

Avoid executions on perfect parrys:
This sounds counter intuitive, but the best way to maximise your damage is to avoiding performing executions if you manage to land a perfect parry and shoot them with the pistol instead. Forming an execution just leads to the boss being invulnerable for a short period and moving to their next set of attacks. Executions should only be used when in close quarters phases, the bosses have much less health during these sections and you can use the time during when they are knocked down to boost your next attack.

Use a controller:
Using a controller is damn near essential on Furier difficulty. Though Furi difficulty is entirely playable with a keyboard and mouse (hell, I managed to S rank all the bosses without a controller), the additional dodging you’ll have to do on Furier is significantly harder with a keyboard and mouse, to the point where it's outright impossible to dodge some attacks unless you’re standing in a specific position. Since Furier requires a lot of shooting and dodging at the same time, do yourself a favour and use a controller to avoid tearing your hair out in some sections.

The Chain

This guy got a fair buff, but should be manageable if you’ve already beaten the game. General differences will be that his attacks are much faster; you’ll have significantly less time to dodge his bullets. Additionally, he’ll try to trick you with his melee attacks, he’ll still perform the same set of moves, but he’ll teleport around you after every hit. Don’t panic, just listen for the audio cues that tells you when to parry.

Phase 1:
Just keep shooting him in the face. Apart from new sets of projectiles, this is fairly straightforward. His melee phase changes up a bit, after you block one of his attacks he’ll teleport to the centre and use an AOE wave attack which you’ll have to dodge through.

Phase 2:
Not much changes here, apart from him trying to trick you by teleporting during his 4 hit melee combo.

Phase 3:
Just keep shooting him.

Phase 4:
A little harder than on Furi, but still pretty easy. You’ll have little room to manoeuvre, but that shouldn’t a problem. Just keep shooting the bullets and dodge through the purple wave attacks. When in the melee phase, you’ll have significantly less time to dodge his sweep attacks than normal, you’ll have about half a second to dodge. The good thing is that the pattern never changes, so if you memorise where he’s going to attack you should be fine.

The Strap

The Strap is one of the few bosses that remains relatively the same; apart from some extra projectile attacks and faster beam attacks, you won’t have to change up your strategy much here; just keep on shooting her in the face. If you’re not confident with your dodging abilities, the best way to deal with her beam/wave attacks is to just hold the dodge button for a little longer, even if only by a bit you’ll still get that extra distance. As for using the arenas alarms, I personally like to save them for her 5th phase, standing on the buttons in the centre will distract her for a while and if you have all 4 remaining in that time, you can do huge amounts of damage to her before she even gets a chance to use any attacks.

Phase One:
Not much change here apart from her beam attacks being extremely fast. Just keep shooting her in the face.

Phase Two:
No change, although it may be a little harder to dodge through some of her bullets. You can use a charged pistol shot to clear her purple bullets to give you some breathing space. You should also dodge through the orange bullets that can’t be shot through, that additional set usually means you’ll end up taking a hit if you try to parry them.

Phase Three:
She’ll grab her scythe, but all this does is give you more opportunities to put some good damage into her with your pistol. Her 3 hit combo here remains the same as before. Her orange bullets don’t come with an additional set this time for some reason, so feel free to parry them right back at her.

Phase Four:
Almost exactly the same as the previous phase, except she’ll do a 4 hit combo this time, which is still the same one on Furi. Only significant change here is her AOE attack in her melee phase has an extremely small safe space this time, about half the size than before.

Phase Five:
She’s out of her chair now and she’ll run away. Find one of the alarms in the arena and shoot it, you skip her QTE altogether by doing this. Alternatively, you can just chase after her when she’s running away, but this is a little harder. In this phase, I like to use the 4 buttons in the middle to lure her and distract her, you can get her down to nearly no health if you save all 4 for when you get to this phase.

Phase Six:
Move away from her position, I like to be around the 3rd and 4th pillars just below her. Here, her beam attacks have an additional wave attack added that you’ll need to dodge as well, the further away from her you are, the easier will be to dodge the additional wave.

The Line

This is where you’ll need to start using entirely new strategies. Though the changes are relatively simple, you’ll have to be aware of everything that’s happening onscreen.

Phase One:
You’ll only need one charged shot to break through his barriers here. The downside is that you have limited room to manoeuvre; instead of shooting his beam attacks where you are, he’ll shoot 4 beams in an outward direction. The best thing to do here is just stay in the same position, and move to another position when he shoots his beams at you, while using your charged pistol shot to break through his barrier.

Phase Two:
You’ll want to dodge in a circular motion here and avoid his 4 beams. Don’t bother trying to parry the bullets that come at you, it will slow you down and even worse, can make you get hit by his beam attack. Just wait for an opening where you can dodge through both the bullets while avoiding the beams, don’t get too close to him or you’ll have a hard time dodging him beams. Just keep shooting the pillar and be patient.
In this next portion, you’ll have to dodge through his wave attacks, no avoiding them. Try to dodge them as soon as possible, you don’t want to be in a situation where you have to wave attacks coming at you and get unavoidably hit. His melee phase remains the same here, though he’ll try to trick you by teleporting behind you like The Chain does. You’ll have less room to dodge his sweep attack but on the up side his attacks are fairly easy to predict here, he doesn’t have much health and you can knock him down very quickly if you use an execution or a charged melee hit.

Phase Three:
This phase is almost easier on Furier than on Furi. You’ll want to get close to the pillar and keep shooting it while dodging through the AOE waves he sends at you. Just parry back the orange bullets and this part will be over quickly.
His 2nd melee phase is the only time you’ll have an entirely new melee combo learn. Here he’ll perform a 5 hit melee combo while teleporting all around you. Just listen for the audio cues to parry and you should be fine.

Phase Four:
The worst thing you can do here is panic. The purple attacks he sends at you are annoying, they’ll home into your position and getting hit by one often escalates into getting hit by even more. Just keep dodging every time you see a large amount headed towards you and always dodge the AOE wave; the bullets only take off 1 square of health but the wave takes of 2 so if getting hit is inevitable, get hit by the bullet and use the small invincibility frame to get out of the way.
In the last portion, there’ll be a huge number of bullets on the screen. Take your time here, look for the green bullets if you’re low on health and keep shooting the pillars. Because of the huge density of bullets, this phase can sometimes take a rather long time, getting closer to the pillars is often not an option so don’t be afraid to stay back and wait for an opening.

The Scale

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ did this guy get hella hard on Furier! This is probably one of the hardest fights on Furier, this is where your skills will really be put to the test.

Phase One:
Unlike on Furi, you’ll want to keep your distance for the time being, don’t try parry his trail bullets because he shoots an additional wave you have to dodge through. Wait for him to shoot, move to the side and dodge through the wave. When he comes in to melee you, block his 2 hit combo and then GET BACK; he’ll shoot out an AOE wave that is outright impossible to dodge if you are close to him.
His melee phase remains the same here, dodge twice then hit him with a combo. If he tries to melee you here, parry him, then immediately dodge away; he’ll do a small AOE bomb that will knock you down if you don’t move.

Phase Two:
Here it’s safe to use the same strategy on Furi. Get up close to him and parry his bullets while shooting him.

Phase Three:
Apart from an additional AOE wave to dodge through, this remains exactly the same. DPS is important here, if you do enough damage to him during this part you can skip an entire section of this phase; namely when he teleports to the centre and fires of a circular beam with waves as well as his QTE.

Phase Four:
Use the same strategy as phase two, get up close to him and parry his bullets. Melee phase is the same as it was on Furi.

Phase Five:
Here he’ll use the same attack with a cluster of bullets, only difference now is they’re purple and home onto your position which can make it difficult to damage him during this phase. If you manage to do enough damage you can skip his cloning section. His cloning section involved a bit of RNG, his clones will either fire off the same cluster of homing bullets of AOE waves to dodge through.

Phase Six:
This is where things get really hard. Here you’ll need to dodge through wave attacks while simultaneously shooting the bullets coming at you. The most consistent way I’ve managed to beat this part is by charging your dodge, both when you’re dodging towards the centre and diagonally to the sides to the side.
When you hear him shout “DIE, DIE!” immediately go up as far as you can and parry the trail bullet that he shoots down the centre. If you don’t do this, the next part will become extremely difficult; there will be next to no room to dodge the next attacks. Move to the lower half of the available space left. You’ll have to dodge through many AOE waves here. This looks harder than it actually is; what you want to be looking for is the opening when two of the waves on the sides come together so you can dodge diagonally through them (think of it as dodging through the middle of a venn diagram). You’ll have to dodge through about 4-5 of these, when everything finally despawns shoot at him and you’ll be done.

The Hand

This fight changes very little, some extra AEO waves to dodge through but nothing ridiculous like The Scale.

Phase One:
Use the same strategy as normal, wait for him to perform his full 3 hit combo then hit him with your two hit slash and half charged slash. When he moves to the sides of the arena to shoot his beam, use this opportunity to deal damage to him with the pistol. Just be mindful of when he’s about to bring his shield up again.

Phase Two:
To dodge through his large beam attack, you’ll have to charge your dodge. Otherwise this phase is relatively simple.

Phase Three:
To have an easy time dodging his AEO wave and moving 4 beam attack, stay on the outside of the arena, dodge towards the centre when the wave comes close, then move back to the outside. He’ll use two different types of beam attack during this phase, one will be the same on as phase two, and the other will be the same as phase one, only this time he’ll shoot four sets of them so you’ll need to keep strafing sideways.

Phase Four:
Now that he’s gotten rid of his shield, you can shoot and parry at the same time. This phase is relatively easy, he’ll add an additional AOE wave in addition to his large beam attack, but there’s nothing that will give you too much trouble.

Phase Five:
Same strategy as phase four, only you’ll have less room to move.

The Song

Get ready to do a whole lot of dodging for this one. You'll want to be careful and keep your distance when you can, trying to do any ranged damage to her before she starts her next attacks causes her to fire a blue wave have isn't very well telegraphed and can be extremely hard to dodge through if you are close to her.

Phase One:
Immediately try get up close and melee her for some small damage, shooting her will just cause her to use her wave attack. You’ll have to keep shooting her as she’s performing her attacks, getting damage in will be hard as there is now a lot of bullets that cannot be shot through.

Phase Two:
Her 180 degree beam attack now has an additional beam you’ll have to dodge through. If you can, the best way to avoid this attack is getting behind her, look to which direction her hands point to when she’s about to fire off the beam and move the other way to get behind her. When she tries to swoop you, you can either dodge through it or use a heavy pistol shot to knock her down.

Phase Three:
Use heavy pistol shots to clear the bullets that spread around. Keep shooting her with the pistol as she swoops you, you can get a lot of damage in here.

Phase Four:
Relatively unchanged from Furi mode, she’ll use purple homing bullets instead of normal blue ones and you’ll have AOE waves to dodge through, but her melee pattern still remains the same. To see which way to move when she fires off her thick wave of bullets, look at which way her hands point and move to that direction. Also remember in her close quarters phase you can parry her bullet attacks instead of dodging them.

Phase Five:
Hit her with a heavy pistol shot to start with, she’ll keep moving away if you try to attack her with anything else. Be mindful of where you are in the arena, try to move to a spot where there aren’t bullets raining down to avoid being interrupted while dodging or parrying.

Phase Six:
Personally, I like to start from the top and move in a clockwise direction when shooting down the pillars. Unless you’re up close avoid using the heavy pistol to shoot them, more often than not it’ll just be blocked by the bullet’s she’s shooting outwards. Once you deal with the pillars, her final attack is dictated by RNG like on Furi, she’ll either use a double beam attack or two sets of orange balls you need to either block or dodge through.

The Burst

For arguably the hardest boss in the game on Furi difficulty (she's still my favourite boss,) The Burst isn’t too bad on Furier, compared to the buff some of the other bosses got. The first thing you’ll have to be mindful of is avoiding her one hit KO sniper shot, you have about 1-2 seconds less to avoid it on Furier. Navigating the arena is a little trickier as well, her drones now shoot orange balls that you’ll have to either parry or dodge through, and her mines now produce a larger AOE wave. Just remember you can parry to work out which direction she is, but you have to wait until she’s preparing her sniper shot to reach her or she’ll cloak and run away, costing you some time.

Phase One:
Parry to work out which direction she is and wait for her to prepare her sniper shot before closing in on her. Keep an eye on the time, she’ll usually prepare her shot at around the 8 or 9 second mark so make sure you’re standing in the open by then. She’ll use the same set of attacks as normal, but with some additional ones added on. If you get her close to the edge while you’re standing on the edge as well, when she fires off her red ball attacks, you can make half of them go off to give you more space.

Phase Two:
Get up close to her parry all her purple bullets right back at her to avoid them exploding in an AOE. This phase is fairly easy, just keep on shooting her to maximise your damage.

Phase Three:
This phase is almost exactly the same, it’s even a little easier than it was on Furi. Once you find her and she moves to the centre of the arena, circle strafe around the pillars to avoid her one hit KO and keep shooting her. When she jumps to the middle, move right below her; she’ll shoot off a large several large AOE attacks that you have to dodge through, but since they’re moving so slowly you can do enough damage to her that they won’t even reach you.

Phase Four:
This phase is straightforward as long as you’ve memorised her 3 melee combos. She’ll try hit you with either a 1, 2 or 4 hit combo and never use the same one twice in a row, so if you count the number of hits she does, you can predict how many times she’ll try hit you next. One thing that makes this a little easier is watching her; for her 1 and 2 hit combos she’ll attack you straight away but for her 4 hit combo there’s a slight pause in when she appears to when she starts her attack. Another thing to remember is you can’t knock her down during her melee phase with a 4 hit combo this time, you’ll need to do an execute if you want to knock her down to prepare a boost.

Phase Five:
Same as before, except she’s immune to your pistol attacks now so you have to rely on melee to whittle her down. If you manage to land a perfect parry during this part, you can get her to uncloak for a while which lets you deal a good amount of damage to her. Doing enough damage lets you skip the 2nd part of this phase entirely.

Phase Six:
Finally we get to what was arguably the hardest part of the entire game on Furi difficulty. The good news is there’s not much change here, the wave attacks are a little thicker which means you need to be more precise with your dodge, but apart from that it’s exactly the same strategy, though do note you have an extremely small amount of time to dodge her one hit KO and sometimes taking a hit from the waves is unavoidable due to RNG. The way I manage to consistently beat this phase is by moving in a backwards “L” shape to dodge through the waves (starting from the left side, dodge right, up, down, left and repeat.) When you get in to her close quarters phase she’ll only use her 1 or 2 hit combo; remember which one she used last and this should be a piece of cake.

The Edge

There is nothing to say about this boss, his attack patterns are exactly the same as they are on Furi. In fact, there is almost nothing about this fight that changes between difficulties.

The Beat

Fairly easy, unless you suck at platforming. Getting hit and getting knocked off the platforms suck though, so it’s worth practicing if you’re trying to S rank her.

Phase One:
Keep moving and dodging forward in a zigzagging motion, if you do this you won’t even have to dodge through the orange balls. Don’t bother trying to block them, the additional set of them the turrets shoot means you’ll take a hit.
The next part is the same as it was on Furi except she’ll now spawn white balls that cannot be shot through which can be extremely annoying given the poor visibility combined with the other attacks.

Phase Two:
Take your time and chase after her on the platforms. Try stay away from the edges if you can, there’s nothing more tilting than getting knocked off by a stray bullet and losing 3 squares of health.
The next part change is similar to the previous phase, there’s an additional wave to dodge through as well as the white balls which you’ll have to work around to get a shot on her.

Phase Three:
Same as Furi, except the turrets will now shoot an AOE wave in addition to their beam attacks. A tip for this is just to rush through the beams like normal, if you stay ahead, the AOE waves despawn entirely. Just be aware that falling or getting hit means you’ll have to deal with them again. Even worse is getting hit and knocked off the platform, which deals a whopping 4 squares of health damage, over one third of your total health.

The Star

In theory The Star isn’t that bad, there isn’t even many new attacks to dodge through and the only things that are added are different bullets and smaller areas to dodge. What makes The Star difficult is not getting hit, getting hit by any attack can completely throw off your positioning which makes you vulnerable and unable to move to a better position to avoid the next attacks. Personally, I absolutely hate this fight because of this, often you can just get KO’d by taking a single hit because you get pushed out of position and there’s no way you can get back without taking another hit. The only way to beat this fight is through practice and learning all the patterns. For general combat tips, you’ll have to use your charged shot as your method of damage; most of the time your bullets will be blocked from hitting The Star’s hands.

Phase One:
This plays out the same way as it does on Furi, just keep using the charge shot to damage the hands, parry the purple bullets and parry the drones.

Phase Two:
Same as before. When she starts shooting out the waves, switch to shooting bullets and charge your dodge just to be safe.

Phase Three:
There is a safe spot on the left hand side just under the 2nd drone, the same one that's there on Furi. If you can get into this position, you won't even have to worry about the beam attacks, although if you don't do enough damage quick enough, you'll still have to deal with them. Dodging them is fairly hard, the best way to do it is dodge in a backwards "L" shape (from the middle, go down, left, right, up).

Phase Four:
Shoot the charged laser shot at her hands, then prepare to dodge waves from the left and right. Briefly holding on the dodge button is the safest way of ensuring you won’t get hit by these waves, stand as far as you can from them and dodge just before they hit you then move back into position. When she starts shooting the red waves, shoot at her hands with normal pistol shots; you'll be doing too much dodging to hit her with charged shots. The worst part of this is getting hit, getting pushed out of position during this phase can be extremely deadly and can often result in a KO simply because you can’t get back into position again to dodge through the next wave.

Phase Five:
This phase is an act of endurance, you'll want to reach the final part with at least 2 or more squares of health. The first part is fairly simple, just strafe between the balls and dodge through the blue ones if need be. When the purple bullets start homing towards you, you can shoot them out with the pistol if need be.
Next you need to dodge the beam she shoots from side to side. This isn’t too bad, just charge your dodge to ensure you can make it and use your pistol to shoot the incoming bullets.
The next part is the hardest part of the phase, you need to dodge in between wave attacks while avoiding purple bullets. You'll just have to time your dodges carefully, I've found spamming dodge a good way of avoiding purple bullets. Use the whole space to your advantage during this part, sometimes it's better to dodge up and down and not just side to side. Getting hit during this part can be fatal, being knocked down and pulled out of position can easily result in a KO.
The final part is relatively easy, but can be nerve racking if you’re low on health. Just try to be aware of everything coming towards you. To start with, move as high as you can while shooting the bullets, this gives you enough space to move. When she starts shooting red waves move back a bit, and keep shooting. Congrats, you’ve beaten the game on Furier!

S Rank requirements

Thankfully, Furi is fairly lenient when it comes to obtaining an S rank. If you confirm planet assimilation, you need to beat the game in 3 hours, under 30 KO’s and 600 hits. If you choose to attack the mothership, you need 3 and a half hours, under 40 KO’s with 650 hits. Even if you die on one or two bosses, you should still have enough time to get an S rank, especially if you spend time fighting them in practice mode before attempting it in story mode.

Feedback

If you have any feedback or any alternative strategies, feel free to let me know in the comments and I might add it in to the guide.

Credit for thumbnail image goes to Lios.

[Hannibal Lahr]

Such a relief to hear you don't need to fight The Star for S-rank. On Furi difficulty they were the one boss that kept me from S, and frankly they're the only boss in the game I don't enjoy fighting.

[ursus_ludens]

beating this shit on keyboard isn't so hard

[Manta]

The key to tracking down the Burst during her opening phases is not to get too close and remember that she will run to a new hiding spot if the *CAMERA* sees where she is before she starts charging her sniper shot. That means you should never approach her from the south since the camera sees much more above you than below you. You can actually get onto the smaller islands from the north without her running away if you want.

The off-camera thing is also used for spawning mines and drones, so running south tends to run into drones spawning right in front of you and much further away when running north.

[Calljaketron]

It was a huge deal to discover that switching to Type D control scheme allows you to parry and shoot at the same time

[ROMASHUNTERFOURTWENTY420]

Honestly I play mouse and keyboard and the biggest issue is those pie chart phases, however they are seriously not a big deal. I personally have never played on controller in my whole life because I play a lot of FPS. But I can admit that a controller is probably the right option. But this guide is so good and I seriously thank you ABG.

[Absolute Chazmania]

The parry time for melee parry is a specific point of the sound not the flash of the weapon

[ENGLISHNAME]

Gonna be honest: Game is not any harder on keyboard and mouse than controller.

[Durandal]

'There is nothing to say about this boss, his attack patterns are exactly the same as they are on Furi. In fact, there is almost nothing about this fight that changes between difficulties.'

I'm really not sure why you'd say something that is so completely false, differences are that his final phase requires more careful positioning to avoid one of his attacks, his waves he sends out with the paddle come out with more than 1 at a time, he dodges and parries far more often...

[Opieo]

@Developer Kid - No, if you stay with her it won't issue you a rank at all. Just got my stay with her achievement. No actual rating and stats shown. Just credits roll and 'welcome back to the menu'.

[Developer Kid]

Does staying with Song count for "Furier Than Ever" achievement?