Uploaded March 2022 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago
Totally not a ripoff from a certain Mario boss.
Unlike the other three extra area bosses, Crystal Guardian here doesn't really have any particular bad designs in a vacuum. Rather, it's just that the whole fight is significantly overstat for its challenge level - each crystal is about as strong as the early shadow fights in the basement, and you're expected to take four of them plus the main boss at level 152, at which point a head-on fight is essentially impossible because of sheer stat difference; you'd have to pull some trickery to speedrush a few crystals to be able to survive. At a higher level you'd be able to deal with the enemies much better, though by then all the bosses would have low HP... yeah, it's hard to get a good fight in here, too.
The only thing of note is that the Guardian will regenerate HP based on the number of crystals alive, but if you kill all four crystals it'll go in a berserk phase where its speed is much higher and it'll self-buff before every move, so it's best to kill three cyrstals and then take out the boss, leaving the final crystal for last.
Totally not a ripoff from a certain Mario boss.
Unlike the other three extra area bosses, Crystal Guardian here doesn't really have any particular bad designs in a vacuum. Rather, it's just that the whole fight is significantly overstat for its challenge level - each crystal is about as strong as the early shadow fights in the basement, and you're expected to take four of them plus the main boss at level 152, at which point a head-on fight is essentially impossible because of sheer stat difference; you'd have to pull some trickery to speedrush a few crystals to be able to survive. At a higher level you'd be able to deal with the enemies much better, though by then all the bosses would have low HP... yeah, it's hard to get a good fight in here, too.
The only thing of note is that the Guardian will regenerate HP based on the number of crystals alive, but if you kill all four crystals it'll go in a berserk phase where its speed is much higher and it'll self-buff before every move, so it's best to kill three cyrstals and then take out the boss, leaving the final crystal for last.
