Much like Flukemarm, I think The Collector is either one of the simplest bosses in the game, or one of the most frustrating, depending on whether you can one-shot the enemies it spawns.
For context, I've found I can beat The Collector on Radiant difficulty with relative consistency as long as I have a fully upgraded nail and fragile/unbreakable strength - every spawned enemy can be killed in one hit with this setup. However, in the five or so hours I've put into trying to beat the third pantheon on all bindings, I've gotten past The Collector only a handful of times, because, even with the pure nail, having the nail binding active means two of the three enemy types spawned take two hits to kill. I've head a higher success rate lately as I've started to better utilize nail arts, but even when I do win, it doesn't feel as satisfying as beating more traditionally difficult bosses like Nightmare King Grimm or The Radiance, it just feels like I got lucky with enemy placement and type. It also doesn't help that, if you have a fully upgraded nail, there's no real way to practice this fight outside the pantheon - on Attuned difficulty, even with no charms, you still one-shot the enemies, (vengeflies, aspid hunters, and baldurs), and on Radiant the enemies are different, (amoured squits, primal aspids, and sharp baldurs) so while they do take two hits with no charms, two of the three have different attack patterns.
I understand that guessing at developer intent isn't the most fruitful way of approaching analysis, but I am curious what Team Cherry would consider to be the way this boss is "meant," to be handled. Thematically it feels strange that the Radiant difficulty, ostensibly this boss' most powerful form, is easier than the all bindings difficulty. I also understand that without fragile/unbreakable strength, the Radiant difficulty would be the harder fight of the two, and if there was a way for bindings to be implemented to that difficulty, I don't think I'd be writing this at all. But within the systems already in place, I take the Radiant difficulty to mean having the player at their strongest face off against the boss at their strongest, and to defeat them flawlessly, proving your mastery.
All things as they are right now, I believe The Collector is meant to be fought with the player being able to one-shot spawned enemies. Outside the Godmaster DLC, I see its function in the game world as a damage/health check for those seeking all the grubs. Yes, it can be done with four masks while still two-hitting the aspid hunters and baldurs, but the challenge of that does not feel appropriate for what is rewarded. I do think having to prepare a nail art between spawns adds a compelling layer of tension to the fight, but at least how I see it right now, the fight is not designed with that strategy in mind. Maybe if the jar placement was more selectively random, (meaning they could only fall from eight or so distinct places) or the time from when an aspid hunter is spawned to when it can first attack was more consistent, (sometimes they shoot basically as soon as the jar breaks, others may take a few seconds) or if baldurs were replaced with crawlids, or some other ground bound enemy that either took only one hit to kill or had slower movement, or some combination of all of these, I could see how having to two-hit some enemies could raise the difficulty of this boss while still feeling balanced.
But again, as it stands, I do not feel like I am learning this fight, at least not to the same degree as most others. Randomness in fights is fine as long as there is adequate time and space to react, (I don't even want to think about doing Oblobble on Radiant.) I think the time and space allotted for The Collector was designed for the enemies to be killed in one hit, and having to two-hit in the all bindings fight feels like an unfortunate consequence of the binding system, which I otherwise think is fantastic, turning this boss from a tense but simple challenge into a frustrating mess I don't think I'll ever want to do again.
What are your thoughts on this? I've only played a few bosses on Radiant so far, are there others like this where you've found the all bindings fight to be more difficult than the Radiant fight? Do you think some spawned enemies taking two hits to kill is still balanced?
Submitted December 17, 2018 at 07:11AM by rolandgrayhill https://ift.tt/2Bpa3Y1
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