Part 15: Duel in Desert: Fighting Fefnir

Extra Stage Thoughts

This is a good stage, one of the best we've seen so far. This is entirely due to the fact that it's so simple. There's a bunch of enemies, go kill their asses, that's the gimmick and the objective in one. You not being able to go back is kind of an afterthought, and I do suspect that it's just to avoid trouble with accumulating enemies; they do spawn infinitely, after all.
It's got a basic progression: First, you have to be careful. The camels take a little time to destroy, and there's the bloody spike ball droppers, though those aren't nearly as bad as the balls themselves coming out of nowhere. After you went through that, there's a stretch where you can just have fun. Tons of Pantheons to just mow down, and the tanks, while a beautifully intricate design, are easily sliced through as well. At last, you've got the assault from the chopper, which mixes things up as well as possible in this type of mission by making you defend yourself for a little. The final tank afterwards is just a dick move, though. You're done! Their assualt is stemmed, the reserves defeated! Oh no wait there's one asshole still standing in your way because fuck you. Not cool.

Boss Comments



Attacks

Fefnir can charge up in an instant, which changes the next normal attack he does. It's signified by a white aura. The attacks are ordered by how near he has to be to Zero for them to get activated (with a little overlap for each).

• Gun Uppercut: He charges forward and tries to grab Zero. If it connects, his gun becomes a clamp, and Zero gets shot up in the air with a fireball to the butt. Ouch. Charged Fefnir jumps right after and slams Zero into the ground in one of the most awesome animations of the game. Oh, and double ouch. It's beautifully made just exactly long enough to circumvent your invincibility.
  
• Earth Breaker: Fefnir jumps forward and slams the ground, producing a shockwave. Charged the shockwave is far bigger (but it's still possible to jump it).
  
• Fire Buster: Well, he's got a gun. This has multiple variants: A single shot, two shots right after each other, a triple shot, and finally he can use it during the next attack, aimed directly at Zero. Charged the projectile is always single, fuck-off huge and leaves behind an explosion that can still damage Zero a little while after the shot has hit the ground.
  
• Jump Attack: Fefnir hops a fixed distance towards Zero. As he doesn't aim directly at him, this is pretty hard to avoid, especially as he usually jumps when he's so far away from you that you can't see him. Sometimes shoots at Zero from the peak of his jump for added fun. The hardest attack to deal with, in my opinion. Stay close enough! Charge only changes the nature of the projectile fired, if that happens.
  
• Rain of Fire (EX Skill): Fefnir gains a yellow invincibility-aura (like all the Guardians when they EX out) and fires a stream of shots into the air. They then fall down at random within a certain radius around him and always on the side where Zero is standing. No charge effect.
  This is the worst EX Skill in the game. It makes the entire fight unfun, because suddenly it's completely luck-based if Fefnir will wreck you or be a really cool boss regardless. The main problem is that he can do it whenever he wants. So you want to jump over him because he should be near enough to try and charge? Fuck you he just started to shoot fireballs upwards, you got grilled. Don't jump and wait for his next move? He uses the EX skill, you're cornered and there's simply not enough room to dodge. You're toast, no way around it. And when he is far enough away, you just wasted a shot because invincibility, and he wastes your time majorly. Then his shooting ends, but the balls keep raining. Then he jumps at you while they fall (as he's far away, he'll likely jump), and shoots in mid-air...mhm, have fun dodging that. It's complete bullshit, fuck this stupid attack.

It's such a shame about the EX skill, because otherwise Fefnir is pretty much the best fight in the game, topped maybe by the final boss! Measured mostly in how incredibly complex his attacks are. For every distance to Zero he has multiple ways in which he can act, and while that means that you can manipulate him to a certain degree, a complete lock is really difficult, because you'll have to be really exact for him to do the same thing over and over again. And a little deviation means that he's completely off the rails again. The floor of the arena greatly helps in making the fight even more multi-layered, with the undulating dunes; that way, you can more easily jump over him from the peak of a dune, or hide in one from his fireballs...it just gives you so many options. You can really tackle this every way you want, it's in a completely different league to dross like the Pantheon Core fight. Oh, and for once having a large arena really helps out, compared to Blizzack Staggroff who could just offscreen snipe you all the time. This style of fight is the prevalent one for most of the following bosses in the sequels, and a very large reason for why I love Zero 2 so much.
Oh, and the EX skills get majorly toned down, too. That's also a plus. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. On B-rank or lower, Fefnir is plain fantastic.

And after all of this gameplay talk is said and done, this mission is also a perfect example for how even a simple one as it can tell such a good story. The Resistance is useless, Zero is their only hope again. It's him against an entire army. And you hack them to pieces. Ciel is still worried about Zero's safety, they attack him directly with everything they got, and stand no chance. The enemy commander flies in personally and he's immediately impressed. Eager. Because Fefnir considers himself Zero's equal, and with good reason. Great melee coverage, agility through a dash, a powerful Buster, the ability to charge up: It's a very clear mirror of your own abilities. And your victory through hard work (nobody ever said Fefnir was easy, in fact I consider him the hardest of the Guardians by far) tells you one important thing:
You're better than their best. They had a guy one equal footing and you destroyed him in fair combat.

Then Ciel tells you that you are indeed the legendary hero they've been hoping for all that time. It's almost like the closing of a character arc for Zero: He's been doubted at the start. Proven himself time and time again. And now it's official: He is Zero, the legend.
And Ciel just needed to say one single sentence to make that clear. How's that as a case for shutting the fuck up?


Ranking High

Stage isn't too bad. Tanks can be easily taken out by slashing once, then a half-charged shot, as can be hordes of Pantheons. Be quick in the pit, and no spike balls will spawn (or just go above and farm more at the end but that's boring). You will need to farm, at any point where Pantheons spawn quickly; no way around it, and if you're efficient before, then you'll need to farm even more. Thank God that time is pretty much of no concern. The chopper attack is nasty; I had great success with my Buster tactic, but it's still not perfect. Just a lot of stuff flying at you at once, but still staggered enough so you can't simply bypass it or tank a single hit.
Anyway, all of that is trainable. Then comes Fefnir and does whatever he well pleases with his EX skill and you get ready to curse him. I can't really help you there; my tactic otherwise is clear enough, I think. Stay close, slash and Buster, don't slash twice unless you've got the timing of Buddha (or Violen). It's too easy to think "now I've got him locked" and then he suddenly grabs you because whoops your slash was a little too late you won't interrupt him now. By goading him into either the groundslam or the dash, with a respectful but not too great distance, this should be managable.
Until, as said, he decides to go "fuck you" and EX five times in a row. And each time you run the risk of him jumping/firing out of his fireball cover which is incredibly easy to get him from. So unfair. At least five days of constant failures because of this shit.




Deadzone plays here (like in the base defence against Hittide Hottide [still funny]), and it's still a horrible track for a full-scale mission.