Part 10: Occupy Factory: Guard Orotic
Extra Stage Thoughts
This stage has two gimmicks that are both kind of shitty. The sensor part at the start is annoying as hell because Ciel thinks you're some kind of moron, and it's piss-easy either way so it doesn't even matter. Best to just skip it, because the stage designers thought it bad anyway? I do like that there's multiple ways to tackle the first part. Considering that you get an Elf for it, the back route seems preferred by the game, anyway. Apart from you missing out on the stupid hoppers which you have to make respawn.
The second part is just awful. Either you die an extraordinary amount of time because you don't know what to do (every first time player's experience here) or you do know what to do and it's terribly boring. The main thing to keep in mind is that the spiders over the second transition (where the Elf is inside the little compartment) are complete butts and need to be taken out asap. Jump-slashing can work, but it's a crapshoot and if you get hit once, it's a trip down bottomless lane. Not fun at all. The route back is better, but not good. Don't fall down or you'll hate yourself. Spiders are still butts. Not a good mission.
Boss Comments
Took me a bit to find the name. Five FAQs have five different ones. I took Bean's because he always seems to know what's up! Apparently, the original one would be Orochi-Arm Metalcore, though. That's pretty, well, metal.
Attacks
It moves around and either chooses to use its EX Skill or start a rotation. The right head will act first, then the left, then it rotates another notch, clockwise. You can destroy the heads pretty quickly, but they will regenerate once the empty node reaches the top. It's pointless. Only when its attacking, the exposed Core can be damaged.
- Neutral Yellow Lunge: A simple headbutt attempt. Stay in-between the heads. It's probably the easiest attack to avoid.
- Electric Green Thunderballs: Three shots get fired roughly aimed at Zero. They fly slowly, but cover a relatively large area. Try to not get hit, they do high damage.
- Ice Blue Breath: If you're below the heads, you'll get frozen. Button mash (left and right, I think) to escape.
- Fire Red Flameshots: It's similar to the lunge, but with added fire. Dash away. Hardest phase to hit him in unscathed, but doable, of course.
- Shot Spray (EX Skill): After each head sparks up once, the core will fire quite a number of bullets aimed at Zero. You have to quickly dash away, ideally climb the wall. Pretty tough to time a hit in without getting tagged yourself!
It's a cool idea and design, I quite like it. Sadly, it boils down to a relatively boring fight because it's not much of a threat, and has way too much health. Sadly, destroying the heads doesn't help you any, but you don't need to do it anyway. The EX Skill makes it far more interesting, in my opinion; he can do it far more often than the one time you saw it, and it's far more frantic than the rest of the fight. Good exercise in pattern recognition, though. 100% predictable, of course. It'll always do the same attacks in the same order.
Ranking High
Maybe taking the long route without being seen is a bit faster and gives you more enemies to kill, but definitely not if the clock ticks on while Ciel talks. Anyway, it's annoying. Making the spiders respawn is far more consistent and less of a hassle. I didn't really count how many I need, but it worked out in the end. Time is an issue, so don't spend too long farming. The second part is really not hard at all if you're already good enough to attempt high ranks, and really consistent. Biggest problem is the boss, because his EX Skill takes a while and it's hard to hit him during it. Sadly, that's a luck factor. But overall, pretty doable. My easiest high rank so far, and quite good to boot.
- Hell Plant: I think it's pretty boring. Would, again, work better as cutscene mood-setting and not as a full stage theme.