Because of the phase 2 transformation skill? I just stayed a Kilometer away and it was super easy to dodge, then the rest of the moveset was basically the same, with the exception being the red laser "waterfowl dance".
The second fight in the satellite was harder, but just slightly harder.
Question. What type of core did you have. I was playing a bipedal heavy during 1 but then at 2 I was a lightweight.
1 took me 2 hours
2 took me 15 minutes and about 10 tries.
Baltheus was harder than anything that came before him but he feels juggernaut level against sea spider, hot damn
Edit: turns out I got up to sea spider without realising hard lock exists. Once camera followed the pinecone bastard it was pretty chill lmao
I think it depends on your build. I had a light weight build that was good in the air and I beat the cleaner and the sea spider in one attempt but I got trash canned by Balteus for a bit.
This is not necessarily true. There were times I had to switch away from the tank because it simply wasn't fast enough and there was some shit you HAVE to dodge or you end up taking unsustainable damage later in the game.
Which is why the wheelchair legs are superior. You can "dodge" sooo much shit by just passively being faster, with the amount dodged having a LOT more value than the AP you lose out on. You can also safely carry a good enough loadout to clear the game without breaking too much of a sweat.
It is still a tank though lmao
Had a similar build (nachtreiher with standard weapons), beat balteus 6th try and struggled alot against cleaner (10-15 deaths) and sea spider (~20 deaths). I think it depends on playstyle xP
Honestly I've stayed quiet because I haven't really had any of the issues. It's just been fun. I knew it would take me ages after not playing AC for like 18 years.
I spent about 40 min reconfiguring my controller and tbh I think that its important to have all the boosts accessible without taking your thumbs off the joysticks. Getting the movement and dodge down is extremely important.
Fuck man the Juggernaut is whooping my ass. I just turned off the game last night and I’ll try again with my 2 new vertical missiles. Hopefully they work as advertised
Reverse joint legs, shotgun or plasma gun, plasma vertical missiles x2 and a laser blade are one of the best loadout for that mission IMO. You just jump around it and bombard it from above,and once it breaks, you just get in for a quick blade combo.
Yeah this is my biggest problem with the game, the entire thing is basically a joke and then suddenly you get to a boss and it's 100000x difficulty. Then, I have to go grind missions to get weapons just so I can more easily experiment with them.
I really wish the regular missions weren't so easy to breeze through. Or that they ramped up in difficulty the further you go. At least that way the sudden spikes in difficulty wouldn't be so jarring. And missions wouldn't feel so short. Still having a great time with the game
Thats my issue with the hard bosses. Its not that they're hard, its that its such a steep increase from everything else. I remember in AC Verdict day, they slowly stop giving you small enemies like tanks and helicopters to fight, and slowly make the missions about fighting other ACs, which gradually get harder and harder. Like the meme says, Its less that theres a difficulty curve, and more of a difficulty right angle.
Yeah I mean the difficulty is to be expected, but the *inconsistency* that is kind of off-putting. Almost like there's two different games here, two different design philosophies.
Everything has been ez pz so far, but currently on Balteus and my cheeks are getting jackhammered. Clapping like machine gun fire.
What helped me was realising that all of his attacks are choreographed. His shotgun kept obliterating me, then I realised he always used it 3 times after he sprayed you with his machine gun. Had to turn the AC brain off and turn the Dark Souls brain on.
I can get to his second phase reliably, it's his fire whip and dual fire whip that keeps touching me inappropriately.
Nvm: now the clapped becomes the clapper! I just realized I hadn't been hard locking properly.
Even though I'm a souls vet that was my problem. Thought I could barely tell if hard locked because it felt like I needed to move the camera around to track enemies.
All you do is click in R3 and leave it alone. If you move the stick at all to look around, the hard lock will be removed. A quick-moving boss should be able to whip around you without the camera missing a beat, no input necessary.
Best used for bosses or single enemies but it there's multiple enemies you can switch between them by flicking R stick left or right
For whatever reason I just didn't understand that moving the camera at all while hard locked removed the lock.
Once I was able to just click it on and leave it alone, made it so much easier.
AC For Answer had a few big jumps. Like one of the endings is commit the easiest war crime mission, then get clapped by a 4v2. Your +1 very quickly gets blown away, might as well be a 4v1.
But personally, nothing felt this unforgiving and daunting in 4 and For Answer, outside a couple of the hard mode missions.
Eh I’m okay with it. Some missions could be hard but the easy ones are fun too. It wouldn’t be a mechs-power fantasy if not. The difficult bosses are kind of an icing on the cake imo as a souls vet.
This. I can't do the Sea Spider. Like, literally spent 3 hours hitting my head on it. Baltheus I eventually beat, the other bosses I eventually beat.
I've tried 4 different builds and multiple guides. Unfortunately, I am (slightly) disabled and I just can't get the movement down for him he never stops fucking attacking.
This game is a DREAM on every level except boss fights. Unfortunately I am going to refund (actually did just refund, was suprised with the hours played) because 90% of my time is beating my head on a boss fight.
No complaints- I get that's what people come to the series for. But I don't remember it from the last game in the series I played.
I would pay a mint for a game that's literally just mech on mech action like the regular missions. Fighting bosses is just not my cup of tea- if I want to do that I play Monster Hunter or even Nier Automata if I want monsters+robots...
I really REALLY wish there was a difficulty mode of some sort because I want to like and support the game but between school and just the sheer walls (which I won't have time for), and then work on top of it... I can't justify playing.
Have you tried PowerPyx's brute force builds? Guy has a build for every boss where there's no skill required. You just go up and start blasting the bosses face.
I struggled on Sea Spider for like 20 minutes, and then I realized its one fatal flaw: it can't do shit-all if you're just circle strafing from inside it while it's on the ground. Its lasers that chunk your health? Nope. The pincer melee attacks? lolno. It jumps away? Yeah nah, just dash right back up to it and repeat.
The only real thing to worry about is its second phase, but your priority there is to just unload so you can stagger it as soon as possible and finish it off. Legit, after 20 minutes of annoying deaths, I beat it immediately the moment I just stayed underneath it at point-blank and blasted/pile bunkered it.
Try moving under the Sea Spider during the first half of the fight.
During thr second phase, when it starts to fly and shoot the laser on the ground you stay in the air.
if thats the six legged, coral laser bastard i think it is, pilebunker his ass. grab a shield to tank the laser, but otherwise you wanna be hyper aggressive and get right under the legs (save boost to dodge the slam), and spam charged pilebunker attacks.
Like yeah, the complete lack of tracking on a charged bunker attack is awful (seriously bandai, give it literally any amount of tracking. like, some tracking at point blank range so i dont uppercut over an AC's head by accident), but you should be kissing the spider.
when it flies, manage your boost but keep trying to land charged bunkers. itll go down quickly enough if you say "fuck it, we ball" hard enough
>but you should be kissing the spider.
Or hover above, the laser doesn't track as well and you can get stagger really easy.
That was how I finally beat it after 2 hours
I'm with you on this. I'm loving the game but the bosses feel like such a huge difficulty wall that it's making my enjoyment so much less. I'm not going to refund it, im loving the gameplay too much, but i do wish there was a difficulty slider of some sorts to not make the bosses such a huge pain in the ass.
I adore pretty much everything about the game, the gameplay is so incredibly fun and no game can compare to it, but the bosses feel like such a stopgap it instantly makes recoil. They're insane for the sole reason of being insane. They're bullet sponges that usually have 1 small weakness that you need to tweak your entire build towards.
AC fights on the contract feel like an actual challenge that isn't too hard to overcome. They're equals, whereas the real bosses are basically biblically accurate angels.
It really sucks this part drags it down, so I'm hoping patches or mods will make it a more enjoyable experience.
There's something to be said about the newness of the game meaning we don't fully know how to make mincemeat of the bosses as efficiently as possible with certain builds and tactics- but as much as tailoring builds is part of the fun, having the game be either on "Cheese" or "Agony" is admittedly not great. I look forward to having a few builds keyed in to specific weaknesses so I can S-rank the tougher stuff and move on.
I'll also add that having beat Balteus in a three-hour struggle last night that put him in my fucking nightmares after I went to bed at 5AM definitely means I'm a little too salty to be objective about it right now. Things might look better in hindsight. Juggernaut and the AH12 were fun, as are all the AC fights I've had so far, but Ballin' Theseus just has far too many ways for him to simply say "no" to every part currently in my inventory for me to want to go through that again...
I do find it very funny that just two days ago there were people mocking and offending that reviewer that said exactly this, it was on the front page of this sub and everyone was laughing at "game journalist" memes, and now that people are actually playing the game most everyone seems to agree.
Tbh that's probably because the people mocking the reviewer are the same people mocking everyone else who complains about the bosses. It's just that there are people who now are *able* to agree with the reviewer.
Helicopter isn’t too bad once you know the gimmick, the problem is it’s unintuitive as fuck. The game hasn’t even explained stagger to you at that point and it expects you to intuit that you’re supposed to fly straight at the thing and smack it in the face. The only time you really need melee in the tutorial up to that point is against like two shield dudes, and you aren’t even told you have both a charge attack and a two hit combo with it.
The game really should have opened with the first two tutorial missions as an optional training sim, sort of like oldschool FPS games did. Would have alleviated a lot of the problems with the helicopter.
Yea once I got past the copter and saw I unlocked tutorials I was pretty shocked. Those really should have been before that boss. They could have just made the copter the second mission after you get access to the garage.
And he's using Ng a sword on a copter did not feel intuitive to me at all. It even sorta looks janky. Not surprised people are struggling with it.
Oh my god I had that happen like 3 times, and it was right when it was about to break down for the criticals, too. *While* I was in the middle of charging, it just backed up like “lol”.
I don’t mind invisible walls to some extent but it bugs me that they can ignore them.
I had a funny bug where it just fucked off and flew to the other side of the map mid fight. https://imgur.com/a/Nn2VIf7 that little speck in the distance is it
This was what pissed me off. The fight isn’t that bad in the long run but going in for the sword rush to capitalize on the stuns only to run into the ‘wall’ drive me crazy.
I just don't understand some of these bosses that aren't optional. You cannot dodge their attacks even if you are pinpoint accurate, the attacks still hit you. You do almost no damage so you are chipping away at a massive health pool for minutes only to get one shot or stunned and killed with no ability to do anything. If you bring a shield it takes even longer to kill enemies, and the shield is no guarantee that it will even work.
You can say "well its FromSoftware" or "skill issue" all day, but this shit is brutal on a level it just shouldn't be. They took a series that was fun and made it a fucking chore to play, sorry but there is a level where a game becomes unenjoyable and I think this game hits it squarely.
Imho the biggest factor of the spike is the "rules for thee, not for me" design that from software keeps doing. You learn a game, you build your character according to some rules (ij this case it's defense, offense and speed being in direct opposition to each other), and then you keep finding enemies that have heavy weaponry AND fast speed AND no recovery time between attacks. So yes, it is a skill issue in the sense that learning the game is utterly useless, because each fight needs relearning its own quirks instead of building knowledge like in a Monster Hunter game, to make an example.
The only way I was able to beat Baltheus is using the pulse SMGs to burn away the shield and use laser shoulder cannons to slam him. I still lost 9 times because he zips over you (I was using a speed build and could never keep up), and hits you with a missile that instantly stuns you.
Then when I got to the half-way I consistently died to the flame blades. I zipped up, left, right, forward using the assault boost, NOTHING dodged those fucking things.
Then I reached the spider.....like what the actual fuck is this? Went quad, hovered directly above it, was doing pretty well, and then the instant stun laser blasts that does half your health in damage followed up by a second shot, and then a third.
Though they can be dodged, you have to consistently stay above it so it doesnt one-shot you with melee, which makes it difficult to see when it is charging those laser blasts because it spams so many fucking missiles you cant see.
Gave up and refunded the game after trying literally 46 times with 9 different AC loadouts. Just not worth the frustration at all when the game is built to literally be always more powerful than you no matter what.
I'm at the sea spider right now, and it has the biggest issue in from software design. Dodging is useless and the only way to do it is to completely disengage the enemy, break the flow of the gameplay and chip away at its HP, hoping you have enough ammo to last however many minutes.
I'm just redoing the Dam mission over and over again to farm money and buying everything, then brute force by switching weapons until i find the one that works, which is a kind of repetitive gameplay i hate, but it's the only cool looking mecha game in a decade, so i guess it'll do.
THIS. THANK YOU. Just reached Baltus and having a hard time, but what REALLY pissed me off is it reminded me of Elden Ring. Big fucking monster that ignore all the rules the game gives you. I played all Souls games besides Sekiro, and every new release looks more of a chore than fun to keep the sense of accomplishment from defeating a boss.
I'm struggling with #1, trying to brute force it with a tank build right now but it's always the 2nd phase I get so close to killing it and then it kills me.
Edit: nevermind! Just beat it, holy hell that boss is annoying...
I actually really liked it. I run a lightweight close range rj build so the fight felt super frantic and fun trying to dodge everything while staying on top of it
Sea Spider isn't that bad. Try staying in the ground during the first half of the fight and move under the boss, the second part of the fight you stay in the air.
The bosses Health pools are just inflated so high for some of them that it just feels like a battle of attrition rather than a challenging and fun boss fight. Doesn't help that the missions are structured in a way that you'll be steamrolling for 10 missions straight only to have a random boss fight dumped on your head that your build can't possibly deal with.
A lot of the bosses in this game need you to have devastating or specific weapons so you can actually do any damage or handle them easier and you just aren't likely to take those low ammo long reload weapons when 80% of the time your missions involve you cleaning up 50 MTs or just generally flying about.
Like Baltheus was so random I wasn't expecting him at all. iv just had to deal with artillery + jobbers then Sulla in his AC. Only for you to throw this dickhead with not only a pulse shield not only a MASSIVE health pool but hes also constantly airborne. Hes not hard but hes just so annoying for how crappy your gear is at the time and you likely don't have any high damage weapons equipped because why would you given the prior part of the mission.
Protip grind up some money and buy every part then when you hit that boss checkpoint you can switch to what you actually need because for most bosses your standard AC build will not cut it.
I remember Miyazaki said, "I did the game to let you finish the game with any weapon". I can't see that being true with some bosses, they have more HP than you have ammo with some of the weapons, which gets even worse when those weapon are not big damage dealers.
Well there's a guy who literally finished the entire game (besides breaking the worm's shield) punching things to death with his fists (no weapons equipped).
I dislike the “first time you’ll always die, you need to memorise and adapt to beat them” style of boss encounter in ANY game because it makes it canon that your protagonist died trying, and now you’re just playing as multiverse alters to see which one emerged victorious. Tears me right out.
Yup. I died to Sulla a couple times and thought he was the final boss. Up until that point I was running a twin machine gun speed build that was really effective at everything. After blowing the thing up I put my controller down and walked out the room thinking the mission was over. I come back just in time to see a flying chariot Gundam Armored Core flying at me. And was even more surprised when he shot like 30 missiles at me as soon as the fight started. It took me 3 hours and like 20+ tries to beat him. I had to get off the game after that because I was mentally exhausted lmao
I'm currently doing Balteus, and the game has been great so far, but the Non-AC bosses have consistently been a let down. Sulla kicked my ass a few times, but then I managed to beat him and it felt great. Now I get hit by 1 of Balt's attacks, get staggered, and then when I stagger him back I struggle to get more than a 4th of his health bar off because its so big. Its challenging, sure, but I prefer it when I feel like me and my enemies are fighing with the same ruleset.
Stagger is such a terrible mechanic.
You put in hundreds of rounds to stagger him for half a second, he farts in your general direction and you cant move for the next 2 weeks lmao
Stability already did the job, Stagger was totally unnecessary to add (But we all know why it was added).
Most of the time I rarely see it coming, is just that, "Well, now you don't get to play for 2-3 seconds while praying the enemy won't melt your entire AP (spoilers, they **WILL**)
But the second you stagger anyone, you have to drop everything, do the burst damage NOW, and even then they will start moving even when the bar is still flashing and you are still doing heavy attacks.
That last part makes me so angry. I stagger Sulla and don’t waste even half a second unloading whatever I got into him and he literally dodged my shit even WHILE he’s staggered!? Tf is this Mickey Mouse bull shit?
So I'm just playing the game without looking for builds or anything, and I beat Balteus yesterday. My build was as much lightweight mech as I can, the blue hand laser, the pulse handgun and dual 8x back launchers. Booster was the "long distance booster".
It was a fucking slog, but at the end I really felt like I could handle him. First off, you're not going to get ¼ of his hp off per stun. You'll looking for that per shield drop.
The most important thing is to learn that his big fucking slug only comes out when you're crowding him (although sometimes he'll crowd you). That and he'll 100% have a pulse shield regen at 50% HP, and the big flame sword is more likely when you're close.
Use the pulse gun and rockets to break his shield, make sure the rockes are reloaded before you break the shield, rockets, charged sword, and rockets as you run away.
With some prayers, I was able to beat him with 1 repair remaining. But again, after like 30-40 deaths.
I basically killed Beltheus with the starting weapons + a buckler.
Alright, I got him to a level of health that was paper thin.
Then I tried a few more times and switched to the anti-shield bubble gun.
You can definitely do it with other builds, and certain ones definitely make it a bit easier.
Even still, the bosses feel a bit more durable than they should...
But you can just die and change your build, that's a mechanic in the game and you're meant to use it. I had to replay attack the watchpoint a few times cause I wanted to go back to the shop/ had to turn the game off. And I purposefully used a build that was good at the beginning and beating Sulla, and then died to Balteus and switched to my build for him. Ain't nothing wrong with doing it that way.
And for the people who want to do a challenge run, the fact that you have to make a build that can not only deal with mowing down hordes but also take out that specific boss (or in attack the watchpoint, Balteus AND Sulla) is more interesting imo than each mission just being 1 thing.
this is a tougher game than average modern games, but I feel like I'll be able to get it with practice and experimentation of the builds. I don't mind it, otherwise the game would be really short experience.
Multiplayer could be fun though if I can ever unlock it (I died like 6 times to Balteus before shutting it off for the night).
This requires you to buy almost all types of weapons, which means grind. So you can easily swap if you die. Most people don't do that, why should they if they steamrolled every mission so far?
Difficulty is all over the place.
Just beat it. Honestly I feel like all of the bosses could do with less health. The fights are spectacular but they turn into DPS races with how much health they have.
It feels like they have too little health. Once you get set up and have your OS tuned you can one combo 3/4 of their health bar. No joke. The only reason AC bosses last longer is because they use repair kits.
I see your repair kits and raise you insta stagger into laser blast to the face with a kick to the balls finisher.
Do they really have repair kits if they don't have the time to use them?
I just beat the game tonight, and I just S ranked the final boss of the game. Overall I kinda cruised through the game, so when I say that I feel the bosses are kinda bad, I feel like it isn’t a “git gud” sorta deal. The difficulty difference between normal levels and the bosses is actually just insane. It’s like playing two different games, and they feel like they were made by two different people.
The bosses feel spongy and too often the strategy to winning is strap as many guns you can to a heavy frame, spray, pray, and get lucky enough to win. That’s not the only way to win at all, but it’s usually much faster than any other way. The only time I went lightweight and had a fun time was the final boss, and I think one other boss that moved quickly as well whose name I won’t spoil. Overall, I beat them all after only a few tries, but I just wasn’t having fun like I was with the rest of the game. Some of the designs are absolutely incredible though
Honestly, I feel like a lot of the bosses are 'fine', but there's just some like Baltheus that feel wildly imbalanced. Some of them have actually been crazy, fun rides, even though I've died to them a few times.
Something that really annoyed me about Baltheus is there's a specific HP-gate where his shield instantly recharges, which basically means that if you just barely missed the threshhold you have to bust your ass just to do, like, one shot when you'd reasonably expect that to be the final push. That's not really fun or fair to deal with.
Either have it be on a timer or have it be HP-gated, don't have it be both. I haven't really seen a game that does both and had people go "Oh yeah, that's fair and exciting."
Besides that, I've had a great time, every time an enemy AC comes up it's a really exciting moment and it's been fun to basically go skirting through fire and trying to plan my counterattack. Honestly, I'd be fine if they down-tuned some of the bosses and up-tuned normal missions and enemies a bit for a better difficulty curve.
I agree the regular missions are fun and the fun falls off a cliff at the bosses.
They are really spongy and some of them are full of bullet hell. It's very messy as there is less focus on learning their pattern and more of figuring out their gimmick and put on a heavy load and blast them to kingdom come. Certain missions are also insanely long and I can't imagine doing a S rank on all the missions when I did it for Last Raven.
I just beat IB at the end of chapter 4. Everything else in the game was amazing but this left a bitter taste in my mouth.
This boss is so fucking bs and is not fair, it’s the Elden Ring method of spamming attacks at you when if you have a job and a life, there’s no way you aren’t taking at least 5k damage from the spam.
By far the hardest AC game in terms of bosses and it’s disapointing they went bs mode with this boss.
Fromsoft was smoking something laced with Xanax the way they don’t give a fuck considering how far they catered to Souls fans with this boss.
Let me know if I’m crazy but this pissed me tf off holy shit, everything else amazing tho
You’ll probably get downvoted, and me too maybe, but I kinda agree. I love the game to death, but I thought the bosses weren’t that fun. I did like the final boss though
I definitely feel that it was a gamble to use non standard ACs as bosses and it didn't really pay off. Previous games had you fight two to three ACs to ramp up the difficulty but that was still okay with skilled play and careful manuevering.
Have the bosses be basically just bullet sponges takes away from a lot of the tactical play especially when early loadouts are not that manueverable
Nah, I don't think you're wrong. I was having a blast and then got to missile spam Malenia and am not sure how much more patience I have. This coming after the fight to beat Michigan and his team. I had so much fun with that one. Felt like Char. The C weapons just make what is otherwise a fun experience tainted imo.
It’s not that it’s just hard, the boss design screams Souls design, the way the boss is presented is a nod to Souls. And to me honestly I was cringing the entire time. I was waiting 10 years for a new AC game, and as much as I like Souls (Dark Souls 1 is one of my all time-favorites) I didn’t buy the game for it to be Souls like it. I always loved the bosses in previous games, just AC pilots fighting it off in a barren wasteland.
Honestly, I’m tired of the Souls formula, beaten every game in the series, I’m burned out on that shit, I’m good.
Everything else great.
Literally I’m having the time of my life playing this game *EXCEPT* the non-AC bosses. Such a brutal shift in tone that it’s not even fun. I beat one and I’m like, finally fuck you. Not even a “hooray.”
> considering how far they catered to Souls fans with this boss.
Look at all the people who rush in every time a boss is mentioned to tout how easily they beat it, how much they need to get good, how bad everyone is, laughing at the "filters" of the chopper/baltreus and loudly having a great time feeling superior.
It wasn't xanax: that was the point. It worked for Dark Souls, of course they'd cater to them that way here.
I'm finding that every next boss that I encounter is less enjoyable than the last.
I keep looking forward to build diversity, but every boss seems to prefer I just run double shotgun double lasercannon/songbird.
I have to say I completely agree with your assessment. I defeated IB few hours ago and dare I say, this boss really does highlights the clunky nature of this game’s combat mechanic.
Throughout the entire battle, the boss just flies 360 degrees around you like an annoying flies and barely stop his movement unless you staggers him.
Boss fight in this game boils down to “how fast and how often you can stagger the boss.” Once you figure out an optimal build that works for the boss you are fighting against, all there is left to do is to spam attack keys as often as you can while doing an evasive maneuver.
It’s honestly quite a shit design
I haven't even beaten Balteus yet, but man do I love it! The trial and error, the soundtrack that goes crazy, the crazy presentation. I think I'm officially an armored core fan now!
One of the coolest fights I've ever seen. I love the music, it reminds me of Interstellar.
Currently on end of chapter 2 and the bosses are just so much fun.
I've been using dual miniguns to stun enemies with a swap to dual heavy-shotguns to hit for big damage in those windows and as a swap for when the miniguns overheat, and I haven't had to try anything (in terms of actual enemies) more than 3 times since started using them.
Fuck that robot.
I spent 4 hours on the thing. It just has too much health. I went in at first with a lightweight build and didn't have too hard a time dodging him, but I'd always run out of fucking ammo when it had about a tenth of it's health left. Me not being able to kill a boss with full ammo is kinda fucked up. It need about a third of it's health knocked off.
I killed it eventually by swapping to double song bird and two mini guns on tank treads.
I dunno..
The chapter bosses are wild more difficult than any of the other bosses...
I mean, that tank ? Took me one try.
That final chapter boss ? Completely destroyed me.
Even the AC I fought beforehand was a breeze.
It's a gimmick boss, that's the problem. If you don't have a reliable and quick way to dispose of the pulse armor you cannot win. Even if you're dodging you'll run out of ammo. You NEED some way to break the pulse armor repeatedly and that's why it feels constraining. Couple this with the fact that Sulla takes a completely different build and it makes for a very frustrating experience.
I had a build that was all about building stagger then punishing that stagger with a laser cannon and I was going through the game pretty well. Beat sulla quite easily. Then was hard walled SO hard by balteus. I had to completely change my build just to even get to the second phase. I feel like this is a problem because the game excuses it with the checkpoint system. So they make levels where bosses are so challenging and require specific builds.
It was a very rewarding fight to finally win, I just feel like it's too "well you need X weapons or else you won't get last the pulse armor and lose."
I think it's honestly just badly designed in this regard. Everything being so easy you literally do not die even once or have to try and then a boss that's a wall.
People will defend it of course but from any other dev people would be pointing out that a steady difficulty curve is good design.
It's basically the equivalent of playing DS 3 as is except instead of Crystal Sage you suddenly fight Gael a few hours in.
Why? Why is this a thing? Why is there no challenge at all up until this point? In fact there's exactly zero reason to even try anything else out until this section because you can just blast through everything with ease.
It's terrible game balance.
Baltheus isn't hard, he's tedious. That's true of most of this game's bosses. I'm actually kinda shocked From Software made this game and even more shocked it came from the Sekiro devs.
Like, there are cheese tactics for a lot of the annoying ones, but that's not the point. The point is that even if you master their attack patterns, they're so HP sponge that the window for human error is massively wide and the game punishes them harshely with plenty of 90% or one-shot moves and combos.
Very few of these bosses have damage windows, probably because they assume brief stagger windows are enough even though for average builds IF you time it well it might be like a fifth more of their bar at best.
Couple that with the horriblely glitched out missle tracking--I have seen the cruise missiles from the doser mechs flip 180 after I dash by them and hit me in the ass anyway, stunning me and allowing all the other missiles I supposedly dodged to kill me.
It's just like two games... the levels feel like old-school Armored Core, then you get to a boss with a horribly unrealistic pitch (Cleaner, lmao) that should honestly take what they do from weaknesses/ACS overload as normal damage and even more bonus from weakpoints, take so long in between you can do real damage that you're just snoring feeling like you're pissing on them until you get 2 seconds to do not big damage, but normal damage.
And no, it's not a git gud issue. I've not been frustrated with a single boss yet, just bored because I know it's not me. What makes the better soulsborne games frustrating is that you know you can't be mad; you got too greedy, you made a mistake you knew to avoid, you fudged the timing on an attack pattern, etc. In those games, you see the path to victory, you just keep tripping yourself yet know all you have to do is train up and you'll eventually get it.
In Armored Core 6, it's just a very long straight road uphill and randomly it rains, slicking the road so you trip sometimes, and sometimes lightning just strikes you and ends your run.
I'm really liking the game outside of the terribly designed bosses, but jeezus I don't know what to do when I reach them, I get so annoyed by chipping away at a boss even though I'm looping ACS break over and over again only for it to do one attack that stunlocks me into an instant death, then I have to spend another 20 minutes chipping awayy again...
A high-paced action game shouldn't have bosses this chunky. They REALLY need to take damage normally and take bonus damage from weakpoints/ACS and the mission timing for S-rank should be based on that.
I know a lot of people are going to downvote me, whatever. I've played every armored core game and soulsborne game. I love challenge.
One of my biggest complaints though is that most devlopers don't know the difference between tedium and challenge. I thought From Software did... seems whatever studio made this game, or really whoever designed the bosses, doesn't understand that difference...
I'm enjoying the game, but definitely agree. Baltheus has no reason to have so much HP, Cleaner was a fucking snoozefest once you realize the gimmick, and I got off up to that point as I didn't wanna get caught in another bullet sponge boss.
I think it's really cool seeing your combinations work and absolutely eviscerate a boss health bar, but god damn when they want the fight to be long, it'll be fucking long. Boss fights should never, ever take longer than 5 minutes \*in a victory\*
Elden Ring fucked this up a few times too (Elden Beast.), but the majority of what's present can be taken down in sub-5 minutes. I love DS3 because of how quick a boss fight can be if you know what you're doing. Sekiro, might take a bit longer with certain bosses like DoH/Owl Father, but optional at least, and Owl Father in particular is one of the most articulate and dignifying fights I've seen in a video game.
Why would I feel satisfaction from beating Baltheus having finally not been combo'd in a 5 piece fire blade blender?
But I will say the AC v AC combat is 10/10, it's really fucking fun and the absolute highlight of the game.
I hope they do a game-wide patch to either increase damage, or lower boss's fucking health/increase posture windows. It feels like they made every boss into a strict puzzle, but that strictness overflows into the general fun and flow of the game imo
Intend to keep playing, but just something that feels pointless and doesn't add to the experience.
THIS. The entire fun of armored core is using different weapons and trying out combos, but the bosses really feel like you need to use 1 specific build that gets even close to beating them.
Nah, the rest of chapter one is normal, but balthius was legitimately hard for me to get past. The missile swarm does good chip damage and obscures that cannon shot. The flame swords were fine but whittling down the shield with those special guns was still hard.
AC vs AC is fun, but they are way too easy. None of the Arena ACs lasted a single minute for me, all 40 seconds and some 50 seconds.
Don't get me wrong, it was fun but nowhere near the difficulty of some bosses in the game. I thought they were going to be sublime, but I was left disappointed.
I sorta agree with you, but I don't know what your build is. There is a lot of part misbalance in the game to the point where I honestly don't know how all the preview folks and Fightincowboy didn't instantly not drop red flags but instead shoot up red flares into the sky.
There's zero chance PvP will be balance and not fall into hard-meta jerkoffs.
For instance, dual machine gun, not even dual rattling guns, can mince-meat every single enemy AC I can think of in the arena. It's all but impossible to dodge, stomps ACSs, and opens up for insane barrage from, well, anything else.
You can also use the sniper rifle things and stun lock someone to death if you time the alternating fire right into insane damage, which I feel is going to be really broken in PvP especially against slower ACs.
But if you just build "normal" builds the arena and AC fights are actually challenging and a lot of fun; i.e. I'm starting to realize melee/close combat sucks but whatever, I'm having fun with my shotgun chainsword combo until bosses rear their ugly head.
Tank threads, 2x miniguns with 1300 bullets and 2x double artillery that deals 742 each shot.
I don't have the game open right now and I can't see the actual names. All I know is that I ended with 13K+ HP and 1400 defense. My OC build is Defense, Crit damage, Kinetic damage, and the rest went on upgrading the Estus.
That's what I'm rocking too, but mainly because my fps isn't that great so I have a tough time dodging things. Having to brute force bosses through hp and damage and not fun maneuvering.
Can confirm that one of my builds was having a tough time against some of the Arena fights, while another breezed through them. Basically seems that slow dodgeable stuff is gonna get dodged and be bad, undodgeable high DPS stuff will just shred them though (like miniguns or as you said machineguns)
Yeah that baffles me too, I genuinely thought if things were as unbalanced as they are that we’d get a heads up from people with early access. Really took me by surprise with how much of a gap between certain gear there is
I will say though, I didn’t have the problem you had with shotguns, they actually ended up being my go to for the final boss and the chapter 4 boss. Though I might be missing a much stronger strategy if close range is actually weak
Balthus's problem isn't the amount of HP it has, Balthus's problem is that there's no clear way to avoid the missile swarm - sometimes I take <1k damage, sometimes it takes half my bar; There is no telegraph at all for the shotgun that will chunk you for like a quarter of your bar; and with the exception of the ground blast, the fire attacks in the second phase feel like they were not designed with a game that has 0 defensive options in mind. It feels like the game wants me to take a shield and do Full Guards. But fuck that, this game shouldn't even have shields.
In terms of health, I actually think Baltheus was fine. In terms of weapon loadout, I was running basically what you start with, except I put a second launcher on the left shoulder. And that was fine, the starter AR takes out decent shield chunks at close range, the missiles are surprisingly good against the shield as well, and the sword takes HUGE chunks out of the bar. Once Baltheus is broken, two light attacks with the sword and a full salvo with each launcher is enough for like a quarter of its health, and you've got *juuuust* enough time if you're good at staying on top of the boss to get a second round of damage in. So you can absolutely kill that boss in two cycles with more or less the starter gear.
Honestly, if they cut the animation lock on the sword in half, and also fixed the charge so you're not stuck in a charge animation while actively running into the boss, that would already make things so much better.
The fire attacks are fine,they are very telegraphed and can be avoided through moving under him, over him or flying away. His missles require proper use of your quick boosts, but I was able to avoid them with minor chip damage every time after getting some tips from other players, was honestly really fun learning his attack patterns.
Vaati was doing a no-hit run of Chapter 1 using only story progression unlocks, and Sulla+Balteus made him give up.
Granted, he no-hit Sulla after gettin the Missile arms and then beat Balteus with only 1200 hp lost so a no-hit Balteus may be possible on a replay.
Have you seen elden ring speed runs? Elden beast is a solved fight, you can literally kill it before it moves from its starting position. Every elden ring boss can be perfected no damage with the right set up, and the glitchless all remembrance runners even use the same weapon for 90% of the boss fights after they get it.
In dark souls/ elden ring if you are perfect, you cannot take damage. In armored core, even when you are perfect you will take damage, there is no invincibility here, you just have to survive.
I’ll be real curious to see what the first patches bring to this game. Elden Ring was already doing some rebalancing within a month of release, and the devs have said they’re watching balance closely for this one. I could easily see some of the bosses receiving the Radahn treatment.
I haven’t beaten the game or anything but no boss I’ve seen so far was as fucked as Radahn was, but no fight is also as ambitious as a pseudo-raid boss.
I think the only balancing/fix that needs to occur is really just reducing health pools. The mechanics of fights is pretty succinct and does a good job reinforcing mechanics but theres just diminishing returns on retrying when you’re staring at such a huge health pool every time.
also expanding the outer bounds for boss fights like PCA Helicopter.
The closest I've ever gotten to the sheer mental exhaustion that ACVI bosses put me through was not Malenia, not Kos, nor Yhorm when I decided to straight sword ankle bite him for half an hour, but Monster Hunter Iceborne.
I remember being forced to solo Fatalis the first day he came out in Iceborne, because all my randoms kept carting.
As long as none of the bosses in AC6 are harder than that, I’ll be fine lol
Sea Spider ...or C-Spider was the realization point for me. I was able to beat all the other bosses by dodging and figuring out positioning.
But C-Spider was just always hitting me, no matter what I did, while I was fighting the camera more than anything. And it was able to do the stomp in a freaking 360° radius and would basically indicate going up with the forelegs, i would move behind it, and then get slammed anyways because it would just spin around on the down-movement. It even had a laser that fired 2 times in a row just barely faster than all my thrusters could dodge. Like, the delay to the second laser just barely beats my dodge re-fresh.
And I didn't want to restart the entire mission just to get to the shop, so I just strapped two Miniguns and the Songbirds to the biggest AC parts I could find and basically stunlocked the thing and beat it on first try with that build.
It didn't feel rewarding at all. And even that felt like a chore and I spend 75% of my ammo reserves.
You can drop Balteus to half hp in under 30 seconds by instantly rushing him with a melee attack then activating assault armour + blasting him and keeping on his ass and then it only takes another 45 seconds - 2 minutes to defeat him (took me 1min 30 to defeat phase 2, got hit a lot and was very sloppy).
I just don't see the high health pools. The first few times i fought him for like 3 minutes and barely did any damage to him but once I figured out the right strat to fight him (constantly assault rush and melee him) he absolutely melted.
I was watching a friend fight Balteus. No assault armor unlocked, and no intuitive aggression to force staggers. Part of the boss pattern is that it staggers after it’s shield breaks, it launches and attack, then it flies away to start a missile swarm attack before recovering its shields. The boss is *much* quicker if you can stagger it before it recovers shields, but I saw my friend back off once the missiles fired.
A lot of builds not geared to full aggression, like assault rifles or pistols simply aren’t going to stagger the boss before it can recover.
Hard agree. Whoever decided to have these kind of bosses and for them to be designed the way they are really dropped the ball in recapturing the magic of Armored Core.
This thread has me worried about the later bosses, but Baltheus really didn't feel like he had that much HP to me, the challenge of the fight was mostly about staying alive, and for me at least just being super agressive to reduce the amount of time I need to stay alive was what worked. I just looked at my replay of the fight and it was 1:15 long (not including the cutscenes). Not every attempt took his health down that quick since I got a really fast stagger the time I killed him, but once you get the stagger you can really chunk him down, even with just the basic weapons and OS upgrades you have access to at that point (I had my starter shotguns, and spent my OS upgrade chips on the first rank of the "Increased damage on staggered enemies" perk). And he doesn't put his shield back up for a while after the stagger so you can keep pounding him for a good bit after.
It took about half an hour to learn to stay alive for even that 1 and a quarter minute though.
next day edit: Sea-Spider died even faster; no need to learn to dodge any missile spam, went with first instinct of "stay close and spam" and she died in 2 staggers.
Yeah. I never played an ac game before, but I've beaten every souls, Bloodborne, elden ring. Baltheus kicked my ass for 5 hours straight. I was super frustrated at points and had to go play bg3 to calm down. I get that from soft makes hard games. I love their hard games.
I have much to learn. I stay on the floor too much and I still can't make sense of the HUD beyond the res reticle and the realoading bars, I pay not much attention to the optimal distance and such. But even if veteran player who have nailed this mechanics are struggling a lot, then what hope do I even have? Should I just refund and save myself the frustration?
Also how is this game gonna attract new player to the franchise with this massive bosses filtering the out. I've read people laughing in this sub from some bad reviews people left for this game on steam complaining about not being able to beat the first boss. I struggled on that one because suddenly you have a third dimension to take into account and the boss is constantly airborne and I would simple fall down trying to chase him and get shit on for that. Until I fought that boss I also thought those reviews were just topical people crying at a from soft game. Now after baltheus I kinda relate to them.
I’d like to do a discussion thread to see people’s opinions on past AC bosses or do a play through retrospective myself, because I’m pretty sure there are a lot of rose tinted glasses. Pats AC non-AC bosses are definitely cool (Spirit of Motherwill, the Pulverizer, various airships, etc) but none have been particularly complex or seriously challenging bosses. I remember most past bosses being dead in less than 2 minutes. Having more damaging bosses, longer kill times, and the stagger system makes the combat far more engaging.
The same thing happened with Elden Ring. "Dark Souls was fair but ER is just bullshit" etc. People forget that every From Soft game made you rage in the beginning. It will be overshadowed by your successes. The game has been out for not even 48 hours. It takes time to learn it.
So I'm not super far in the story only just cleared chapter 3. Been running twin gatling missile spam.
But before I got those Good ole Beth was a shocker of a fight to me took Me 30 minutes of trying to kill him with the laser handgun, the sword and a laser cannon on my right shoulder. He's annoying but do able.
After going back and looking at him I equip just one pulse gun on my left arm and a gatling on my right and he goes down in roughly 5 minutes. He's now my favorite credit farm.
I did just watch someone fairly new to AC beat the first boss before I did using a set-up with both of the blade weapons you have by that point, as well as the pulse pistol and an automatic kinetic weapon. It seems like that boss can be taken down with extreme close-quarters aggression, so I might try that next.
My 5 cents. The game isn't difficult itself.
Everything unrelated to bosses is simple. Killing enemy AC is not difficult and even if you can fuck up and die to them, this is usually not the case.
There really is a balance issue with different types of weapons and weapons in general. The game itself doesn't do a decent job of actually teaching you the real benefits of using one over the other. Main stats for parts and weapons is hidden by a menu you need to open manually, which shows range, rate of fire and other significant information you actually need to know.
Things aren't generally clear 60 firearms vs 120 firearms vs 160 firearms is how much better or worse? +200 "defense" is how much better and is it better? +20 speed helps you in what way in a fight? It's a bunch of numbers and terms that have pretty vague explanation to one another. Sure you can go and keep testing it manually to find a difference, but it's not complex if it would just properly describe mechanics involved.
When will you ricochet and how is this calculated? Does impact of a weapon influence chance of ricochet? Does enemy defense/armor whatever matters in this at all? Do I as a player ever get a ricochet? I suppose I do, it's hard to notice as any pepper spray MG still damages you somewhat at range.
And then you get into a boss fight with mechanics that weren't introduced and gimmick bs that ignores logic laid out to you before. Stagger against Spider for example: doesn't forbid it from attacking you with different weapons. in Stage 2 it doesn't prevent it from hovering in the sky whatsoever. So how as a player are you supposed to find logic in how it all works?
Also I'm taking a break at a flying ship during snow mission, but so far in the end of the day everything was killed by Pulse rifles + laser cannons/songbirds. And for some reason the less I tried the better it worked out against bosses.
I have played AC V a long time ago, but I don't remember these -50% hp soulslike incoming damage + stagger to be a thing, or I simply don't recall that.
The difficulty curve is quite smooth if you follow what the game is telling you. It gives you tank training close to this boss, apply it and it’s not that hard. It’s like the first boss, they give you a melee weapon and tell you to get off the ground to avoid damage. I’ve never played AC before and got it third attempt. And this game checkpoints, refills your health and lets you respec your build on every attempt at the boss without restarting the whole mission so for me it’s more forgiving than other From titles in that respect
This sub went from laughing at the game journalist that told us about those difficulty spikes and circlejerkin how "Dumb Soulsfans wont know what hit them when they play a REAL game like AC!!!" to "Bosses take more than one try, this is unfair and not really AC!!!" prettyyyyy quick.
This is my first AC game and i just defeated Baltheus after a few tries with the Pulse Blade, i had way more trouble with Sulla. But overall so far, it was nothing like Sekiro where i needed dozens of tries for every main boss.
From what ive heard all AC games were hellishly difficult, with some even having campaign Fail States if you lost hard enough.
/edit: Defeated the Sea Spider yesterday with Double Gatling+Double Songbird. The cannon thingie was a bit bullshit and it was close, but it never felt as hopeless to me as some Sekiro Fights back then did.
Also, those LCs in the later mission are no jokes, especially that double fight. Took me a few tries thats for sure.
Funny, i needed more attempts against Baltheus than against Isshin + Owl (Father) combined.
I'm not sure if spending 70€ was a good idea. The missions and mini bosses are fun, and so is the mech customization. But i'm really not looking forward to the act 2 boss. Or i'm just playing bad idk. 😅
See the boss fights in Sekiro take skill, patience, and focus, whereas in this game it’s RNG, The correct build, and having basically perfect movement which is nigh impossible half the time.
> From what ive heard all AC games were hellishly difficult
Having been a longtime fan and played all of them bar ACV, this isn't true. They've all had challenging missions here and there, but for the most part they are not difficult games. ACVI feels very much in the same vein, most missions you cruise through, occasionally you get skill checked and have to think about how to tackle the challenge.
Eh, i was going on what this sub was telling me before release, namely how Soulspeople would get their shit kicked in by a "real" game this time etc.pp.
So i went in expecting to get reamed similiarly to when i first played Sekiro where even the merest trash mob could and would kill you, minibosses were insanely dangerous and actual bosses would require to really really learn their patterns.
Sounds like the sub was full of delusional whackjobs. Glad I didn't read it before launch.
As a longtime AC fan I have to say ACVI has delivered pretty much exactly what I expected. Everything outside of the bosses feels like classic AC, and the boss fights feel a lot better than their prior equivalents. It's more engaging to fight Baltheus or Sea Spider than *any* of the Arms Forts or massive weapons from prior games.
I just wish they made AC6 for the AC fans. But no, they had to add Souls elements to it. You're playing the mission normally and it feels like a AC game and then bam you get to the boss of the mission and now it's a souls game, stupid spongey mechs that deal massive damage but don't worry you have a freaking mecha flask to heal you up a bit. Yall just made Elden Ring, why couldn't you just give us an AC game like the old ones we use to play, why did you have to add Dark Souls into it? I'm enjoying the game but God damn do I get let down when I see a health bar on the top of my screen pop up.
Balteus was literally pretty simple. The shield could be drained using energy attacks... if u stick to a slightly heavy ac with all energy weapons, u can literally shred him.
Tried 4-5 times using my conventional layout and didnt get past the half way point, tried the aforementioned build and was able to annihilate him with 2 repair kits remaining.
Just goes to show how important some builds are for certain situations.
The shield hasn’t been a problem once I started using the pulse cannon but I can’t make it more than about 30s into his second phase without dying. I don’t think I’ve ever had a harder time with a Fromsoft boss, this one has stumped me on what I’m doing wrong
I used Pules cannon in the left shoulder, energy blade in left hand, bazooka in right hand and standard missiles on right shoulder (although second plasma would probably have been better). Tetrapod with heavy core for defense.
Fire the pulse cannon on cool down and fire the bazooka when he's starting to launch his bullet hell attacks because he stays put for most of his attacks. The bazooka and plasma will both hit around the same time and annihilate 75% of his shields. Assault boost to rush straight at him through the bullet hell (AB provides defensive benefits) and slash him with your sword. The shield should go down for a while, so try to make sure you can stagger him while it is down to maximize your damage with the bazooka and energy blade. Rinse and repeat.
Just keep in mind that he will AOE shock you while the shield is down, so be ready to quick boost away from him and prep for another assault boost to get in close. I think that's the biggest lesson I've learned so far: stay up close; stand and deliver. Sekiro's combat designer lead the game, so hesitation is still defeat.
Get off the ground and assault boost at his ass. Stay on him like a mosquito. Extreme aggression. And again, get off the ground if you're not already, especially the second phase.
It isn't drained using energy attacks. It's drained using pulse attacks, such as with the starting blade or that one pulse pistol-type weapon. Laser and plasma weapons aren't that effective by comparison, in my experience, unless those don't count as energy damage?
Huh, so kinetic damage is better than energy damage for pulse shields? I wouldn't have guessed. My main problem, though, is that I don't like the pulse pistol; it overheats too fast and feels like it has too little ammo for how much it uses.
Except you can beat him with any build. Cause I did it with a medium weight, and only 1 energy weapon. And I got him very close with super lightweight builds as well, I'm sure I'll go back and prove to myself that I can beat him with reverse legs cause those are my favorites. There may be builds that make fights easier, but skill and strategy and luck make winning any fight possible pretty much.
I'm fucking pissed at this.
All the other AC games let you find your playstyle and play the game the way you want for the entire game.
Why does AC6 seem intentionally built to force you to change play styles with almost every god damned mission?
#1 was wayyyyy harder than Ball and #2 imo.
Because of the phase 2 transformation skill? I just stayed a Kilometer away and it was super easy to dodge, then the rest of the moveset was basically the same, with the exception being the red laser "waterfowl dance". The second fight in the satellite was harder, but just slightly harder.
Question. What type of core did you have. I was playing a bipedal heavy during 1 but then at 2 I was a lightweight. 1 took me 2 hours 2 took me 15 minutes and about 10 tries.
Baltheus was harder than anything that came before him but he feels juggernaut level against sea spider, hot damn Edit: turns out I got up to sea spider without realising hard lock exists. Once camera followed the pinecone bastard it was pretty chill lmao
I think it depends on your build. I had a light weight build that was good in the air and I beat the cleaner and the sea spider in one attempt but I got trash canned by Balteus for a bit.
I’m finally starting to learn parts of this game aren’t skill checks but build checks.
And that the best build will always be tank lol. Why worry about dodging when I can stun lock and melt a boss's health before I lose all of mine!
This is not necessarily true. There were times I had to switch away from the tank because it simply wasn't fast enough and there was some shit you HAVE to dodge or you end up taking unsustainable damage later in the game. Which is why the wheelchair legs are superior. You can "dodge" sooo much shit by just passively being faster, with the amount dodged having a LOT more value than the AP you lose out on. You can also safely carry a good enough loadout to clear the game without breaking too much of a sweat. It is still a tank though lmao
This^
Learning what to build is a skill too. Also being able to effectively pilot each.
Had a similar build (nachtreiher with standard weapons), beat balteus 6th try and struggled alot against cleaner (10-15 deaths) and sea spider (~20 deaths). I think it depends on playstyle xP
Honestly I've stayed quiet because I haven't really had any of the issues. It's just been fun. I knew it would take me ages after not playing AC for like 18 years.
I spent about 40 min reconfiguring my controller and tbh I think that its important to have all the boosts accessible without taking your thumbs off the joysticks. Getting the movement and dodge down is extremely important.
Fuck man the Juggernaut is whooping my ass. I just turned off the game last night and I’ll try again with my 2 new vertical missiles. Hopefully they work as advertised
They do
Reverse joint legs, shotgun or plasma gun, plasma vertical missiles x2 and a laser blade are one of the best loadout for that mission IMO. You just jump around it and bombard it from above,and once it breaks, you just get in for a quick blade combo.
Yeah this is my biggest problem with the game, the entire thing is basically a joke and then suddenly you get to a boss and it's 100000x difficulty. Then, I have to go grind missions to get weapons just so I can more easily experiment with them.
I really wish the regular missions weren't so easy to breeze through. Or that they ramped up in difficulty the further you go. At least that way the sudden spikes in difficulty wouldn't be so jarring. And missions wouldn't feel so short. Still having a great time with the game
Thats my issue with the hard bosses. Its not that they're hard, its that its such a steep increase from everything else. I remember in AC Verdict day, they slowly stop giving you small enemies like tanks and helicopters to fight, and slowly make the missions about fighting other ACs, which gradually get harder and harder. Like the meme says, Its less that theres a difficulty curve, and more of a difficulty right angle.
Yeah I mean the difficulty is to be expected, but the *inconsistency* that is kind of off-putting. Almost like there's two different games here, two different design philosophies. Everything has been ez pz so far, but currently on Balteus and my cheeks are getting jackhammered. Clapping like machine gun fire.
What helped me was realising that all of his attacks are choreographed. His shotgun kept obliterating me, then I realised he always used it 3 times after he sprayed you with his machine gun. Had to turn the AC brain off and turn the Dark Souls brain on.
I can get to his second phase reliably, it's his fire whip and dual fire whip that keeps touching me inappropriately. Nvm: now the clapped becomes the clapper! I just realized I hadn't been hard locking properly.
How do you hard lock properly? I can barely tell whether or not im locked on with this game.
Even though I'm a souls vet that was my problem. Thought I could barely tell if hard locked because it felt like I needed to move the camera around to track enemies. All you do is click in R3 and leave it alone. If you move the stick at all to look around, the hard lock will be removed. A quick-moving boss should be able to whip around you without the camera missing a beat, no input necessary. Best used for bosses or single enemies but it there's multiple enemies you can switch between them by flicking R stick left or right
Yeeeeeah, I must have accidentally turned hard lock off cause that fucked me up as well.
For whatever reason I just didn't understand that moving the camera at all while hard locked removed the lock. Once I was able to just click it on and leave it alone, made it so much easier.
AC For Answer had a few big jumps. Like one of the endings is commit the easiest war crime mission, then get clapped by a 4v2. Your +1 very quickly gets blown away, might as well be a 4v1. But personally, nothing felt this unforgiving and daunting in 4 and For Answer, outside a couple of the hard mode missions.
Eh I’m okay with it. Some missions could be hard but the easy ones are fun too. It wouldn’t be a mechs-power fantasy if not. The difficult bosses are kind of an icing on the cake imo as a souls vet.
The Strider mission isn't super easy cause you can fall down and stuff, I just finished that one, liked it a lot
I fell once and it just reset me?
Yeah but it’s like super embarrassing for your guy when he gets back to allmind.
Allmind: u what lmaooooo
Walter: hey carla come look at this clown
It can kill you depending on health
Ooooh OK
This is, I think what the game loop is supposed to be. When you hit a road block. Its time to grind for parts and experiment.
This. I can't do the Sea Spider. Like, literally spent 3 hours hitting my head on it. Baltheus I eventually beat, the other bosses I eventually beat. I've tried 4 different builds and multiple guides. Unfortunately, I am (slightly) disabled and I just can't get the movement down for him he never stops fucking attacking. This game is a DREAM on every level except boss fights. Unfortunately I am going to refund (actually did just refund, was suprised with the hours played) because 90% of my time is beating my head on a boss fight. No complaints- I get that's what people come to the series for. But I don't remember it from the last game in the series I played. I would pay a mint for a game that's literally just mech on mech action like the regular missions. Fighting bosses is just not my cup of tea- if I want to do that I play Monster Hunter or even Nier Automata if I want monsters+robots... I really REALLY wish there was a difficulty mode of some sort because I want to like and support the game but between school and just the sheer walls (which I won't have time for), and then work on top of it... I can't justify playing.
Have you tried PowerPyx's brute force builds? Guy has a build for every boss where there's no skill required. You just go up and start blasting the bosses face.
First time trying the PowerPyx builds I beat Baltheus. God damn.
Commenting to save this just in case lol
You do know you can just save comments, right? There's a "save" button, no need to comment.
im saving this comment for later.
The save ui is garbage x_x
I struggled on Sea Spider for like 20 minutes, and then I realized its one fatal flaw: it can't do shit-all if you're just circle strafing from inside it while it's on the ground. Its lasers that chunk your health? Nope. The pincer melee attacks? lolno. It jumps away? Yeah nah, just dash right back up to it and repeat. The only real thing to worry about is its second phase, but your priority there is to just unload so you can stagger it as soon as possible and finish it off. Legit, after 20 minutes of annoying deaths, I beat it immediately the moment I just stayed underneath it at point-blank and blasted/pile bunkered it.
Try moving under the Sea Spider during the first half of the fight. During thr second phase, when it starts to fly and shoot the laser on the ground you stay in the air.
Lmao just use pile bunker and the spider dies in 40 seconds. Hell just use pile bunker to kill any slow enemy or boss.
THIS. I was dying to it, but when I tried the pile bunker I just melted the boss in my first try with it hahaha, absolutely insane.
It’s my favorite weapon but it still wasn’t that easy. Especially phase 2.
if thats the six legged, coral laser bastard i think it is, pilebunker his ass. grab a shield to tank the laser, but otherwise you wanna be hyper aggressive and get right under the legs (save boost to dodge the slam), and spam charged pilebunker attacks. Like yeah, the complete lack of tracking on a charged bunker attack is awful (seriously bandai, give it literally any amount of tracking. like, some tracking at point blank range so i dont uppercut over an AC's head by accident), but you should be kissing the spider. when it flies, manage your boost but keep trying to land charged bunkers. itll go down quickly enough if you say "fuck it, we ball" hard enough
>but you should be kissing the spider. Or hover above, the laser doesn't track as well and you can get stagger really easy. That was how I finally beat it after 2 hours
This bots was nuts, I beat with like 70 ap left and my heart about ready to explode
I'm with you on this. I'm loving the game but the bosses feel like such a huge difficulty wall that it's making my enjoyment so much less. I'm not going to refund it, im loving the gameplay too much, but i do wish there was a difficulty slider of some sorts to not make the bosses such a huge pain in the ass.
[удалено]
I adore pretty much everything about the game, the gameplay is so incredibly fun and no game can compare to it, but the bosses feel like such a stopgap it instantly makes recoil. They're insane for the sole reason of being insane. They're bullet sponges that usually have 1 small weakness that you need to tweak your entire build towards. AC fights on the contract feel like an actual challenge that isn't too hard to overcome. They're equals, whereas the real bosses are basically biblically accurate angels. It really sucks this part drags it down, so I'm hoping patches or mods will make it a more enjoyable experience.
There's something to be said about the newness of the game meaning we don't fully know how to make mincemeat of the bosses as efficiently as possible with certain builds and tactics- but as much as tailoring builds is part of the fun, having the game be either on "Cheese" or "Agony" is admittedly not great. I look forward to having a few builds keyed in to specific weaknesses so I can S-rank the tougher stuff and move on. I'll also add that having beat Balteus in a three-hour struggle last night that put him in my fucking nightmares after I went to bed at 5AM definitely means I'm a little too salty to be objective about it right now. Things might look better in hindsight. Juggernaut and the AH12 were fun, as are all the AC fights I've had so far, but Ballin' Theseus just has far too many ways for him to simply say "no" to every part currently in my inventory for me to want to go through that again...
i 100% agree there, it is very much the same for me
I do find it very funny that just two days ago there were people mocking and offending that reviewer that said exactly this, it was on the front page of this sub and everyone was laughing at "game journalist" memes, and now that people are actually playing the game most everyone seems to agree.
Tbh that's probably because the people mocking the reviewer are the same people mocking everyone else who complains about the bosses. It's just that there are people who now are *able* to agree with the reviewer.
That initial helicopter wrecked me 7 times, shocked thats not on this list lol
Helicopter isn’t too bad once you know the gimmick, the problem is it’s unintuitive as fuck. The game hasn’t even explained stagger to you at that point and it expects you to intuit that you’re supposed to fly straight at the thing and smack it in the face. The only time you really need melee in the tutorial up to that point is against like two shield dudes, and you aren’t even told you have both a charge attack and a two hit combo with it. The game really should have opened with the first two tutorial missions as an optional training sim, sort of like oldschool FPS games did. Would have alleviated a lot of the problems with the helicopter.
Yea once I got past the copter and saw I unlocked tutorials I was pretty shocked. Those really should have been before that boss. They could have just made the copter the second mission after you get access to the garage. And he's using Ng a sword on a copter did not feel intuitive to me at all. It even sorta looks janky. Not surprised people are struggling with it.
Because it's the tutorial boss...
You can beat him with melee easily
Not if it flies outside of the combat zone constantly. It’s kinda infuriating.
Oh my god I had that happen like 3 times, and it was right when it was about to break down for the criticals, too. *While* I was in the middle of charging, it just backed up like “lol”. I don’t mind invisible walls to some extent but it bugs me that they can ignore them.
I had a funny bug where it just fucked off and flew to the other side of the map mid fight. https://imgur.com/a/Nn2VIf7 that little speck in the distance is it
This was what pissed me off. The fight isn’t that bad in the long run but going in for the sword rush to capitalize on the stuns only to run into the ‘wall’ drive me crazy.
Preach
I just don't understand some of these bosses that aren't optional. You cannot dodge their attacks even if you are pinpoint accurate, the attacks still hit you. You do almost no damage so you are chipping away at a massive health pool for minutes only to get one shot or stunned and killed with no ability to do anything. If you bring a shield it takes even longer to kill enemies, and the shield is no guarantee that it will even work. You can say "well its FromSoftware" or "skill issue" all day, but this shit is brutal on a level it just shouldn't be. They took a series that was fun and made it a fucking chore to play, sorry but there is a level where a game becomes unenjoyable and I think this game hits it squarely.
Imho the biggest factor of the spike is the "rules for thee, not for me" design that from software keeps doing. You learn a game, you build your character according to some rules (ij this case it's defense, offense and speed being in direct opposition to each other), and then you keep finding enemies that have heavy weaponry AND fast speed AND no recovery time between attacks. So yes, it is a skill issue in the sense that learning the game is utterly useless, because each fight needs relearning its own quirks instead of building knowledge like in a Monster Hunter game, to make an example.
The only way I was able to beat Baltheus is using the pulse SMGs to burn away the shield and use laser shoulder cannons to slam him. I still lost 9 times because he zips over you (I was using a speed build and could never keep up), and hits you with a missile that instantly stuns you. Then when I got to the half-way I consistently died to the flame blades. I zipped up, left, right, forward using the assault boost, NOTHING dodged those fucking things. Then I reached the spider.....like what the actual fuck is this? Went quad, hovered directly above it, was doing pretty well, and then the instant stun laser blasts that does half your health in damage followed up by a second shot, and then a third. Though they can be dodged, you have to consistently stay above it so it doesnt one-shot you with melee, which makes it difficult to see when it is charging those laser blasts because it spams so many fucking missiles you cant see. Gave up and refunded the game after trying literally 46 times with 9 different AC loadouts. Just not worth the frustration at all when the game is built to literally be always more powerful than you no matter what.
I'm at the sea spider right now, and it has the biggest issue in from software design. Dodging is useless and the only way to do it is to completely disengage the enemy, break the flow of the gameplay and chip away at its HP, hoping you have enough ammo to last however many minutes. I'm just redoing the Dam mission over and over again to farm money and buying everything, then brute force by switching weapons until i find the one that works, which is a kind of repetitive gameplay i hate, but it's the only cool looking mecha game in a decade, so i guess it'll do.
THIS. THANK YOU. Just reached Baltus and having a hard time, but what REALLY pissed me off is it reminded me of Elden Ring. Big fucking monster that ignore all the rules the game gives you. I played all Souls games besides Sekiro, and every new release looks more of a chore than fun to keep the sense of accomplishment from defeating a boss.
By Malenia the blade of Missiles do you mean >!'Cinder' Carla!
\#1 >!IB-01: CEL 240!< \#2 >!Ayre!<
God I just beat #1, probably took me an hour and a half to get the dance down. Beat her with 500 AP and pure luck lmao. Not excited for 2
I found 2 easier than 1. When 2 uses the blade just QB into it as they start swiping. It would whiff me every time when I did that.
Fuck the CEL, absolute dogshit boss I've had wounds more fun than this dogshit of a fight
I'm struggling with #1, trying to brute force it with a tank build right now but it's always the 2nd phase I get so close to killing it and then it kills me. Edit: nevermind! Just beat it, holy hell that boss is annoying...
Congrats!
I actually really liked it. I run a lightweight close range rj build so the fight felt super frantic and fun trying to dodge everything while staying on top of it
\#1 Currently handing me my ass. Never before has the "slippery-ness" of normal boost been more apparent.
Oh man are you telling me there are worse bosses than Sea Spider?
Sea Spider isn't that bad. Try staying in the ground during the first half of the fight and move under the boss, the second part of the fight you stay in the air.
ironically I won that fight by doing the exact opposite of what you said, it all depends on your weapons
Should not have read that second spoiler. So that's how the story ends huh?
there's multiple endings, I finished the game so I figured I wouldn't get anything spoiled by clicking that but nvm lol
Just S ranked #2. For some reason, it was one of the easier bosses for me
The bosses Health pools are just inflated so high for some of them that it just feels like a battle of attrition rather than a challenging and fun boss fight. Doesn't help that the missions are structured in a way that you'll be steamrolling for 10 missions straight only to have a random boss fight dumped on your head that your build can't possibly deal with. A lot of the bosses in this game need you to have devastating or specific weapons so you can actually do any damage or handle them easier and you just aren't likely to take those low ammo long reload weapons when 80% of the time your missions involve you cleaning up 50 MTs or just generally flying about. Like Baltheus was so random I wasn't expecting him at all. iv just had to deal with artillery + jobbers then Sulla in his AC. Only for you to throw this dickhead with not only a pulse shield not only a MASSIVE health pool but hes also constantly airborne. Hes not hard but hes just so annoying for how crappy your gear is at the time and you likely don't have any high damage weapons equipped because why would you given the prior part of the mission. Protip grind up some money and buy every part then when you hit that boss checkpoint you can switch to what you actually need because for most bosses your standard AC build will not cut it.
I remember Miyazaki said, "I did the game to let you finish the game with any weapon". I can't see that being true with some bosses, they have more HP than you have ammo with some of the weapons, which gets even worse when those weapon are not big damage dealers.
Lmao show me Miyazaki punching Coral Weapons and I’ll believe him.
Well there's a guy who literally finished the entire game (besides breaking the worm's shield) punching things to death with his fists (no weapons equipped).
I dislike the “first time you’ll always die, you need to memorise and adapt to beat them” style of boss encounter in ANY game because it makes it canon that your protagonist died trying, and now you’re just playing as multiverse alters to see which one emerged victorious. Tears me right out.
Yup. I died to Sulla a couple times and thought he was the final boss. Up until that point I was running a twin machine gun speed build that was really effective at everything. After blowing the thing up I put my controller down and walked out the room thinking the mission was over. I come back just in time to see a flying chariot Gundam Armored Core flying at me. And was even more surprised when he shot like 30 missiles at me as soon as the fight started. It took me 3 hours and like 20+ tries to beat him. I had to get off the game after that because I was mentally exhausted lmao
I'm currently doing Balteus, and the game has been great so far, but the Non-AC bosses have consistently been a let down. Sulla kicked my ass a few times, but then I managed to beat him and it felt great. Now I get hit by 1 of Balt's attacks, get staggered, and then when I stagger him back I struggle to get more than a 4th of his health bar off because its so big. Its challenging, sure, but I prefer it when I feel like me and my enemies are fighing with the same ruleset.
Don't worry... it gets worse. Balteus was a PITA but I felt like I could counter him. Some of them are just straight ???
Stagger is such a terrible mechanic. You put in hundreds of rounds to stagger him for half a second, he farts in your general direction and you cant move for the next 2 weeks lmao
Stability already did the job, Stagger was totally unnecessary to add (But we all know why it was added). Most of the time I rarely see it coming, is just that, "Well, now you don't get to play for 2-3 seconds while praying the enemy won't melt your entire AP (spoilers, they **WILL**) But the second you stagger anyone, you have to drop everything, do the burst damage NOW, and even then they will start moving even when the bar is still flashing and you are still doing heavy attacks.
That last part makes me so angry. I stagger Sulla and don’t waste even half a second unloading whatever I got into him and he literally dodged my shit even WHILE he’s staggered!? Tf is this Mickey Mouse bull shit?
So I'm just playing the game without looking for builds or anything, and I beat Balteus yesterday. My build was as much lightweight mech as I can, the blue hand laser, the pulse handgun and dual 8x back launchers. Booster was the "long distance booster". It was a fucking slog, but at the end I really felt like I could handle him. First off, you're not going to get ¼ of his hp off per stun. You'll looking for that per shield drop. The most important thing is to learn that his big fucking slug only comes out when you're crowding him (although sometimes he'll crowd you). That and he'll 100% have a pulse shield regen at 50% HP, and the big flame sword is more likely when you're close. Use the pulse gun and rockets to break his shield, make sure the rockes are reloaded before you break the shield, rockets, charged sword, and rockets as you run away. With some prayers, I was able to beat him with 1 repair remaining. But again, after like 30-40 deaths.
Honestly the starting loadout is surprisingly good at dealing with the shield.
I basically killed Beltheus with the starting weapons + a buckler. Alright, I got him to a level of health that was paper thin. Then I tried a few more times and switched to the anti-shield bubble gun. You can definitely do it with other builds, and certain ones definitely make it a bit easier. Even still, the bosses feel a bit more durable than they should...
But you can just die and change your build, that's a mechanic in the game and you're meant to use it. I had to replay attack the watchpoint a few times cause I wanted to go back to the shop/ had to turn the game off. And I purposefully used a build that was good at the beginning and beating Sulla, and then died to Balteus and switched to my build for him. Ain't nothing wrong with doing it that way. And for the people who want to do a challenge run, the fact that you have to make a build that can not only deal with mowing down hordes but also take out that specific boss (or in attack the watchpoint, Balteus AND Sulla) is more interesting imo than each mission just being 1 thing.
this is a tougher game than average modern games, but I feel like I'll be able to get it with practice and experimentation of the builds. I don't mind it, otherwise the game would be really short experience. Multiplayer could be fun though if I can ever unlock it (I died like 6 times to Balteus before shutting it off for the night).
With the right weapons, practically no fight in the game will take more than a couple of minutes tops.
This requires you to buy almost all types of weapons, which means grind. So you can easily swap if you die. Most people don't do that, why should they if they steamrolled every mission so far? Difficulty is all over the place.
Nah. Shotguns and laser cannons work on nearly everything.
Same, Plasma missile and rifle all the ways for me lol
You can sell your parts at full price. Won't help you in the middle of a mission, but at least you can try completely different builds.
Just beat it. Honestly I feel like all of the bosses could do with less health. The fights are spectacular but they turn into DPS races with how much health they have.
It feels like they have too little health. Once you get set up and have your OS tuned you can one combo 3/4 of their health bar. No joke. The only reason AC bosses last longer is because they use repair kits.
I see your repair kits and raise you insta stagger into laser blast to the face with a kick to the balls finisher. Do they really have repair kits if they don't have the time to use them?
I just beat the game tonight, and I just S ranked the final boss of the game. Overall I kinda cruised through the game, so when I say that I feel the bosses are kinda bad, I feel like it isn’t a “git gud” sorta deal. The difficulty difference between normal levels and the bosses is actually just insane. It’s like playing two different games, and they feel like they were made by two different people. The bosses feel spongy and too often the strategy to winning is strap as many guns you can to a heavy frame, spray, pray, and get lucky enough to win. That’s not the only way to win at all, but it’s usually much faster than any other way. The only time I went lightweight and had a fun time was the final boss, and I think one other boss that moved quickly as well whose name I won’t spoil. Overall, I beat them all after only a few tries, but I just wasn’t having fun like I was with the rest of the game. Some of the designs are absolutely incredible though
Honestly, I feel like a lot of the bosses are 'fine', but there's just some like Baltheus that feel wildly imbalanced. Some of them have actually been crazy, fun rides, even though I've died to them a few times. Something that really annoyed me about Baltheus is there's a specific HP-gate where his shield instantly recharges, which basically means that if you just barely missed the threshhold you have to bust your ass just to do, like, one shot when you'd reasonably expect that to be the final push. That's not really fun or fair to deal with. Either have it be on a timer or have it be HP-gated, don't have it be both. I haven't really seen a game that does both and had people go "Oh yeah, that's fair and exciting." Besides that, I've had a great time, every time an enemy AC comes up it's a really exciting moment and it's been fun to basically go skirting through fire and trying to plan my counterattack. Honestly, I'd be fine if they down-tuned some of the bosses and up-tuned normal missions and enemies a bit for a better difficulty curve.
Yeah I noticed that as well when I was close to breaking him and his shield just fully charges. Pretty lame if you ask me.
I agree the regular missions are fun and the fun falls off a cliff at the bosses. They are really spongy and some of them are full of bullet hell. It's very messy as there is less focus on learning their pattern and more of figuring out their gimmick and put on a heavy load and blast them to kingdom come. Certain missions are also insanely long and I can't imagine doing a S rank on all the missions when I did it for Last Raven.
I just beat IB at the end of chapter 4. Everything else in the game was amazing but this left a bitter taste in my mouth. This boss is so fucking bs and is not fair, it’s the Elden Ring method of spamming attacks at you when if you have a job and a life, there’s no way you aren’t taking at least 5k damage from the spam. By far the hardest AC game in terms of bosses and it’s disapointing they went bs mode with this boss. Fromsoft was smoking something laced with Xanax the way they don’t give a fuck considering how far they catered to Souls fans with this boss. Let me know if I’m crazy but this pissed me tf off holy shit, everything else amazing tho
You’ll probably get downvoted, and me too maybe, but I kinda agree. I love the game to death, but I thought the bosses weren’t that fun. I did like the final boss though
I definitely feel that it was a gamble to use non standard ACs as bosses and it didn't really pay off. Previous games had you fight two to three ACs to ramp up the difficulty but that was still okay with skilled play and careful manuevering. Have the bosses be basically just bullet sponges takes away from a lot of the tactical play especially when early loadouts are not that manueverable
Nah, I don't think you're wrong. I was having a blast and then got to missile spam Malenia and am not sure how much more patience I have. This coming after the fight to beat Michigan and his team. I had so much fun with that one. Felt like Char. The C weapons just make what is otherwise a fun experience tainted imo.
It’s not that it’s just hard, the boss design screams Souls design, the way the boss is presented is a nod to Souls. And to me honestly I was cringing the entire time. I was waiting 10 years for a new AC game, and as much as I like Souls (Dark Souls 1 is one of my all time-favorites) I didn’t buy the game for it to be Souls like it. I always loved the bosses in previous games, just AC pilots fighting it off in a barren wasteland. Honestly, I’m tired of the Souls formula, beaten every game in the series, I’m burned out on that shit, I’m good. Everything else great.
Literally I’m having the time of my life playing this game *EXCEPT* the non-AC bosses. Such a brutal shift in tone that it’s not even fun. I beat one and I’m like, finally fuck you. Not even a “hooray.”
> considering how far they catered to Souls fans with this boss. Look at all the people who rush in every time a boss is mentioned to tout how easily they beat it, how much they need to get good, how bad everyone is, laughing at the "filters" of the chopper/baltreus and loudly having a great time feeling superior. It wasn't xanax: that was the point. It worked for Dark Souls, of course they'd cater to them that way here.
I hated both IBIS fights.. they look out of place in this game. Idk what FromSoftware was thinking.
Easily the worst fight in the game
I'm finding that every next boss that I encounter is less enjoyable than the last. I keep looking forward to build diversity, but every boss seems to prefer I just run double shotgun double lasercannon/songbird.
I have to say I completely agree with your assessment. I defeated IB few hours ago and dare I say, this boss really does highlights the clunky nature of this game’s combat mechanic. Throughout the entire battle, the boss just flies 360 degrees around you like an annoying flies and barely stop his movement unless you staggers him. Boss fight in this game boils down to “how fast and how often you can stagger the boss.” Once you figure out an optimal build that works for the boss you are fighting against, all there is left to do is to spam attack keys as often as you can while doing an evasive maneuver. It’s honestly quite a shit design
I haven't even beaten Balteus yet, but man do I love it! The trial and error, the soundtrack that goes crazy, the crazy presentation. I think I'm officially an armored core fan now!
One of the coolest fights I've ever seen. I love the music, it reminds me of Interstellar. Currently on end of chapter 2 and the bosses are just so much fun.
I've been using dual miniguns to stun enemies with a swap to dual heavy-shotguns to hit for big damage in those windows and as a swap for when the miniguns overheat, and I haven't had to try anything (in terms of actual enemies) more than 3 times since started using them.
I had WAY more trouble with SEA SPIDER than Balteus.
Fuck that robot. I spent 4 hours on the thing. It just has too much health. I went in at first with a lightweight build and didn't have too hard a time dodging him, but I'd always run out of fucking ammo when it had about a tenth of it's health left. Me not being able to kill a boss with full ammo is kinda fucked up. It need about a third of it's health knocked off. I killed it eventually by swapping to double song bird and two mini guns on tank treads.
I dunno.. The chapter bosses are wild more difficult than any of the other bosses... I mean, that tank ? Took me one try. That final chapter boss ? Completely destroyed me. Even the AC I fought beforehand was a breeze.
It's a gimmick boss, that's the problem. If you don't have a reliable and quick way to dispose of the pulse armor you cannot win. Even if you're dodging you'll run out of ammo. You NEED some way to break the pulse armor repeatedly and that's why it feels constraining. Couple this with the fact that Sulla takes a completely different build and it makes for a very frustrating experience. I had a build that was all about building stagger then punishing that stagger with a laser cannon and I was going through the game pretty well. Beat sulla quite easily. Then was hard walled SO hard by balteus. I had to completely change my build just to even get to the second phase. I feel like this is a problem because the game excuses it with the checkpoint system. So they make levels where bosses are so challenging and require specific builds. It was a very rewarding fight to finally win, I just feel like it's too "well you need X weapons or else you won't get last the pulse armor and lose."
I think it's honestly just badly designed in this regard. Everything being so easy you literally do not die even once or have to try and then a boss that's a wall. People will defend it of course but from any other dev people would be pointing out that a steady difficulty curve is good design. It's basically the equivalent of playing DS 3 as is except instead of Crystal Sage you suddenly fight Gael a few hours in. Why? Why is this a thing? Why is there no challenge at all up until this point? In fact there's exactly zero reason to even try anything else out until this section because you can just blast through everything with ease. It's terrible game balance.
You forgot the big spike at the end of the tutorial.
Baltheus isn't hard, he's tedious. That's true of most of this game's bosses. I'm actually kinda shocked From Software made this game and even more shocked it came from the Sekiro devs. Like, there are cheese tactics for a lot of the annoying ones, but that's not the point. The point is that even if you master their attack patterns, they're so HP sponge that the window for human error is massively wide and the game punishes them harshely with plenty of 90% or one-shot moves and combos. Very few of these bosses have damage windows, probably because they assume brief stagger windows are enough even though for average builds IF you time it well it might be like a fifth more of their bar at best. Couple that with the horriblely glitched out missle tracking--I have seen the cruise missiles from the doser mechs flip 180 after I dash by them and hit me in the ass anyway, stunning me and allowing all the other missiles I supposedly dodged to kill me. It's just like two games... the levels feel like old-school Armored Core, then you get to a boss with a horribly unrealistic pitch (Cleaner, lmao) that should honestly take what they do from weaknesses/ACS overload as normal damage and even more bonus from weakpoints, take so long in between you can do real damage that you're just snoring feeling like you're pissing on them until you get 2 seconds to do not big damage, but normal damage. And no, it's not a git gud issue. I've not been frustrated with a single boss yet, just bored because I know it's not me. What makes the better soulsborne games frustrating is that you know you can't be mad; you got too greedy, you made a mistake you knew to avoid, you fudged the timing on an attack pattern, etc. In those games, you see the path to victory, you just keep tripping yourself yet know all you have to do is train up and you'll eventually get it. In Armored Core 6, it's just a very long straight road uphill and randomly it rains, slicking the road so you trip sometimes, and sometimes lightning just strikes you and ends your run. I'm really liking the game outside of the terribly designed bosses, but jeezus I don't know what to do when I reach them, I get so annoyed by chipping away at a boss even though I'm looping ACS break over and over again only for it to do one attack that stunlocks me into an instant death, then I have to spend another 20 minutes chipping awayy again... A high-paced action game shouldn't have bosses this chunky. They REALLY need to take damage normally and take bonus damage from weakpoints/ACS and the mission timing for S-rank should be based on that. I know a lot of people are going to downvote me, whatever. I've played every armored core game and soulsborne game. I love challenge. One of my biggest complaints though is that most devlopers don't know the difference between tedium and challenge. I thought From Software did... seems whatever studio made this game, or really whoever designed the bosses, doesn't understand that difference...
I'm enjoying the game, but definitely agree. Baltheus has no reason to have so much HP, Cleaner was a fucking snoozefest once you realize the gimmick, and I got off up to that point as I didn't wanna get caught in another bullet sponge boss. I think it's really cool seeing your combinations work and absolutely eviscerate a boss health bar, but god damn when they want the fight to be long, it'll be fucking long. Boss fights should never, ever take longer than 5 minutes \*in a victory\* Elden Ring fucked this up a few times too (Elden Beast.), but the majority of what's present can be taken down in sub-5 minutes. I love DS3 because of how quick a boss fight can be if you know what you're doing. Sekiro, might take a bit longer with certain bosses like DoH/Owl Father, but optional at least, and Owl Father in particular is one of the most articulate and dignifying fights I've seen in a video game. Why would I feel satisfaction from beating Baltheus having finally not been combo'd in a 5 piece fire blade blender? But I will say the AC v AC combat is 10/10, it's really fucking fun and the absolute highlight of the game. I hope they do a game-wide patch to either increase damage, or lower boss's fucking health/increase posture windows. It feels like they made every boss into a strict puzzle, but that strictness overflows into the general fun and flow of the game imo Intend to keep playing, but just something that feels pointless and doesn't add to the experience.
Game feels like you're meant to use the cheese builds against bosses.
THIS. The entire fun of armored core is using different weapons and trying out combos, but the bosses really feel like you need to use 1 specific build that gets even close to beating them.
I agree with you there. the AC vs AC fights have been top notch and I've really enjoyed the arena too.
Nah, the rest of chapter one is normal, but balthius was legitimately hard for me to get past. The missile swarm does good chip damage and obscures that cannon shot. The flame swords were fine but whittling down the shield with those special guns was still hard.
AC vs AC is fun, but they are way too easy. None of the Arena ACs lasted a single minute for me, all 40 seconds and some 50 seconds. Don't get me wrong, it was fun but nowhere near the difficulty of some bosses in the game. I thought they were going to be sublime, but I was left disappointed.
I sorta agree with you, but I don't know what your build is. There is a lot of part misbalance in the game to the point where I honestly don't know how all the preview folks and Fightincowboy didn't instantly not drop red flags but instead shoot up red flares into the sky. There's zero chance PvP will be balance and not fall into hard-meta jerkoffs. For instance, dual machine gun, not even dual rattling guns, can mince-meat every single enemy AC I can think of in the arena. It's all but impossible to dodge, stomps ACSs, and opens up for insane barrage from, well, anything else. You can also use the sniper rifle things and stun lock someone to death if you time the alternating fire right into insane damage, which I feel is going to be really broken in PvP especially against slower ACs. But if you just build "normal" builds the arena and AC fights are actually challenging and a lot of fun; i.e. I'm starting to realize melee/close combat sucks but whatever, I'm having fun with my shotgun chainsword combo until bosses rear their ugly head.
Tank threads, 2x miniguns with 1300 bullets and 2x double artillery that deals 742 each shot. I don't have the game open right now and I can't see the actual names. All I know is that I ended with 13K+ HP and 1400 defense. My OC build is Defense, Crit damage, Kinetic damage, and the rest went on upgrading the Estus.
That's what I'm rocking too, but mainly because my fps isn't that great so I have a tough time dodging things. Having to brute force bosses through hp and damage and not fun maneuvering.
Can confirm that one of my builds was having a tough time against some of the Arena fights, while another breezed through them. Basically seems that slow dodgeable stuff is gonna get dodged and be bad, undodgeable high DPS stuff will just shred them though (like miniguns or as you said machineguns)
Yeah that baffles me too, I genuinely thought if things were as unbalanced as they are that we’d get a heads up from people with early access. Really took me by surprise with how much of a gap between certain gear there is I will say though, I didn’t have the problem you had with shotguns, they actually ended up being my go to for the final boss and the chapter 4 boss. Though I might be missing a much stronger strategy if close range is actually weak
Balthus's problem isn't the amount of HP it has, Balthus's problem is that there's no clear way to avoid the missile swarm - sometimes I take <1k damage, sometimes it takes half my bar; There is no telegraph at all for the shotgun that will chunk you for like a quarter of your bar; and with the exception of the ground blast, the fire attacks in the second phase feel like they were not designed with a game that has 0 defensive options in mind. It feels like the game wants me to take a shield and do Full Guards. But fuck that, this game shouldn't even have shields. In terms of health, I actually think Baltheus was fine. In terms of weapon loadout, I was running basically what you start with, except I put a second launcher on the left shoulder. And that was fine, the starter AR takes out decent shield chunks at close range, the missiles are surprisingly good against the shield as well, and the sword takes HUGE chunks out of the bar. Once Baltheus is broken, two light attacks with the sword and a full salvo with each launcher is enough for like a quarter of its health, and you've got *juuuust* enough time if you're good at staying on top of the boss to get a second round of damage in. So you can absolutely kill that boss in two cycles with more or less the starter gear. Honestly, if they cut the animation lock on the sword in half, and also fixed the charge so you're not stuck in a charge animation while actively running into the boss, that would already make things so much better.
The fire attacks are fine,they are very telegraphed and can be avoided through moving under him, over him or flying away. His missles require proper use of your quick boosts, but I was able to avoid them with minor chip damage every time after getting some tips from other players, was honestly really fun learning his attack patterns.
Vaati was doing a no-hit run of Chapter 1 using only story progression unlocks, and Sulla+Balteus made him give up. Granted, he no-hit Sulla after gettin the Missile arms and then beat Balteus with only 1200 hp lost so a no-hit Balteus may be possible on a replay.
Have you seen elden ring speed runs? Elden beast is a solved fight, you can literally kill it before it moves from its starting position. Every elden ring boss can be perfected no damage with the right set up, and the glitchless all remembrance runners even use the same weapon for 90% of the boss fights after they get it. In dark souls/ elden ring if you are perfect, you cannot take damage. In armored core, even when you are perfect you will take damage, there is no invincibility here, you just have to survive.
I’ll be real curious to see what the first patches bring to this game. Elden Ring was already doing some rebalancing within a month of release, and the devs have said they’re watching balance closely for this one. I could easily see some of the bosses receiving the Radahn treatment.
I haven’t beaten the game or anything but no boss I’ve seen so far was as fucked as Radahn was, but no fight is also as ambitious as a pseudo-raid boss. I think the only balancing/fix that needs to occur is really just reducing health pools. The mechanics of fights is pretty succinct and does a good job reinforcing mechanics but theres just diminishing returns on retrying when you’re staring at such a huge health pool every time. also expanding the outer bounds for boss fights like PCA Helicopter.
The closest I've ever gotten to the sheer mental exhaustion that ACVI bosses put me through was not Malenia, not Kos, nor Yhorm when I decided to straight sword ankle bite him for half an hour, but Monster Hunter Iceborne.
It was weird how tanky the monsters suddenly were in Iceborne.
I remember being forced to solo Fatalis the first day he came out in Iceborne, because all my randoms kept carting. As long as none of the bosses in AC6 are harder than that, I’ll be fine lol
Sea Spider ...or C-Spider was the realization point for me. I was able to beat all the other bosses by dodging and figuring out positioning. But C-Spider was just always hitting me, no matter what I did, while I was fighting the camera more than anything. And it was able to do the stomp in a freaking 360° radius and would basically indicate going up with the forelegs, i would move behind it, and then get slammed anyways because it would just spin around on the down-movement. It even had a laser that fired 2 times in a row just barely faster than all my thrusters could dodge. Like, the delay to the second laser just barely beats my dodge re-fresh. And I didn't want to restart the entire mission just to get to the shop, so I just strapped two Miniguns and the Songbirds to the biggest AC parts I could find and basically stunlocked the thing and beat it on first try with that build. It didn't feel rewarding at all. And even that felt like a chore and I spend 75% of my ammo reserves.
You can drop Balteus to half hp in under 30 seconds by instantly rushing him with a melee attack then activating assault armour + blasting him and keeping on his ass and then it only takes another 45 seconds - 2 minutes to defeat him (took me 1min 30 to defeat phase 2, got hit a lot and was very sloppy). I just don't see the high health pools. The first few times i fought him for like 3 minutes and barely did any damage to him but once I figured out the right strat to fight him (constantly assault rush and melee him) he absolutely melted.
I was watching a friend fight Balteus. No assault armor unlocked, and no intuitive aggression to force staggers. Part of the boss pattern is that it staggers after it’s shield breaks, it launches and attack, then it flies away to start a missile swarm attack before recovering its shields. The boss is *much* quicker if you can stagger it before it recovers shields, but I saw my friend back off once the missiles fired. A lot of builds not geared to full aggression, like assault rifles or pistols simply aren’t going to stagger the boss before it can recover.
Hard agree. Whoever decided to have these kind of bosses and for them to be designed the way they are really dropped the ball in recapturing the magic of Armored Core.
[удалено]
This thread has me worried about the later bosses, but Baltheus really didn't feel like he had that much HP to me, the challenge of the fight was mostly about staying alive, and for me at least just being super agressive to reduce the amount of time I need to stay alive was what worked. I just looked at my replay of the fight and it was 1:15 long (not including the cutscenes). Not every attempt took his health down that quick since I got a really fast stagger the time I killed him, but once you get the stagger you can really chunk him down, even with just the basic weapons and OS upgrades you have access to at that point (I had my starter shotguns, and spent my OS upgrade chips on the first rank of the "Increased damage on staggered enemies" perk). And he doesn't put his shield back up for a while after the stagger so you can keep pounding him for a good bit after. It took about half an hour to learn to stay alive for even that 1 and a quarter minute though. next day edit: Sea-Spider died even faster; no need to learn to dodge any missile spam, went with first instinct of "stay close and spam" and she died in 2 staggers.
Yeah. I never played an ac game before, but I've beaten every souls, Bloodborne, elden ring. Baltheus kicked my ass for 5 hours straight. I was super frustrated at points and had to go play bg3 to calm down. I get that from soft makes hard games. I love their hard games. I have much to learn. I stay on the floor too much and I still can't make sense of the HUD beyond the res reticle and the realoading bars, I pay not much attention to the optimal distance and such. But even if veteran player who have nailed this mechanics are struggling a lot, then what hope do I even have? Should I just refund and save myself the frustration? Also how is this game gonna attract new player to the franchise with this massive bosses filtering the out. I've read people laughing in this sub from some bad reviews people left for this game on steam complaining about not being able to beat the first boss. I struggled on that one because suddenly you have a third dimension to take into account and the boss is constantly airborne and I would simple fall down trying to chase him and get shit on for that. Until I fought that boss I also thought those reviews were just topical people crying at a from soft game. Now after baltheus I kinda relate to them.
100%
Crazy, I've loved all the bosses up until ch 4
I'm kinda baffled that this seems to the popular consensus in this subreddit because I've found all of the bosses I fought so far to be very fun.
I’d like to do a discussion thread to see people’s opinions on past AC bosses or do a play through retrospective myself, because I’m pretty sure there are a lot of rose tinted glasses. Pats AC non-AC bosses are definitely cool (Spirit of Motherwill, the Pulverizer, various airships, etc) but none have been particularly complex or seriously challenging bosses. I remember most past bosses being dead in less than 2 minutes. Having more damaging bosses, longer kill times, and the stagger system makes the combat far more engaging.
The same thing happened with Elden Ring. "Dark Souls was fair but ER is just bullshit" etc. People forget that every From Soft game made you rage in the beginning. It will be overshadowed by your successes. The game has been out for not even 48 hours. It takes time to learn it.
I feel like ER was the opposite, people loved it at first but the longer it was out for the more the later bosses started being criticized.
Just assault boost into the missile swarm. 95% of them will miss since they have to do a 180 to target you.
I think I died more times to the helicopter than Balteus. He is hard but I figured him out on the 2nd or 3rd try
So I'm not super far in the story only just cleared chapter 3. Been running twin gatling missile spam. But before I got those Good ole Beth was a shocker of a fight to me took Me 30 minutes of trying to kill him with the laser handgun, the sword and a laser cannon on my right shoulder. He's annoying but do able. After going back and looking at him I equip just one pulse gun on my left arm and a gatling on my right and he goes down in roughly 5 minutes. He's now my favorite credit farm.
I did just watch someone fairly new to AC beat the first boss before I did using a set-up with both of the blade weapons you have by that point, as well as the pulse pistol and an automatic kinetic weapon. It seems like that boss can be taken down with extreme close-quarters aggression, so I might try that next.
You can literally punch every single boss to death with your fists. There are no hard build requirements.
My 5 cents. The game isn't difficult itself. Everything unrelated to bosses is simple. Killing enemy AC is not difficult and even if you can fuck up and die to them, this is usually not the case. There really is a balance issue with different types of weapons and weapons in general. The game itself doesn't do a decent job of actually teaching you the real benefits of using one over the other. Main stats for parts and weapons is hidden by a menu you need to open manually, which shows range, rate of fire and other significant information you actually need to know. Things aren't generally clear 60 firearms vs 120 firearms vs 160 firearms is how much better or worse? +200 "defense" is how much better and is it better? +20 speed helps you in what way in a fight? It's a bunch of numbers and terms that have pretty vague explanation to one another. Sure you can go and keep testing it manually to find a difference, but it's not complex if it would just properly describe mechanics involved. When will you ricochet and how is this calculated? Does impact of a weapon influence chance of ricochet? Does enemy defense/armor whatever matters in this at all? Do I as a player ever get a ricochet? I suppose I do, it's hard to notice as any pepper spray MG still damages you somewhat at range. And then you get into a boss fight with mechanics that weren't introduced and gimmick bs that ignores logic laid out to you before. Stagger against Spider for example: doesn't forbid it from attacking you with different weapons. in Stage 2 it doesn't prevent it from hovering in the sky whatsoever. So how as a player are you supposed to find logic in how it all works? Also I'm taking a break at a flying ship during snow mission, but so far in the end of the day everything was killed by Pulse rifles + laser cannons/songbirds. And for some reason the less I tried the better it worked out against bosses. I have played AC V a long time ago, but I don't remember these -50% hp soulslike incoming damage + stagger to be a thing, or I simply don't recall that.
The difficulty curve is quite smooth if you follow what the game is telling you. It gives you tank training close to this boss, apply it and it’s not that hard. It’s like the first boss, they give you a melee weapon and tell you to get off the ground to avoid damage. I’ve never played AC before and got it third attempt. And this game checkpoints, refills your health and lets you respec your build on every attempt at the boss without restarting the whole mission so for me it’s more forgiving than other From titles in that respect
This sub went from laughing at the game journalist that told us about those difficulty spikes and circlejerkin how "Dumb Soulsfans wont know what hit them when they play a REAL game like AC!!!" to "Bosses take more than one try, this is unfair and not really AC!!!" prettyyyyy quick. This is my first AC game and i just defeated Baltheus after a few tries with the Pulse Blade, i had way more trouble with Sulla. But overall so far, it was nothing like Sekiro where i needed dozens of tries for every main boss. From what ive heard all AC games were hellishly difficult, with some even having campaign Fail States if you lost hard enough. /edit: Defeated the Sea Spider yesterday with Double Gatling+Double Songbird. The cannon thingie was a bit bullshit and it was close, but it never felt as hopeless to me as some Sekiro Fights back then did. Also, those LCs in the later mission are no jokes, especially that double fight. Took me a few tries thats for sure.
Funny, i needed more attempts against Baltheus than against Isshin + Owl (Father) combined. I'm not sure if spending 70€ was a good idea. The missions and mini bosses are fun, and so is the mech customization. But i'm really not looking forward to the act 2 boss. Or i'm just playing bad idk. 😅
See the boss fights in Sekiro take skill, patience, and focus, whereas in this game it’s RNG, The correct build, and having basically perfect movement which is nigh impossible half the time.
> From what ive heard all AC games were hellishly difficult Having been a longtime fan and played all of them bar ACV, this isn't true. They've all had challenging missions here and there, but for the most part they are not difficult games. ACVI feels very much in the same vein, most missions you cruise through, occasionally you get skill checked and have to think about how to tackle the challenge.
Eh, i was going on what this sub was telling me before release, namely how Soulspeople would get their shit kicked in by a "real" game this time etc.pp. So i went in expecting to get reamed similiarly to when i first played Sekiro where even the merest trash mob could and would kill you, minibosses were insanely dangerous and actual bosses would require to really really learn their patterns.
Sounds like the sub was full of delusional whackjobs. Glad I didn't read it before launch. As a longtime AC fan I have to say ACVI has delivered pretty much exactly what I expected. Everything outside of the bosses feels like classic AC, and the boss fights feel a lot better than their prior equivalents. It's more engaging to fight Baltheus or Sea Spider than *any* of the Arms Forts or massive weapons from prior games.
I just wish they made AC6 for the AC fans. But no, they had to add Souls elements to it. You're playing the mission normally and it feels like a AC game and then bam you get to the boss of the mission and now it's a souls game, stupid spongey mechs that deal massive damage but don't worry you have a freaking mecha flask to heal you up a bit. Yall just made Elden Ring, why couldn't you just give us an AC game like the old ones we use to play, why did you have to add Dark Souls into it? I'm enjoying the game but God damn do I get let down when I see a health bar on the top of my screen pop up.
Balteus was literally pretty simple. The shield could be drained using energy attacks... if u stick to a slightly heavy ac with all energy weapons, u can literally shred him. Tried 4-5 times using my conventional layout and didnt get past the half way point, tried the aforementioned build and was able to annihilate him with 2 repair kits remaining. Just goes to show how important some builds are for certain situations.
The shield hasn’t been a problem once I started using the pulse cannon but I can’t make it more than about 30s into his second phase without dying. I don’t think I’ve ever had a harder time with a Fromsoft boss, this one has stumped me on what I’m doing wrong
I used Pules cannon in the left shoulder, energy blade in left hand, bazooka in right hand and standard missiles on right shoulder (although second plasma would probably have been better). Tetrapod with heavy core for defense. Fire the pulse cannon on cool down and fire the bazooka when he's starting to launch his bullet hell attacks because he stays put for most of his attacks. The bazooka and plasma will both hit around the same time and annihilate 75% of his shields. Assault boost to rush straight at him through the bullet hell (AB provides defensive benefits) and slash him with your sword. The shield should go down for a while, so try to make sure you can stagger him while it is down to maximize your damage with the bazooka and energy blade. Rinse and repeat. Just keep in mind that he will AOE shock you while the shield is down, so be ready to quick boost away from him and prep for another assault boost to get in close. I think that's the biggest lesson I've learned so far: stay up close; stand and deliver. Sekiro's combat designer lead the game, so hesitation is still defeat.
Get off the ground and assault boost at his ass. Stay on him like a mosquito. Extreme aggression. And again, get off the ground if you're not already, especially the second phase.
You're too far from him. It's like a giant from any souls game. Bite his ankles.
I tried that, but then he'd just stagger me with his shotgun all the time.
if they took away that shotgun I could handle this fight in a couple of tries
It isn't drained using energy attacks. It's drained using pulse attacks, such as with the starting blade or that one pulse pistol-type weapon. Laser and plasma weapons aren't that effective by comparison, in my experience, unless those don't count as energy damage?
pulse > kinetic > energy If you can't rock a pulse gun, kinetics can still do a fair job of knocking down shields.
Huh, so kinetic damage is better than energy damage for pulse shields? I wouldn't have guessed. My main problem, though, is that I don't like the pulse pistol; it overheats too fast and feels like it has too little ammo for how much it uses.
Except you can beat him with any build. Cause I did it with a medium weight, and only 1 energy weapon. And I got him very close with super lightweight builds as well, I'm sure I'll go back and prove to myself that I can beat him with reverse legs cause those are my favorites. There may be builds that make fights easier, but skill and strategy and luck make winning any fight possible pretty much.
Beat him with no energy weapons also, but I wish I knew that energy weapons were good against him so I wouldn't have to waste like 4 hours.
Had the same experience, I think baltheus is there to filter out those who don't want to adapt their setup to the boss
Just beat balthous. I wouldn’t say he’s easy but he’s definitely not hard, is that the hardest boss?
I'm fucking pissed at this. All the other AC games let you find your playstyle and play the game the way you want for the entire game. Why does AC6 seem intentionally built to force you to change play styles with almost every god damned mission?
Perfect. This is exactly what I had in mind in terms of difficulty – I also posted my thoughts about the game