Kid Icarus Uprising Babel Club ND attempt boss commentary

-Twinbellows - well, this guy is actually one of the few bosses where Babel Club is better than Skyscraper Club. However, how much better depends on what Twinbellows does before the player gets to launch 2 Forward Shots at close range. If he does his obnoxious lunge attack early enough, you may as well be using Skyscraper Club, especially when Twinbellows needs to be out of the lunge attack to actually die from being hit to or at 0 HP.

-Gaol - this is where Babel Club's basic weaknesses over Skyscraper Club start proving themselves. Gaol's roll dodges are already intimidating normally, but Babel Club gets the worst of it even with Parry Chargeup because of the high chargeup time. Even worse, Babel Club's Shots can also be shrugged off if Gaol roll dodges. Not that she would need to if you're too far away to deal decent damage with the Neutral Shot. What's even worse is that Gaol has THREE hitscan attacks with significant coverage and underwhelming telegraphing to make sure that overwhelming pressure gets you caught. The Mega Laser is never used up close, but no such luck with the paralyzing corridor and surrounding explosion attacks. Diagonal dodging away seems to help with those.

BTW, did you know the surrounding explosion ignores knockback immunity from the Super Armor Power? I wish I was exaggerating.

Oh, and be sure to get rid of the Skuttlers as need be. That will be less pressure on you, and if the Skuttlers aren't around, Magnus will attack Gaol. Keep in mind, however, that Gaol only gets finished by YOUR attacks, just to further complicate things.

-Hewdraw - sometimes Hewdraw can start with spitting out water balls and then send out a scale to catch you trying to dodge the mess the water balls already create. Sometimes, Hewdraw can also be uncooperative about allowing for hitting him as well and the scales can move out in unwelcome patterns. At least the scales have only 4 Shot Cancel to mitigate that second part. Hewdraw doesn't have too much else worth talking about.

-Great Reaper - Okay. Another boss where Babel Club has advantages over Skyscraper Club. Of course, Great Reaper in general isn't too hard to bring down in a reliable manner because his recoil length is so long that you can rack up damage without much issue. Babel Club's main advantage is simply eliminating the need for accuracy when finishing Great Reaper off, really, but sue me, Great Reaper's attacks aren't so hard to dodge in general either way.

-Pandora - this is one of the major attractions in this entire mess with Babel Club, and it makes me wish it was one of the first 4 fights. Pandora's first phase, while capable of the occasional shenanigans such as throwing bombs that sponge Babel Club's Pierce, is barely a problem.

It's the second phase, which has Dark Pit the hypocrite about friendly fire, that shoots Pandora into being an issue.

See, because Pittoo is not on Pit's side at this point, he's basically an enemy, though his focus is on Pandora. Still, you can get caught in the crossfire thanks to Pandora's spastic teleporting, and dodging it can become compromising, especially because Pandora has an inhale attack where direct contact with Pandora results in taking damage. Attacking Pittoo also results in Pittoo choosing to go after you to attack you, with your own weapon type at that, and while Pittoo CAN be KOed if you want him to stop this, with Babel Club, you can't expect results because the knockback from each hit will actually interfere with damage output.

But okay, this is just the challenge, it's not supposed to be easy.

Well, Babel Club involves one extra nasty surprise for this fight.

Dark Pit cheats with the chargeup.

Dark Pit actually has DASH Shots come out within 4 seconds of each other, without needing ANY Parry Chargeup, when Babel Club's chargeup time is 5 seconds.

I wish I was exaggerating. And yet, here we are with video proof of as much. Babel Club is supposed to have high chargeup to justify the high damage and big size of the Shots, but Dark Pit acts like he's using freaking Halo Club.

This means that he can easily have your Shots clash with his, and since for whatever reason the developers thought that Clubs generally shouldn't have 6 Shot Cancel on Dash Shots instead of the 5 shared with the Neutral Shot, so I guess because Dark Pit feels like it you lose your entire Dash Shot to Dark Pit doing ANYTHING he feels like doing, including a Neutral Shot. This can lead right into compromising positions, and the video of course shows a taste of this point.

-Dark Pit - in the fight with Pandora, I complained about Pittoo cheating with the chargeup. Here, he cheats with the Shot Cancel, with the non-weak shots all having 6+ Shot Cancel, despite his using a Silver Bow, which barely has 4 Shot Cancel on Dash Shots. Since Babel Club can't do anything about that, I have to make sure I won't get caught in the cooldown of my attack. Fortunately, the only other important thing is to stay either sun-side on the top platform or near one of the Jump Pads in case Pittoo uses his EX attack. Pittoo is thankfully not durable.

-Tanatos - complicated guy this guy is with 6 forms to work with. I'll go over each of them.

--Sword - the common blind spot between the two potential closeup attacks is behind Tanatos's left, thanks to the horizontal swing always being anticlockwise. Damaging this form may get bothersome with Babel Club because of the spears getting in the way, but shouldn't be too bad once you know what's going on.

--Foot - 2 Shots from up close should be enough. Neutral Shot can be second as a time saver even if Tanatos doesn't get uncomfortably close.

--Bat - I did a Neutral Shot in wariness about the energy bat shots. After Tanatos becomes a cluster of smaller bats, you'd want to be careful not to get clipped by scout sends or the swarm coming at you, and then do a Side Shot where you expect he will reform into the big bat.

--Urn - Club Swings can be used to actually hit the skulls however you like, and as long as you stay wary of an unfavorable pattern, this isn't too bad. One thing to note that I was trying to display is how if you reflect a skull when Tanatos is using the pouring method, it MAY hit the opening the skulls are coming from, which is his weak spot, and if it does, the form will be instantly defeated.

--Matryoshka - the easiest of the forms and also the most time consuming. If I had rolled this, you'd have seen me use Back Shots repeatedly to keep hitting the weak spot. Since I didn't roll this form, the Back Shot is useless anyway.

--Humanoid/final - just be wary of the fireball flurry, really.

-Kraken - clear space for your destination, because the tentacles like to throw about attacks that involve dodge paths that aren't too simplistic when you're near them, and when attacking, remember that Babel Club's Shots accelerate. After the tentacles are gone, it's recommended to be around the purple circle at the center while sniping Kraken from there. Don't get twitchy with the dodging, because that's a good way to get caught.

-Medusa - while Babel Club's Air Shot is single hit and thus this fight had nothing to with differences between Skyscraper and Babel Clubs, Medusa herself is worth a section for being a potential No Damage Run killer.

The orbs dodging is the first concern. Depending on how RNG goes with the orbs, they may get uncomfortable fast and it's a nightmare to dodge them if they do. What I find seems to work is first to delay my Shot to catch the first two spawners with it which seems to create space, and then if they get concerning enough, to momentarily tighten my circling, a sort of loop-de-loop, to confuse the orbs, because it seems the orbs do have a general pattern of how they play out. This could be placebo, though, keep that in mind.

Everything else in the first phase isn't too bad in comparison, just that I use a Bomb to add damage and eliminate some of Medusa's attacks, because I would prefer to take out the phase before Medusa can send me straight back to the orbs dodging and this Bomb becomes redundant anyway.

Medusa's second phase has really more bark than bite. The chase shots attack is scary but proper dodging generally allows for not being caught by it, barring some weapon types while attacking, Clubs actually not being among them. Note that I say generally, because Medusa can still use it as a followup to her mines, which can complicate the dodging path, or even make dodging impossible without a precious Bomb, which IS important because the third phase has its own shenanigans. The third phase has those purple orbs that have some dangerous trailing ability, to the point where I'd want Bombs around so that I don't have to do extensive baiting. At least the Bombs are universally usable though.

-Phoenix (Wright) - compared to Skyscraper Club, Babel Club is practically a Glass Cannon in this fight. Babel Club can deal a ton of damage to Phoenix, but has the issue of dealing enough damage to his beak to make him crash onto the ground and prevent him from using his passiveness punishment attacks.

-Cragalanche - Phoenix's easier, more aggressive rock-type cousin. Who gets rocked. ....that WAS funny, Cragalanche.

-Reset Bomb Pod - this is the particular fight that brings up the Pierce factor, mostly because of how quickly Reset Bomb Pod can be killed if the guards don't immediately disperse as they did here. If they don't, it's guaranteed that you can have the guards out of the way out of your way fast enough before starting your attack. If you don't get it, 2 Forward Shots launched from close range will actually destroy RBP from full health where 2 Side Shots from close range again won't.

-Arlon - generally not too bad as long as you're alert. The multi-hit aspect could make damaging him well bothersome though, since he IS human-sized.

-Phosphora - now here is a boss who can get bothersome because dealing damage becomes important and troublesome simultaneously. Phosphora is a human sized target and so the multi-hit problem crops up. This is on top of the fight being high pressure enough that it's generally better to use Neutral Shots, which feel it even more via their speed working against them, but that's better than getting caught in an extra full second of cooldown using a Dash Shot. Even worse, Phosphora's energy orbs have above 5 Shot Cancel, so you can't shoot them to get rid of them. You'd want to get to landing precision attacks to really catch her.

Come her Turns Red phase, you'd want to hang around one of the trees so that her EX attack doesn't have the lanterns direct the initial lightning into you--the lesser shots that come right after, while nothing to be complacent about, aren't too bad. Of course, the Turns Red phase also has Phosphora able to chain attacks, and if you're far away from her, she can use this to frame trap you into her "comin' at ya" lunge. Yeah, when being close to her has her go into a habit of circle-strafing you.

-Aurum Core - You'd expect that a stationary target that's medium sized as far as bosses go would be favoring Babel over Skyscraper...but no. Those turrets are around to snipe you if you leave them alone, and while they're fragile enough that the acceleration issue doesn't kick in to prevent their destruction, Babel Club's higher recharge time adds to the wait between shots, during which the electrical flooring can pull some RNG stunt with its patterns. At least the electrical flooring can be determined by where the floor changes shades. It's also worth noting that there is a nasty glitch with the Turns Red transition where if it triggers while the eletrical flooring is active, the next bit of electrical flooring will have its hit detection activate IMMEDIATELY, ensuring you getting shocked if you are within it at all.

Ironically, I got lucky that Aurum Core died when he did anyway.

-Aurum Generator - for once, Babel gets the edge over Skyscraper, and it's against an asinine boss as well. Aiming at the core of the Generator maximizes damage, of course. Still, I do have to save a Shot or two to keep the Tribytes from cheap shotting me nearly as easily. I'm a little incapable of fighting back unprepared against that considering.

-Aurum Pyrrhon - first phase is basically lead your Shots to destroy the barrier orbs anticlockwise. Babel Club has to make sure enough hits are scored for each orb, but done correctly, this would still allow for getting around vision issues.

Pyrrhon's second phase is actually interesting, even if I do wish the mines weren't such a harsh punishment for giving up vision simply by moving closer to him. Pyrrhon has a variety of attacks that have their difficulty in dodging being dependent on which range you're at. Long range will want to watch out for the mortar, the fire dragon, and the Calamity Blast, while being up close adds risk with the triple fireballs, the mines, and the fire ring. All 6 attacks are still dodgeable at any range, though you don't want to test the mines, which for reference have 4 Shot Cancel, but if you can't work with that, you'll have to worry that their explosions' hitboxes linger longer than the actual animation.

-Pit's Body - this has nothing to do with the player's loadout whatsoever, but lately, I have developed the idea of taking the center where feasible so that I can be ready to chase him down. Anything to get past this generally scary fight without as much concern, instead of relying on "no I don't think so" moments like the one I pulled here by opting to dasharound in place of trying a Combo 3 hit. I miss NOVA from Kirby Super Star.

-Chariot Cheater - get a drink. This is going to be long because there's a reason why I'm going with the Intentionally Malicious Misnaming.

This fight is enough reason why I detest the idea of a No Damage Run through Boss Battles at all in this game, even on Easy where bosses don't have hiked up health values on top of making DPS management insanely difficult with inflated speed.

The whole fight is really a physics nightmare, but I wish to begin with a potential case of beginning RNG that mercifully didn't happen in this run. What the case of beginning RNG is, is Chariot Cheater immediately going with the mines attack, when you're having to move forward on a NARROW BRIDGE. Slowing down as the obvious preparatory solution to this runs the risk of making ANOTHER attack that Chariot Cheater could roll, the shot shower, becoming literally undodgeable. I have actually dodged the mines without slowing down before, but I am confused as to how and it could be just luck. The labbing required to figure this out would be a sight to behold, because Chariot Cheater can only be fought either at the end of Chapter 19, which is the longest chapter in the game without question; or here, after 18 straight boss fights. And if you're labbing, you have to hope he does this at the offset to get an idea of what to do. If he doesn't, you won't get to see what you can do against this ugly possibility and your entire trip is for nothing. It's clear that having to start at that narrow bridge has got to be some sick joke by the developers, and I guarantee that the labbing would only really be managed by somebody using an emulator like CITRA for savestate capability to outmaneuver this, assuming KIU doesn't have some sort of anti-savestate capability in the first place.

Oh, but this is just the beginning, believe me. It all goes back to this fight's very premise, where you are riding a chariot that stays on the move and has to use a 2 lane system. Moving around at all is incoherent, and I imagine the playtesting for these controls wasn't there because this chariot riding is involved in only this ONE fight. I would expect that the lackluster maneuverability would have come up to the QA department, because I don't imagine other scenarios in KIU are nearly this confining, including Chapter 17 and its enacting Touhou on a grounded character with 1/3 of the vision. This farce has actually been compared to F-Zero racing, but I know F-Zero doesn't confine the player to a 2 lane system, and for good reason when precision movement allows for outmaneuvering things.

I bring that up because Chariot Cheater has his general attacks be so synergetic with each other in trapping you. His melee attacks are confusing in how to dodge them without braking even when you get your vision on him in time to catch his ridiculously short telegraphing, and that's not even getting into how slowing down doesn't even work sometimes anyway. What's the problem with slowing down, you mak ask? Why, the fireball shower attack, because the fireballs are fond of converging upon your expected position and yet they're so spread out that you can't expect to dodge this attack directly in the later part of it. The mines aren't fun either, even outside that narrow bridge, because Chariot Cheater can even spread them out between the 2 lanes and cheaply catch you that way. That is how I got hit here: because he threw a mine onto the lane that I switched to, when he launched the mines right after he switched to the one I was on right before. The turn that this happened on wasn't even a tight one, maybe 30 degrees at most, so the excuse of forced lane switching would fall flat on its face. There was simply no excuse for the game letting this happening because the telegraphing of the direction was nonexistant.

This scenario wouldn't even have happened with Skyscraper Club, due to one more aspect in this fight, one that is actually supposed to be in the player's favor: Chariot Cheater takes recoil whenever he is inflicted enough damage, and when that happens, he just stops attacking in favor of readying for a burst of speed to get back in the lead. You might notice that right before Chariot Cheater did that mines attack that hit me, I had hit him with a Forward Shot. With Skyscraper Club, this would definitely have done damage in the triple digits from the singular hit and that would have been more than enough to set off the recoil. Babel Club gets no such luck, because the physics of the fight is made problematic to figure out by the characters consistently moving, and certainly enough to be the reason why I lead my shots as much as I do, which is saying something. Even that isn't enough, obviously, because Babel Club relies so much on the multi-hit to deal its damage, and the fight's physics actually had the Forward Shot, which already is supposed to have low velocity, get too far ahead of Chariot Cheater too fast to continue dealing damage. MAYBE if I did a Side Shot I would have caused the recoil, but the Spin Shot technique would have costed me vision against Chariot Cheater's generally problematic attacks and the confounding track.

Oh wait. Back Shot could have helped with the Spin Shot technique. Yeah...no. The Back Shot's BD value is freaking 56. This is NOT sufficient to make Chariot Cheater recoil. It's annoying, but there's your big explanation for why this fight is ugly: a freaking dearth of good options.

-Possessed Palutena - alas, getting past Chariot Cheater doesn't have me at any semblance of stress relief, because Possessed Palutena is ALSO unfriendly toward Babel Club. I also opt to intentionally avoid killing the Centurion Knight to make up for being damaged by Chariot Cheater--this of course gives me two unfriendlies who I would want to avoid killing rather than one. Hey, at least it makes Pit into a better commander and I don't have to kill a fellow knight to get rid of the thankfully fragile puppeteer.

The player's goal in the fight is to take out a given enemy target who does what he can to avoid being caught by your attacks, while not killing Palutena, is the main attacking opponent. Naturally, bigger shots, without enough redirection, can end up hitting Palutena by accident, but that's all Babel Club has for hitting Chaos Kin, the target, when he's invisible and flying above Palutena. Chaos Kin still flies low enough that the angling to hit him and him alone can be bothersome to manage, because firing too low heightens the risk of clipping Palutena, which I did at one point and I only dodged the resulting countershot because I was focused on dodging the Centurion Knight and I was far enough away from Palutena that the countershot burned out during my dodge. It's not like Palutena took much damage either, since one hit from Babel Club's general Shots does so little damage.

The countershot is actually exclusive to Boss Battles. In story mode, you're already punished with a Nonstandard Game Over if you kill Palutena. Mind, I don't know if that's the case here in Boss Battles as well, although she definitely can die here too. The countershot is likely to provide lingering consequence for hurting our perky mission control face, since Boss Battles doesn't end here like it did in Chapter 20 and we don't have Viridi calling out Pit for this. In any case, the countershot has extreme homing, and by all indications is literally undodgeable at closer range without Evasion+ or some such h4xdodge. This would be fine, but Palutena has this triggered by WINDBOXES, which is why I don't use the Neutral Shot in this fight. Fortunately, it won't trigger anytime Palutena does her "this might sting" lunge that's more like "this might help" because she's conveniently invincible AND repelling Chaos Kin during that.

Babel Club also gets to put up with one stand out nuisance outside the objective: the divinity turrets. These things have no less than 7 Shot Cancel, and we know the story with Babel Club when it loses at Shot Cancel by this point, whereas something like Skyscraper Club would at least be able to shoot a Neutral Shot to dissipate the turret without fear of doing anything to Palutena. For whatever reason, I wig out and attack in forgetfulness of this, and by some miracle, I don't get hit. In general, it's desirable to dodge in a good forward angle because the turret doesn't have turning to cover for as much, though you wouldn't want to forget about anything Palutena or an available mook could do. A club swing can also instantly destroy the turret, but there's always the risk of hitting Palutena by accident either by Palutena suddenly getting too close to you or you unexpectedly firing off a Shot from not being aware about your chargeup.

This would already make the battle long enough without me trying to avoid killing the Centurion Knight in addition to Palutena. What I ultimately end up doing is use the AI's attempts to space to maneuver Palutena and the Centurion Knight to where they would pose the least problems, and while this isn't immediately reliable, it does at least eventually provide opportunities to hit Chaos Kin safely enough.

-Chaos Kin - so now we have this battle of cathartic revenge against the piece of filth responsible for the story arc that involves the 3 fights involved. Or at least it would be cathartic, if it didn't involve the return of Dark Pit the friendly fire hypocrite. At least this time he just has a Silver Bow instead of whatever weapon type you have, though the Silver Bow can be irksome for dealing with Dark Pit's retaliation, which can even have him delay it in some Paranoia Gambit attempt.

The good news is, most of the offensive threat is from Pittoo's friendly fire muddling things, the arena is much bigger than the room with the Mirror of Truth, and Chaos Kin also has a higher chance of focusing on Pittoo than Pandora ever did. The bad news is that Chaos Kin is a spazz who will be happy to disrupt offense. His big jumps do lead to his most vulnerable moments, but again, Babel Club isn't known for shot velocity. Chaos Kin can even use his speed to directly confront you and create compromising situations that way--I only dodge crossfire from Pittoo because I had used a Neutral Shot as my counterattack against this.

At least Chaos Kin isn't the nightmare that Chariot Cheater is.

-Amazon Pandora - say it with me now: Breather. Boss. The only thing to worry about is Amazon Pandora pulling a fast one with her heart shots sometimes and firing 5 shots instead of 3. Nothing else is a remote threat if you're alert.

-Hades' Heart - I have to level with you: there is some blame on me with how I got hit here. However, I will get to the stupidity that got me to that point in the first place.

Hades' Heart is infamous, and it's all because of that berserk state that has given players fits with dodging it. Most players wouldn't even know that there's actually a damage threshold for when the berserk state triggers, especially since there's no indication of how close they are to it, and instead think more about how they expect Hades' Heart to directly respond than indirectly. While an expectation of strategy over tactics is good, some of the design decisions involved here are just plain inexcusable.

You understand that with my research toward this absolute exaggeration of his owner I can barely mitigate his difficulty, and definitely can't eliminate it entirely. It shows here, where I still get hit when I am showing a generally patient approach toward Hades' Heart. The reason for my approach is to make sure I have the berserk state trigger when I want it to, in order to minimize the number of dodges I have to do and optimize my general positioning with those blasted bomb clones in mind. The passive behavior itself is no real threat, but it has a nasty habit of interfering with setting this much up. Even better is how if you deal enough damage to a bomb clone, instead of getting disarmed, the bomb clone just stops on the next "corner" (this includes the middle of any of the 3 longer straightaways) and does its Bomberman-style explosion there, which while still allowing for manipulating them is STILL a significant threat. At least Babel Club can deal this damage easily enough to stop the bomb clone's chase, but I'd rather the threat go away altogether.

There is a convenient L block that I like to hang around, because this would be something I'd want Hades' Heart to waste a lot of his berserk mode tracing around. Hades' Heart does his general pathfinding whenever he reaches a turn or a fork in the road, preferring to keep his distance from Pit when he's passive, or get closer to him when he's angry. Whichever side of a "tile" Pit is on will also influence the direction Hades' Heart will take, and I think his pathfinding updates assumes the arena is actually just having the blocks be 1 tile instead of including the more complex pieces that are around, because he can certainly be baited into tracing around the L-block reliably even though that's obviously the longer path on both ends. This can be used to make Hades' Heart spend too much time on missed movement.

However, this still doesn't excuse how badly designed the berserk mode is. Hades' Heart can still create his bomb clones during the berserk mode, complete with how they can't be disarmed completely. He is also completely invincible during the berserk mode, so you can't even soften him up with sneak-in attacks--even Twinbellows merely prevented finishing him during HIS still annoying lunges. It doesn't even help that Hades' Heart doesn't have his running be audible to at least create an idea of where he is coming from--to be fair, the standard view IS third person view instead of the first person view that I am of course using and thus vision shouldn't be a problem especially when the view is more zoomed out than usual, but the QA department never runs into this for the same reasons Secret of Evermore's never ran into all the bugs with Axe attacks in relations to barricades there: they're too busy using the easier stuff to not finetune these options. Honestly, addressing ANY of these would have been a big improvement, and I would definitely prefer all 3 with the berserk mode just giving a high defense boost and death prevention instead of flat invincibility.

Oh, and when does the berserk mode trigger? Why, every time you deal about 15% of his HP from when it last ended. Overdamage doesn't count towards the next trigger, and this favors weapons like Skyscraper Club via the higher base damage to reduce the number of berserk mode triggers even without damage manipulation. Babel Club doesn't have this, unfortunately, and so it has to put up with the berserk mode more often. There is one more aspect around that could help, but it's not reliable. Namely that sometimes, Hades' Heart will sometimes stand in place, and when he does, he won't go into berserk mode from taking enough damage until he stops standing. This can help Babel Club deal actual overdamage, but the standing is a random action, so it's definitely not worth forcing, especially when Hades' Heart can randomly lay down homing mines, which of course have above 5 Shot Cancel, if you're constantly behind him.

What's particularly painful about needing to deal with the berserk mode is that Hades' Heart can create his bomb clones on ANY "tile" when he moves on it including the very one you're on if he feels sadistic enough with the timing. Did I forget to mention that the bomb clones can deal contact damage? This gives them an easier time chasing you. You might think that that hit I took could have been averted if I had the foresight to predict Hades' Heart's movement more properly, but the slightest weird thing happened to begin with and I only thought about the bomb clone that suddenly spawned on top of me, too much to keep me from looking more carefully at my dodge path which would explain the pathing that Hades' Heart followed, and that in tandem with the relief that I got the dodge timing on the explosion correct is what got me caught unexpectedly. This, by the way, happened on berserk mode #3, which would have been avoidable with Skyscraper Club without excessive luck.

In a way, I messed up, but Hades' Heart is guilty of idiocy in his own right.

-Magnus and Gaol - and of course, I still can't relax. First, I want to comment that Gaol is so nerfed from in her original fight all the way back in Chapter 2. Somehow, she STILL contributes to the fight being a pain, but that's range attacks for you.

Magnus is the big threat, though. You REALLY want to find a good opening to bait him into doing his melee combo attack when you can dodge to his backside, because the melee combo attack is by far the WORST issue about this whole fight, as Magnus has RIDICULOUS homing movement, superarmor, AND the followup hits that punish you if you dodge it improperly as you likely will if it catches you off guard. Don't discount Gaol's shenanigans either, because her lunge STILL provides her flat invincibility and completely nullifies your shots on contact, so that too is capable of being a sucker punch, and that's not even getting into her range attacks which, occasional as they may be, can still snipe you while you're busy dealing with Magnus.

Oh, and by the way, think you can just focus fire on either of these two to cut the threat in half early? Yeah, think again, because Magnus and Gaol share plenty of HP.

-Pseudo Palutena The Big Fake Who Isn't Beautiful - all I can say is, I need this freebie to a patient player for probably any weapon before going up against Great Sacred Treasure.

....oh, speak of the devil.

-Great Sacred Treasure - this boss fight, while not without its difficulty, is more feeling like the hardest thing in the world than it really is, aside from its obvious issues on higher difficulty levels. That's what happens when it's all the way at the end of this 26 strong gauntlet.

The ideal general position against GST is to be a decent ways away from him and having leg room to move anticlockwise around him. The anticlockwise movement would be to be able to avoid his fireballs from his right gun, and the distance would be to have room for forward dodging as an option against his two most dangerous attacks, the scattershots. The converging ground waves come from his left gun, but they aren't too hard to beat with timing, so it's really the scattershots worth concern, and fortunately, both are telegraphed by GST closing his upper wings together. Unfortunately, GST can also use his converging tornados attack right before either of the scattershot attacks to force you to be closer to him and complicate the forward dodge option.

The big mercy is, when GST goes into his Turns Red phase, he adds to his attack roulette attacks that all have clearly overwhelming telegraphing, though his electrical orb attack is capable of trapping you if you stay too far from him. The random teleportation can stagger offense, but it's still going to be a far cry better than being pinned too frequently, especially when the charged laser provides a MASSIVE opening for a Forward Shot.

Overall doable if you keep steady.