u/OldSodaHunter

To be short, I only have one friend who plays this game IRL. He's really encouraged me to get into it (we've been playing online for the same length of time, so he isn't more experienced at the game just been playing paper a smidge longer).

These are the decks he plays.

Umi Stun. Enneacraft. Kashtira. Mimighoul. Lair of darkness (with all the virus cards).

That's a small sampling but uhh, we'll just say that all of these decks are extremely unfun to play against, like, completely miserable. He constantly talks to me about the game, always hyping up how I should/could build various decks, and then we play and it's just stun. Every time. He doesn't understand how this isn't fun for me, we're literally playing at home by ourselves with no stakes at all.

I also only have extremely budget decks - the legendary 5DS decks are 3 of my 4 and they are hardly even upgraded, like one or two newer support cards I've found in each deck.

Anyways, for this reason I find the game in the way I am able to play it completely miserable to play, and it's making me hate it entirely. I know this isn't really a question about the mechanics of the game, but if this is my reality it feels like I'm better off just not playing at all.

Edit: I have now finished my first playthrough and yeah, I think this ibis boss was the hardest one. But hoooooly peak. The last act of this game was fucking phenomenal. Time for more playthroughs

Because this boss is taking a piping hot shit on me. Ignoring the dread of whatever comes after this which remains to be seen, this is the hardest thing in the game by such a fat margin. This makes every single mission and boss before this look like candy land.

I'm really curious about which bosses are generally considered the hard ones in this game, in every fromsoft game I almost always have the opposite experience to common consensus and I'm itching to know. I should really wait till I finish the game to be thinking about that but that is not going to happen for awhile at the rate I'm going.

Aaaaannnnyways this game is peak and fucking amazing, one of the most difficult experiences imaginable sure but at least it's like the best looking game ever while I'm getting my ass handed to me!

Have to do a quick edit because I posted this less than an hour ago and have already gotten a ton of varied, helpful, and positive advice. You guys are great!

Started playing a few days ago, and there have been plenty of speed bumps already, but gotten through them. The rival AC you fight in the last mission of chapter 1 before the real boss, and Smart Cleaner have been probably the worst so far (aside from the tutorial boss filtering me until I figured out the combat generally).

But I am now at the "prevent delivery of the observational data" mission in chapter two, and it has actually set a new record for me in frustration, I had to go for a walk and come back. Then did it again.

Any advice it welcome. I have tried every single weapon I have available, every sequencing of strategy and approach, and not gotten remotely close. There's some butthead enemy with a shield that takes zero damage from every single thing I can throw at it, and the entire time it is literally pissing out missiles at me on top of the other enemies around.

I'm completely lost. I've never been stuck on any level to this degree in my life. I knew to expect difficult because, fromsoft, but this dwarfs anything else I've experienced from them.

Spoilers! In case the tag doesn't work right.

Tl;Dr VoR4 in the underworld is top 5 most fun and most butt clenching experience I've had in any game, ever. 11/10. Miraculous first attempt at it, and I'm just way too giddy at how fun that was.

Got this game a few weeks ago, huge fan and obsessive player of the first game. This sequel has felt mostly harder, but in one particular niche way I'm enjoying it more - boss fights much more often come down to the skin of my teeth! In the first game, a good build often meant the bosses were easy as heck, even on high heat, EM4 etc. while a not so good build, you kinda could tell it would be bad.

Income the sequel, and maybe recency bias here, but certain bosses are way more exhilirating even after many fights! In particular, in regards to the title...

HOLY SHIT VoR 4 underworld boss. Maybe the coolest fight, and maybe the hardest, across both games.. I just fought him for the first time, used all my DD during the second phase (did NOT expect the one shot to happen b2b and time freezing, so cool, already heart is beating like crazy). Then as expected a third phase, that I make it to with like 50 HP.

And then thanks to my GOAT Area I was able to win this first attempt because of that boon that lets you heal up to 40 when under.. but I had to play really reckless and spammy, so it's an absolute miracle I won. I'm positive I'm gonna lose to that fight a ton of times in the future, you know since time flows freely and all.

Anyways, that's all, this game is awesome, all the VoR are super creative and make it way more exciting (done them all except VoR 4 surface).

How. Just, how. I played this as a kid and I am currently completely confused and gaslit as to how I was able to ever beat it. I'm having a harder time with it now than I've had with any other games - I've been stuck on one opponent in chronicle 16 for... Let's just say a really long time. Longer than I've ever been stuck on a boss or level or etc.

The arena has that effect that constantly pushes you away from the opponent, so none of my moves can close the distance fast enough to not get hit. If I ever land a single jab the pull away effect makes my next hit whiff.

The opponent has always regenerating HP. My hits do tiny fractions of damage (like my biggest possible burst of damage move would still take 7 or 8 times without the healing to win). Their attacks do massive chunks, so even a single kick takes about five hits to kill me.

The cherry on top is they get a perfect on me about 80% of attempts - every single attack I throw gets blocked. I've planned specific starts to the fight and tried different openings and the opponent blocks anything I do in any setting. I've tried using the "AI" breaker moves that I know of/have access to and the separating arena effect makes them miss.

I'm gonna go nuts. It's the enemy Konomi. I have tried every possible strategy, every weapon I have access to, every character, and can't even do an eighth of the HP bar. I think it might actually be impossible, if not for the fact that I somehow did this years and years ago and there are videos of other people doing it (that are not able to be replicated in my case)

Been running an ABB double steel, shadow flygon, forrestress, and corviknight. Been pretty effective for the frequent tinkaton and mawile showing up. First time an ABB team has seemed functional in awhile for me.

That said been having a really rough time whenever a stunfisk shows up - a pretty common team has been azumarill lead, turtonator and stunfisk in the back. Been swapping to corviknight to draw out the fire (turt), getting some damage on it then bringing in flygon to farm it down. Gives me a lot of energy to throw at azumarill.

About here is where I'm not sure of the best play - what I've been doing is catching a move onto forrestress to save a shield, but I'm thinking maybe using all shields on flygon would be better? Because when I catch on forrestress it just becomes a game of "does their third beat forrestress?" and that's been usually a yes. Stunfisk especially since the volt switches do nothing.

In general this is the struggle I have with ABB teams sometimes - the counter drawing out works but my second B vs their third thing is often not a good matchup, and it's hard to tell if I should preserve the A or the B to go against their 3rd mon