I'm disappointed I pushed through to Balteus instead of returning when I still could when I was on the fence. Granted a half hour doing mech dress-up, and a half hour in game menus when my dog lost his shit from storms kinda screwed that.
I think I put a bit more time in once my return was denied, but have 4.7 hours in and haven't played since last Saturday.
Balteus is just not something I even want to bother trying to fight or figure out. Having the entire game locked behind winning that fight I know I can win eventually but just don't care about and am not invested in putting a dozen or two dozen attempts in sucks.
As far as Fromsoft games go I am disappointed I spent $60 on this and have no interest in playing it more. I feel like I wasted my money and got ripped off.
At least in Elden Ring I could go do something else. This game its like no fun, grind shit out.
It's a bit low to say you got ripped off because a game everyone told you wasn't Dark Souls or Elden Ring isn't Dark Souls or Elden Ring.
The entire game that is locked behind Balteus is just more Balteus. Every other chapter boss is going to be presenting the same basic gameplay challenge as Balteus, but even harder, bigger, faster .
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
I'm disappointed I pushed through to Balteus instead of returning when I still could when I was on the fence. Granted a half hour doing mech dress-up, and a half hour in game menus when my dog lost his shit from storms kinda screwed that.
I think I put a bit more time in once my return was denied, but have 4.7 hours in and haven't played since last Saturday.
Balteus is just not something I even want to bother trying to fight or figure out. Having the entire game locked behind winning that fight I know I can win eventually but just don't care about and am not invested in putting a dozen or two dozen attempts in sucks.
As far as Fromsoft games go I am disappointed I spent $60 on this and have no interest in playing it more. I feel like I wasted my money and got ripped off.
At least in Elden Ring I could go do something else. This game its like no fun, grind shit out.
I came in to write a similar post. Last night, I hit the wall that is Balteus. Through experimentation, I found ways that could sometimes get to phase two, but for the most part he pasted me. Today I looked up every bit of advice and cheese I could. I climbed the wall over and over so that I could switch between dual bazookas, phase guns, plasma cannons, 8 shot rockets, tank treads, quad legs, whatever. I had two runs get him under 40%, the better one maybe 25%.
So I am fucking done.
For the night.
I know he's going to be a right bastard, but I want to see more of this game. I want to buy more parts and see what this BL2 Angel knockoff wants with me. I hear there's gatlings. I want to fire the gatlings.
So I'll be back tomorrow. I think my problem is not processing staggers properly. Currently my strategy is to stagger him, charge in with a sword, then take a rocket to the face. Gonna watch some video and see if there's a better way.
And if not, there's always hax.
The entire game that is locked behind Balteus is just more Balteus. Every other chapter boss is going to be presenting the same basic gameplay challenge as Balteus, but even harder, bigger, faster .
Honestly, I feel that the rest of the game is significantly easier as you actually unlock more parts to experiment with and adapt to the encounters.
At no point did I have as much trouble as I did with Balteus. A few fights took several attempts, the Spider took a fair bit, but "Chapter 1 boss taking two straight hours of beating my head against a wall versus Chapter 4 boss being a first time kill" is a very weird difficulty curve!
Somehow, despite using these arms for what has to be a week straight now, I have only just now noticed the HUD throws up a “ARM OVERLOADED” error at me if I swap the Moonlight out for my Zimmerman.
On the other hand, no pun intended, this does not actually seem to be too much of an issue, because Zimmerman. I am curious if that’s making it less accurate at distance though.
0
ArmsForPeace84Your Partner In FreedomRegistered Userregular
The entire game that is locked behind Balteus is just more Balteus. Every other chapter boss is going to be presenting the same basic gameplay challenge as Balteus, but even harder, bigger, faster .
With Balteus, as with Juggernaut, the difficulty of the fight comes from the limitations of the Assembly screen to parts available in Chapter One. The heavy chopper in the tutorial, of course, takes this even further, as it can only be fought with the starter AC. And there's a bit of truth to the meme that the tutorial is the great filter of this game, in my view. With this introduction, the game is not selecting players to move on based on the soundness of their builds, or even really based on their skills, but for their persistence. Someone who wins that fight can progress, at least, to Chapter Five where I am now. And presumably beat the game.
I just wrapped up the Chapter Four boss fight, which took two tries once I took someone's advice and trivialized it with
dual gatlings and explosive needle launchers, on the wheelchair legs, and turned up the camera speed. Naming the build, what else, Silver Bullet. Not even running an optimum set of OS chips for its armament.
The first try, I got close but then was caught in slashing attacks. The second try, I dominated the fight until Ibis landed some good hits, then madly dashed the repair button, which seemed to take forever, mais c'est la guerre mécanique. Mercifully, it eventually applied the much-needed AP, in time for the last act. Where Ibis was once again having trouble landing attacks while my own kept the boss staggered until the bullet-time kicked in for that last hit.
Then in the escape mission, running that old and busted joint, I insisted on destroying the heavy quad MT, so I was a bit short on AP making my way through the city ruins. And ultimately ran around and hid when my rescuer appeared and took a curiously long time to dispatch a few MTs. Perhaps not wanting to hog all the glory. Hoggit hoggit hoggit!
Now, with new parts in the shop, I've returned to my pattern of replaying old missions for combat records, S-ranks, and the credits needed to build the Arena opponent ACs. Which are fun to take on sorites or into MP, and then tune up to keep the same philosophy but use better parts where these are available.
And I'm dabbling in my own builds inspired by other mecha franchises. For instance:
The entire game that is locked behind Balteus is just more Balteus. Every other chapter boss is going to be presenting the same basic gameplay challenge as Balteus, but even harder, bigger, faster .
With Balteus, as with Juggernaut, the difficulty of the fight comes from the limitations of the Assembly screen to parts available in Chapter One. The heavy chopper in the tutorial, of course, takes this even further, as it can only be fought with the starter AC. And there's a bit of truth to the meme that the tutorial is the great filter of this game, in my view. With this introduction, the game is not selecting players to move on based on the soundness of their builds, or even really based on their skills, but for their persistence. Someone who wins that fight can progress, at least, to Chapter Five where I am now. And presumably beat the game.
I just wrapped up the Chapter Four boss fight, which took two tries once I took someone's advice and trivialized it with
dual gatlings and explosive needle launchers, on the wheelchair legs, and turned up the camera speed. Naming the build, what else, Silver Bullet. Not even running an optimum set of OS chips for its armament.
The first try, I got close but then was caught in slashing attacks. The second try, I dominated the fight until Ibis landed some good hits, then madly dashed the repair button, which seemed to take forever, mais c'est la guerre mécanique. Mercifully, it eventually applied the much-needed AP, in time for the last act. Where Ibis was once again having trouble landing attacks while my own kept the boss staggered until the bullet-time kicked in for that last hit.
Then in the escape mission, running that old and busted joint, I insisted on destroying the heavy quad MT, so I was a bit short on AP making my way through the city ruins. And ultimately ran around and hid when my rescuer appeared and took a curiously long time to dispatch a few MTs. Perhaps not wanting to hog all the glory. Hoggit hoggit hoggit!
Now, with new parts in the shop, I've returned to my pattern of replaying old missions for combat records, S-ranks, and the credits needed to build the Arena opponent ACs. Which are fun to take on sorites or into MP, and then tune up to keep the same philosophy but use better parts where these are available.
And I'm dabbling in my own builds inspired by other mecha franchises. For instance:
Hey, scope out this cool AC!
+7
ArmsForPeace84Your Partner In FreedomRegistered Userregular
The entire game that is locked behind Balteus is just more Balteus. Every other chapter boss is going to be presenting the same basic gameplay challenge as Balteus, but even harder, bigger, faster .
With Balteus, as with Juggernaut, the difficulty of the fight comes from the limitations of the Assembly screen to parts available in Chapter One. The heavy chopper in the tutorial, of course, takes this even further, as it can only be fought with the starter AC. And there's a bit of truth to the meme that the tutorial is the great filter of this game, in my view. With this introduction, the game is not selecting players to move on based on the soundness of their builds, or even really based on their skills, but for their persistence. Someone who wins that fight can progress, at least, to Chapter Five where I am now. And presumably beat the game.
I just wrapped up the Chapter Four boss fight, which took two tries once I took someone's advice and trivialized it with
dual gatlings and explosive needle launchers, on the wheelchair legs, and turned up the camera speed. Naming the build, what else, Silver Bullet. Not even running an optimum set of OS chips for its armament.
The first try, I got close but then was caught in slashing attacks. The second try, I dominated the fight until Ibis landed some good hits, then madly dashed the repair button, which seemed to take forever, mais c'est la guerre mécanique. Mercifully, it eventually applied the much-needed AP, in time for the last act. Where Ibis was once again having trouble landing attacks while my own kept the boss staggered until the bullet-time kicked in for that last hit.
Then in the escape mission, running that old and busted joint, I insisted on destroying the heavy quad MT, so I was a bit short on AP making my way through the city ruins. And ultimately ran around and hid when my rescuer appeared and took a curiously long time to dispatch a few MTs. Perhaps not wanting to hog all the glory. Hoggit hoggit hoggit!
Now, with new parts in the shop, I've returned to my pattern of replaying old missions for combat records, S-ranks, and the credits needed to build the Arena opponent ACs. Which are fun to take on sorites or into MP, and then tune up to keep the same philosophy but use better parts where these are available.
And I'm dabbling in my own builds inspired by other mecha franchises. For instance:
Hey, scope out this cool AC!
We're close to Rubicon, wake the dog up.
Nothing personal. It's just business.
+5
Olivawgood name, isn't it?the foot of mt fujiRegistered Userregular
edited September 2023
I bashed my head against Balteus for over an hour before I finally beat him, and spent about that long on the chapter four boss. Nothing else in this game kicked my ass nearly as hard as those two fights
On my new game plus playthrough I beat Balteus in one try using plain old biped legs and a single pulse gun plus a blade and some songbirds
The chapter four boss took a few tries, but I got it inside of twenty minutes using a Zimmerman shotgun, a songbird, and a totally sick laser twinblade
Getting more and better parts is a big big help, as well as knowing a boss’s weaknesses, like pulse guns shredding Balteus’ armor. But I was shocked at just how much easier those fights were as a pilot, too
Yeah, I struggled on Balteus when I first fought him. I cleared him again on this NG+ playthrough this weekend and I killed him in probably less than a minute on my first try, with a loadout that honestly isn't much better than what I used the first time. I have just gotten a lot better at the game and that's a really cool feeling.
+3
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
The entire game that is locked behind Balteus is just more Balteus. Every other chapter boss is going to be presenting the same basic gameplay challenge as Balteus, but even harder, bigger, faster .
Honestly, I feel that the rest of the game is significantly easier as you actually unlock more parts to experiment with and adapt to the encounters.
At no point did I have as much trouble as I did with Balteus. A few fights took several attempts, the Spider took a fair bit, but "Chapter 1 boss taking two straight hours of beating my head against a wall versus Chapter 4 boss being a first time kill" is a very weird difficulty curve!
I said it before but it's funny how different playstyles must factor into this.
Balteus was like no issue at all. In a very low tier of boss difficulty. Spider is where I started to be unsure if I could even finish the game.
After seeing everyone talk about Balteus being a wall I started thinking maybe I just had a lucky run but...
then I hit Balteus round 2 and I just dumpstered him first try
The Spider was pretty tough. It has a ton of HP and I wasn't sure how to actually avoid taking damage from its huge spread of attacks. Plus it has a couple of huge damage attacks that can end your attempt in one hit if you're out of energy at the wrong time.
I ended up using a light build to stay airborne, with the exploding bazooka, the default energy sword, and two vertical plasma missile racks. I was stunning it constantly, but it had so much health that it took dozens of stuns to kill it. I feel like I must have been missing something about that fight, a way to do more damage maybe?
I'm disappointed I pushed through to Balteus instead of returning when I still could when I was on the fence. Granted a half hour doing mech dress-up, and a half hour in game menus when my dog lost his shit from storms kinda screwed that.
I think I put a bit more time in once my return was denied, but have 4.7 hours in and haven't played since last Saturday.
Balteus is just not something I even want to bother trying to fight or figure out. Having the entire game locked behind winning that fight I know I can win eventually but just don't care about and am not invested in putting a dozen or two dozen attempts in sucks.
As far as Fromsoft games go I am disappointed I spent $60 on this and have no interest in playing it more. I feel like I wasted my money and got ripped off.
At least in Elden Ring I could go do something else. This game its like no fun, grind shit out.
I came in to write a similar post. Last night, I hit the wall that is Balteus. Through experimentation, I found ways that could sometimes get to phase two, but for the most part he pasted me. Today I looked up every bit of advice and cheese I could. I climbed the wall over and over so that I could switch between dual bazookas, phase guns, plasma cannons, 8 shot rockets, tank treads, quad legs, whatever. I had two runs get him under 40%, the better one maybe 25%.
So I am fucking done.
For the night.
I know he's going to be a right bastard, but I want to see more of this game. I want to buy more parts and see what this BL2 Angel knockoff wants with me. I hear there's gatlings. I want to fire the gatlings.
So I'll be back tomorrow. I think my problem is not processing staggers properly. Currently my strategy is to stagger him, charge in with a sword, then take a rocket to the face. Gonna watch some video and see if there's a better way.
And if not, there's always hax.
When you rock and roll on Balteus, try to keep a heavy stun ranged weapon on cool down. If you completely exhaust everything on his FIRST stagger, you often won't have enough raw damage to knock him into his second.
Every shield pop, it's possible to get two staggers. And my first clear I wasn't using an optimal build, it was two bazookas and two plasma missiles.
Also, all but one of his flame thrower attacks can be jumped over or dashed under.
manwiththemachinegun on
0
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
The Spider was pretty tough. It has a ton of HP and I wasn't sure how to actually avoid taking damage from its huge spread of attacks. Plus it has a couple of huge damage attacks that can end your attempt in one hit if you're out of energy at the wrong time.
I ended up using a light build to stay airborne, with the exploding bazooka, the default energy sword, and two vertical plasma missile racks. I was stunning it constantly, but it had so much health that it took dozens of stuns to kill it. I feel like I must have been missing something about that fight, a way to do more damage maybe?
I felt like I was missing something the whole time.
I had to change up my build after literally running out of all my ammo against him and he still had plenty of health.
I started relying on a lot of melee attacks between bazooka shots to keep damage up without using as much ammo and just staying in his butt the whole time. Hoping he didn't use whatever attack that just destroyed me so sometimes.
So y'all weren't kidding about the Zimmerman and the Songbird
Why are these weapons wildly better than almost anything else available? It kind of ruins the fun of building a mech when I know that the best option is just dual Zimmermans, dual Songbirds most of the time. Meanwhile, rifles seem to serve no purpose aside from clearing trash mobs and saving ammo from guns that are actually good.
The Zimmerman's range and projectile velocity is crazy.
The entire game that is locked behind Balteus is just more Balteus. Every other chapter boss is going to be presenting the same basic gameplay challenge as Balteus, but even harder, bigger, faster .
Honestly, I feel that the rest of the game is significantly easier as you actually unlock more parts to experiment with and adapt to the encounters.
At no point did I have as much trouble as I did with Balteus. A few fights took several attempts, the Spider took a fair bit, but "Chapter 1 boss taking two straight hours of beating my head against a wall versus Chapter 4 boss being a first time kill" is a very weird difficulty curve!
I just did an experiment. I took off all my OS chips, made a build from the first random guide I googled, which was a tank build with double Ludlows and the shoulder laser cannons, and one shot the whole mission. It was messy and I ended up with a D after face-tanking most of his shots, but I beat it. Honestly not the build I would choose to go with because it felt waaay too slow and cumbersome.
But the fact is you do have a good selection of parts to buy or otherwise get already before Balteus. I think it is easy to underestimate how big an impact having an intuitive grasp of the mechanics, muscle memory for different situations, the experience to not just panic when there is a wave of missles coming at you, etc have. I think what your example actually shows is that Balteus was successful in forcing you to develop the necessary skills to then take on all the other more difficult bosses.
The Spider was pretty tough. It has a ton of HP and I wasn't sure how to actually avoid taking damage from its huge spread of attacks. Plus it has a couple of huge damage attacks that can end your attempt in one hit if you're out of energy at the wrong time.
I ended up using a light build to stay airborne, with the exploding bazooka, the default energy sword, and two vertical plasma missile racks. I was stunning it constantly, but it had so much health that it took dozens of stuns to kill it. I feel like I must have been missing something about that fight, a way to do more damage maybe?
I'm not sure this can even be an issue with explosive weapons, but one thing is to make sure you aren't ricocheting. It's also entirely possibly that it has high resistance to plasma and or explosives? Finally the question would be what were you doing to punish those staggers? I assume hitting with the sword? Because direct hit damage is it's own stat and just continuing to fire away with the same weapons if they have good impact but not particularly good direct hit damage will grind a boss down but not very quickly. That's why the piledriver is so great.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
In theory, rifles or whatever have the advantage of longer range, better ammo capacity, and better efficiency against trash mobs, which will let you clear them a bit faster at lower risk, but this is rarely a large benefit unless you're playing a long mission and going around hunting for combat logs instead of rushing the objectives. You'd also think that rifles have better ability to maintain stagger damage on enemies, but I don't actually think that taking damage prevents older damage from decaying based on how the minigun worked against the Sea Spider so this is also not that useful, and you can usually get a shotgun reload + shot off during the stagger window so you also don't really miss out on direct hit burst with shotguns.
I do think Songbirds are good but at least slightly less universally powerful, since having to pause to fire them is a bit awkward and for certain bosses it might be useful to have certain kinds of missiles to keep damage up while staying mobile and far away.
The laser shotgun that looks like a small dagger is what I usually run to pile up damage quickly against staggered enemies, as it has a very high firerate, and is only limited by having heat buildup.
So y'all weren't kidding about the Zimmerman and the Songbird
Why are these weapons wildly better than almost anything else available? It kind of ruins the fun of building a mech when I know that the best option is just dual Zimmermans, dual Songbirds most of the time. Meanwhile, rifles seem to serve no purpose aside from clearing trash mobs and saving ammo from guns that are actually good.
The Zimmerman's range and projectile velocity is crazy.
The needle cannon, whatever it's called, is right up there with Songbird. And at least where I'm at, starting chapter five, there's what, one other direct-fire back weapon option? The laser cannon is good, but can't quite hang with the other two.
I'm a little annoyed at not seeing any shoulder gatlings, so I could run a handheld bazooka. But the way bipeds have to pause to fire shoulder weapons would be awkward with an MG, I suppose. That and the pause to fire a charged-up weapon really seem to be narrowing my build variety in the campaign. Has me looking forward to playing more MP, to try out some weapons that don't make the cut when I'm trying to bring down some flying bullet sponge with potential game-over attacks to watch out for.
I do think the Songbirds demand a bit more finesse sometimes, but they were really useful when e.g. fighting a tiny flitting enemy AC. Getting above them and hitting the triggers on both Songbirds just after the enemy finishes their boost tended to hit them squarely with both blasts when I tried it.
I am finding it really hard to deliver a solid follow up after staggering enemies, especially since I find myself needing to really push my loadout to get those staggers in the first place.
Are there any rules governing why some weapons can't fire simultaneously (e.g. shoulder laser cannons) and some weapons can (e.g. songbirds)? It's a bit frustrating to have to experiment to figure it out
The entire game that is locked behind Balteus is just more Balteus. Every other chapter boss is going to be presenting the same basic gameplay challenge as Balteus, but even harder, bigger, faster .
Honestly, I feel that the rest of the game is significantly easier as you actually unlock more parts to experiment with and adapt to the encounters.
At no point did I have as much trouble as I did with Balteus. A few fights took several attempts, the Spider took a fair bit, but "Chapter 1 boss taking two straight hours of beating my head against a wall versus Chapter 4 boss being a first time kill" is a very weird difficulty curve!
I just did an experiment. I took off all my OS chips, made a build from the first random guide I googled, which was a tank build with double Ludlows and the shoulder laser cannons, and one shot the whole mission. It was messy and I ended up with a D after face-tanking most of his shots, but I beat it. Honestly not the build I would choose to go with because it felt waaay too slow and cumbersome.
But the fact is you do have a good selection of parts to buy or otherwise get already before Balteus. I think it is easy to underestimate how big an impact having an intuitive grasp of the mechanics, muscle memory for different situations, the experience to not just panic when there is a wave of missles coming at you, etc have. I think what your example actually shows is that Balteus was successful in forcing you to develop the necessary skills to then take on all the other more difficult bosses.
I mean, if we're sharing personal experiences, in my own retry of Sulla+Balteus, even WITH all the OS chips you can get in the first run of the game and packing double Songbirds and way better body parts than anything you can have before you fight and the experience of beating basically the entire rest of the game, he came very close to ending me nonetheless. As in, ended the mission at like 3K AP and no estus left.
And the fight was pretty much me using superior firepower to rush him, because he just has harder to deal with attacks than the Sea Spider, or Ibis - it's just I had so much gun I could burst him down before HE bursted me down.
I do think the Songbirds demand a bit more finesse sometimes, but they were really useful when e.g. fighting a tiny flitting enemy AC. Getting above them and hitting the triggers on both Songbirds just after the enemy finishes their boost tended to hit them squarely with both blasts when I tried it.
I am finding it really hard to deliver a solid follow up after staggering enemies, especially since I find myself needing to really push my loadout to get those staggers in the first place.
Are there any rules governing why some weapons can't fire simultaneously (e.g. shoulder laser cannons) and some weapons can (e.g. songbirds)? It's a bit frustrating to have to experiment to figure it out
I like to run up and trigger Assault Armor when they're staggered.
Just wrapped up my first playthrough, so I think I'll take a bit of break and then get down to business finding hidden parts and completing battle logs, before running the missions again for my second of three playthroughs. As there are more gaps in my selection of parts than I expected, that actually keep me from running all the arena loadouts.
K, someone make me a mod that asks you to identify some Dire Straits lyrics*, and if you get it right, it gives you an extra quarter second to react to the "this is gonna fuck you up" beep. I may just not have the reflexes for this any more.
Got him to 10%, but I don't think I've EVER dodged his bullshit missile, and that would have been a difference maker.
* And not Sultans or Money for Nothing... something hard like Down To The Waterline
K, someone make me a mod that asks you to identify some Dire Straits lyrics*, and if you get it right, it gives you an extra quarter second to react to the "this is gonna fuck you up" beep. I may just not have the reflexes for this any more.
Got him to 10%, but I don't think I've EVER dodged his bullshit missile, and that would have been a difference maker.
* And not Sultans or Money for Nothing... something hard like Down To The Waterline
Depending on how far/near you are to them, it does become much harder or even impossible to dodge on reaction.
And now I never, ever have to fight that thing again. Right?
Final loadout:
Phase sword, shotgun, 2 8x Vert missiles. Tank treads and as heavy as I could get.
Strat: Keep missiles on CD. Assault charge into sword repeatedly. Fire shotgun if shield is down after sword. Try to remember to sword again.
I wonder if there was an earlier version of the game without the checkpoint system, or with checkpoints/gear adjustment only existing at the resupply points? The two things feel at odds in the final game.
It'd certainly 'fix' certain balance issues if you didn't get free and plentiful reload via checkpoint respawn, but it'd also be a hell of a lot harder.
In theory, rifles or whatever have the advantage of longer range, better ammo capacity, and better efficiency against trash mobs, which will let you clear them a bit faster at lower risk, but this is rarely a large benefit unless you're playing a long mission and going around hunting for combat logs instead of rushing the objectives. You'd also think that rifles have better ability to maintain stagger damage on enemies, but I don't actually think that taking damage prevents older damage from decaying based on how the minigun worked against the Sea Spider so this is also not that useful, and you can usually get a shotgun reload + shot off during the stagger window so you also don't really miss out on direct hit burst with shotguns.
Rifles do keep accumulated impact from decaying, just nothing can keep regular impact from decaying. So if you do a big burst of impact and then start peppering the enemy with AR fire to keep that stagger bar up while you ready for your next big burst, you will still see a lot of stagger recovery in all likelyhood as the regular impact wears off regardless. But you will be keeping the accumulated impact up, and while that's going to be a much smaller section of the bar, keeping that accumulated impact up is pretty important to getting the stagger bar into your range where your next big impact burst can secure the stagger.
I want to shove whoever said the Liberator ending is unambiguously the good ending into a LOCKER.
SHE LITERALLY YADA YADA’S THE CONVERGENCE.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. For a reminder, Coral exposure KILLS PEOPLE. You got lucky because you were in a mech and have coral literally implanted into your body and brain. Normal people JUST DIE.
So Ayer asks you to kill the character who literally saved your life, you do so, we stop Xylem from burning the coral and....
That’s IT!!!!! We get an ending that goes, word for word, “I know we can do something about the convergence, TOGETHER!”
You, a coral corpse piloting merch, and the voice in your head, are somehow going to solve coral convergence. You know, after killing two of the formost experts on coral in the UNIVERSE.
Which is, by the way, only bad for YOU AND HUMANITY. Aint nothin gonna happen to Ayer.
And this game, this fucking game, RUNS with it.
They didn’t have to not elaborate at all on it. That was a purposeful CHOICE. Fromsoft, on purpose, refused to elaborate on how to fix an existential crisis to humanities continued existence and instead filled it with hopeful feelgood anime BULLSHIT and I LOVED it.
I want to shove whoever said the Liberator ending is unambiguously the good ending into a LOCKER.
SHE LITERALLY YADA YADA’S THE CONVERGENCE.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. For a reminder, Coral exposure KILLS PEOPLE. You got lucky because you were in a mech and have coral literally implanted into your body and brain. Normal people JUST DIE.
So Ayer asks you to kill the character who literally saved your life, you do so, we stop Xylem from burning the coral and....
That’s IT!!!!! We get an ending that goes, word for word, “I know we can do something about the convergence, TOGETHER!”
You, a coral corpse piloting merch, and the voice in your head, are somehow going to solve coral convergence. You know, after killing two of the formost experts on coral in the UNIVERSE.
Which is, by the way, only bad for YOU AND HUMANITY. Aint nothin gonna happen to Ayer.
And this game, this fucking game, RUNS with it.
They didn’t have to not elaborate at all on it. That was a purposeful CHOICE. Fromsoft, on purpose, refused to elaborate on how to fix an existential crisis to humanities continued existence and instead filled it with hopeful feelgood anime BULLSHIT and I LOVED it.
Game still really good. Time for FINAL.
Ayre's ending is about humans co-existing with Coral, remember the Dosers get high on Coral. Of course she's naive thinking that humans want to coexist with it instead of just exploiting it. I agree it's not the "good" ending but the "naively optimistic" ending.
I do believe NG++ should clear some more things up for you.
Posts
It's a bit low to say you got ripped off because a game everyone told you wasn't Dark Souls or Elden Ring isn't Dark Souls or Elden Ring.
So I am fucking done.
For the night.
I know he's going to be a right bastard, but I want to see more of this game. I want to buy more parts and see what this BL2 Angel knockoff wants with me. I hear there's gatlings. I want to fire the gatlings.
So I'll be back tomorrow. I think my problem is not processing staggers properly. Currently my strategy is to stagger him, charge in with a sword, then take a rocket to the face. Gonna watch some video and see if there's a better way.
And if not, there's always hax.
Honestly, I feel that the rest of the game is significantly easier as you actually unlock more parts to experiment with and adapt to the encounters.
At no point did I have as much trouble as I did with Balteus. A few fights took several attempts, the Spider took a fair bit, but "Chapter 1 boss taking two straight hours of beating my head against a wall versus Chapter 4 boss being a first time kill" is a very weird difficulty curve!
On the other hand, no pun intended, this does not actually seem to be too much of an issue, because Zimmerman. I am curious if that’s making it less accurate at distance though.
With Balteus, as with Juggernaut, the difficulty of the fight comes from the limitations of the Assembly screen to parts available in Chapter One. The heavy chopper in the tutorial, of course, takes this even further, as it can only be fought with the starter AC. And there's a bit of truth to the meme that the tutorial is the great filter of this game, in my view. With this introduction, the game is not selecting players to move on based on the soundness of their builds, or even really based on their skills, but for their persistence. Someone who wins that fight can progress, at least, to Chapter Five where I am now. And presumably beat the game.
I just wrapped up the Chapter Four boss fight, which took two tries once I took someone's advice and trivialized it with
The first try, I got close but then was caught in slashing attacks. The second try, I dominated the fight until Ibis landed some good hits, then madly dashed the repair button, which seemed to take forever, mais c'est la guerre mécanique. Mercifully, it eventually applied the much-needed AP, in time for the last act. Where Ibis was once again having trouble landing attacks while my own kept the boss staggered until the bullet-time kicked in for that last hit.
Then in the escape mission, running that old and busted joint, I insisted on destroying the heavy quad MT, so I was a bit short on AP making my way through the city ruins. And ultimately ran around and hid when my rescuer appeared and took a curiously long time to dispatch a few MTs. Perhaps not wanting to hog all the glory. Hoggit hoggit hoggit!
Now, with new parts in the shop, I've returned to my pattern of replaying old missions for combat records, S-ranks, and the credits needed to build the Arena opponent ACs. Which are fun to take on sorites or into MP, and then tune up to keep the same philosophy but use better parts where these are available.
And I'm dabbling in my own builds inspired by other mecha franchises. For instance:
Hey, scope out this cool AC!
We're close to Rubicon, wake the dog up.
On my new game plus playthrough I beat Balteus in one try using plain old biped legs and a single pulse gun plus a blade and some songbirds
The chapter four boss took a few tries, but I got it inside of twenty minutes using a Zimmerman shotgun, a songbird, and a totally sick laser twinblade
Getting more and better parts is a big big help, as well as knowing a boss’s weaknesses, like pulse guns shredding Balteus’ armor. But I was shocked at just how much easier those fights were as a pilot, too
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
I said it before but it's funny how different playstyles must factor into this.
Balteus was like no issue at all. In a very low tier of boss difficulty. Spider is where I started to be unsure if I could even finish the game.
After seeing everyone talk about Balteus being a wall I started thinking maybe I just had a lucky run but...
I ended up using a light build to stay airborne, with the exploding bazooka, the default energy sword, and two vertical plasma missile racks. I was stunning it constantly, but it had so much health that it took dozens of stuns to kill it. I feel like I must have been missing something about that fight, a way to do more damage maybe?
When you rock and roll on Balteus, try to keep a heavy stun ranged weapon on cool down. If you completely exhaust everything on his FIRST stagger, you often won't have enough raw damage to knock him into his second.
Every shield pop, it's possible to get two staggers. And my first clear I wasn't using an optimal build, it was two bazookas and two plasma missiles.
Also, all but one of his flame thrower attacks can be jumped over or dashed under.
I felt like I was missing something the whole time.
I had to change up my build after literally running out of all my ammo against him and he still had plenty of health.
I started relying on a lot of melee attacks between bazooka shots to keep damage up without using as much ammo and just staying in his butt the whole time. Hoping he didn't use whatever attack that just destroyed me so sometimes.
Definitely the boss that took me the most tries.
laser gang keeps winning
Why are these weapons wildly better than almost anything else available? It kind of ruins the fun of building a mech when I know that the best option is just dual Zimmermans, dual Songbirds most of the time. Meanwhile, rifles seem to serve no purpose aside from clearing trash mobs and saving ammo from guns that are actually good.
The Zimmerman's range and projectile velocity is crazy.
I just did an experiment. I took off all my OS chips, made a build from the first random guide I googled, which was a tank build with double Ludlows and the shoulder laser cannons, and one shot the whole mission. It was messy and I ended up with a D after face-tanking most of his shots, but I beat it. Honestly not the build I would choose to go with because it felt waaay too slow and cumbersome.
But the fact is you do have a good selection of parts to buy or otherwise get already before Balteus. I think it is easy to underestimate how big an impact having an intuitive grasp of the mechanics, muscle memory for different situations, the experience to not just panic when there is a wave of missles coming at you, etc have. I think what your example actually shows is that Balteus was successful in forcing you to develop the necessary skills to then take on all the other more difficult bosses.
I'm not sure this can even be an issue with explosive weapons, but one thing is to make sure you aren't ricocheting. It's also entirely possibly that it has high resistance to plasma and or explosives? Finally the question would be what were you doing to punish those staggers? I assume hitting with the sword? Because direct hit damage is it's own stat and just continuing to fire away with the same weapons if they have good impact but not particularly good direct hit damage will grind a boss down but not very quickly. That's why the piledriver is so great.
I can't be the only person who was constantly dying from accidental assault boosts
I do think Songbirds are good but at least slightly less universally powerful, since having to pause to fire them is a bit awkward and for certain bosses it might be useful to have certain kinds of missiles to keep damage up while staying mobile and far away.
The needle cannon, whatever it's called, is right up there with Songbird. And at least where I'm at, starting chapter five, there's what, one other direct-fire back weapon option? The laser cannon is good, but can't quite hang with the other two.
I'm a little annoyed at not seeing any shoulder gatlings, so I could run a handheld bazooka. But the way bipeds have to pause to fire shoulder weapons would be awkward with an MG, I suppose. That and the pause to fire a charged-up weapon really seem to be narrowing my build variety in the campaign. Has me looking forward to playing more MP, to try out some weapons that don't make the cut when I'm trying to bring down some flying bullet sponge with potential game-over attacks to watch out for.
I am finding it really hard to deliver a solid follow up after staggering enemies, especially since I find myself needing to really push my loadout to get those staggers in the first place.
Are there any rules governing why some weapons can't fire simultaneously (e.g. shoulder laser cannons) and some weapons can (e.g. songbirds)? It's a bit frustrating to have to experiment to figure it out
I mean, if we're sharing personal experiences, in my own retry of Sulla+Balteus, even WITH all the OS chips you can get in the first run of the game and packing double Songbirds and way better body parts than anything you can have before you fight and the experience of beating basically the entire rest of the game, he came very close to ending me nonetheless. As in, ended the mission at like 3K AP and no estus left.
And the fight was pretty much me using superior firepower to rush him, because he just has harder to deal with attacks than the Sea Spider, or Ibis - it's just I had so much gun I could burst him down before HE bursted me down.
It also comes down to leg type. Generally, only tank legs or quad legs while hovering can fire shoulder & arm weapons at the same time.
I like to run up and trigger Assault Armor when they're staggered.
Just wrapped up my first playthrough, so I think I'll take a bit of break and then get down to business finding hidden parts and completing battle logs, before running the missions again for my second of three playthroughs. As there are more gaps in my selection of parts than I expected, that actually keep me from running all the arena loadouts.
Got him to 10%, but I don't think I've EVER dodged his bullshit missile, and that would have been a difference maker.
* And not Sultans or Money for Nothing... something hard like Down To The Waterline
Depending on how far/near you are to them, it does become much harder or even impossible to dodge on reaction.
Phase sword, shotgun, 2 8x Vert missiles. Tank treads and as heavy as I could get.
Strat: Keep missiles on CD. Assault charge into sword repeatedly. Fire shotgun if shield is down after sword. Try to remember to sword again.
It'd certainly 'fix' certain balance issues if you didn't get free and plentiful reload via checkpoint respawn, but it'd also be a hell of a lot harder.
Oh and then the RLF guy showed up and suddenly it was a 2v1 because of course it was.
i got complacent beating everything within a few tries for a long while
Edit: I just looked a video up and he doesn't say it
Yeah, not sure how the whole other people knowing you from before works.
Ending=
My thoughts are....controversial.
I want to shove whoever said the Liberator ending is unambiguously the good ending into a LOCKER.
SHE LITERALLY YADA YADA’S THE CONVERGENCE.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. For a reminder, Coral exposure KILLS PEOPLE. You got lucky because you were in a mech and have coral literally implanted into your body and brain. Normal people JUST DIE.
So Ayer asks you to kill the character who literally saved your life, you do so, we stop Xylem from burning the coral and....
That’s IT!!!!! We get an ending that goes, word for word, “I know we can do something about the convergence, TOGETHER!”
You, a coral corpse piloting merch, and the voice in your head, are somehow going to solve coral convergence. You know, after killing two of the formost experts on coral in the UNIVERSE.
Which is, by the way, only bad for YOU AND HUMANITY. Aint nothin gonna happen to Ayer.
And this game, this fucking game, RUNS with it.
They didn’t have to not elaborate at all on it. That was a purposeful CHOICE. Fromsoft, on purpose, refused to elaborate on how to fix an existential crisis to humanities continued existence and instead filled it with hopeful feelgood anime BULLSHIT and I LOVED it.
Game still really good. Time for FINAL.
I do believe NG++ should clear some more things up for you.