Zodi Plays: Furi (Time To Wake Up) [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

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LaZodiac

2018-07-20, 01:00 AM

https://vgy.me/08rEcv.png

Special thanks to Pinkhaired August for the Furi banner

Furi. A 2016 release by The Game Breakers, it is one of my favorite games. It is, at it's core, a boss fight game, where your skill will be pushed to the limit. We're gonna slice and shoot our way through the game, and I'll be doing my best to provide strategies for each of the jailers we come across. I...think I do pretty well in these, but due to time constraints and just general stress, and the idea that this LP is meant to be a sort of cool down period between projects, we're gonna be playing this fairly casually. I'll maybe try out the harder difficulties to show them off, but ultimately I'm just not interested in them, and will leave them open for you guys to play through yourself.

So, what IS Furi, exactly? It is, as said, a boss fight game. You are The Stranger, a samurai of sorts with a cool sword that crackles with lightning, and a laser pistol. You have a three hit combo with your sword, you can shoot and charge up your gun in full 360 degree range, and you can charge up the sword likewise for a high powered dash attack that stuns enemies for a cool little attack animation. Defensively, you've got a dash that you're invincible during the duration, and you can parry attacks that have a white sparkle to them. Parrying heals you a little bit, and if you parry at the exact right frame you do a full counter, stunning them so you can get that fancy attack animation out again. You can parry all enemy bullets except for lasers and waves, though that doesn't heal you. And really, that's it beyond the specifics of the boss you're fighting. You CAN charge up the dash, but since you always wanna be on the move you (or at least, I) tend to just press it for a quick dash. I've heard you're not actually supposed to be able to do this, but I have no idea it's something that feels natural to do.

Bosses in Furi fight you in phases. Barring specific exceptions each phase has a long range blue health bar, and a close range orange health bar, and you've gotta beat both without falling to defeat that phase. Long range combat is where the enemy has the advantage, able to run away and launch high power attacks, whereas close range is where The Strange has the advantage. Their attacks are easier to avoid and not nearly as flashy as they typically are, and while he can't use his gun he can instead charge himself up to make his next attack deliver a devastating blow. I make good use of this, because while parrying heals you, beating a phase entirely heals you as well. And besides, a dead enemy is an enemy that won't hit you. Additionally, every boss has a desperation move as their final phase, where you must outlast them while they're in an invincible state. Some require you to be more active about that survival than others, but we'll cover that when we get to them.

Story wise, we are The Stranger. We've been locked in a prison, way up high, and we don't really know why. But a friend, The Voice, is here for us. This lapin friend has freed us, and given us back our weapons. We need only set ourselves free from here. A simple story, but a solid premise and one that's sure to lead us to fighting at full strength.

With that all said and done, lets talk about the LP itself. As sort of mentioned above, this is a more casual play through to show off the game and encourage others to take up the sword, so to speak. I will at least try to fight the bosses on the Furier difficulty, but overall we'll be playing on the standard difficulty. Except for The Chain since otherwise he's a tutorial boss and that's sad. No spoilers please, while I have beaten this game before it's a relatively obscure game so anyone watching this has a pretty high chance of not knowing what's going on. Uploads will be Monday and Friday, same ole same ole. So yeah, lets get this party started.

I hear thunder. Pitter patter. Time to wake up.

Zodi Plays: Furi [1] Broken Chain (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u9Ig_OSMHE)

Video Length: 14:17

Our first fight is against The Chain, but if you're familiar with my A Taste Of video on this series a long time ago, you may realize this is...not The Chain of old. That Chain was on the Furi difficulty, whereas this one is the Furier difficulty Chain, fought in the single fight mode. I decided to do this because the tutorial is overall not very good video watching, and this is a good way to really pump you up for the fighting ahead. It also gives The Chain some time to shine since otherwise he gets his butt handed to him pretty soundly (in my actual Furi mode fight with him this run I got an achievement off him for never getting hit once. Poor guy).

The Chain, even on Furier, isn't that hard. He starts off simple enough, though his spread gun is tricky, a good mix of large shots that can be destroyed with your own gun fire and those annoying void shots that can't be destroyed. A nice mix up of blue focused fire and purple focused fire (purple homes!) to change things up, and sometimes he just hits you with his stick real good. He's got a pretty nasty wave attack, but it never really gets dangerous until he starts mixing it up with his staff throw (though both are, again, not really dangerous). In all his blue health bars he can do a dashing grab that you have to parry to avoid, otherwise you get into a stick wiggling minigame to avoid taking damage. It's a little annoying, and I'm always bad at timing it, but I get pretty good at the wiggling so it's fine. As you tear apart his health bar, he slowly starts charging with electricity, getting faster and faster. He eventually starts to throw out arena wide lightning blasts, though they're telegraphed with a no-zone and are generally slow. There's also just nothing stopping you from dashing through him, since enemies don't cause contact damage in this.

In close quarters, he is at his weakest. He can do his stick combo, and he can warp around to do a rather annoying wave AOE, but with precise dashing you can evade it fairly easily. He does his little lightning sweeps as well here, but just like in long range mode you can dash through him to avoid it entirely, letting you set up for a charge slash if you want (or charging up your sword in general for some massive damage). He doesn't block too often regardless of what phase you're on, so feel free to lay on the attacks.

His desperation move is a massive wave of large blue shots and void shots that you need to shoot and wave through. As it goes on he starts adding waves of lightning to it that you've got to be mindful of, but short dashing over it isn't all that hard. Once you get to the end of it, he forces you into melee combat where he lets out a torrent of lightning sweeps and stick attacks while invincible. Parry and dodge your way to success, and once he's all tuckered out stab him in the faces.

And with that, The Chain is broken and our first jailer is defeated. We might be able to actually do this. Hope you all enjoyed, I'll see you guys next time!

------

Oh hey reposting the poll just in case.

Anyway, fulfilling the thing I said last time, it's time for AN POLL. So, the next LP is Furi, and after that is Phantom Hourglass. But what'll be after THAT? It's time to determine that, through VOTE. So let's lay out the options.

But first, here is the Strawpoll itself, right here! (https://www.strawpoll.me/16101404)

1: Zodi's Choice (Iconoclasts) - A game by Konjack, maker of the famous indie gem, Noitu Love and it's sequel. An amazing game, about a mechanic who just wants to do her best to help people.

2: Kid Icarus Uprising - The triumphant return of Pit, the angel who can't even fly on his own. Join him and the great goddess Palutena as they return, as does the evil monster Medusa who they might stop once and for all!

3: Tactics Ogre Knight of Lodis - A tactical RPG, showing a hidden story in the Tactics Ogre world. Join a young man as he adventures to find himself, among other things.

4: EVOLAND - An RPG about RPGs, from the early days to current. I've never played this, it would be blind!

5: Harvest Moon More Friends Of Mineral Town - The girl variant of everyone's favorite farm sim that isn't Stardew Valley. Will we become a successful farm, and will we find love?

6: Custom Robo - A world where people solve every conflict with miniture, psychically controlled super death robots. We have a mysterious bracelet and a mysterious Dad Past. I don't actually have a good way of presenting this game because it's very weird. We need a job basically.

7: Ronin - Your father is dead. You have nothing but a tech suit and a katana. Kill everyone responsible. A turn based 2D action game, very interesting.

8: Bayonetta - A character action game staring Bayonetta, an umbran witch with intense power. She's here to chew bubblegum and kill angels. And she's got plenty of both.

9: Bioshock - Under the sea, everyone is free. A First Person Shooter with vaguely RPG elements, inspired by System Shock. Can you survive the underwater utopia of Rapture?

10: Drakengard 3 - A character action game, staring Zero, a woman with one of her eyes replaced by a flower. Her and her dragon have one goal; brutally murdering Zero's sisters. Extremely violent and concerning. This would be mostly blind.

11: Final Fantasy 12 - A sort of bad but still good RPG staring the optional character in a regular RPG. An epic plot that is very different from a lot of what Final Fantasy does, while being exactly the same.

12: A Hat In Time - An adorable time traveler must get a bunch of objects to fix her hat based time machine. A collectathon style game, and one people like a lot. This would be blind!

So yeah, please vote on this poll! Which game will be after Phantom Hourglass? Let's find out! This poll'll be open until NEXT FRIDAY (July 27th).

DataNinja

2018-07-20, 08:23 AM

So, been meaning to mention this for a while, but no time like with a new banner... should probably note that I - and likely a bunch of other people - can't actually see your imgur images (which does include your signature one). I might suggest hosting elsewhere if you want people to see them on gitp. (I use vgy.me (https://vgy.me/), if that's helpful.)

Anyhow, on with the show and all...

Not much to really say for this fight, really having seen the basics before. But, hey, it's nice to see the tutorial get a chance to let loose some more.

LaZodiac

2018-07-20, 08:27 AM

DataNinja

2018-07-20, 08:56 AM

Yeah. And yeah, yeah, I'll set that up. I just couldn't remember the link of the new hotness in art hosting.

...honestly, no idea if it's the new hotness. Just tried to find one that didn't have 'no avatars' in their ToS. Liking the banner and Zoditar, as usual, though, now that I can see it.

Qwertystop

2018-07-20, 08:01 PM

I'm surprised at how much I remember this, with how long it's been since the Taste Of.

kumarsinhas

2018-07-21, 01:43 AM

cool huh..

Eurus

2018-07-22, 10:19 AM

Whoa, stylish. This looks pretty dang fun, I might need to try and get hold of it...

LaZodiac

2018-07-22, 10:32 AM

Whoa, stylish. This looks pretty dang fun, I might need to try and get hold of it...

It's available on GOG and Steam if you're interested! I uh, forgot to mention what Furi is for in my write up. It's on...everything, actually. Switch, PC, I think one of the sony and microsoft things really the first two are the only ones that matter really.

Eurus

2018-07-22, 05:05 PM

...Yeesh. These controls on keyboard and mouse are rough. Or maybe it's just really dang hard, and I'm bad. :smallamused:

Lethologica

2018-07-22, 06:34 PM

...Yeesh. These controls on keyboard and mouse are rough. Or maybe it's just really dang hard, and I'm bad. :smallamused:
I'm definitely bad, but it's also definitely a pain to use keyboard and mouse for this game. That "gamepad highly recommended" warning isn't just for show.

LaZodiac

2018-07-23, 08:22 AM

Strap in, it's time for more Furi.

Zodi Plays: Furi [2] Strap In (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvh0_E8sVPs)

Video Length: 19:07

Our next foe to handle is The Strap, a woman strapped to a medical table/segway cross. No one knows what her deal is, according to The Voice she just kinda showed up one day while they were working on our Prison, screaming lasers at things and otherwise being a nuisance. So they put her prison inside of ours to serve as the second jailer. Two birds with one stone. Effective, for the most part.

Before we begin, a brief thing I forgot to talk about! Because it's not in the Furier difficulty The Chain fight at all. Sometimes a blue shot is replaced with a green shot, which you can shoot to destroy and get a health pick up. These basically only show up in The Chain, The Strap, and our next boss. After that they never show up again pretty much, so don't rely on them. The best way to heal is always going to be to defeat the enemy.

The Strap is an immediately different boss from The Chain. Her arena is massive, and covered in a mazelike structure of regenerating walls and pillars that block attacks on both sides. They can be destroyed briefly, but they'll regenerate eventually. Unique to this fight, there are four squares in the center of the arena that you can hit to emit a sound only The Strap can hear, causing her to charge towards the square in question and lay into it with physical strikes and shots from her head cannon. It's a good way to get her to drop her guard, though she's still quite quick on the defense. You can also find little square marks on some pillars, which when shot get the same effect going.

As for fighting her, The Strap has the most clear differences in her various phases. She starts out strapped to her medical segway, shooting blast after blast at you. She's got a variety of small and large basic blue shots, purple homing shots, and the occasional bullet blocking void shots. But where she excels is the laser. You can't parry a laser, you can only avoid it, so be careful with your dodges. Like with The Chain, dodging through her is possible and recommended if you can do so. Some of her shots also start to do AOE wall attacks, which are basically wave attacks but instead of a long spread across the ground it's a tall wall that slides across the ground. Same basic thing, but specifying it matters. She can also do melee attacks, but they're not that effective until she reaches her second phase and takes out her scythe. Her melee attacks are way more dangerous here, coming out at odd timings because of the nature of using a scythe as a weapon. As the fight drags on her bullet attacks start getting stronger and more elaborate, seeming to focus on wide spread attacks to limit your movement so her laser sweep can take you down. Further abuse gets her off her segway and she starts fighting on all fours, making her physical swipes a little more dangerous but a little more predictable. Except for her leaping and charging attack, the charging attack especially frustrating since she basically just leaves the screen entirely to find a place to charge up to actually charge at you. Her leaping is the more dangerous of the two though, since it's a bit tricky to time.

In close range quarters, The Strap is at a clear disadvantage. She only has access to her laser blasts, of her ranged options, and since you're in such close quarters together you can easily get behind her. Her scythe still has the tricky timing to keep in mind, and she's still got access to her leap attack (which can cause a cutscene moment where you're almost guaranteed to take damage). That all aside, she's quite easy to deal with in close range mode, and if you lay on the hurt you can take her out without much fuss.

Her desperation attack is a bit less impressive than The Chain's, even comparing it to his Furi difficulty one. She generates an AOE wave around her for defense, and starts spewing out an endless spread pattern of bullets. They're easy to maneuver through or shoot your way past, but it gets pretty crowded after awhile and it completely strips the arena of walls. After that, she starts sweeping her laser scream across the battlefield, slowly getting faster. A lot of people apparently have trouble with dodging through lasers, but all it takes is timing it right. After her lasers she becomes vulnerable, and you can smack her to get her into the close range part of her desperation move, where she basically just blasts a ton of lasers at you, ending with an AOE wall you have to dodge through. It isn't the most difficult thing in the world, but she does a ton of damage so try not to get hit. A single solid strike will take her out after her invincibility ends, and with that The Strap has been defeated.

The prison within a prison has been defeated. It's time to go. Hope you all enjoyed. See you guys next time for more Furi.

DataNinja

2018-07-23, 11:21 AM

Don't really have much to say, but, yeah, this is definitely a much different boss fight than the last one. Where the Chain was methodically trying to find the best way to hurt you, the Strap is much more... wild with her attacks. I see that most clearly in the desperation burst. Whereas the Chain's was all perfectly placed, with all its geometrical beauty, the Straps is way more chaotic.

ShneekeyTheLost

2018-07-23, 11:26 AM

This genre of game really isn't my bag, so I probably won't have much to meaningfully contribute other than my continued support to Zodi as one of my favorite LPers.

LaZodiac

2018-07-23, 03:44 PM

This genre of game really isn't my bag, so I probably won't have much to meaningfully contribute other than my continued support to Zodi as one of my favorite LPers.

**** like this is stuff I wanna frame on my wall when I get my own place. Thanks, it's super appreciated.

Qwertystop

2018-07-23, 08:47 PM

The Strap reminds me of something I saw a while ago – a particular reading of the design of GlaDOS (http://www.game-ism.com/2008/04/04/still-alive-shes-free/). While some of that is surely just the inherent similarities of the root design, a woman in a straightjacket, I still feel like the designer might have heard the same idea.

Eurus

2018-07-24, 01:17 PM

I've lost to this lady like five times so far. On standard difficulty. Zodi is very good at this to make it look so effortless. :smallbiggrin:

Iruka

2018-07-25, 08:11 AM

I don't think I would enjoy playing this game, but I like the aesthetics and the story so far is intriguing. So, good for me you are doing this LP. :smallbiggrin:
Anyone else picking up some 'Afro Samurai' vibes?

LaZodiac

2018-07-27, 08:06 AM

Time for more Furi.

Zodi Plays: Furi [3] Crossed A Line (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXUzI319aM4)

Video Length: 14:58

I think, after the dark dank thunder place, and the cool but dark prison, seeing such a vibrant pink area full of floating rocks and stuff is really a nice change of pace. It shows just how varied these prisons are. Of course then you remember...these are prisons, and we're stuck in them. Time to move forward.

The Line, our next opponent, is an interesting fellow. He actually talks to us, for once. Not like Chain, who mostly just taunted us and told us about his plans to beat us up, and not like Strap, whose conversations are a bit more painful than most peoples. He actually speaks to us, and it's interesting. He has probably one of my favorite lines in the game. Fitting, given his name. Don't let his old man look fool you, he's as powerful as everyone else.

The Line is also the first boss where they start really playing with the phases you fight them in, and also the first boss where we see that this game is just as much a SHMUP as it is a character action game. His first phase surrounds himself with shields, and we've gotta shoot them down. Every hit we land becomes a shot we have to avoid, and said shots slowly fly towards us, only to bounce off the edge of the arena back towards the center. They continue to bounce like this for awhile, though they do eventually run out of steam. Don't think you're safe just to pick away at his shields, he'll send out waves of energy you'll have to dodge. They get bigger as they move along the ground, so be quick about it. Each layer of shield bounces back stronger shots, and if you break every single shield you get an achievement (though I didn't go for this, obviously). All it takes is a single hit to take out a whole chunk of life here, not even with a close range health bar! In his second phase he surrounds you with void orbs that you have to dodge through or parry (I prefer the parrying here) for a bit, after which he gets on top of a tower that resembles his shields. The shield is protected by those void orbs, which move out and then in every so often, letting you get your shots off, but every time you hit the tower it pulses out four waves and four regular shots. It's pretty tricky to deal with, but predictable so you can time it.

Once you break his tower he'll stop messing around and flood the area with bullets that slowly move in random directions. With the arena flooded, making dodging quite hard, he'll start lunging at you with that sword of his. Parry him and time will freeze, locking the bullets in place. More importantly, it forces yourself into The Line's time, making him unable to warp around and lunge at you. Instead he's got waves to throw out with his sword, and arrhythmic combo attacks. I actually like how staggered and weird feeling his melee is, since he's an older guy but also because it has a very "clock" like feel to it. I don't know why it does, but it does. He's also got AOE wall attacks which come out pretty fast, so be careful. Absolutely do not use your gun in this phase, as the bullets will freeze in the air. There is no limit to how many bullets you can have on screen at once and my very first time I played this I left enough shots layered in place that when I immediately ran into them I died like an idiot. Once you beat him up enough you'll get into close range mode with him, where he's significantly at a disadvantage. His attacks are slow, though they come out surprisingly fast and I always get caught by at least one, and he can do wide reaching wave attacks with that sword of his, but overall we're just better in close range combat so we can push through pretty easily.

His third phase is much like the second in that he's standing on top of a tower again. This time our shots make it send out a wall AOE attack, and The Line is sending an assault of void orbs at us. Occasionally three of the void orbs get replaced with green shots if you need to blast em for health. This is a surprisingly tough situation, but since he lacks the raw protection phase 2 has you should be able to take it down quickly enough. Then we have a repeat of the bullet flooding, only with the medium sized shots.

For The Line's desperation attack, he focuses in the center of the arena and starts creating more of those void orbs. They very quickly start flying towards you, though it's a loose homing so you don't have to worry too much about them going straight for your thought. This isn't a situation where you have to stutter your movements so you can avoid the locked on shots while also avoiding the new ones as they appear, it's far more scatter shot and thus easier to dodge. The Line will also start sending out wall AOEs to make it harder. Once you've endured this for awhile, he'll enter his true desperation attack. Multiple pillars appear, as he surrounds himself with an AOE wave and medium sized bulletes that slowly orbit around him, vomiting up more bullets with each tick of the clock. Our own shots against the pillars cause smaller blue shots to spray out everywhere, leading to a huge flood of damage to avoid. You have to be quick here, The Line's attacks will slowly get faster and faster as this bit goes on, but if you go too fast it'll be super hard to avoid everything. You need to follow the flow of his time. This is where the gun's charge shot really shines, since it can cut through a lot of bullets (though not all of them, medium shots take a lot of energy out of it). After taking down each pillar, he starts warping around the field. Once you parry him one final time, stepping into his here and now, it's over.

The Line defeated, we move forward. His words hang over us. I wonder what he means... Ah well. We'll find out, in time. Hope you all enjoyed, I'll see you guys next time.

------

Just a quick update on yonder poll. Y'all voted, and y'all have decided. The next LP, after Phantom Hourglass, which is after Furi, is...Tactics Ogre Knight of Lodis.

My curse of playing exactly one tactics RPG a year continues. I kid, I'm fine with this.

Lethologica

2018-07-27, 11:43 AM

The Line has seen some s***. He was in Spec Ops, after all.

DataNinja

2018-07-27, 02:24 PM

If feels like this would be a more effective prison if only you needed a keycard or whatever to access all the bridges and stuff. :smalltongue:

I really like how they've managed to make each boss so far feel wildly different, even if the basic mechanics are the same. And the fights themselves give a good overview of the personality of the boss - though the dialogue (or lack thereof, for The Strap) also helps.

Huh. Neat, he's got pause button logos on him.

Okay, cool. I was wondering if your own shots would just freeze in the pause-time. Good to know.

LaZodiac

2018-07-27, 03:29 PM

The Line has seen some s***. He was in Spec Ops, after all.

I hate how good this joke is.

If feels like this would be a more effective prison if only you needed a keycard or whatever to access all the bridges and stuff. :smalltongue:

I really like how they've managed to make each boss so far feel wildly different, even if the basic mechanics are the same. And the fights themselves give a good overview of the personality of the boss - though the dialogue (or lack thereof, for The Strap) also helps.

Huh. Neat, he's got pause button logos on him.

Okay, cool. I was wondering if your own shots would just freeze in the pause-time. Good to know.

Makes you wonder how we're having such an easy time of navigating things, the jailers in our way aside.

LaZodiac

2018-07-30, 07:52 AM

One step forward at a time.

Zodi Plays: Furi [4] Tipping The Scale (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juVaVVoSDp0)

Video Length: 16:49

This is where things start getting interesting. A dark, sliced out chunk of the world. The Free World. Dank, swampy, and full of bio-luminescence and general spookiness. Even the music feels gross and corrupted. The Voice tells us this is the fault of one single impact. I wonder who caused it. He also tells us a bit more about his plans, but it's...vague and mysterious, but thinking about it laterally will help you figure it out. He also tells us to disregard The Scale and his ravings. If we should...remains to be seen. Though he's not wrong when he says The Scale is uh...not doing too hot. The fishy friend wants to stab us to death, so lets oblige him on the "to death" part.

The Scale is...equal parts very easy and very difficult. He has the special attribute of poisoning you with basically all of his attacks, making the screen wave and shift. That one minor thing aside he's honestly not that difficult. For some reason I have a difficult time fighting him here though, whereas in my first run ever I basically destroyed him. This is the first fight where you're gonna need to master the timing on your quick dashing, and the first real fight where if you get caught up in a QTE event you're gonna have to actually put in some effort. The Scale's main attack is blasting you with a series of green poisonous orbs, which leave a minor trail behind them that hurts just the same as the orb itself. In different phases the way these orbs are shot and how they move changes, first a quint spread, then blasting a bunch in a weird pattern, and so on. These are surprisingly easy to dodge if you just take a breath and pace yourself, and if you're charging a slash or dash (or both, since you charge your sword back up quicker if you dash after charging a slash) you can easily maneuver around the patterns. He can also send out waves of poison in chunks of three, but they're short and shallow so you can dash past em pretty easily. Be wary of his melee strikes, those harpoons leave a nasty mark and the timing on them is rather odd and hard to deal with. He's also the first boss that will interrupt your combo, in his case by dodging backwards. His final real shot attack involves creating an AOE wave of poison around him, then blasting our shots in all directions, though like with the quint shot and it's variants it's not random, it's a very strict pattern so dodging should be simple.

Those aren't the only tricks up his sleeve mind you. He can dive under water to sneak attack you, sometimes even grabbing you for a rather difficult to deal with QTE. After taking a good deal of damage he'll start making those clones of himself he showed off in his intro. They're not that durable, falling in a single hit or too, but each one has access to all of the major shots he can do, and as a result dealing with them quickly is recommended. The Scale's attacks are easy to manage, but in high numbers like that it can easily overwhelm you. Once you get to phase three he starts adding in the occasional, and quick quick wall AOE attack, and his clones can do those two so be careful! The only exception to this trend is in his final, non desperation phase, where his blasts are a more persistent, rotating series of orbs. The only other "trick" he has is that, unlike Strap and Line, in close range quarters he's actually quite dangerous. He has large, far reaching wave attacks, usable as huge chunks or two wedges, he can do his AOE wall even in this mode, and his melee attacks can be done normally or after diving through the water to try and flank you. It's a stark contrast from the last two bosses, and for this reason many people consider The Scale a sort of "wake up call" boss. But then every boss has that ignoble fame when you get down too it.

The Scale's desperation move is probably one of the tougher ones to deal with. He sends out a cross grid of poison orbs, their trails lingering for the duration more or less. If you're smart and clever like me, you will definitely intentionally eat a shot to the face to give yourself some breathing room in the center of the arena (or parry the orb for the same effect). This IS doable without doing that mind you, it's just ever so slightly tougher since you have such an actually small space to move. While laying his poison trails he peppers you with regular medium sized bullets, and once everything is set up (regardless of parrying or face tanking to remove the orbs before they make a full trail) he'll start summoning clones to send wall AOEs at you. Like with most bosses, once you survive the attack a few solid blows will take him out for good.

With The Scale defeated, sinking to the bottom of his swamp, we head onward. What was The Scale talking about? And what does The Voice mean by his motivation? All mysterious, and all with answers. Maybe we'll find out next time? Or maybe we'll just fight another cool boss. Regardless, hope you all enjoyed, I'll see you all next time.

ShneekeyTheLost

2018-07-30, 12:00 PM

I can see several ways this might play out...

You created a significant tragedy, either through malice or by accident, but I'm leaning towards malice. In other words, you darn well earned your place in the prison. Your character is just as insane as all the others you've ran into, and you are certainly not shy about killing. The Voice is springing you for his own goals, knowing that he is, in effect, making a deal with the devil. Then again, he's fairly well a devil himself, and just as bat-guano insane. He's got a reason for freeing you, wanting you to be a weapon for him to wield. Either you refuse, and he becomes the BBEG, or you agree, and end up committing an atrocity.

This is a Mindscape, all the combat, all the prisoners, and most especially the Voice, are all aspects of your character's personality. The Voice represents the genocidal homicidal nature, egging you on to conciousness so you may return to your slaughter. The other prisoners represent various aspects of yourself... your self-loathing (I'm going to HURT you before I put you back), your incoherent rage, your guilt... you are waging a mental battle trying to come to terms with some great horror you committed, with The Voice being the part that wants to do it again. Which means ultimately, The Voice is going to end up being the BBEG, to reclaim your sanity (or at least what sanity remains for you).

DataNinja

2018-07-30, 02:22 PM

Oh, good. I see we've stepped into Aperture, from the immediate looks of it. :smalltongue:
...okay, nevermind, the water doesn't instantly kill you.

Oh, I see there's a past here. And he claims that we're corrupted. Now, that's something that we have no evidence against. We still don't know what we did to get locked up in such a prison, after all. All we have to go on are what's told to us by someone who seems to have the power to get out of here should they wish, based on how they jump-cut around.

...so, we can walk on water, apparently, given that it's deep enough for him to submerge himself in.
And given that he can drag us under.

Well, this is all very ominous.

Durkoala

2018-07-30, 07:44 PM

I am posting!

So yeah, I'm stylishly late, but this game is just stylish. Every aspect is so much fun to look at: the protagonist, the foes,the environments and the fights. The music is also really good!

I'll follow up my impression of the later bosses later, but for now here's the Chain and the Strap.

Chain: Definitely better than the tutorial version, with a lot more flashy tricks and a mix of bullets and staff fighting. I love his clothing and his oni theme: It's very apt for a guardian of The Stranger's singular hell. While he's a nasty man, I have to give kudos for his unshaking assurance that Stranger will be going down.

Strap: Strap's a perfect foil to Chain: a fellow prisoner after a warden, a rabid beast after a disciplinarian, pastel pink following dark blue and a very science-y theme after Chain's mystical trappings. The mutual hunting
throughout her maze is a great contrast to the brawl in the small arena we just finished and sets the stage for how varied the fights in this are going to be. I am a bit surprised that her final phase didn't involver her tearing the giant laser off her face, as it seemed that was where the fight was leading up to.

Also, this is the first time that I've realised that "I hear thunder, pitter patter. Time to wake up" is actually spoken by The Voice, rather than Stranger.

LaZodiac

2018-08-01, 07:54 AM

Surprise it's an A Taste Of!

A Taste Of: Darksiders (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao9EHC6VKe0&feature=youtu.be)

Video Length: 22:58

Darksiders, a beat em up crossed with a Zelda-like, with a cool end of the world style aesthetic. It's dumb and stupid and loud and great and I love it and the fact that I haven't actually ever played the first one is genuinely shocking to even me, so I decided to do this after seeing the game in the local pawn shop for five bucks. It's a very solid game, with some incredibly baffling choices that are completely counter to the actually quite modern mechanical design it is. Having the super mode be on a L1+R2 combo is...utterly baffling and feels SO unnatural that it feels like it must of been a mistake. Someone accidentally wrote R1 and R2 and now we have this. Additionally, R1 is a block button but at no point during this tutorial did they even mention it and that seems...like a massive oversight!

That aside, this game rules.

DataNinja

2018-08-01, 03:15 PM

I think the feeling of 'aged title screen' is just because these days, even if there's just a simple logo, there tends to be something else in the background, rather than just pure blackness and a the title. If you have a static image, it's usually some dynamic/interesting-looking image. The "Press Start Button" in what looks like Times New Roman probably doesn't help, either. But, I get what you mean.

I'll be honest, if you've got peace, and are able to enforce it... it feels like you should probably have not had those seals be breakable. :smalltongue:

...modern? Huh. This sure did seem like it'd be a fantasy game.

Yeah, I really do like the angel design. ...then again, I'm always a sucker for sci-fi/magitek aesthetic.

Yeah, when weighty combat is done well, it's really satisfying. I remember playing Space Marine. Man, that was great.

Definitely not just you with the half-second thing. Don't have access to the original to tell if it's the recording or not. Would imagine so, though, if you didn't notice it while playing.

...there's no health bar for the boss, is there?

So, looks neat. Not one that I'd ever heard of before, but... that's not really surprising. It's me. :smalltongue:

LaZodiac

2018-08-01, 04:57 PM

There is not a health bar, and it is a mistake.

I'm actually glad I got this out when I did since it serves as such a nice contrast. It's a really early beat em up game, from the era of when they were really starting to hit main stream and hit their stride. Now contrast to Furi, which is the genre streamlined and sliced until it is pure and raw.

Iruka

2018-08-02, 04:58 AM

ShneekeyTheLost

2018-08-02, 10:38 PM

I think the M rating was because the combat was happening literally in what is a semi-realistic rendition of modern day America, while God of War is set in an obviously fantasy setting. You know, because demons and angels in power armor are realistic... but hey, you've got actual modern day humans running for their lives and dying as these beings battle against each other, so that could qualify it despite the lower absolute quantity of gore. Also, I'm betting they had at least one fundie who was on the board who was highly offended at the fact that angels were bad guys in this game, and both heaven and hell bent knee to an even larger power.

Also, kludgy or at least counter-intuitive controls in a beat-em-up? Yea, that's a problem.

As an aside, the webcomic Grrl Power (and yes, that's not a typo) is a superhero-style webcomic, and lampshades/inverts a lot of common superhero tropes, one of which was the viewpoint rookie on the team being told that 'if you can pick up a car, don't, just pick up the bad guy and slam him into the ground'. A finely crafted link (http://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1224) for reference. The previous page also references (http://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1223) a trope invoked in this game, albeit to a lesser degree, but the idea of a 'Nayh Nayh Can't Hit Me Man' is just too funny to not reference. For some reason, that first linked page kept running through my head throughout the entire battle scene.

LaZodiac

2018-08-02, 10:50 PM

As someone who enjoys trash I really must say Grrl Power has some of the worst art I've ever seen. It's also got...it sure has writing. I like playing around with tropes and stuff, but the surroundings of that have never really keyed off with me well. Something about it just feels "eh".

DataNinja

2018-08-02, 11:08 PM

'if you can pick up a car, don't, just pick up the bad guy and slam him into the ground'.
But that isn't as fun. :smalltongue:
(And also it's hard to throw a guy who's flying in the air.)

Lethologica

2018-08-03, 02:19 AM

Indeed, as the Darksiders prologue demonstrates, one of the virtues of picking up a car is that you can then throw it at enemies who were smart enough not to get within arm's reach of someone strong enough to pick up a car.

LaZodiac

2018-08-03, 08:06 AM

I'm feeling furious. In the good way.

Zodi Plays: Furi [5] Hand in Hand (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQeEZMppezg)

Video Length: 14:41

A desert wasteland, the sole sign of life a dome connected to a large power cord of some sort. Whoever lives here is pretty ascetic. It's so barren that even the music barely goes above a whisper as we march towards our next foe. The Voice gives us some advice for focusing, and tells us a bit more about our situation. Beaten, imprisoned, but that's all they can do. They can only delay us. The Guardians cannot kill us. So we march forward, focused on the task at hand. He tells us about our next foe. The man who caught us, who lead an army against us. It was about right here where I fully realized that we're probably not the good guy here, and I love it. The Voice is clearly leading us towards that, and all we can do is wonder why. Within the dome we find our foe, The Hand, and his son. The Hand prepares himself, and the fight begins.

The last few fights have been a mixture of ranged opponents and of opponents who have a good mix of melee and ranged skills. Here we find a master (but not the master) of close range quarters combat. The Hand is, as you can tell from his appearance, almost entirely physical. His shield means we can't get an attack in without baiting him into lowering his guard, and even then he can break out combo by catching it on his shield edge and forcing a quick time event. He is of course also entirely immune to ranged attacks for the most part, that shield of his reflecting any shot fired at him (though if you tennis a shot around for a bit you get an achievement). His melee attacks aren't really hard to parry, but they have a ton of strength to them. What he lacks in unpredictability he makes up for in raw speed and power. Just because he's a melee boss doesn't mean he doesn't have some ranged attacks of course, he can get in a corner and throw out a large, narrow expanding wave with his sword, and he can do a massive AOE burst by charging up a little, though he only ever does this in the middle of the arena so you can escape to the edges to avoid it. The secret to The Hand is just anticipation. Wait for him to open himself up, the minor moments where his guard is down, and strike as hard as you can.

In close range mode, The Hand doesn't lose a bit of power. His melee attacks are just as strong and fast, and he can charge up briefly for a long range wave attack with his sword. He can still parry you into a quick time event in this mode, and can still interrupt you by bringing up his shield. He's even still got that AOE burst attack, though it's got shorter range due to him just not being able to charge up as much in close range mode. The Hand is honestly one of my favorite bosses in this because of the back and forth, he never really weakens as you fight him, compared to some of the others. He is dangerous at any range, especially since the arena is so small. He replaces the AOE burst with a full on wall attack in phase two, as well as getting an additional, wider wave attack he can perform. He can do these in close range as well!

In phase 3 he opens up with a rather unique attack. He creates a AOE hurt zone around him, and starts slowly rotating waves around the edge of the area. You can either dodge through them, or quickly follow the direction they're taking. Either way, The Hand can't be hurt here, so all you can do is endure. Wait for his guard to fall and strike. It's here he starts comboing his wave slash attacks, and you can't just dodge and strike anymore. You've gotta wait until he's actually off balance. As with everything else he does, he combos in close range mode as well (though my, dare I say, excellent use of sword boosting prevented us from actually seeing that). After that he throws away his shield and focuses entirely on offense! Shots can hit him now, but they do piddly damage to the guy. He gets a little faster now, a little stronger, and more importantly can now just do a stunning blow on you can forces a QTE that will ALWAYS hurt you, no matter how fast you get out of it. The Hand is not to be trifled with. Also he can just shoot lasers from his sword now. This is the advantage of double handing a sword! You can dodge the lasers, but it's got a tricky timing since they are IMMEDIATELY out once it's fired.

After we've finally beat him to his last life, it's time for his desperation move. And boy is it a move. He creates an AOE hurt zone around the edges of the arena, and then proceeds to fight you like normal. The area you can safely fight is minuscule, and the ring of damage is genuinely dangerous. Part of why The Hand is so route, so very much the same type of stuff just stronger and better, is because of this move. Master your dodges, concentrate, and strike when you can. But of course that's not all. Once you've beaten his final blue life bar, it's time for close range mode, where he becomes entirely invincible and just goes ham on you. All you can do is parry each blow. I don't think you can even get a perfect parry at this phase, you have to endure every hit. And these hits don't heal you when parried, so any damage you take is damage you'll have to live with. He finishes it with an AOE wall attack, which does a ton of damage, but once that's over he's vulnerable and clearly off his guard. With a final strike, take him out.

With The Hand dead, we can leave this part of the prison. But this is, I believe anyway, the first area with actual optional dialogue! If you walk over to The Hand's house, The Voice brings up...a really good point actually? Why did The Hand bring his son here? Why would you endanger the life of your son, and also effectively end it since it seems like the Guardians are jailed up here with us, unable to leave, if you loved him so much? An interesting question, and one The Stranger has no answer for. The Hand is right. We have no one and are nothing. At least, that's how it seems. With the assurance that we shouldn't over think it, we move on to the next prison world.

I hope you all enjoyed. I'll see you guys next time for a really fun one, I think.

DataNinja

2018-08-03, 12:33 PM

Wow... his attacks take out rather large chunks of your health.

Not really much to add here, beyond what I've commented on before. It is nice to see an actual dwelling, though. :smalltongue:

Knight9910

2018-08-06, 05:12 AM

I said it on the Youtube, but I'll say it again.

I'm not so sure about this gritty re-imagining of A Link Between Worlds.

Knight9910

2018-08-06, 05:14 AM

Also, and on a more serious note, while it's not a huge deal, I don't really like the Auto-Walk.

It's like... if you want me to explore your levels, then let me do that. If you want me to just go straight to the next boss fight then just make the walking into a cutscene.

It's not like it's some huge deal that ruins everything... I just can't see any reason for an auto-walk feature to exist.

LaZodiac

2018-08-06, 09:15 AM

Happy Civic Holiday. Have a Furi.

Zodi Plays: Furi [6] Siren Song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFJhuOtSEzc)

Video Length: 17:14

Welcome to the angel's garden. My favorite looking prison world, and my favorite track in the game. A beautiful cathedral and garden where our next foe, The Song, rests. The Voice tells us not to listen to her, she's a cold manipulator who is responsible for this Prison in the first place. She even had The Voice locked up, though for what he does not say. We head forward, and meet The Song...but she doesn't fight us. She tells us to look around. Look at the beauty of this world. She asks us a simple request; cease fighting, at least for awhile, and stay with her. A tempting offer...and one we accept. And with that, we get the first possible ending in Furi. We have put down our sword and decided to stop fighting. We've decided to stop moving forward. Now, when you get an ending, it ends the game (as you'd expect). Some people where annoyed by this, since as it turns out taking this choice means you have to start over from the beginning. After all, the game has ended, the Stranger deciding to put down his sword. While the game doesn't give you like, a warning about it, I feel like it's a fair guess that this sort of thing would happen. So it doesn't bother me that much. Still though, it's an interesting choice, and one I'm glad they offered.

But in the end we cannot sit idle. We have to move forward. We have to escape the Prison. So we reject her offer, and she shows us the full extent of her power. If The Hand was a powerfully adept melee fighter, The Song is a powerfully adept ranged fighter. With her angel wings she can evade almost all of our actual attacks, and her sickle guns fire spurts of orbs we'll have to contend with. She can slash to create thin, wide waves, and she can also do a powerful dash attack that we can thankfully parry. As far as bosses go, this is the one where I start having trouble. Partly because I didn't practice, partly because The Song is just completely a hard counter to my play style (you'll notice in many of the fights I don't wait for a boss's combo attack to finish, striking at the first immediate opening. This obviously does not work on The Song). Other attacks in her repertoire include firing off bombs that explode into orbs you have to avoid (and we do mean explode, they even have a blast radius!) and a massive barrage of bullets that is intended to cut off two thirds of the arena so you have a harder time avoiding her wave attacks. Luckily, what I lack in being able to shoot her effectively, I make up for in being mostly pretty spot on with the parries. She's tough, but if you're following along you can do it!

Interestingly, though not surprisingly, The Song doesn't actually go into orange health for most of the fight. She's too fragile, and she's aware that as a sniper angel girl she really REALLY doesn't want to get into close range combat with us. However, as we wear her down, she stops getting so flightly. Focusing more on high intensity attacks, raining down barrages of bullets at us. She also starts using lasers, and hers are a fair bit more effective than the other ones we've seen so far. Especially because she does something that I, Zodi, just had a hard time grocking. She now shoots lasers as she dashes, and I just continuously failed to notice she isn't shining with the light that means you can parry that. She's enveloped in lasers, you've gotta dodge through em. Like I said, this is the first fight where I start to run into trouble. Mostly of my own fault! She also starts doing that bullet barrage to cover two thirds of the arena, but sweeps a laser across instead of doing her three wave attacks, and she also does this from the bottom of the screen instead of the top of the screen, which actually messes me up a lot.

Phase 3 is where things start getting a bit nuts. She opens by covering the arena in shots that split into further shots, and they're all medium size so shooting through them takes a bit. Then she does three AOE wall attacks at once, staggered and each slightly slower than the last, making for a rather hectic bit of dodging. She shotguns out void orbs, and now dashes multiple times, sometimes so far that even I can't parry her on the first dash (and I think the game is actually designed to let her avoid being perfect parried until the last of her dashes, to let you heal up a little bit if you're good enough). The attack that always gets me in this phase is her shooting out two medium sized shots that boomerang back to her, but they're orbited by smaller blue shots. These always catch me off guard, and I'm not sure why. Best advice I've got for this is to keep your distance, she may be closing in for a drag out fight but keeping her at arms length is still a preferred idea here.

As the fight drags on and on, the arena adds pieces to it, and she finally stops holding back. She actually does full on melee attacks now, and she'll just start vomiting stream after stream of bullets. She'll also do an AOE explosion that covers the area around her in orbs, and this attack covers the entire size of the original arena you where fighting her in, so you'll want to dodge away to the arms. Be careful though, you can fall here and it deals a fairly hard chunk of life. You can also be knocked OFF the edge, for the same damage. Another thing to watch out for is her "crack the sky" style attacks, where she shoots wildly into the air, creating little glowing circles on the ground that show a massive bolt of energy is gonna hit there. Avoid them as best you can. The best advice I can give for this phase is don't be afraid of charging up your gun, if she wants a ranged battle she can have it. This phase also has an orange life bar, and she's surprisingly tricky. Her gun shots are tough to avoid due to how fast they come out, and she has decently sized wave attacks that you've gotta dash to avoid as normal. The next phase is more of the same, though she's far more willing to let loose those crack the sky style attacks to at the very least distract you, and she starts employing homing purple orbs. She also lets out an explosion that sends slowly rotating huge wedge shaped waves to the outer edge of the arena, onto the arms, and uh...this attack is very dangerous since if you fall off because of it you'll likely get reset back up within it. You have a brief window of invulnerability after you take a hit, so try to...not dodge the way the things are rotating like I did. LIKE I SAID...this boss gives me difficulties. Especially once she mixes her laser into this attack. It's a bit much to take in all at once!

Finally, her desperation attack. She shields herself with power, and starts blasting out wave after wave of blue orbs, slowly increasing in speed as she goes. Like with The Line, you've gotta destroy the pillars fueling her shield. But each pillar destroyed is another type of projectile you're going to have to contend with. She mixes in two rotating lasers after the first is down, a very distinct red wall AOE that crawls it's way across the stage after the second, and after the third the random crack the sky attacks start falling again, putting an unpredictable wrinkle into this fight once more. With all the pillars destroyed she creates a series of wedge shaped waves, trying to make it impossible for you to approach her safely, but with quick reflexes and a good understanding of how the dodge works you can zip over to her to deliver the final strike. She'll also shoot void orbs and lasers at you as well, so be mindful of that.

With one final blow, the fight is over. The Song does not resist, and awaits her death. Which comes...but not as swiftly as The Voice expected. Hesitation. He isn't sure why it's there, but he knows one thing for sure. He likes it. And that'll be it for today, hope you all enjoyed! A bit of a longer post than normal since The Song is so involved. See you guys next time for more of this.

------

Also, and on a more serious note, while it's not a huge deal, I don't really like the Auto-Walk.

It's like... if you want me to explore your levels, then let me do that. If you want me to just go straight to the next boss fight then just make the walking into a cutscene.

It's not like it's some huge deal that ruins everything... I just can't see any reason for an auto-walk feature to exist.

The reason auto-walk exists is because some people just want to go to the fights. So let them go to the fight. Trust me, they do something with this mechanic that's actually interesting. As for why it's in the game, ignoring the actual thematic stuff for it it's just an accessibility thing. Some people aren't as good at navigating these winding art pieces that they call the calm before the storm. I know I have trouble with it, the jumping around camera angles leave me a little unsure of where I am and where I'm going sometimes. Additionally, it's a good deal of time where you're holding a direction on your gamepad's control stick, which while minor is definitely going to wear down your strength after a bit, so auto walk lets you REST for the next fight.

It's also meant to be cinematic. Not A cinematic, a cutscene you watch, but something dramatic. It helps pushes forward what kind of person The Stranger is. Walking methodically to his destination, no real reason to stop beyond his own desire to look at how beautiful some of these worlds are (if the player so chooses). Walking slowly in silence towards his goal as The Voice tells him about who he'll face, and why he faces them. It's important for the themes of the game. Aside from The Song, The Stranger doesn't have a choice. He can either go forward, or not. He's free to explore the confines of his prison, but only within those same confines. So the only true path forward is forward. And that's what auto-walk represents, his drive to escape. In order to stay with The Song, you have to not move, the first choice The Stranger really has is "not to act" and for that reason, I really like Auto-walk and what it represents in the game.

DataNinja

2018-08-06, 01:24 PM

I honestly'd forgotten today was a holiday until it was abnormally busy at work on Friday, and I remembered it was a long weekend. Oops. :smallamused:

And immediately in, hit with some visual spectacle. Physics is out to lunch again. :smallwink:

Suspicious that every time it's "don't listen". :smalltongue:

Huh. Interesting that it lets you do that. Also, uh, ooops to the save thing.

These bosses are definitely getting a lot more hectic. Also, didn't realize until... last fight, I think, or the one before that, that your own 'life' boxes healed between phases (I noticed the bar, though). Didn't realize until this one that it was only a single one per phase.

Lethologica

2018-08-06, 09:31 PM

LaZodiac

2018-08-06, 09:32 PM

Autowalking definitely sucks a lot less than not auto-walking. But that mostly raises the question of why auto-walking sequences have a manual option in the first place. (As distinct from times where manual walking is necessary and mandatory, like making the choice with The Song.)

Because look at this game. It's beautiful. Sometimes you just wanna linger and set up a sweet as hell wallpaper for your desktop. Additionally, some people DON'T want to binge an entire game in an afternoon or morning, so it lets you safely...stop playing.

LaZodiac

2018-08-10, 07:51 AM

Happy friday. Get a Furi.

Zodi Plays: Furi [7] Burst With Rage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvebzBRXkeU)

Video Length: 17:24

We start off in a rather interesting room, equipment strewn about, rock surrounding clearly constructed areas, and in the center...holograms showing all the various prison worlds. And even stranger, our friend The Voice defeats the Guardian of this prison world! Though...as we walk through the world, it becomes clear The Voice is misleading us, just a little. Not that he means to trick or betray us, he's actually betraying everyone else. The Voice was The Architect, who created this vast prison. But The Song had him imprisoned in here, likely to assist with keeping it running. However...he had a daughter. No one keeps a father from his daughter. The thin line between love and madness. We move on, to the next prison world.

With that potentially shocking reveal done, our next foe to face is The Burst. Her world is full of hexagons, and a happy little drone friend scans us, becoming the first voice beyond The Voice to talk to us during our walk ups to the boss. Though in this case, it's more talking to The Burst. Giving HER information on US. And what information it is. The Stranger is clearly...odd, to say the least. His DNA features unknown to her database, he has been fighting and running for all this time without any sign of wear or tear, and his heart is a steady 8 beats per minute. We are a mystery...one The Burst is interested in only in so far as how she can kill us. With a devious trap, we fall down to her massive arena, and begin the fight.

The Burst is a unique fight, to say the least. Her focus is entirely on ranged attacks, and it shows. She even uses automated drones to assist her, giving us targets to shoot instead of her! Their are two variety of drone, drone's that shoot homing purple orbs and drones that shotgun out a wave of medium sized orbs. Both varieties can be taken out fairly quickly, but don't focus too heavily on them. Your real target is The Burst. Additionally, as the phases roll on, she starts adding land mines to the field which detonate into an AOE burst. I've never found them all that dangerous, but it's worth noting them at least. While you're dealing with her drones, don't expect to be left alone. She IS a sniper after all, and once you're within sights she'll start locking on with that aiming laser of hers. Duck behind cover before she fires, because that shot will kill you in one hit, more or less. She always goes for the head and she never misses. With a VERY well timed dodge it might be possible to juke the laser, but it's better to just hide behind some hexagon wall cover.

Once she's actually started targeting you though, that's your time to shine. You know where she is now, so you can duck and weave your way over to her. She's typically invisible where she's firing from, thanks to her cloak, but if you charge slash into her it'll break her cloak and force her to tangle with you for a bit. The fact that she IS a sniper is warranted, but she's deadly even up close. She can machine gun fire some smaller orb shots at you, quickly followed up by a rapid fire shot of homing orbs, she of course has a melee attack that's surprisingly quick to come out (having a bayonet on a sniper is goofy as heck, but it's sure effective!) and she can use here cloak to try and make you lose sight of her. She's agile enough to dodge your combo attacks too. She's even got an AOE wall attack, and the walls are surprisingly thick so dodging it can be tricky. She can also shoot grenade orbs that explode into AOE bursts. This is a lot of stuff to handle, but you can do it. Like with The Song, she doesn't have many instances of the orange health bar, which makes her a bit easier, but don't be fooled. This by no means mean she's weak.

As the fight drags on, she slowly adds moves to her arsenal. An AOE wall grenade, charging up to shoot three larger homing shots, a crazy wave move that you have to use cover to avoid since it covers the whole arena you're in (since the cover blocks off the rest of this massive fighting ground). Her biggest trick however is, once you've beaten her twice, instead of lingering around to fight you, she'll quickly evade to the center of the arena. It's here she shows her true power, using her sniper rifle to it's fullest potential. Get behind those walls or you WILL be killed. Also somewhat embarrassingly, if you linger too long fighting her drones when she goes to the center, eventually she'll get mad at leave to start sniping at you as normal. I never realized this is what she does when she says "keep your eye on the prize" since it had never happened to me before!

But yeah, once she's in the center she starts breaking out all the stops. Blasting her grenades everywhere, taking out the sniper rifle for the hopes of a one shot kill, and once you push her even further going so far as to cloak and attack you with melee to try and fake you out. Luckily we can still see the shimmer of her form that lets us parry her. She'll also start combining moves from all her phases into this one, using every last bit of her strength to take us down. The hardest of these moves is when she creates a massive AOE wave effect that slowly rotates around her, as she also rotates a bunch of small blue shots in the same direction. This is a lot to handle at once, and I had the misfortune of being locked off into a somewhat uncomfortable part of the arena due to her cover walls when she first did this! This is also when she starts actually having orange health bars, though given she is a sniper she's actually very ineffective at this specific close-range mode. The best she's got is that she can force a QTE by going invisible, and while you can't DAMAGE her if you succeed at it, she can't damage you unless you fail.

Finally, she hits her desperation move. Like many before her, she creates a little AOE damage field around her to protect her. Then she starts firing. Wave after wave of void bullets, plus tiny little wedges of wave attacks. The void bullets even have a thin string of wedge between them all, meaning you HAVE to dodge through them, not just duck and weave. She'll stop firing this attack to snipe at you, leaving you to quickly duck behind the one bit of cover that pops up, and you continue. This time with two drones added, firing more of those void shots chained up with waves. Once you've evaded enough sniper shots, her energy runs out and you can close in for the kill. But she has one last trick up her sleeve, true stealth mode. She becomes entirely invisible, the only thing you can see the shine of light that shows you can parry her. You don't have to parry her if you know when to properly attack between her blocks and your own guarding, but it can be really tough. With one final strike, we finish her off.

The Burst, for all her skill and power, was mostly using tech as it turns out. With manual control off, her pride overwhelming her sense of preservation, we can easily get in and kill her. And with that, we've killed her. Two guardians remain. The next one is my favorite, perhaps my most favorite fight in the whole game. I hope you've all enjoyed, I'll see you guys next time.

We're continuing to walk our path, and slowly it reaches the end. But what will we find there? Only time will tell.

DataNinja

2018-08-10, 01:12 PM

Quiet. Where is rabbit buddy?

Oh. I see. That's ominous... especially since he said he already took care of this one? If he could do that, then why would he need us in the first place?

I imagine, based on all of his comments here, is that he was this place's guardian.

Ooh, I like this next place a lot.

This character looks a tad familiar. :smallwink:

Man, this place is huge. And also a lot of enemies. Which is something that I don't believe we've seen before now? Just the rotating walls, and the pillars.

Unrelatedly to the game itself, it gave me a chuckle that at 16:51 the subtitles says that the Voice says "huh?" but he actually says "eh?". Just having seen the mixing of Canadian and American families, that's one that seems to get stronger in people depending on where they're actually living at the time.

Qwertystop

2018-08-10, 09:11 PM

I like how The Burst says "No-one said we had to play fair" as she puts up just more than enough cover to block the amount of otherwise-basically-unavoidable lasers she then shoots at you.

LaZodiac

2018-08-13, 07:57 AM

It's time for my favorite boss oh man.

Zodi Plays: Furi [8] Pushed To The Edge (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PooTxlxNK8k)

Video Length: 8:12

A sandy beach with calm, purple waters. Few signs of life except for the occasional boat. The Voice tells us about our foe, as always, and he starts with an interesting question. What would you do if you had an eternity to yourself? It's a pretty relevant question, the idea of immortality, of living forever, it's a heavy one. There's only so much a person can DO. Unless you dedicate yourself entirely to something. That's The Edge. He's spent a long time training for this moment, in the precaution, one could even say hope, that we'd escape. And here we are. Swordsmen against swordsmen. No words are needed, just the clanging of our wills against each other.

The Edge is, as you'd expect, a very hard boss. Unlike every other boss we've fought so far, he doesn't have BLUE health. He fights purely in close range mode, with us, and he is just as skilled as that sounds. He doesn't really fight fancy, he has no real special tricks (though he does have a wave AOE attack in phase 2) he just has perfect execution. He has a multi hit combo, and he has a three hit combo that makes massive waves you have to dodge. When attacking him, unless it's at the end of a combo where he's left open, you'll really only get one hit in. He can dodge, parry, or just block his way past everything you throw at him otherwise. Unlike every other boss, getting him into a QTE that YOU'VE initiated is the same as him putting you in one, and you have to win to get that bonus damage, so charge slashes aren't very useful. In terms of raw health, he doesn't have much...but he will defeat you in two or three hits, so the same goes for you as well. I had never actually SEEN his AOE wall attack before, thus why I got hit by it, since as you might imagine from my other fights I tend to err on the side of hyper aggression, sneaking in attacks after parrying attacks that are punishment for attacking the enemy's block. The first time I fought this guy I got the achievement for finishing a five in under 5 minutes, and to be honest it feels like it's almost impossible not to get this, given how hard he pushes you.

His third phase, he changes thing up. Like the legendary swordsmen of legend, when it appears the blade is not serving him he takes up the oar. We switch to a 2D arena, which is really interesting, and fight there. With the oar, it is now impossible for us to hurt him via QTE, any instance where we get him in one or he gets us in one is one where we cannot hurt him, just avoid being hurt. This is where my aggression shows it's major flaw, because he's near impossible to hit this phase if you don't let him tire out, but I persist on attempting to sneak in that damage. It FEELS cool, is all. Also in this phase he DOES have access to one single ranged attack, wherein he shoots an energy wave by swinging his oar hard enough. I had never seen him do that in this phase before, and thus I got destroyed by it. I'm fine with all of the times I do lose a life in this fight though, since I end up getting to show you all his best quotes!

Aaand then we hit his desperation move. Wherein we learn that...my aggressive nature was preparation for this. As far as I can tell, the only way to deal damage to him here is to aggressively get in sneak attacks between his attacks while he recovers from your blocks. You can scratch him a bit at the start, after he calms down from slashing out wave after wave of energy at you, but otherwise you have to push yourself to the limits The Edge has reached to beat him. I imagine you can also sneak some damage in after his AOE burst attack at the end of his combo attacks. Unlike the other bosses, his desperation attack doesn't END until he does.

The Edge falls, and as ever The Voice praises us, impressed with our skill. The Edge is the strongest, hardest foe in the prison, and we've got only one more Guardian left. I hope you all enjoyed. I'll see you next time, for our escape from prison. It won't be the end, but it will be a conclusion to our goal. I wonder what will happen.

DataNinja

2018-08-13, 07:12 PM

LaZodiac

2018-08-13, 07:14 PM

Hmmm... short video today. Wonder what that means. I'm sure it'll be interesting.

Huh. This guy seems almost... familiar. Reminds me of the Stranger, almost. Sword, stance, hairstyle, even the attack noises. Or maybe it's just me...

Interesting. Perspective shift. And also a good deal of OHKO attacks.

Yeah. Most games like this tend to have a "rival fight" and this is definitely that. Though in this case we're the rival. It's cool.

LaZodiac

2018-08-17, 07:56 AM

It's time.

Zodi Plays: Furi [9] Beat Of The Heart (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02ZXGnQNFrU)

Video Length: 16:01

A snowy mountain range, with wind howling. The location of our final fight. The Voice seems upset that she's even allowed to be here, angry she's allowed to even be a Guardian. He calls her an idealistic child, but foolishly so. When we meet her, it's clear just how accurate that is. She's barely a teenager, and she's locked her life away for what, to stand against us at the last moment, after everyone else has fallen? That's actually kinda sad. We cannot do anything but continue, so continue we shall. She is the last Guardian. The jailer is the key. Kill her, and you will be free.

The Beat is an interesting fight. She knows she can't take us head on. We just finished cutting our way through The Edge and The Burst, there's nothing she has that could match us. But what she lacks in skill or practice, she makes up for in quantity. She runs, along one massive floating bridge, and an endless supply of speaker like cannons fire at us. The first phase shoots a wave of void shots at you, the second shoots clusters of medium bullets that are pretty tricky to avoid, and the third phase sweeps laser beams across the area. The Beat herself just runs to each connecting bridge hub, and once you get to her she releases an AOE wave around her using her shoulder speakers. She's too loud, so all you can do is pelt her with gunfire as the defense speakers at each platform shoot at you, the first with large homing shots, the second with AOE wall grenades. The Beat herself in phase one rotates narrow waves around her to try and catch you off guard, while in phase two she lets out a wall AOE that you've gotta dodge in time with the grenades her defense speakers shoot. Like with the last two bosses, she only has singular health bars, but in the third phase...we finally catch up to her and fight her on our terms. She's tired, her ultimate weapon has failed, and all she can do is hope to convince us not to fight.

She tells us that with us, the world will wither and die. That we can't be let into the Free World, no matter what. But we must escape the prison. It is the only way. In what is...probably one of the sadder moments, as she dies she asks us to hold her hand so she doesn't just feel the coldness of death taking her. The Stranger refuses, he either cannot understand her request or doesn't care. The Voice thanks us, and tells us that...we're not the person we were when we first landed on this planet all those years ago. An interesting thing to note. And with that he leaves, us following one last time.

The following has been spoiled for a reason! Watch the video first!

And it is here that we finally reach The Free World, and find that for the first time in the game, our ability to Auto-walk has been removed. Because we no longer have a goal to pursue. We no longer have a direction to follow. We may go as we please. And so we do. And we see just how true The Beat's words where. How true everyone was. By the time we fought The Scale it should be clear we're not entirely in the right here, and each successive fight has shown us that no matter how malicious or cruel or corrupt our jailers are...they're keeping us in her for a reason. A reason that becomes clear the moment we choose to walk upon The Free World. When I first played this game, I had suspected we were The Bad Guy. I wasn't sure in what exact fashion that was, but I was sure of it. But still, seeing it play out like this. Seeing just what it all meant. What The Scale meant by "my creator", what The Line meant by "look to the stars". What The Beat meant by "with you, our world withers and dies". This was a powerful moment to me, and I'm glad I got to share it with you. It helps that the credits music is...so melodic and somber in tone, it fits the mood so powerfully. Seeing the world seem to burn around us, the same size as our little "circle" that we fought people in when we take the advantage. Watching the very world crack, grass die, even buildings decay around us. It's amazing.

The thing that really gets me is that, because of how the game functions, you can always look back and see the direct path you choose, thanks to the withering corruption. This is a game about how you cannot walk back your choices. This is why choosing to stay with The Song ends the game outright and makes you start over, because it's a CHOICE. An important one. All choices, ones we make every day, they're all important. And even if it means we gained our freedom, it may be that we've made the wrong one. As the credits roll, I want you to think about all we've done. Nine people have died, of which only really one was actually all that bad a person. The Burst was rude sure but being cocky isn't a sin. The Song was manipulative but she believed it 100%. The Hand was stupid for bringing his son to the prison worlds but heroes like him are always bad parents. Every single one of these people have died to stop us. Was it right? Who can really say, the world is complicated like that. But the one thing we know for sure is a bleeding wound on the face of the Free World follows us as we walk, and that's a powerful imagery. As the credits end, The Stranger, legs now stretched, can run. There are not a lot of places to go here, but thankfully I know the path. We head to one of the last actual places left in this area. We meet an old friend.

The Voice did what he did for a reason. A petty reason, an awful reason, but a reason none the less. He had hoped maybe we'd be changed by cutting our way through the nine guardians. Maybe we have been. As he holds his daughter's hand he tells us the one important thing. What we've done is bad, yes, but that's okay. I mean it's not okay okay, but...it's in the past. We can move on. What matters next is what we choose to do. See you guys next time, for the end of Furi.

DataNinja

2018-08-17, 11:52 AM

Sonic weaponry? Seems dangerous in avalanche territory. :smalltongue:

...is that a hockey stick?

Also, gameplay change again. Bell, I guess it's kinda like the Burst. Chase rather than find, though.

Okay, not a hockey stick. Emergency lever.

...well, uh, that's dramatic. Goodbye, all life and colour. Wonder where the Voice went.

(Oh, good. The reveal of a bigger cast in the credits. I see why this isn't the end.)

Ah, there he is.

Well, that was indeed poignant. It was a simple story, sure, but well-delivered, I think. Everything in the game used the same mechanics, but in a wildly differing way. And that's neat.

LaZodiac

2018-08-20, 08:30 AM

And so it ends...

Zodi Plays: Furi [10] [FINALE] Look To The Stars (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dpWg-GMK88)

Video Length: 16:49

What matters is what we are going to do. With that in mind...there's only one larger tower in this field we can explore, and for some reason we feel drawn to it. Inside we...well, nothing really much happens, though there WAS going to be a boss fight with someone called The Flame, which I have rendered for your viewing pleasure. I'll talk more about The Flame next time in the bonus video, but suffice to say he is someone who honestly isn't all that missed in this game, for pacing reasons. Beyond him, we find it. A flying machine, built for us. It identifies us by our true name. The Rider. Lotta symbolism in this given we're from the stars and bring ruin to a world. But for the Rider, all it means now is a way to leave the Free World and find out what his purpose in life should be.

And so we head into space, just like that. And head towards the spot in the sun that The Line spoke of. Look to the stars for our answers. We didn't know what the questions where until now. As we fly to the massive space ship, we see it's arms are full of Riders in storage, though with short hair since they haven't spent who knows how long lingering in a prison. Further into the ship we fly, until finally we meet The Star, the being responsible for all of this. The collected consciousness of thousands of worlds, housed within a server with a holographic face. They ask us what we, just a simple scout, have learned of the Free World, and if it's suitable for assimilation into their whole. Here we are given a second choice. What matters is what we are going to do. If we choose to assimilate, the game ends. The Voice's gamble failed. But if we choose desertion, destruction, defiance...we get our final boss.

Aaaand this is the part where the game, mechanically, falls apart. Something about the Rider vehicle that we're in is DIFFERENT then controlling the Rider by himself. He does not have the speed of his dashes you'd expect from the rest of the game, and you have less invulnerability frames. Additionally, there is no positive feedback when you parry, and the timing is slightly different. Additionally, though you can do physical attacks...none of them matter. This is entirely a ranged boss, where your turning radius for shooting is not as fast and your dash is clunky all of a sudden and, perhaps the worst of it, the depth of field is off from every fight in the game so it just feels WRONG to play. This, THIS is the worst boss in the game. It is unfun, it plays badly, it's tediously long because the only action we have is shoot and charge up gun for a larger laser which they kinda expect you to do but also don't because you have to break the laser firing constantly to dodge. It's an awful, awful fight and the first time I played this it was...such a step down from the rest of EVERYTHING. I went from this amazing emotional experience of the ending, the combined feeling of despair and utter badassery due to fighting The Edge and then The Beat back to back like that, it was such a good experience. The Voice's speech is amazing, and then you go to the tower and we get in our fancy suit and it's like, cool this might mean we get to do everything we do, enhanced by a mech suit sort of thing, that's rad! And then in practice it sucks A TON! This is honestly...the saddest part about this game. It literally fumbles it, right at the finish line.

So, lets talk about The Star. They've got large drones throughout the fight, and four massive hand machines. Our goal is to destroy the hands so we can eventually get to the holographic core of The Star. The drones don't matter, though you can defeat them temporarily. And I do mean temporarily they come back WAY too quick. The front two drones shoot homing purple shots, sweeping lasers, and try to melee you during Phase 1, while the drones in back lay down covering fire with a constant stream of spread shots. Eventually the front two drones start a weird curtain of void shots while the back two shoot sweeping lasers, but by this part in the phase you should be nearly done with it so keep on the pressure. In Phase 2, the two sets of drones effectively switch places, the back drones doing the melee attacks and sweeping lasers while the front drones shoot a wandering pattern of medium sized bullets. They also do homing shots! Mid way through this they change up as well, the front drones shooting large bullets that split into void orbs to cut off chunks of the arena, while the back two shoot wave after wave of...well, wave attacks. They're thin so they should be easy to dodge, but sense the Rider scout vehicle is clunky and awful it becomes far harder to actually do. then it should be.

Phase 3, The Star starts getting serious, using it's hands for attack instead of defense. You still can't hurt them directly though, gotta wear down those hands. The hands shoot void shots, creating circle AOEs of them...but the back hands shoot special BLUE void shots forward in a specific wave pattern to make dodging the circles harder. This sucks because again, the dash is bad now so you'll get clipped a lot, especially since the Void Shots being transparent means it can be hard to judge them at times. There is nothing unique about the blue shots by the way they're only blue to help differentiate them from the orange ones, the one saving grace this bullet pattern has. Mid way through this, the hands and front drones all together will start a massive network of sweeping lasers, and you've gotta dodge between the openings to avoid them all. This is again very hard because the dash has an awful garbage weird as hell delay on it that it never has in any other moment but here. If the fight lingers too long, and I think also once you beat one of the two front hands, the pattern gets harder, the back drones adding lasers as well.

The next phase has The Star being out her back hands, now that the front hands are destroyed. These ones are...extremely annoying. This is probably my least favorite phase, and that's saying a lot since I hate all of them. The hands start shooting out blast after blast of tri spread void orbs, while the front drones shoot wave after wave of those narrow wave attacks. This is nearly impossible to dodge. Luckily, there is a very minor hiding point in the bottom left corner. You can use this to avoid the waves if you're quick enough, and the dash even agrees to help with this though he's still very stuffy and causes us to get clipped by the left side drone's waves occasionally. And of course this is...not at all viable on the RIGHT side of the screen, it's only on the left. After The Star gets tired of that they start punching the battlefield, creating AOE walls you need to dodge through, but these walls are the worst and most finicky walls in the game thanks to the dash being unreliable on start up. Also the back drones shoot a vast volley of purple homing shots, meaning you can barely get any damage in during this part. Once you beat the first hand (around half of the health bar) The Star switches things up again. The back drones add their own wave attacks to the initial pattern, making your safe spot not quite as safe anymore and making it far easier to get edged by the leftmost drone's. Additionally since we're no longer focusing on the left hand hand (it's better to focus on the left hand first since doing these dodges from the left side while the attack leans left without a right hand isn't really viable, ignoring that that's how I beat it this go around) we're no longer able to clip the drone with the laser, meaning we can't even take some of the edge off this attack.

With all the hands destroyed, it's time for a desperation attack. Three sets of blue void shots, packed together, start rocking back and forth across the screen, as The Star lays out an unending chain of orange void shots, a wave we'll have to carefully maneuver around. They even throw in the occasional cluster of slow purple homing shots to make it even more troublesome. Eventually this runs it's course, and they begin quick firing medium shots at us as red AOE walls start blasting up out of nowhere. Even as the firing gets faster, I've found the easiest way to avoid this is to run a figure eight pattern. Eventually the red aoe walls stop and are replaced with wave after wave of that thin sickly wave attack. This is far harder to dodge, not least of which because, again, the dash has a bad delay on it and it ends differently compared to the on foot dash, and has weird invincibility frame issues. Once THIS wears out, they start spewing a massive sweeping laser that gets faster and faster with each rotation. Adding to this is a series of spreading orange shots, though they're normal so you can shoot them to get rid of them if you have the time. This quickly falls flat, leading to the final phase. A massive brick of void shots, with only the middle being vulnerable to shooting regular shots, followed by a full wave of orange shots, then the inverse of the first wave (so middle a chunk of void, the sides orange shots) and then a wave of orange shots. This continues for SOME TIME. All we can do is sew our way through this endlessly repeated pattern, hoping to find our way through. Adding to the fun is the occasional red AOE wall. It's slower than the other walls, but because of the depth of field it's hard to deal with. But finally, FINALLY, after all that...The Star runs out of shielding and becomes vulnerable. Get past the last AOE wall and lay into em!

The Star explodes, giving us the final parting words of someone who knows there are other things out their than themselves (and hoping for a sequel, too). But The Rider doesn't care. He's saved the Free World from this threat. With The Star destroyed it may even get rid of the subroutines that force him to wither the planet for analysis. We fall from the heavens, The Voice and his daughter watching. When all is said and done, we've completed Furi and chosen the path we've chosen.

We finish off with a grade. The grade we receive overall on the game doesn't really matter as far as I'm aware, but the grade we get on each boss determines how much of their concept art we unlock. I won't be showing this off since you need to S rank on Furi and Furier difficulties to show both the black and white and in colour versions. Consider this a challenge that you guys can look at yourself. Overall, I think I did pretty well, and I hope you've enjoyed the LP! I won't really go over the game in full like I normally do since...lets be fair, I've kinda done that throughout the whole series. The game is good, amazing even, and then the final boss happens and it ruins the entire experience. Not enough to make me say "don't play this" but enough to make me go "man it sucks that the final boss is so bad".

But yeah, that's the end of Furi. Join us next time when I take us through one last look at the game, with the DLC. One More Fight remains. Let's see this through.

DataNinja

2018-08-20, 03:46 PM

Wow, fastest boss battle yet. :smallwink:

Okay. Mecha. Is this, uh, signalling gameplay change?

Also, apparently we can breathe in space.

That seems like an, uh, unsafe place to transport/store people in space. :smalltongue:

Huh. That's interesting. I'll be honest... I can't tell if I liked it more with not knowing anything about the Stranger, just that he was anathema to the world, or if this development helps flesh it all out. There's a simplicity about not necessarily knowing what it was all about. But, on the other hand, I do like this development.

Ah, yeah, that dash delay didn't come through at all as someone watching. Here, it just looked like you were being as awesome at the game as ever for a difficult-looking bullet hell boss. :smalltongue:

LaZodiac

2018-08-20, 05:39 PM

I appreciate the fluffing but I feel like any skill I might have is held back by the game here. I don't know why, but something about the machine makes the game feel like it plays less good. Like the Rider himself has to deal with the input lag of his own machine, and that's translating to me.

LaZodiac

2018-08-24, 08:09 AM

And so, the furi fades.

Zodi Plays: Furi [Bonus] Flames, Up The Side Of My Face (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWj-qLvqS8Q)

Video Length: 17:34

And so we have reached the end. This bonus video'll probably be the end of my time with Furi, due to a variety of reasons. Mainly that this is the end of the game. The DLC for Furi is...pretty alright, to be honest. It has some flaws, but overall it's nice. There isn't a lot of story here, which is sadly what I care most about for this game when all is said and done, but is interesting. Our first foe in the One More Fight DLC is The Flame, back for revenge...revenge that he never has a reason for doing since we didn't actually fight him in the game proper but hey. Never let the lack of anything bad happen stop you from getting revenge on someone who did you wrong.

The Flame is an interesting boss in that while he's very melee focused, he also just has a ton of guns as well to support him. He's got four arms, and still has trouble holding all of his weaponry. In phase 1 he'll lash out with the occasional punch, zooming across the arena to hit you, but these are relatively easy to parry. To start of what he can do with his guns, he has to charge them up a little bit for most of his more dangerous attacks. Within his repertoire of weaponry he can shoot out a wave of void shots that have a thin wave aoe linking all the orbs together, requiring you to dodge through it. He typically fires a bunch of these one after another. If he evades a shot you fire at him, he'll shot gun out some void orbs too, so be careful trying to go gun to gun against him. His most annoying move is creating a DNA chain of basic blue shots and void shots, that you've gotta dodge through to avoid. This is an attack he keeps around throughout all his phases, making it faster and get better bullets as the fight drags on, which is pretty frustrating. The final sort of trick he has in phase 1 is getting in the middle of the arena and shooting large cluster shots at random, alternating between orange, and purple shots. The purple are of course the most dangerous since they split into many homing orbs. In close range mode, he'll resort mostly to punching, though don't be careless! He can shoot as well, and at this close a distance it's hard to avoid if you're not good at timing your dodge. His slickest move is to shoot out two wedge shaped wave AOEs, so you have to dodge...but his third arm shoots a homing shot at you just before the waves hit, so keep an eye out! He's pretty dangerous, even if you know what you're doing, and I barely know what I'm doing I've never really fought him before this.

Phase two starts fairly similar to phase 1, but herein lies the trick. His first three phases are all pretty much the same, except for the bullet type he uses. Phase 1 was the orbs, phase 2 is laser time! He sweeps a laser three times across the battlefield, each sweep switching from red to blue to orange, getting stronger and larger with each sweep. Keep those colours in mind as well, blue red orange is another theme with this fight. His big showcase move for this phase is to create three giant lasers and start rotating them around the battlefield from the center, meaning you've gotta be quick on your toes to avoid this. Either dodging through the lasers, or keeping up with the rotation. The void orbs with a wave through them is what he does when he dodges in this phase, funnily enough. His final real attack this phase is doing a thing dangerline that shows he's going to shoot a max power laser right down at you. The only way to avoid this is to dodge at the right time, since the thin nature of the danger line is false, the laser's actually pretty wide. I'm not a big fan of THAT, but I think it works given by this point in the fight you're well aware that this is the laser phase. As you'd expect, the close range part of the phase is much the same as before, mainly melee attacks interspersed with laser sweeps.

Phase 3 is probably the most annoying phase, not the least of which because he starts doing QTE inducing charge attacks now. The real annoyance here is that it's the grenade phase. Orbs that explode into AOE wall attacks, very annoying and very hard to deal with when a ton of them go off at once. When he dodges a bullet he leaves a grenade, and annoying this is also where he starts actually making the DNA chain of bullets more annoying by throwing out TWO grenades at the same time during it, making an already deceptively hard to avoid attack even harder. He also shoots two sets of these grenades! Like the laser pointing attack from last phase, he can also just shoot out three grenades in a row, which is troublesome but not the hardest thing to avoid. His final move this phase is to, like the triple laser sweep, create an AOE wave around him and attack at full force, launching three grenades that explode together, and doing this multiple times. The sort of L shaped dodge pattern I'm doing here is the most natural way to avoid this in my head, but it might not work for everyone. Doesn't even work for me 100% of the time, even. In melee mode, he is at his most annoying, being able to fire out two grenades that explode together. This wouldn't be that big a deal if not for the fact that the camera angle in melee mode makes it very hard to actually dodge through both of these wave AOEs at once! Luckily I was able to shove the damage through before it tore me to pieces.

The next phase, The Flame gives in to his rage! This is actually to our advantage since, as he tears off one arm to use as a club, he becomes significantly less of a threat. His new moves gained from doing this are way easy, even if they are devastatingly strong. He does more melee combat now, and can smash the arm into the ground to create a huge wedge wave attack. Also, speaking of ground, it's gotten smaller! The arena slowly shrinks as the phases wear on, technically making it harder. But yeah, in this phase he's far less prone to spewing a ton of bullets out, making him way easier. He does shoot homing shots, but they're small ad easily avoided. The worst thing to look out for is a strange narrow but large wave attack followed by a thin but wide wave right at the end of it, which is just a little trickier to dodge than you think. Mid way through the fight he'll get SUPER pissed and leap into the center of the stage, forcing it to extend open in odd angles, leaving pits in it but also giving him more room to swing massive AOE wave attacks that you've got to avoid. This leaves him open to a LOT of gunfire, so fill him full of whatever it is The Burst's drones said our gun shoots. Melee range is of course much the same, you don't rip your own arm off to use as a club if you're not gonna be using it, after all. The fifth phase is...basically the same as phase 4, except now he's got some leap attacks that cause wall AOEs. Like I said above, if you rip off your own arm to use as a club you're GONNA be using it, and evidently The Flame has decided to use it exclusively. As easy as this guy IS, he ends up taking a life off me here since I've just never fought him before so didn't know what to expect! This is also like, my first time getting to this phase if I recall.

Finally, we have his desperation move. A rarity, in that he's not invincible during this one...and won't be running out of ammo any time soon. We have to shoot him during this. The move itself is quite devastating an attack, creating wave after wave of AOE...waves, interspersed with attacks from his first three phases. A massive ring of bullets, sweeping lasers around the arena, and exploding multiple grenades on at a time in relatively quick succession. The laser sweep is the hardest, since it's also mixed with wall AOEs, a combination I'm just not super good at. Once we wear him down it's time for one last bit of close range combat, since even the many bullets to the chest couldn't take him out. He lets out a storm of melee attacks and wave based shotgun attacks, finishing off with a really weird AOE blast that I have a LOT of trouble dealing with! I'd of cut out the more tedious repetitions of the desperation attack if I could, but there wasn't really a good time to do it considering his quotes during it felt important. But yeah, once he lets out that final blast, you can lay into him for the finish. And that's The Flame, not even a fancy end cutscene for him, this is just a score mode. And my score is uh...bad. But this was my first time ever beating him so it's to be expected.

Our reward for beating The Flame is...further concept art, as you can see.. Like the other bosses, on the regular difficulty you get black and white concept art, and on higher difficulties you get the high res coloured stuff. Chunks of the concept art unlock depending on the rank, get an S rank and you unlock the full thing. Makes sense. We also however, unlock another thing. As you may of noticed at the start of this post, I said The Flame was the FIRST fight of the One More Fight DLC. We unlocked...a further one more fight! A second one more fight! And this one against...Bernard.

Bernard is, effectively a staff ghost. Not to say he's a ghost that fights the boss alongside you as a challenge, but as in he is the ghost of all the staff members who worked on this game, piling every last bit of sweat and tears into this one final challenge. This one, final, really stupid not fun challenge. I don't know about you, but this one just...isn't very fun. I'm here for the story first and gameplay second, and there's no story and the gameplay for this boss is kinda bad. You can only fight Bernard on the hardest difficulty...and he has a phase for each boss in the game, except for The Star and I think including The Flame. You must, effectively, fight each boss in the game in a row without losing to beat him. This isn't happening. I gave him the ole college try and all, trust me, but also keep in mind I've never BEEN to college.

But yeah. That's the end of Furi. I hope you all enjoyed. It's a really good game, with an amazing story and amazing gameplay...who's final boss and final challenge really just aren't that fun since they either alter the game's mechanics just enough to make it bad to play, or are just too high of an ask considering the difficulty of the game. At least that's my opinion on it. But yeah, as it says in the video, I'MMA TAKE A WEEK OFF. I've been very tired this week, and I'm glad I've been able to take a bit of a breather.

Once again, thank you for watching. Without you, and the amazing people who have decided to give me money to do things like this, I wouldn't really be able to do this. I'll see you all September 3rd for our noble (some would say ignoble) return to The Legend of Zelda, with the direct sequel to Wind Waker...the dreaded Phantom Hourglass.

Aeson

2018-08-24, 12:01 PM

The Flame's head reminds me a bit of one of the early bosses - the guru-type guy, I think.

DataNinja

2018-08-24, 12:33 PM

Well, uh, jumps you right in there. :smalleek:

Huh. He... really doesn't have much personality to his banter.

These names really don't have much meaning. Are they the names of the The Capitalized Words we defeated along the way? Close family members? Friends? All of the above? Context matters.

Hoo boy, Bernard looks like... a boss. Yeesh.

And, awww. I dunno about PH being a bad Zelda game. :smallfrown:
Granted, I probably have some (and/or multiple pairs of) nostalgia goggles, but from having played Spirit Tracks first, I can definitely appreciate that PH had its fair share of flaws. (Also granted, I haven't played it in a while. I might try seeing if I can find my copy and play alongish.)

LaZodiac

2018-08-24, 04:29 PM

DataNinja

2018-08-24, 06:21 PM

Phantom Hourglass is going to be a constant struggle between chill relaxing editor Zodi and in the moment mad at game for it's flaws Zodi. It's gonna be a hell of a trip.

...sounds familiar, for some reason. :smalltongue:

LaZodiac

2018-08-24, 06:22 PM

...sounds familiar, for some reason. :smalltongue:

As it turns out that's my aesthetic. X is bad but I still like it here are it's many flaws that I accept and some I don't.

TheWombatOfDoom

2018-08-27, 11:49 AM

Bounces up and down with excitement. Looking forward to counting again!

Iruka

2018-08-30, 05:46 AM

Thanks for presenting this game!
I didn't even know boss fight games were a thing. As I said before, nothing I would enjoy to play, but watching was a pleasure.
Turns out my theory about the Voice being some kind of imaginary friend of the Stranger or the inner voice of his emotions was wrong, they played that part rather straight.
I liked that the Stranger was indeed locked in the prison for a good reason. The part about the design and its jailers being intended to convince him to spare the world was also neat. Could have done without the last part. Just standing there, spreading decay, seemed somehow more ... poetic.

LaZodiac

2018-09-03, 08:36 AM

IT BEGINS!

I AM ON A BOAT. AGAIN. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?568219-Zodi-Plays-The-Legend-of-Zelda-Phantom-Hourglass-(I-asked-for-LESS-water!)&p=23342549#post23342549)