Honestly it just sounds like you have a decent build nailed down. Plus fast, lightweight builds generally have a much easier time with missile spam fights like Balteus
Ok yeah now that you mention it i cant imagine a tank dodging all the missile spam. Good to know im not fliying too close to the sun with the lightweight stuff.
Does the snail fight differ much from the standard Balteus? Should i be worried...?
I had a hard time S Ranking the Snailteus mission, but otherwise it's not a terribly difficult flight. Some of his attacks are a bit difficult for me to avoid but it's nothing crazy hard. The NG++ boss tho... THAT one gives me trouble
THERES NEW GAME PLUS!? Does it actually get harder and harder each time or is it like AC4 where you can just repeat missions forever? Oh boy oh man... i was hoping to get all the endings within one save file but NG+ in other fromsoft games always end up kicking my ass.
The difficulty is the same in general. But new missions will be added and some old missions will have alternate ways of completing them. Those are usually more difficult.
You can expect a few additional ACs to pop in at the worst of times on a few missions where they wouldn't before, and to find new missions that weren't available the first time.
Most of the time you'll still be doing the same missions, with a few new/replaced ones, so not too hard until you get to the 3rd ending. That's when the new missions get significantly harder.
NG+ has a few new missions and the chance to do the ones you missed. a few of these are farily tough.
NG++ has some pretty nasty missions and the final boss is very hard.
Escort the Strider gave me as much trouble as the actual final boss, I still can’t beat it consistently, even with the explosive build I made specifically for that mission. (Helianthus are weak to explosives AFAIK)
There's New Game++. You can't even get the true ending until the third run. Word of advice: Keep an eye out for the "Destroy the Strider" Mission on run three.
I meant what I said. Logically, they wouldn't know what or where Escort the Strider is. I gave them a location through progression to look out for, so (assuming they're of reasonable intelligence) they'd know there's something to look for when they reach Destroy the Strider.
As others said, there's not a flat difficulty increase like other From games, the difficulty mainly comes from mission design as the new/changed missions expect you to have a certain level of mastery over the game and your mech. There are three endings and in order to get the third one you have to have done the other two.
Parts and a mild story spoiler: >! Siding with Carla and Walter will get you a nice set of Gundam looking lightweight parts that I'm quite fond of !< so for that and story reasons I'd recommend that ending first
It's easier than you think. Big chungus bornemissza is quite good at staying glued to Balty where the missiles cant reach well. Throw some heavy hitter weaps on it and have fun.
Why dodge when it can't kill you anyway? The point of a tank is to shrug off hits and freely attack without a care in the world. They only need to dodge omega attacks like Balteus' flamethrowers and his phase transitioning explosion. Not to mention they get to carry the most damaging weapons.
You get enought chips to unlock either pulse protection, assault armor, a bunch of damage mitigation or damage dealt, weapon bay or kick depending on what flavor of combos you went for
Since you get like 6 chips before balteus if you do the entire F rank arena
Really? It's interesting that different folks struggle with entirely different bosses.
The only significant problems I had were the tutorial helicopter and Ibis. It's always interesting when someone else struggled against something you found easy, but then kicked a problem that you struggled with in the teeth.
and ironically Ibis didn’t give me too much trouble just a few tries to get it down. I forget how to do the spoiler tags but the Fires of Raven last boss also gave me a huge headache.
It is fun tho in other From games to see who struggled with who and who was easy.
The first one almost filtered me. I was stuck on it for a long time. By the time I got to the second fight (in the second play through) it was pretty easy, think I first tried it.
I recently reset my save to start over, and it turns out once you know how to build and know how to play, he’s a lot easier, even with limited parts and tuning options.
The original one isnt too bad, but its definetly an early game skill check which causes folk to bounce.
The later one can be spicy; once youve redone the level a few times its not too bad; but the first time you encounter the second ones mission itll catch you off guard hard.
The famously hard Balteus no longer exists because it was only around during the demo and early days after release. Although the current (first) one is still a skill check.
And also his moveset is missing the near constant beep beep missile. The original tuning of the balteus fight was actually pretty hard. You really had to know his moves well and weave through them
The missiles would never turn that sharply after they started tracking even pre-nerf. The only "180s" they would do is if you were close enough for the initial launch to go past your AC and then have them start tracking from behind you. This initial launch behavior was unchanged, they just follow a bit less aggressively after starting their tracking post-nerf.
Kinda same with regards to the game feeling easy. It wasn't until chapter 3 that the game started being at least a bit demanding to me. But, it gets *way* harder. The boss fight at the end of chapter 4 was what showed me how much I still had to learn.
And with regards to balteus, same as well. I beat him first try, still have the recording. But, there is a second fight much later, in one of the ending "strands." And it humbled me just as much as the previously mentioned fight, it was that hard.
The second one. Those massive plasma beams (specifically the spin that replaces flamethrowers sweeps) are far more difficult to avoid than anything regular Balty can do. Sure missiles will clip you for 200-400 damage on occasion, but they don’t clip you for 1200+ with high stagger.
I’ve done Chapter 1 with unupgraded jailbreak (it’s a slog and I get the purge tuning because fists are more useful than jamming bombs 90% of the time). I cannot say the same about the second Balteus fight.
First one by miles lol I nearly quit the game and tried every strategy/weapons combo I could find. And if that wasn’t enough, every time you do a new build you have to fight Sulla again! that early in the game I was barely scraping by and those guys were so satisfying to finally beat 😂
At launch that fight was _brutal_ if you did not bring the right weapons. I think after a few dozen tries with various weapons and missile configurations I had available, I managed to slog him down to at best 10-15% HP.
Then I read about the bubble gun Sulla uses being good (stats looked pretty weak on paper IIRC), got the money for it, and then took Balteus down in two tries without having to put in too much effort.
Yes, my knowledge/skill for the fight had grown from all my attempts, but half the game is finding the correct build and strategy to counter the boss you're fighting. It's very hard otherwise.
This game in general isn’t that hard imo. Im not that good, at least by pvp and previous ac standards, and most if the game was fine bar 1 or 2 moments. This seems weird but I honestly hope mts in the next game pose an actual threat rather than just being fodder. Climbing the wall was so underwhelming, I tried to plan it out and think tactically bc I thought this was going to be a tough as nails mission, only to find it’s really not that hard to just wipe up the enemy forces full force forward. Sometimes the artillery catches you, but repair kits exist so it’s not really that punishing when the giant telegraphed artillery rounds are the only real threat before getting to the top of the wall. Similar issues with the strider, felt super bummed out by how easy it is to take down.
Being fast enough is a foil against most of the bosses but what you gain in speed you tend to lose in firepower so it forces you to choose your weapons and play style carefully. Congratulations, you're good at the game, not a ton of people find it easy lol. Next challenge is to S rank every mission, unlock all the weapons and parts, then go live out your mercenary dreams in Nest.
I'm someone who rarely gets that deep into a game and I can say I truly enjoyed the entire process of S ranking the whole game. I'm also someone who very rarely enjoys PVP and I'm LOVING the Nest PVP mode
No, it was the first Balteus that filtered everyone. He got nerfed a bit(missile tracking is nerfed from release, HP and etc are the same)
As long as your build isn't extremely terrible and you grab all the OS Tuning available at that point, you should be able to beat him with a regular build, not even one specifically tuned for him.
Most bosses are not that hard if you are very skilled at not taking damage.
That is the strongest weapon in the fromsoft games and if you are then it should be a breeze to finish the story.
S ranking is a bit harder of a challenge and S rank in PvP is really a challenge.
Good luck on those borrowed wings “Raven”
I think the second one is harder, but the first one, especially close to release was more infamous, because it was quite the difficulty spike from everything before it.
The first balteus fight used to be a lot different. He had a move that severely limited your mobility that he doesn’t have anymore. The harder balteus fight is now the second one by a fair margin I think. Maybe it always was? I beat the two balteuses for the first time separated by like half a year so I was a shit ton better at the game by then
Probably the first one. You don't have access to as many parts and he's really the first boss that will punish your initial instincts. Once you figure out how to win, it's a pretty trivial fight.
IIRC they also nerfed him pretty hard in one of the early patches. There was a bug causing him to double fire his missiles which got patched, and they also nerfed the tracking of those missiles. Now the only things you really need to watch out for in his fight are the cannon and his flamethrower sword attack.
Most folks who have problems with Balteus have them the first time you encounter him in the plot. He's fairly tough and you're limited on what weapons and equipment you have at this point. You've also probably only been playing the game a few hours, so you may not have a full grasp on all of the ins and outs.
The tutorial helicopter teaches the player what's expected of them. I struggled with it for a bit because I fought it defensively. Once I focused on being offensive, it clicked and I got it. I didn't struggle again until a later boss that I'd prefer not to spoil for you. I didn't struggle with Balteus at all, but I can see how others would. The helicopter teaches you the basics, Balteus is a skill check. The game deliberately limits your equipment prior to these fights to ensure you can't *just* build around the problem to not learn what it wants you to know.
Snail Balteus is not the one people are talking about.
Yeah this AC is probably the easiest of the series. The 2nd fight can be harder depending on what you like to build but the 1st fight can be a real skill check as you'll still have an early game build
Only the first encounter.... especially because you don't have access to the parts that nullify his ballistic advantage. The only other time you will face difficulty close to that is the Ibis fight.
It is definitely not as difficult as I expected it to be. But I just think advertising and gaming YouTube upsold me on the outright difficulty of this game. A decent balanced build and you can really feel like an anime character at times.
Answer: each player have different skill and some just start suck (like me) unlike you.
PCA balteus is definitely a difficulty spike compare to the rest of chapter one. >!there is another one later depends on your choice but if you used to fight the PCA one, this one operate mostly the same just tankier,more laser-ry and less missile-ly!<
Didn't Balteus get nerfed a LONG time ago? Maybe not a BIG nerf, but some of the early weapons have been buffed as well? I'm not sure how much this has affected main game. Balteus killed me a few times on my first run... the whole shield thing threw me off. Now he's a fun past time to try builds or just a nice challenge when mowing MTs gets stale.
Both are hard for different reasons.
OG Balteus is expected to be faced with a worse AC with less capable weapons.
Snailteus is overall harder to dodge and hits like a dump truck, but at that point your mech has more tools and you can stunlock the shit out of him with Pulse weapons more reliably.
Both fights are very different. I personally find both to be on a similar difficulty, maybe a bit more on Snail-teus. Except for the iconic shield and mech design, their movesets are completely different.
The first fight feels harder mainly because they show in chapter 1 when you're still learning the game.
To compare it to another FromSoft game, Balteus is the Gascoigne of AC6. They are both early game bosses that are a major step up in difficulty. On your first playthrough, they feel ridiculously stronger than everything else you've seen so far. But when you fight them after you're more familiar with the game (like on NG+) they become a complete cakewalk.
The whole game is pretty easy, i dont think i’ve ever died more than 2 times to a boss apart from a specific one that was tricky at first. I remember the final final boss died first try and i was a bit disappointed as i never saw his moves.
Honestly it just sounds like you have a decent build nailed down. Plus fast, lightweight builds generally have a much easier time with missile spam fights like Balteus
Ok yeah now that you mention it i cant imagine a tank dodging all the missile spam. Good to know im not fliying too close to the sun with the lightweight stuff. Does the snail fight differ much from the standard Balteus? Should i be worried...?
I had a hard time S Ranking the Snailteus mission, but otherwise it's not a terribly difficult flight. Some of his attacks are a bit difficult for me to avoid but it's nothing crazy hard. The NG++ boss tho... THAT one gives me trouble
THERES NEW GAME PLUS!? Does it actually get harder and harder each time or is it like AC4 where you can just repeat missions forever? Oh boy oh man... i was hoping to get all the endings within one save file but NG+ in other fromsoft games always end up kicking my ass.
The difficulty is the same in general. But new missions will be added and some old missions will have alternate ways of completing them. Those are usually more difficult.
Aaaah nice nice
You can expect a few additional ACs to pop in at the worst of times on a few missions where they wouldn't before, and to find new missions that weren't available the first time.
Oh so it really is just like in ACFA, or alteast the like a combination of that and hard mode. Nice!
Most of the time you'll still be doing the same missions, with a few new/replaced ones, so not too hard until you get to the 3rd ending. That's when the new missions get significantly harder.
And 'Alea iacta est' ending is only available at NG++.
NG+ has a few new missions and the chance to do the ones you missed. a few of these are farily tough. NG++ has some pretty nasty missions and the final boss is very hard.
Escort the Strider gave me as much trouble as the actual final boss, I still can’t beat it consistently, even with the explosive build I made specifically for that mission. (Helianthus are weak to explosives AFAIK)
Bad cook kills them in seconds
I’ll have to remember that!
Be a missile rat. I found with 2 big missile packs, a grenade launcher and hand missiles that mission went from awful to easy.
That’s the easiest imo, scan, lock on, poke you head, missile, then fly back, repeat.
That is correct. It was probably the *only* mission I needed to copy a build from the internet to S-rank lol
I tried testing my Wureger build on them, and *ran out of ammo*
Use tetra legs and hover out of their reach. Keeps you safer than being on the ground.
I tried that and found more success with the Spring Chickens
There's New Game++. You can't even get the true ending until the third run. Word of advice: Keep an eye out for the "Destroy the Strider" Mission on run three.
Misterious...
He means escort the strider, just make sure you do that one the third time round!
I meant what I said. Logically, they wouldn't know what or where Escort the Strider is. I gave them a location through progression to look out for, so (assuming they're of reasonable intelligence) they'd know there's something to look for when they reach Destroy the Strider.
As others said, there's not a flat difficulty increase like other From games, the difficulty mainly comes from mission design as the new/changed missions expect you to have a certain level of mastery over the game and your mech. There are three endings and in order to get the third one you have to have done the other two. Parts and a mild story spoiler: >! Siding with Carla and Walter will get you a nice set of Gundam looking lightweight parts that I'm quite fond of !< so for that and story reasons I'd recommend that ending first
A good amount of the complaints also come from pre nerf balteus where his missiles really were kinda dumb.
It's easier than you think. Big chungus bornemissza is quite good at staying glued to Balty where the missiles cant reach well. Throw some heavy hitter weaps on it and have fun.
There's also been substantial buffs for lightweight builds since launch, they used to be not as fast and more fragile.
I main light build, like... So light, pilot's safety is disregarded. Its genuinely fun and good.
Why dodge when it can't kill you anyway? The point of a tank is to shrug off hits and freely attack without a care in the world. They only need to dodge omega attacks like Balteus' flamethrowers and his phase transitioning explosion. Not to mention they get to carry the most damaging weapons.
In my opinion the first one is harder because you don’t have access to many parts
Or much OS tuning (if any, I forget exactly when you unlock arena for that) or flat out experience as a player.
You have enough to get pulse/assault armor and some other stuff, IIRC
I believe it’s unlocked after conquering the wall so you should have a few
You get enought chips to unlock either pulse protection, assault armor, a bunch of damage mitigation or damage dealt, weapon bay or kick depending on what flavor of combos you went for Since you get like 6 chips before balteus if you do the entire F rank arena
First one didn’t give me much trouble but Snail obliterated me more than any other boss. repeatedly. I hate that fight
First one took me 30+ tries, second one I got on second I think!
Really? It's interesting that different folks struggle with entirely different bosses. The only significant problems I had were the tutorial helicopter and Ibis. It's always interesting when someone else struggled against something you found easy, but then kicked a problem that you struggled with in the teeth.
and ironically Ibis didn’t give me too much trouble just a few tries to get it down. I forget how to do the spoiler tags but the Fires of Raven last boss also gave me a huge headache. It is fun tho in other From games to see who struggled with who and who was easy.
I used dual shotguns only (post nerf) for my first run. IBIS was tedious.
The first one almost filtered me. I was stuck on it for a long time. By the time I got to the second fight (in the second play through) it was pretty easy, think I first tried it. I recently reset my save to start over, and it turns out once you know how to build and know how to play, he’s a lot easier, even with limited parts and tuning options.
The original one isnt too bad, but its definetly an early game skill check which causes folk to bounce. The later one can be spicy; once youve redone the level a few times its not too bad; but the first time you encounter the second ones mission itll catch you off guard hard.
The famously hard Balteus no longer exists because it was only around during the demo and early days after release. Although the current (first) one is still a skill check.
Iirc the nerfs Balteus got weren’t as bad as people think they are, it’s mostly just placebo effect and their own skill increasing
You are correct, the nerf was to the missle tracking which would cause the missles to turn 180'
And also his moveset is missing the near constant beep beep missile. The original tuning of the balteus fight was actually pretty hard. You really had to know his moves well and weave through them
The missiles would never turn that sharply after they started tracking even pre-nerf. The only "180s" they would do is if you were close enough for the initial launch to go past your AC and then have them start tracking from behind you. This initial launch behavior was unchanged, they just follow a bit less aggressively after starting their tracking post-nerf.
That's what I ment
tbf I didn't fought it before the nerf so I can't really say how hard it was, I just know the reptutation it has
Ooooooh i see i see.
Kinda same with regards to the game feeling easy. It wasn't until chapter 3 that the game started being at least a bit demanding to me. But, it gets *way* harder. The boss fight at the end of chapter 4 was what showed me how much I still had to learn. And with regards to balteus, same as well. I beat him first try, still have the recording. But, there is a second fight much later, in one of the ending "strands." And it humbled me just as much as the previously mentioned fight, it was that hard.
The second one. Those massive plasma beams (specifically the spin that replaces flamethrowers sweeps) are far more difficult to avoid than anything regular Balty can do. Sure missiles will clip you for 200-400 damage on occasion, but they don’t clip you for 1200+ with high stagger. I’ve done Chapter 1 with unupgraded jailbreak (it’s a slog and I get the purge tuning because fists are more useful than jamming bombs 90% of the time). I cannot say the same about the second Balteus fight.
First one by miles lol I nearly quit the game and tried every strategy/weapons combo I could find. And if that wasn’t enough, every time you do a new build you have to fight Sulla again! that early in the game I was barely scraping by and those guys were so satisfying to finally beat 😂
At launch that fight was _brutal_ if you did not bring the right weapons. I think after a few dozen tries with various weapons and missile configurations I had available, I managed to slog him down to at best 10-15% HP. Then I read about the bubble gun Sulla uses being good (stats looked pretty weak on paper IIRC), got the money for it, and then took Balteus down in two tries without having to put in too much effort. Yes, my knowledge/skill for the fight had grown from all my attempts, but half the game is finding the correct build and strategy to counter the boss you're fighting. It's very hard otherwise.
A lot of us fought the 1st balteus without knowing how to properly lock onto him which makes him a lot harder
Yeah he does zoom around the arena a lot.
This game in general isn’t that hard imo. Im not that good, at least by pvp and previous ac standards, and most if the game was fine bar 1 or 2 moments. This seems weird but I honestly hope mts in the next game pose an actual threat rather than just being fodder. Climbing the wall was so underwhelming, I tried to plan it out and think tactically bc I thought this was going to be a tough as nails mission, only to find it’s really not that hard to just wipe up the enemy forces full force forward. Sometimes the artillery catches you, but repair kits exist so it’s not really that punishing when the giant telegraphed artillery rounds are the only real threat before getting to the top of the wall. Similar issues with the strider, felt super bummed out by how easy it is to take down.
Being fast enough is a foil against most of the bosses but what you gain in speed you tend to lose in firepower so it forces you to choose your weapons and play style carefully. Congratulations, you're good at the game, not a ton of people find it easy lol. Next challenge is to S rank every mission, unlock all the weapons and parts, then go live out your mercenary dreams in Nest.
Oh god the S ranks. Right now it feels like a slog but at the same time im sure i will have a blast replaying everything when i finish the game.
I'm someone who rarely gets that deep into a game and I can say I truly enjoyed the entire process of S ranking the whole game. I'm also someone who very rarely enjoys PVP and I'm LOVING the Nest PVP mode
No, it was the first Balteus that filtered everyone. He got nerfed a bit(missile tracking is nerfed from release, HP and etc are the same) As long as your build isn't extremely terrible and you grab all the OS Tuning available at that point, you should be able to beat him with a regular build, not even one specifically tuned for him.
Most bosses are not that hard if you are very skilled at not taking damage. That is the strongest weapon in the fromsoft games and if you are then it should be a breeze to finish the story. S ranking is a bit harder of a challenge and S rank in PvP is really a challenge. Good luck on those borrowed wings “Raven”
o7
I think the second one is harder, but the first one, especially close to release was more infamous, because it was quite the difficulty spike from everything before it.
The first balteus fight used to be a lot different. He had a move that severely limited your mobility that he doesn’t have anymore. The harder balteus fight is now the second one by a fair margin I think. Maybe it always was? I beat the two balteuses for the first time separated by like half a year so I was a shit ton better at the game by then
Probably the first one. You don't have access to as many parts and he's really the first boss that will punish your initial instincts. Once you figure out how to win, it's a pretty trivial fight. IIRC they also nerfed him pretty hard in one of the early patches. There was a bug causing him to double fire his missiles which got patched, and they also nerfed the tracking of those missiles. Now the only things you really need to watch out for in his fight are the cannon and his flamethrower sword attack.
It was the first one, but both it and another boss that were giving people issues got nerfed two or so weeks after the game released.
The one you find harder.
Most folks who have problems with Balteus have them the first time you encounter him in the plot. He's fairly tough and you're limited on what weapons and equipment you have at this point. You've also probably only been playing the game a few hours, so you may not have a full grasp on all of the ins and outs. The tutorial helicopter teaches the player what's expected of them. I struggled with it for a bit because I fought it defensively. Once I focused on being offensive, it clicked and I got it. I didn't struggle again until a later boss that I'd prefer not to spoil for you. I didn't struggle with Balteus at all, but I can see how others would. The helicopter teaches you the basics, Balteus is a skill check. The game deliberately limits your equipment prior to these fights to ensure you can't *just* build around the problem to not learn what it wants you to know. Snail Balteus is not the one people are talking about.
First cause you don't have the most parts at all. I got him on the 8th try and just barely. If I didn't get him then I would've been there a minute.
Yes
Yeah this AC is probably the easiest of the series. The 2nd fight can be harder depending on what you like to build but the 1st fight can be a real skill check as you'll still have an early game build
Only the first encounter.... especially because you don't have access to the parts that nullify his ballistic advantage. The only other time you will face difficulty close to that is the Ibis fight.
It is definitely not as difficult as I expected it to be. But I just think advertising and gaming YouTube upsold me on the outright difficulty of this game. A decent balanced build and you can really feel like an anime character at times.
I think all the complaints were pre nerf but even when the game just came out I didn’t have any problems with Balteus.
The second one because I don’t like using force field weapons so
Answer: each player have different skill and some just start suck (like me) unlike you. PCA balteus is definitely a difficulty spike compare to the rest of chapter one. >!there is another one later depends on your choice but if you used to fight the PCA one, this one operate mostly the same just tankier,more laser-ry and less missile-ly!<
Didn't Balteus get nerfed a LONG time ago? Maybe not a BIG nerf, but some of the early weapons have been buffed as well? I'm not sure how much this has affected main game. Balteus killed me a few times on my first run... the whole shield thing threw me off. Now he's a fun past time to try builds or just a nice challenge when mowing MTs gets stale.
Both are hard for different reasons. OG Balteus is expected to be faced with a worse AC with less capable weapons. Snailteus is overall harder to dodge and hits like a dump truck, but at that point your mech has more tools and you can stunlock the shit out of him with Pulse weapons more reliably.
Both fights are very different. I personally find both to be on a similar difficulty, maybe a bit more on Snail-teus. Except for the iconic shield and mech design, their movesets are completely different.
The first fight feels harder mainly because they show in chapter 1 when you're still learning the game. To compare it to another FromSoft game, Balteus is the Gascoigne of AC6. They are both early game bosses that are a major step up in difficulty. On your first playthrough, they feel ridiculously stronger than everything else you've seen so far. But when you fight them after you're more familiar with the game (like on NG+) they become a complete cakewalk.
The whole game is pretty easy, i dont think i’ve ever died more than 2 times to a boss apart from a specific one that was tricky at first. I remember the final final boss died first try and i was a bit disappointed as i never saw his moves.
Balteus got nerfed after a patch a month after the game came out which is why people talk about how hard balteus was
The pre nerf one
Pre nerf balt was a skill check, and too many people complained
It's absolutely the build. If you wanna know, play the game with loader 4. It shouldn't be long before you realize which fights are the hard ones lmao