Strangers of Paradise (Level 1 | No Upgrades) [SOPFFO]

[@brightsuperstition]

17:37 and 18:56. Cursed Claw is the MVP here. Halving the enemy's max break gauge is such a good thing to have with this kind of challenge run restriction, especially against beefier enemies like the Hill Gigas, the Mindflayer and the Ahriman.

[@FrikXen]

This was one fight I was pretty worried about, though once I realised they put the Skeletons here with Cursed Claw, I thought I could reuse my Lich strategy. It was perfect for this fight for the reasons you noted.

[@brightsuperstition]

@@FrikXen This entire run you've done in general has made me appreciate this game's design so much more. You are this far into the game, yet you can still kill even super tanky enemies very quickly thanks to the deliberate placement of weaker enemies that have useful instant abilities that can help you turn the tides of battle even as a LV1 character with zero stat upgrades (and of course thanks to things like lethal cliffs that allowed you to kill that Aeshma at the end of Astos's mission). That is no accidental enemy placement. That is deliberate design from the developers. You are also this far into the game, yet a lot of enemy attacks (and even a lot of boss attacks) still do very reasonable damage to you despite you being LV1 and not even wearing any armor. There are far fewer oneshots than I thought there would be with your player being that utterly underleveled compared to the level of enemies. Finally, you are this far into the game, yet bosses that are 100 levels higher than you can still be killed in like 10 minutes, again despite you only being LV1. More practice and matchup knowledge can no doubt shave off multiple minutes off of any of these boss fights should you ever reattempt this challenge run in the future. Like, I'm sure someone who has really studied each boss matchup in and out can beat these same bosses under your challenge restrictions in 5-6 minutes. The game is just far better designed and more fair than most people give it credit for.

[@FrikXen]

@@brightsuperstition Honestly, same. I knew the enemy placement is clever in general (didn't know particulars like this fight here), I didn't appreciate some of the other aspects as much which really shine in this run. It's a real shame this game got ignored and dismissed because of memes, difficulty, or, what annoys me most, "Nioh without the depth" (ridiculous). From memory the only guaranteed oneshots are unblockables, which is basically the same as NG2S on Master Ninja with grabs. The damage is really fair despite the level difference. Yeah, definitely agree, I think time can be shaved off in a lot of places. I wanted to do this run to see if it was plausible, which revealed a lot of cool things about the design. I am considering doing an optimised run, though at a much slower pace than this run (which was just complete it if possible, not as well as possible) to figure out the best strats.