The Surge 2 is pretty good so far, but the boss fights make me want to scream

[pleaseinsertdisctwo]

EDIT: nvm not only have I gotten parries (mostly) down, but I was able to get Level IX gear early and everything has become largely easy lol

Honestly my only complaints about the game now are:

1. Story is only kind of interesting because I can't be assed to listen to the audio logs. I absolutely HATE audio logs in games.

2. The maps are just headache inducing honestly. Each area has like 9 shortcuts and it's cool that it's so interconnected but at the same time they really went way too far in this aspect, like it's obnoxious. I feel like the Souls games' maps are babyishly linear in comparison lol. Over here you turn your camera 5 degrees and there's like 2 other routes you can take and in the middle of one of those routes there's another 4 and for each of those 4 routes there's another 2

 

[Deleted member 29682]

Little Johnny is probably the only boss that needs you to do specific things to progress and can't just brute force. He's a bit of a bastard. For posterity I talked about my strategy in the OT a year or two ago:

Leave the legs till last, since they're the trickiest to hit. Focus on the tanks on his front but try to attack from his side rather than his front, in order to avoid his double-claw flurries and ram attack. He'll still attack with the closest claw now and then but it's a single swipe and you can dodge away or around him fairly easily.

Once the front tanks are done with focus on the claws from the same positions at the side (if you want his weapon: if you destroy all his tanks before the claws then he won't drop it). He'll get a poison spray attack so either load up on poison protection or avoid it since it's well telegraphed. Beware that once his claws are destroyed he can still attack with the stubs.

Lastly the tanks on the legs: the front two you'll want to bait him into releasing mines or slamming his body down as he'll keep his legs still and won't attack with them (which is quick and hard to react to). For the back leg you'll want to bait him into doing that flip-forward step, as the back leg will be still and in easy reach half-way through the flip.

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To be honest, I abandoned parrying pretty early on in favour of a dodge build.

 

[pleaseinsertdisctwo]

Little Johnny is probably the only boss that needs you to do specific things to progress and can't just brute force. He's a bit of a bastard. For posterity I talked about my strategy in the OT a year or two ago:



To be honest, I abandoned parrying pretty early on in favour of a dodge build.

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I think that's what I'll do. I absolutely hate the parrying in this game. From what I can tell, if you mess up parrying the first attack in a combo there's almost no way you'll recover and parry the rest of the attacks. Super dumb and frustrating

 

[Deleted member 29682]

I think that's what I'll do. I absolutely hate the parrying in this game. From what I can tell, if you mess up parrying the first attack in a combo there's almost no way you'll recover and parry the rest of the attacks. Super dumb and frustrating

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Would you believe the parrying was worse in the first game? You could only really hop or duck certain attacks (with no indicators) and had to time not just that perfectly, but also a follow-up attack to actually knock the enemy off balance. In two games where you can be really fast and mobile, parrying never really appealed to me. It's very powerful if you get it right but once you get bosses who need multiple consecutive parries the risk is rarely worth the reward.

 

[SmittyWerbenManJensen]

I didn't parry until I got to Delver. It makes the fight more bearable and actually incredibly thrilling. Quickly became one of my favorite bosses.

Parry the Delver. Trust me.

 

[dirtyjane]

The game gave me motion sickness like no other game did, couldn't even finish the tutorial area.

 

[sandweed]

My bigest gripe was that the Iron Mouse quest bugged out and the game denied me a platinum.

 

[Bede-x]

It's bordering on obnoxious, especially since there's no fast travel in the game.

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This is obviously spoiler territory, but

Spoiler

there kinda is. It's very late game and only to three locations if I remember correctly. The game is quite remarkable in it's layout, so when you're meant to backtrack later on, they'll give you other ways of doing so, before you finally get a little fast travel. Very late game and limited to and from a few specific points.

I also feel like the menus are messy and cluttered; looking at the crafting and upgrading screens give me a headache.

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They are actually extremely precise and informative, when you get used to them, easily laying out the what the player needs to know and making changes between sets fast.

Little Johnny is literally one of the worst boss fights I've experienced in recent memory. Absolutely fucking horrid.

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He's kinda like the gatekeeper to the rest of the game. This is the place they want to make sure you've learned how to parry and in addition to that, he requires a specific order of targeting him to take down easily, otherwise he'll be out of control in the final phases. They try to remind you of the targeting system for that reason, just before you enter the fight.

It is possible to get by him and other bosses without learning parrying or doing the phases in order, but they really don't want you to, since it's a lot more difficult. Once you learn the correct order, he goes from being hard to extremely easy, but it's absolutely a difficult section the first time you get to it.

Also remember to equip the chip that makes it possible to see block direction, since only experts will be able to do it without. After that it's mostly learning the timing, which is just as or right before the attack would connect. He usually repeats the same block patterns over and over, with few variations.

 

[Ifrit]

I actually loved the parry in this game, the game let's you know what you can and can't parry so it's pretty satisfying when you get the timing right specially on a boss fight, I used it all the time.

And to the OP, don't get discouraged on parries, they don't get long or complicated later on, it's pretty much in line with the ones on the delver fight iirc

 

[zma1013]

Keep practicing the parry. Once it clicks and you get it down, you will dominate the game, even the bosses. It is the strongest ability you have in the game.

 

[SanderJK]

I actually spend more attempts on the boss in the park area than on Little Johnny. And I actually really liked that after the credits you get a screen showing you tons of stats like that. (Which showed I was the most Average Gamer)

One thing to realize is that in Surge 2, your hits are effectively health. So if you keep the legs untouched at the start, you can then later hit down the legs and regen health by getting those near free hits.
Hitting his body is significantly harder. So if you start by learning how to hit the body + dodge the electricity, then after that it all falls into place fast.

If you want, there is one body part that if you damage it to 0 improves his drop, all the bosses have this, check the wiki.

You can also go in with full battery charges by clearing the extra enemies in the room to the left of the boss entrance. That's more health.

Also tune your setups. Make sure you don't have anything that triggers on kill installed, instead you want things that trigger on parry.

I also vastly preferred the claws weapons. The slower the weapon, the more accurate you need to be with timing attacks and disengages. The claws often allow you to just trade blows and heal.

 

[Ra]

I beat Surge 2 without a single parry. Dodge and my trusty hammer got me through.

 

[Gunny T Highway]

Yeah Little Johnny is my least favorite fight because of how patient of an approach you have to do to fight him. It was just a tedious fight.

 

[pleaseinsertdisctwo]

Keep practicing the parry. Once it clicks and you get it down, you will dominate the game, even the bosses. It is the strongest ability you have in the game.

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Ugh fine

I just lost my patience last night lol

I want to really like this game but the level design ANNOYS me, like if you're going to make the areas this fucking confusing at least allow fast travel, and after Little Johnny my patience really wore thin and I wasn't down to deal with another long and hard boss fight

 

[pleaseinsertdisctwo]

Nvm I got level 9 gear early and the game became easy lol

I also understand parries now

only thing I now hate is the level design lol

The AID Command Center was gross