I may be done with Hades II (Supergiant Games). There will be spoilers throughout the post, but nothing that wasn’t really shown in the first trailer. Well, one thing wasn’t specifically revealed (at least not that I can remember); I’ll ttry to keep that as vague as possible.
*SPOILER*
The big boss down below that does thousand points of damage? There’s no way around that. There’s no trick to it or a way to cheese it; he does that damage no matter what. There are two or three different moves he does that each end up with that thousand points of damage, and the solution is to stand EXACTLY in the spaces that aren’t covered by his bullshit and wait until the bullshit is gone.
I think you can see my issue with this if you’ve read any of my other posts about my biggest difficulties in games. In order to do this, you have to spot the safe spot as the lights are moving, and then race to it in time not to get hit. I read up on the way to fight this boss, and it’s basically hit him once or twice when you can, then race to the tiny spot where you’re safe as he constricts the arena around you, then wait for alllllllllllll that bullshit to go before hitting him once or twice again.
This is the second phase of the fight with the first phase being bullshit, but at least manageable. I have said it before and I’ll say it again–a boss should not be able to one-shot you. At least not if you have a reasonable amount of health. Well, I don’t think at all, but that’s up for debate. In this case, though, it’s an amount of health taken from you that you could not withstand at all.
Here are my issues: I can’t track all the things that are happening on the screen during the boss fight. This is not the first boss fight (or fight in general, actually), in which I find this to be true, but it’s by far the worst. My brain cannot process what is happening as it happens. I’m sure most people have no problem with it, but that’s why it’s called a disability. Even if I wouldn’t give it the ofificial title of ‘disability’, I certainly feel as if it’s one.
I also have depth perception issues, which means that I can’t tell how far or near something is. At least not with precision. Of course, I can tell if something is ten feet from me versus two feet, but three inches versus four? Nope. Add to that the fact that my twitch reflexes are shot, and this game may be too much for me.
I’m feeling very defeated at the moment. I went into the game thinking it might be too much for me. I knew it would take me twice as long (if not three) to do anything in the game that other people did because it always does. This was a thing even before my medical crisis, and it’s certainly an issue now.
There is a raging debate in the gaming community about accessibility. Any time people birng up issues, there’s always someone to counter that game devs get to make the games they make. “Games are for everyone, yes,” they sniff through their aquiline noses. “But every game is not for everyone.”
Which, true. I am not saying that every game is for everyone. I’m not even saying this game needs to be for everyone. I’m just saying I’m really sad it’s probably not going to be for me.
I know, I know. I say this every time I play a hard game. I’ve said it with every FromSoft game I’ve played, and I’ve beaten all of them*. Except, you can summon for all those games save one. And the one in which you can’t (Sekiro), that’s the one that I could not play start to finish now.
I’ve mentioned a time or a hundred that I’m stubborn. That means that I will probably bash my head against the two bosses of this game that are currently bothering me several dozen more times, maybe even more, before I give up. When I played Have a Nice Death (Magic Design Studios), I could not beat the true final boss no matter what. Hell, I could not even get to the true final boss more than a handful of times–and this was with hundreds of run. And on easy mode. I would have kept trying except another game came along, and I completely gave up on that one.
I think I’m pretty close to giving up on this game. I’m so defeated with one of the bosses. I think I might be able to get the other boss (and I’m not even sure it’s the final boss of that route. In fact, my guess would be that it’s not? Which, great. Just great).
Look. I’m going to say something controversial. Supergiant went past the line. They bought into the hype about having HARD bosses, and I’m not pleased with it. I’m not trying to tell them what to do; I’m just expressing my feelings about the game. I wish they would take the one-shot kill moves out of the one boss fight. Put it in the heats run if you must (that’s when you add difficulties to the runs, and they each have a different number of heat). I have not seen that yet in this game, but I’m assuming it’s there eventually.
I thought the final boss of the first game was impossible, too, but that boss did not have a bullshit one-shot kill. It was not a fun fight, but there were ways to get past it simply by stacking up on Athena’s boons. As I mentioned in an earlier post, that’s not possible in this game. You can only get one Athena boon, and I never used her boons with precision.
I’ve read tips and guides on beating these two bosess, but none of them mention what to do of you have terrible reactions. I get that most people with my issues would not play this kind of game, but I don’t think that should be an excuse not to even try. I have read people bringing up the visual noise issue and the fact that there are no audio cues for when an enemy hits you. I don’t like either of these, but, again, I just accept that I’m going to get hit more often than not.
This is the game I was really looking forward to this year. And I got a lot out of it! But that doesn’t take the sting off the fact that I may never beat the two bosses I’m stuck on.
*Except Armored Core VI Fires of the Rubicon.