Nioh 2 Beta: Level 1 Maeda Toshiie G-S0ul 2019-11-09 | No fucking idea how 1:35 didn't hit me. As far as I know the Brute Burst Counter doesn't have i-frames, so I must've got lucky with the elevation difference and had the animation duck under his poke. Outside of accidentally using the Kusa's Blade Spin too many times and blocking more hits than I intended to, I think this fight turned out alright. Got to show off almost every punish I wanted to; ideally I would've remembered to throw in Bird of Prey in one of the ki pressure combos or use the Enki soul core to also jump over his phase 2 running attack, but whatever, this is way better than the 2 or 3 other fights I recorded prior to this. I apologize if this is sloppier than usual, but oh well, there'll be plenty of time to give him a rematch in the final game.Think this'll be the last Beta upload, now I don't really feel like fighting Yatsu no Kami and this is probably a much better fight to end this on. I enjoyed my time with this demo and really look forward to the full game and what it has to offer. For now the Nioh journey will continue in the first game, since there's still a few more fights I wanna record there.
Nioh 2 Beta: Level 1 Kamaitachi (Twilight) G-S0ul 2019-11-04 | Kinda sloppy fight, but whatever, I'll get a cleaner fight in the full game when I'm not under a 10 day time limit to record all the stuff I want. Still want to try and get a fight on the NPC boss after this, and will also maybe record a Yatsu no Kami fight if I have the time.For the most part this boss is alright, I like most of its moveset and think it's a neat fight. I do have some problems with it though, mainly some things that happen when it's out of ki. Firstly, think it's dumb as fuck that it can just dodge out of the way when it doesn't have any ki left. The whole point of breaking larger enemies' stamina down is so you have a consistent window to combo them, when a boss can just jump away in between hits it kinda destroys the point of that reward. The other issue I have is that you for some reason can't grapple the boss if you hit it regularly at all during that state. While it's not a problem if you break its ki with a Burst Counter since it'll always be immediately open, it's kinda hard to tell if you can keep doing normal attacks and not accidentally ruin your opening if it enters that state during a combo. It almost seems like a bug, tbh. Outside of those things this isn't a bad fight at all though.
MGR: Armstrong Fists only, No Damage (Revengeance) G-S0ul 2019-10-26 | Technically gotta use the sword in the ending QTE to kill him, but the main point of this was getting to that QTE without being armed. The original plan was a wooden sword fight so I could do something more stylish while having lower damage, but unfortunately you are locked to Sam's sword in this encounter. I remembered this was a thing and decided to try it, though I was initially hesitant since I wasn't sure if you could fight him like this and keep him at full HP. Turns out you easily can; all you gotta do is just punch him while he tries to heal, as he'll do an avoidable counterattack that'll prolong it, and you can endlessly chain it until he gets all his health back. If this is set up correctly he won't heal again, if he does do it again I'm not sure if there's a limit or if you just get trapped in a loop of breaking him down and then him regenerating it back.Fight performance was alright, but heavy attack/dodge off-setting could've been optimized a bit more. The third part of the heavy attack combo does the most damage in your unarmed moveset, so it's a good idea to figure out how many points you can hit him with that. His AI repeats sequences a lot throughout the fight, and I think there is at least one or two other consistent string of attacks you can fit the third heavy attack in and still safely dodge what comes next. Anyways, this is probably the last basegame thing I'll do with this game. Mainly wanna focus on the Sam DLC on the no upgrades run and I'll probably be done after that.
DMC1: DMD New Game Mission 18, S Rank G-S0ul 2019-10-26 | Second Nightmare encounter. Pretty much repeating the same issues I had in the first fight, I'll reiterate here that it's a good idea to only punish its cores with Ifrit charged punches, as iirc the sword's faster attack rate ends up breaking the cores faster and you'll end up with a full red core Nightmare3 fight. Looking back at this I'm not sure why I even used Alastor in this fight, I purchased Ifrit's Rolling Blaze to easily counter its attack at 4:16, but it could've also easily punished the spike attacks it does frequently. I guess I just got comfortable with activating the wall panels with it, so I continued to cycle between it and Ifrit. Probably just me being an actual idiot, as usual. lol
Nioh: Level 1 NG+4 Date Shigezane G-S0ul 2019-10-13 | Really fun fight, though with this boss being more mix-up oriented it's kinda hard to tell when it's safe to use some skills or if you're going to risk the attempt in doing so. Overall for this fight it's kinda easy to accidentally toss yourself back into his attack strings if you're not paying enough attention, there's probably too many times where I didn't space things out enough and just went right back into his swings. With this all said and done I think this ended up okay, but there's definitely a few awkward spots here and there. Can't really think of anything else to note, this is probably obvious based on the weapons used but this isn't an optimized fight by any means, just felt like playing around with the Kusa and Odachi here. lol
Nioh: Level 1 NG+4 Hino-enma G-S0ul 2019-10-13 | Sword/spear actually ended up being a pretty fun combo for this fight, they have a good set of moves that lets you do some fancy dodges and whatnot. Wish I knew about the attacks that have i-frames sooner, could have used some of that in previous fights I recorded. While I should've generally used the spear a little more, the only actual gripe I think I have looking back at this is that I botched the punish at 1:18. If it was timed correctly it would've properly staggered her and let me do another sequence like 1:56 where I use Flying Monkey to jump over and counterattack her grab. Not much else to say; this boss doesn't really have anything wrong with it, doesn't have much complexity to it but it's still fun.
DMC5: DMD Mission 20 S Rank, No Damage (version 2) G-S0ul 2019-10-04 | Deadweight vs Deadbeat, round 2. Main difference between this and the previous one is that I actually use devil breakers this time, though there could've been much better usage of some of them throughout the fight. Generally there's smaller fuck-ups scattered about this and I tried to get something nicer, but as usual I kinda burnt myself out going at it over and over again. I know I'm a broken record saying all that, but that is how this stuff tends to go down every time lol. This was still a fun fight though, especially figuring out stuff like hitting him with the Punchline boost knuckle out of his big charge up teleport. You can also land it on his triple charge variant and the game will freak the fuck out and slow down for like 10 seconds; when I was first making the "script" for this fight I wanted to show that off, but as I refined other parts of the strategy my aggression would always push him far past the health threshold for him to do that attack, unfortunately.Anyways, there's a few other missions I'll be redoing over time, but my main focus will be the no upgrades run for now. I also may be slowly working on a combo video, but it'll probably be a while before I feel like I did okay enough or consider uploading it whenever it's done. lol
DMC4: DMD Mission 19 No Damage SSS G-S0ul 2019-09-20 | For the most part this mission clear turned out alright. There's a few smaller execution problems, but the only real mistake of note was just how that Agnus fight turned out. There were some pretty bad whiffs, some inputs I botched, and some lock-on shenanigans on top of it that made the fight like 20-25 seconds longer than it could've been. Tried for a while to get something nice the whole way through, yet the one time I got a run I liked the game decided to only give 94% orbs (just 1% away from being S rank), even though I did literally nothing different than all the other runs. The moment that shit happened I knew continuing to grind runs was only going to end up a complete pain in the ass, so I took the probably better option of just leaving this how it is.I know this run's in a weird spot where it's completed and I have half of it uploaded, but a lot of the run was done a while ago when I didn't know as much about some of the game's/character's mechanics. Now that I know more I want to redo most if not all of it, so the original stuff I uploaded may go unlisted or deleted in the future. At the very least I'm definitely redoing Dante's section. Thankfully none of that was uploaded but it was a pretty bad display; I took the kinda cheesy route of using DRI on almost everything that actually posed a threat, and I dunno if anybody wants to see that. So yeah, there'll be a proper revival of this run soon.
DMC1: DMD New Game Mission 17, S Rank G-S0ul 2019-09-20 | At the time I did this I thought showing off the variant of a Nelo3 AI loop I found would be cool, but looking back I should've done a legit fight with him regardless. Oh well, I'm probably going to try a 100% version of this run in the future, and with some of the other stuff I have planned there'll be plenty of opportunities to give him a real fight. Anyways, this mission overall isn't that bad. The Frosts are kinda annoying but the rooms after it are pretty hard to mess up once you understand how they work, and while Nelo3 has a decent bit of stuff going on with his fight, he's still pretty fair with everything he does.So the thing with this Nelo loop variant is that it only works with Kick13 level 1, I tried with level 2 and he breaks out of it pretty much every time. If you consistently do the same sequences, ~95% of the time he'll follow up with that orb attack. To try and sum it up: punish an attack with the divekick, throw a punch to make him guard, divekick again to make him do that followup, charged punch, regular punch, DT K13 level 1, charged punch to break his guard, another charged punch, regular K13, grenade shot, and then jump away and do another grenade shot before the projectile. That last grenade shot part isn't shown in this video but I do it in the next fight, and it 100% works as long as you do it fast enough so you can still get out of the projectile's way. With all of this said, only do this if you for some reason don't feel like actually fighting him; you'll rob yourself of what's probably one of the best fights in the game.
Nioh: Level 1 NG+4 Onryoki G-S0ul 2019-09-06 | Decided to also expand this to some of the lesser fights. While they're not as complex, there's still some neat/fun stuff to mess around with, I think. My focus will still mainly be on the better bosses though, next kills will likely be Shigezane or Sanada. Learned some things regarding gear and tech since the last kill, so I could make fights a little more interesting. Main things of note are sheath cancels and Flash Attack cancelling; the former allowing things like quickdraws to come out faster since you technically skip the sheath animation, and the latter letting you basically chain two weapons' attacks/skills without needing Flash Attack in between them. As far as gear goes, learned more about efficient effects and general debuffs that can be applied on enemies (i.e. "Weaken armor: torso" still works on some non-human enemies, despite them technically not having armor). So yeah, kills should be a little faster now, and while I can technically get even more damage by getting stronger gear and optimizing effects a bit further, this honestly feels fine for the time being.Thanks to Xerieh for telling me about all this stuff. Check out his channel if you haven't already: youtube.com/channel/UC7vnHPFvolw8k3fdblk8stQ
NieR:Automata: Spherical Machine Very Hard Fists only, no item/pod/chips/partner (2B) G-S0ul 2019-09-06 | One of those fights you only really do out of completion's sake, cause uhhh... yeah, there's not a lot going on with this one. Strafe/dodge around to its back, and then quickly clip into it so you can get some easy damage in to the core. If Dango didn't find the clip in his version of this run, I don't think I'd bother with this fight, since the length would likely extend to ridiculous amounts and I don't enjoy fighting boring as fuck bosses for elongated periods of time. lolApproaching the end of route A here. If I get it done I'll probably mess with some route C things first so I don't just end up completely repeating the boss order again. Sometime in the future I think I'd also like to try and record some of the better fights with actual weapon setups and create something more interesting to watch.
Nioh: Level 1 NG+4 Giant Toad G-S0ul 2019-08-29 | So yeah, I decided to give Nioh a second chance about two months ago. The first time I tried it back in 2017 I didn't like it that much for whatever reason, but after playing it now I do actually really enjoy it. While it's a Soulslike and I don't really care for playing Souls anymore, I still have fun with the combat because of the skills system and the amount of style potential/moveset variety available. Probably worth noting these fights are more of a smaller project; I only have plans to play around with the fights I enjoyed more from the game. Maybe in the future this'll expand into an all bosses run, but for now I'm content with just fighting the bosses that really clicked for me.Got a bit sloppy at the end, wish I didn't panic as much, but oh well. Will hopefully get better at some of the smaller things that goes on in these kills as time goes on, I'm aware some of my Ki pulsing is inconsistent, and I did forget to use some weapons' skills more throughout this fight. The next time I play with Tonfas I'll try to also incorporate some of those Demon Dance skills, I kinda forgot about them until after I did this kill. lol.
DMC3: DMD Mission 3 SS Rank G-S0ul 2019-08-29 | Tried for a bit to get a smoother clear, but man, I just didn't have the patience or skills to get something I liked. While in the end I suppose the regular enemy encounter here was handled competently, I dropped the ball pretty hard on Cerberus. The main fuck up there was not landing the first DTE properly, since usually I get it to stagger him and land some solid damage in during that downtime. On top of that, my fights with him are generally pretty slow since I'm not comfortable being aggressive with him. Staying up in his faces often provokes some of the faster melee attacks, and I have a tough time quickly reacting and getting out of the way of those.
DMC4: DMD Berial No touching the ground, No Damage (Dante) G-S0ul 2019-08-12 | Wanted to do one of these kills outside of DMC5 for a while, figured Berial would be a nice start. Initially did this with Nero but I've always wanted to do one with Dante, so after finishing that I moved on and attempted this off and on for a bit but finally sat down and grinded out the winning run not too long ago. Almost botched this in a few places but overall I guess this kill's okay, definitely some more things that could've been done with it though.
DMC1: DMD New Game Mission 16, S Rank G-S0ul 2019-08-12 | First Nightmare encounter. Outside of that fight I don't have much to say for this one. Was always kinda confused about the timed sequence before the boss or what makes the timer end early; I assume just wiping out all enemies before a new one spawns ends it? As for the boss, it's not particularly hard, but if you're going for a flawless fight there's some smaller stuff that gets rather annoying. Around the last stretch of its health there's little goop that starts leaping out that will deal a tiny bit of damage to you, it's aggravating how many times I lost runs to that. Using Alastor in this fight was a huge mistake; the cores function on some kinda number of hits system, and using a faster weapon like Alastor will fuck with it and make you end up with a full red core Nightmare3 for that entire fight (the tankiest version of the fight). So yeah, make sure to always use Ifrit charged punches when it's open, unless you wanna deal with that. lol
MGR: LQ-84I Wooden Sword only, No Damage (Revengeance) G-S0ul 2019-08-02 | Welp, finding another fight where I could still consistently mess around with most of the weapon's moveset as well as no annoying gimmick getting in the way (Sundowner's helicopters, the dwarf gekkos in Mistral's fight, etc.) was tougher than expected. Really wanted to do Armstrong but you're locked with Sam's sword for that fight, I may still try to do something with it though. I think after that (if I even do it) I'll go ahead and move onto the DLCs on the no upgrade run, and when that's over I think I'm ready to be done with this game.While this boss is good there's smaller things that can be annoying at times. You tend to go all over the place during the fight, and you'll usually end up in a spot next to an explosive barrel, which can easily derail aggressive play and is a massive nuisance for no damage fights since the boss can also trigger them.
DMC3: DMD Mission 2 SS Rank G-S0ul 2019-08-02 | Another pretty free mission, none of the enemy types are that annoying and the boss isn't very difficult either. The execution here was okay but there's some moves I should've used more, and there's a few awkward spots that could've been handled much more efficiently. Since this mission is fun and not that aggravating I'll probably rerun it in the future for something more stylish.
DMC5: DMD Mission 3 No Upgrades/Damage, S Rank G-S0ul 2019-07-16 | Not too bad, managing some of the rooms and the boss are a little tricky, but it's nothing obscene. Credit to 成叔SLAYER for the wire-snatch tactic used on the lizard enemy group, probably one of the only reliable ways to handle them when you don't have things like enemy step. I don't have much else to say, next up is a V mission and boy will that probably be a shitshow. lol
DMC1: DMD New Game Mission 15, S Rank G-S0ul 2019-07-16 | Last real battle against Griffon. Mixed feelings on that fight, on one hand I kinda like it and think it's neat, and then on the other I hate it. Either way this was one of the first missions that took a moderate amount of time to finally push through.Maybe there's just some smaller tell I never noticed, but I could never figure out which variation of projectiles he was going to shoot out like at 2:45; using the same dodge timing for both variations didn't seem to work so I naturally lost a lot of runs to it. As for how I actually handled the fight/how often I got damage in, it could've been better in a few spots. When he starts shooting out the wall projectiles (3:18) you can get a shot out after every roll, I had tried to do that but found myself messing up a lot more often compared to only doing it every other roll, so I opted for that instead. I also frequently had a lot of DT stored and just kinda forgot to use it, which likely could've sped things up if used for more than occasional Meteor shots.
DMC5: DMD King Cerberus Coyote-A only, No Damage G-S0ul 2019-07-06 | Was watching some of n472a's kills recently, got inspired to go around and do a few "x weapon only" fights across the games. Decided for these DMC4/DMC5 fights to only use the style that adds moves to whatever the specified weapon is, in this case only Gunslinger is used.Coyote-A's fun to play around with since most of its Cut-in moves have i-frames, which can allow for some neat little counterattacks. It also does rather decent damage if used up close and properly, especially if you allow DT. I had initially done this fight with DT and that can net a 7 minute kill and likely faster ones in the hands of more competent players. I did okay here but probably could've gotten another full stagger on him if I played more aggressively.
DMC3: DMD Mission 1 SS Rank G-S0ul 2019-07-06 | Kinda been bouncing around all these games lately, doing bits of runs whenever. Reached the first V Mission on the DMC5 DMD NU run and decided to take a small break and mess around with this as well as trying to redo some of the DMC4 DMD SSS run. I hope I can end up finishing this but I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't, as some later missions are kinda brutal when going through like this. This mission's one of the easiest ones but it's still quite fun. It's short, comprised of weaker enemies, and has no boss, so it's pretty hard to mess up once you get acquainted with all the enemy spawn locations and whatnot.
MGR: Jetstream Sam Wooden Sword only, No Damage (Revengeance) G-S0ul 2019-06-27 | The start of what'll probably be the last round of MGR content. There's another wooden sword fight or two I want to try, and then to wrap things up I'll finish the DLCs on the no upgrade run. I had routed some of Bladewolf's DLC a few months ago and then just kinda forgot about it and focused on other stuff.Tried to be aggressive for some of the fight as well as using a majority of the moves available with the sword's moveset. Things fell apart in the third phase but that's just how it seems to go, regardless of if you chase after him or run away he doesn't like handing out parries like he does in the first phase, not to mention he also frequently dodges them if you do land 'em. Maybe there's some AI thing I never figured out but it does seem up to luck getting a fast and better looking third phase. So yeah, this could have been better, but I'm mostly satisfied with what's here.
DMC1: DMD New Game Mission 14, S Rank G-S0ul 2019-06-27 | The way some of this mission was played is kinda awkward. I don't think I really needed to kill all the Scissors in the spiked floor room (especially since this run isn't going for SB), and on top of that they were handled poorly and there's better ways of setting them up for the instant kill. The list of things I should've researched more/done differently is endless in this run, but I guess if I have this much of it uploaded already I might as well let this train-wreck reach the finish. lol
DMC5: DMD Mission 2 No Upgrades/Damage, S Rank G-S0ul 2019-06-22 | Still a mostly free mission. Goliath goes on for a bit which is kinda scary knowing some of the shit he can pull, but it still isn't that bad. Probably could've played better in a few fights, but it's otherwise okay I guess. Found out you can still skip the double Antenora encounter at 7:29 without upgrades, gotta make sure you're high enough or else you'll still get dragged into the cutscene.
NieR:Automata: Boku-shi Very Hard Fists only, no item/pod/chips G-S0ul 2019-06-22 | Postponed the run when I got to this fight, and that was a good idea cause man this boss is trash. While a body revived itself before the fight even began, it didn't contribute to anything since it was set to passive. I don't have any real control over it being there since that's just a thing the game does, as apparently bodies have a random chance of reviving if they come into contact with electricity. Some of the problems with this fight: In its first phase the only way to reliably deal damage to it is to let it go onto the building, but because of where its positioned you can't reach some of its back leg panels without aggroing enemies outside the boss. The idea is to stunlock it and have it in phase 2 by the time all leg panels are destroyed, but that's not a 100% consistent scenario due to enemies being able to constantly sandbag attack opportunities, or if the core is wedged at the base of the tail, making you unable to consistently land double hits. If it's still in first phase after all panels are gone it's not *completely* over, as you can actually get into a loop of perfect dodging its barrier into counter hits, but it's a ludicrously slow process. The second phase is kinda shitty but I guess it's manageable if you approach it right. Trying to just stick to it isn't really a reliable option unless you have good reflexes, since it can cancel its bounces into the charge attack at any time, and that shit comes out fast.
DMC5: DMD Mission 1 No Upgrades/Damage, S Rank G-S0ul 2019-06-15 | I know I didn't have to fight any enemies and could've still gotten S Rank, but seeing a flat out 0 on the area rankings in the results screen didn't look right so I went ahead and fought one of the first enemy groups before moving onto the boss. This mission was still pretty easy and there's not too much that changes. While this is sort of a new game and I don't have access to busters to instantly kill or stun the Hell Antenora in the boss longer, some High Shots can still knock 'em out long enough to get some hits in and avoid the boss's attacks without needing to worry about him intervening.
DMC5: DMD Prologue No Upgrades/Damage, S Rank G-S0ul 2019-06-15 | Thought about it and decided to redo this without DT/breakers, which was setup by simply completing the Prologue on previous difficulties and never doing anything outside of them. It's more true to the "no upgrades" stipulation this way, though the lack of moves gained from DT/breakers makes getting all S ranks in this mission most likely impossible, and may further affect the possibility of all S in later missions.Main inspiration for restarting this was after seeing 成叔SLAYER complete the run this way (http://space.bilibili.com/151204704, alternatively uploaded here on Youtube by 月光TKMO: youtube.com/watch?v=UmNyFCBPb_g), and I figured there wouldn't be too much damage done resetting this now since I was only 2 missions into the previous run and had only uploaded the Prologue. I know it's weird and I normally don't reboot a run out of nowhere like this, but it just felt right doing this for some reason. lol
DMC1: DMD New Game Mission 12, S Rank G-S0ul 2019-06-06 | A mostly easy mission. Double Frost encounter can be a little tricky, and while Griffon gets DMC2'd to death it's not a completely free fight since he can break out of the AI loop (it didn't happen here tho). Apparently the HD collection changed his AI to do that, and generally to keep him still you now actually need to repeatedly bait him rather than being able to safely camp on the masts and blast 'em the entire time once you get up there.Ended up back on my DMC5 bullshit sooner than expected, so there might be some random kills and whatnot in between uploading other stuff. I don't wanna put those out too often though, felt like I've been cranking out DMC5 after DMC5 for the last like two months and should probably give it a more proper break.
DMC1: DMD New Game Mission 11, S Rank G-S0ul 2019-06-06 | Pretty clumsy and not well thought out battle against Nelo2, didn't fully develop strats for that guy until the third round. Overall easy mission though, everything's fairly consistent if you've practiced it all enough.
DMC5: DMD Mission 19 S Rank, No Damage (version 2) G-S0ul 2019-05-30 | Few things turned out not so great here, but other than that I think this was mostly an improvement over my first take on this mission. There's just a few missions I wanted to redo before moving onto the no upgrades run, and this one was higher up on that list. After watching some well executed and infinitely more creative kills and taking a few notes, I eventually was able to create this, though it's not 100% what I envisioned. With more grinding I maybe could've got what I wanted, but by this point I was mostly not having as much fun with the game and was kinda burnt out and ready to take a break, and with that said there'll probably be some time before I do the rest of what I want to do in this game.A breakdown of what didn't go according to plan/my incompetence: First off, the combo at 1:41 is supposed to start with a Royal Release, often done on his charge move at 1:34; but since there were summon swords I didn't feel safe going through with it, nor was I sure what his melee combo variant at 1:39 was going to be, so it ended up being less cool and me starting with a regular release and then doing the rest. Secondly, the Release on his combo at 2:05 is supposed to connect, but I guess I just didn't time that right. Then, there was the guard break at 2:35 that looks really bad, and it could've been easily fixed if I just turned off DT before the first guard, as I probably could've had enough DT for it to go through as a partial guard. Finally, though this is actually a much more positive thing and makes the end more interesting, deflecting the summon swords at 3:10 with Judgement was not intentional at all, he normally has less health left when activating that and had that deflecting not happened, this run would've fell flat and been one of many disappointing resets.So yeah, a lot of things didn't go as planned, but there was the one mistake at the end that ended up working in my favor somehow. Knowing the things other players have done, this kill isn't that great, but it's still a step up from what I originally had and I'm mostly happy with it.
DMC1: DMD New Game Mission 10, S Rank G-S0ul 2019-05-30 | Not a very well played run-through of this one. The double Shadow encounter didn't go as well as it could, but more importantly the battle against the double Kyklops at the end was horrible and it somehow never occurred to me during the session this was recorded in to jump off the walls and helm breaker them, which immensely speeds up the encounter.
DMC5: DMD Mission 18 S Rank, No Damage G-S0ul 2019-05-23 | "Gonna miss those critters" Dante might, but I absolutely will not; after some of the shit they pulled in attempts at this all three of those little fucks can rot in the deepest ass-crack of hell for all I care. With this mission completed, all missions have now been done all S ranks/no damage. The full playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhUDDQsLFZ-nsJ35uw4Dltnt9Td_cTgWBI don't like essentially stealing strategies, but for the fights here I had to take a few notes from Xetnevs' and evf02d's runs (which are much better, make sure to watch them). With the right strats, everything leading up to the boss is like 95% consistent and it's only the boss that's really problematic. I normally go for real impacts when Griffon's core is open, but unfortunately here every time it happened Shadow basically cockblocked it and I kinda reached a point where I just didn't want to risk shit anymore so I shot from a distance. When you get in this fight your most common hits will likely be from Griffon's charge attack or Shadow intervening at the worst time possible. If you have the world's worst memory like I do you'll probably also forget about Nightmare's spawn attack and lose a ridiculous amount of good runs to it. Very easy to slip up in this fight if you're not thinking about those. Though this run is finished, I still have quite a few things I'll be trying. I plan on redoing a few missions and doing a few boss kills with miscellaneous restrictions, and eventually it'll culminate in me attempting a no upgrades version of this run that probably won't be true S rank like this one was.
DMC5: DMD Mission 12 S Rank, No Damage G-S0ul 2019-05-23 | Note: In order to preserve 6000+ points for encounters and get all S ranks, the Cavaliere skips had to be used for a majority of the mission. I don't like skipping levels like this, so later I'll be trying a no skip version of this mission (though it might not be true S rank). Thanks to Xetnevs for the strat used for the first encounter to keep the points up.So yeah, with skips obviously this mission loses a lot of its difficulty, since you end up only having to do 2 required encounters before Urizen, and Urizen in this mission dies like 3x faster than his M8 variant. He can still be a little tricky at times, but if you've killed him in M8 he's not gonna pose much of a threat to you here.
DMC5: DMD Mission 10 S Rank, No Damage G-S0ul 2019-05-18 | Huge thanks to Xetnevs for some of the strats used in this, as well as KT1834 for the safe Urizen strat. This mission is a bit of a pain in the ass, I think this one really highlights how bad the game's score averaging system is. If you're going for true S rank, you're pretty much forced to dance taunt (and have most if not all of it play out before being interrupted) before every encounter or else your points ends up dipping below 6000 by the end of it, even if you're playing competently the whole way through. I really wish a simple cumulative score akin to DMC4 was in place instead, therefore you'd actually be able to fight any enemy encounter you want and not have to dance your ass off before throwing a punch. Once you find a consistent method, the actual enemies in the encounters aren't that hard to deal with. It's mostly the Hell Judeccas you gotta watch out for, since they tend to pull some tricky shit with all their teleporting nonsense. Anyways, we're now just down to missions 12 and 18 and the run'll be complete. I'm sure some of the dumbest shit is yet to come.
DMC5: DMD Mission 13 S Rank, No Damage (Dante) G-S0ul 2019-05-18 | Like the other two versions of it, this mission is pretty easy and free. Don't really have anything else to say here. lol
DMC5: DMD Mission 16 S Rank, No Damage G-S0ul 2019-05-14 | Botched several encounters and generally there were quite a few execution errors, but that's just normal at this point for me. This mission was actually pretty fun; none of the encounters were that bad, and you don't even need to dance taunt for any of 'em to keep the points well above 6000. Might redo it later but am mostly satisfied with it for now.
DMC5: DMD Mission 11 S Rank, No Damage G-S0ul 2019-05-14 | One of the first Dante missions I did after not playing him for a long time, this clear is really bad. Relied on Sin DT and certain combo set ups too often, it's just overall a lot worse than it should be. There's some things I've learned since this mission was done, so once I wrap up the other missions (just 10, 12, and 18 left) or get bored of grinding them, I'm most likely going to head back to this and do a more thought-out run of this mission.
NieR:Automata: So-Shi Very Hard Fists only, no item/pod/chips G-S0ul 2019-05-10 | Didn't remember much of this fight coming back into it for this run, it's actually pretty fun. This kill's kinda slow since I fucked up and wasn't able to consistently hit the weak-point after most of the leg breaks in phase 1, otherwise I think I did an okay job. Even with lower damage you can still kinda stunlock it for some of the fight.Boku-shi's next I guess, and that fight's basically just a worse not as fun version of this. I suppose I'm starting to reach the end of route A, with there only being a few fights left. Hopefully I'll be able to go the whole way through with all these restrictions, at the very least I might have to dip into using weapons for some of the last fights.
DMC1: DMD New Game Mission 9, S Rank G-S0ul 2019-05-10 | Been a bit since the last time one of these were uploaded. I'll start putting the rest of this out more frequently now, have had the later half of this run backlogged for the last ~3 months or so. DMC5 was prioritized ever since it came out, and generally I just got caught up in other projects. Not the most interesting mission to return with, but whatever I guess. lolEasy and kinda boring mission. Grenadegun is a pretty powerful tool and it's gonna get used quite a bit throughout this mission and onward. You can skip the Death Scissors encounter after picking up Ifrit if you jump and use the divekick off the platform like 2:05. Not much else to talk about.
DMC5: DMD Mission 5 S Rank, No Damage G-S0ul 2019-05-07 | That'll do it for V's section of the game. Saved this mission for last since I was kind of dreading it, but upon playing through it a few times it was nowhere near as bad as I was expecting it to be. The first enemy group and the boss kinda sucks, but it's all fairly manageable with the right approach. That said, I didn't do that great for a lot of this and V's missions in general, there might be a retake or two in the future but I'm content with this for now.First V mission where I needed to dip into the dance taunt, it's pretty much the only way you're gonna scrape the 5900-6000 point mark in the first two encounters. For the boss you'll want to get rid of Nightmare shortly after his spawn, as his spawn attacks are a good way to get damage in, and if you read the book and taunt in between summons you can keep a consistent reserve of DT going. For some ungodly reason I was jumping around like a fucking idiot for most of it, don't do that.
DMC5: DMD Mission 13 S Rank, No Damage (V) G-S0ul 2019-05-07 | Nothing to really talk about with this one. Was just trying to get through it quickly and wasn't focusing on enemy encounters, was ready to get another mission closer to being done with this character.
DMC5: DMD Mission 7 S Rank, No Damage (V) G-S0ul 2019-05-03 | Yesterday I managed to wrap up these remaining V missions. Was expecting a lot of them to take more time since I didn't really know how to play the character for the most part. Now that these are out of the way, there's just most of Dante's missions to clean up and then this run'll be complete. Actually never did V's version of this mission until this run, pretty neat that some of the level is completely unique to him. As usual this clear was probably average, enemy encounters were handled okay and there were a few pretty bad mistakes. Didn't take the time to properly understand what puts the Angelo knights into the quick kill state, I just know it happens sometimes and I'm glad I managed to at least wipe out Proto with it.
DMC5: DMD Mission 9 S Rank, No Damage G-S0ul 2019-05-03 | Looking back a lot of this mission was handled pretty poorly. I think when/if all missions are completed I'm gonna go back and do some retakes of the worse clears I've had throughout the run, this being one of them.This mission was kind of tough. No boss here but some of the enemy groups can be troublesome, I found the encounter with the double Judecca to be quite annoying at times. Generally a large portion of the encounters within this mission can fuck with no damage kinda easily if you're not paying enough attention.
NieR:Automata: Adam2 Very Hard Fists only, no item/pod/chips G-S0ul 2019-04-29 | Probably one of the best fights in the game. While I don't think it's particularly difficult once you've figured 'em out, he's still a lot of fun. His health refills after the monologue phase, so I saw this as the official start of the boss fight. I still did that phase and can upload it if people want me to.This kill is kinda slow compared to others since I'm not as leveled up, and Adam was being a bit of a shitter at the start of the fight and dodged a lot of my moves. It can be improved but I'm satisfied with what I got here.
DMC5: DMD Mission 4 S Rank, No Damage G-S0ul 2019-04-29 | While I'm improving a little bit, I'm still not very competent with V. Generally there's something kinda boring about playing this character compared to Dante/Nero, I appreciate him more as I learn how to play him but still would rather be using the other characters. This clear was okay, there's a few things I definitely could've done better. One of the bigger problems is not taking proper advantage of Nightmare and manually controlling him, setting up his big laser on some of the strong enemies is really good and can kill them faster. There's other smaller errors I'll hopefully be better at correcting in future missions.
DMC5: DMD Mission 8 S Rank, No Damage G-S0ul 2019-04-25 | Got this a lot sooner than I expected. Having cleared this, all of Nero's missions are done now. This was easily the toughest one, mainly due to the Urizen fight at the end. It goes on for quite some time on DMD, and some of his attacks can be kinda tricky to avoid. Shoutout to evf02d for the double Showdown/Ragtime into Buster Arm strat that's used after the first crystal break.The overall mission itself isn't that hard, but still tougher than others since there's just more encounters which means more chances to fuck up and get hit. If you're going for true S rank, you'll likely want to take out the Hell Caina group at the start of the mission. If you group them correctly and start attacking at S Rank (use special provocation or ground grab with Tomboy and DT activated for instant S) you can typically walk into the next battle with 6300+ points. Useful since the first required fight has few enemies and can hurt your rank a bit, 6300+ points with decent play can preserve 6k points for that portion of the mission.With this outta the way, I'll likely focus on V's remaining missions next. I might attempt to knock out a Dante mission or two along the way, but won't seriously get into playing him until V's missions are wrapped up.
DMC5: DMD Mission 15 S Rank, No Damage G-S0ul 2019-04-23 | Mostly fun mission. Has the typical mainly good enemy groups with a few kinda shitty ones (Nobodies/Behemoths in this case). Boss isn't that bad either if you can be aggressive enough and use charge shot to knock her out of the retarded hyper armor charge mode. There's more execution errors here than I wish there were, but this is still better than some of the other runs I got of this one. Just Mission 8 left for Nero's part of the run, and man Urizen is a fucking turd. It'll probably be a while before I can get that one knocked out.
DMC5: DMD Mission 13 S Rank, No Damage (Nero) G-S0ul 2019-04-23 | Yeah, didn't really know what I was doing in this one. Figured I'd try to clear the enemy groups on most floors, but generally didn't have that much of a thought out breaker setup and whatnot. Was just ready to get through this and tackle the other two Nero missions I have left (8 and 15). I'll come back and do V and Dante's versions of this when I get around to doing their missions.
DMC5: DMD Mission 7 S Rank, No Damage (Nero) G-S0ul 2019-04-18 | Wanted to get a good run that also showcased a weird thing you can do with the Proto/Scudo encounter at the end of the mission. Not 100% sure on the specifics of it, but it seems if enemies are launched and/or have their shield broken, V can apparently just instantly kill them regardless of their health. So if you use Ragtime's charged move that makes time slow for a while, it leaves them vulnerable to that for quite some time, and if V feels like going for it he can end up killing off like half of the enemy group right there. If he does that much it's obviously an immense time shave and saves several minutes. This isn't a reliable strat and V can end up doing nothing during that time frame, so don't count on it happening every time if you try to use it.Anyways this mission wasn't that bad. Ended up getting a clear on the second or third crack at it, but then took additional time to get a run that's more well executed and generally better looking. There's still plenty of problems in this but I'm mostly happy with it. Almost done with Nero's missions by this point. All that remains are missions 8, 13, and 15, and the latter two don't seem that problematic. Hopefully I can eventually complete 'em all.
