strangeaegis

[strangeaegis]

Why Lexaeus from Kingdom Hearts 2 is a Genius Boss Battle

([]), (X), (LS)+([]).

That’s all you need to face off against The Silent Hero without breaking a sweat.

Lexaeus is member no. V. in Organization XIII; The antagonistic group of Kingdom Hearts 2, but if you didn’t know that then you probably wouldn’t be here, so let’s move on.

In the Final Mix version of KH2, as well as the HD Remix version released in America for the PS3 and PS4, Lexaeus is a secret optional boss you can challenge in the Garden of Assemblage area of Cavern of Remembrance- an optional end game dungeon hosting a variety of max-level palette swapped Heartless enemies. The Garden of Assemblage allows you to battle against any of the Organization’s 13 members, and each of them challenges your knowledge of Sora’s move set and the game’s mechanics in a number of ways, but Lexaeus’s boss fight is pure genius in my opinion, and here’s why:

It teaches you- flawlessly- to watch and react at a moment’s notice; Something that can be further applied to any other boss fight or enemy encounter in the game.

This may be the SoulsBorne fanboy in me clawing its way out, but I appreciate a foe who gives a fair opportunity to learn their attack patterns while maintaining a tough challenge. Games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne (over used examples, I know) portray these mechanics very well, providing a difficult battle that you can overcome by watching, learning and reacting.

Lexaeus fits perfectly in to a Souls game, if you remove the spiky hair and shonen anime personality. His attacks are all telegraphed in a way that allows you to stand beside him and react however necessary to dodge, block or counter.

Did he:

•Toss his weapon in to the air? Dodge Roll out of the way of his stone pillars three times, but delay the third roll just a bit.

•Drag his weapon across the ground? Guard that shit and get ready to punish him for his misdeeds.

•Jump out of the arena entirely? Prepare to Dodge Roll when he charges back, and then Guard against the ensuing burst of pillars that follow him.

With every move he makes, you can counter accordingly, and with each phase of the battle as his HP dwindles, he’ll gain a new move or two to add to his repertoire to keep you on your toes. If you have knowledge of the fan-named “revenge value” system that KH2 has implemented in to its combat, the fight becomes that much more mechanically stimulating as you counter with combo attacks perfectly counted out to trigger and encourage Lexaeus to attempt a riposte.

The entire battle can be completed without hardly ever moving Sora other than to Dodge Roll, and without ever taking a hit.

This whole dance between you two is endlessly gratifying, especially if you’ve a massive boner for Souls games like I do (as well as a second, even more massive boner for the Kingdom Hearts series), and I think it teaches players a very valuable lesson in how to completely own combat by paying attention and memorizing subtle movements and tells.

Each of Lexaeus’s moves are deliberately animated to explicitly show the player what he’s about to do, and I believe that’s just one of many reasons that KH2 was a masterpiece of game design for its time.

[strangeaegis]

Excerpt from a Short Writing

It was a cold night; Colder than most had been around here lately. Werd was walking home from the local convenience store, having just spent the last of his pocket change on cheap candies he didn’t need. Broke until next week’s pay check, but the instant gratification was worth it.

Right?

The streets are quiet- almost deserted. Only the foggy phantoms of breath in cold wind are around to make small talk with, and with a choice such as, he prefers to stay silent.

Upon reaching his front door, Werd realizes that he’d left his keys inside. No matter, the door was open. The door is always open.

Even in a town of thieves and delinquents, that hollow emptiness where fear should be still take prevalence in your gut, and thus, a locked door just doesn’t seem important.

Intruders welcome.

Entering his bedroom, Werd is greeted by the sight of his only friend; A cat called Lump.

“Broke again?” Lump asks, as he cracks open the last bottle of pop they have.

“That matter to you?” Werd quickly retorts.

“Well, you’re the one that buys my food, so, yeah. You know the brand that I like is-“

“The most expensive one.” Werd interjects.

“You’re going to be four soon. When are you going to start contributing something, instead of lying around catching fleas all day?”

Taking a sip of soda-in-paw, Lump replies snidely, “Right. I’ll find a job once they allow small animals to work.”

“Small,” Werd scoffs, “you’re nearly twenty pounds.”

<Circa: 2016>

[strangeaegis]

Excerpt from The Night I Sailed off the World

[...]

I’d been falling for days, from what I could recount. It felt like an eternity at the time; I’m surprised I’m alive to tell this tale, given the height from which I must’ve fallen.

But, considering that my story begins with me sailing off the edge of the earth, I suppose there are less believable things out there.

All I remember after the descent was waking up in sand. I recall the sand vividly; Every grain, because I could hardly hold back the excitement that I was once again on solid land. I don’t know how I got there, or where my ship had gotten to- just, sand.

I wandered for about an hour through the dunes, maybe more. Eventually I came upon a lone tortoise, sitting peacefully in the shade beneath a cluster of palms. I must have been suffering from dehydration at this point, because I distinctly remember my first thought being to ask for help.

“Hello.” I said, approaching the tortoise. It was a massive thing; At least half my height.

“Where am I? Do you know?”

Eventually I realized what I was speaking to.

“Oh, I’m mad... you can’t speak. You’re a tortoise.”

Feeling the last bit of hope leaving my body, I grew tired and sat beside the hulking reptile to rest a while.

When I awoke the sun was high in the sky, and I could feel my self moving. I looked down to quickly notice that I was on the back of the tortoise. It seemed at peace as we strolled through a small wooded area. So was I, so I laid back and took in the sights.

A short while later, something possessed me to speak up again to the creature.

“You sure move awfully slow, don’t you?”

“I find it quite pleasurable to keep a leisurely pace, and take in the view.” the tortoise replied, to my immediate surprise.

“By the gods- you speak!” I shouted, perhaps a bit louder than I should have.

“Why didn’t you answer me before?”

I almost didn’t expect it, but the animal spoke again in reply:

“Well, you’d seemed quite confident in your statement that I couldn’t speak, and you looked a bit worn out as well. Who am I to disappoint you further by proving you wrong? But, I can’t very well ignore a direct question; That would be rude of me, and you seemed a bit more relaxed this time, so I thought it necessary to answer.”

Attempting to take everything in without fainting like a maiden, all I could bring my self to say was,

“Fair point.”

<Circa: 2015>

*This story does not support flat-earth theories.

[strangeaegis]

To: The Big-Ass Jar of Peanut Butter that Hardly Ever runs out of Content,

I love you, Big-Ass Jar of Peanut Butter that Hardly Ever runs out of Content. You hardly ever run out of content; Hence the given name.

But we have an issue.. a folly on your maker’s part, if you will.

You see, it doesn’t happen often, but when you do begin to come to an end (as all good things must), it is almost physically impossible to reach the bottom region of your jar without getting peanut butter on your hands. You simply just run too deep- even for a knife, and therein lies the problem:

Not many folks particularly enjoy having peanut butter on their hands. Everybody has their odd fetish, I suppose, but I would much rather my peanut butter be in oat meal or on toast.

So I ask of you, Big-Ass Jar of Peanut Butter that Hardly Ever runs out of Content: help a brother out. Just make this easy for me.

Sincerely,

Sad, Peanut Butter Covered Man

<Circa: 2012>

[strangeaegis]

Sekiro: A Step-up From SoulsBorne Games

The subtitle is actually “Shadows Die Twice;” Don’t be confused, but I think it’s deserving of the former title just as much as the latter. So let’s get in to the nitty-gritty and see why.

For those that don’t know, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is a game developed by FromSoftware, a company who have become quite well-known after creating the Dark Souls games, as well as Bloodborne. This style of game (fairly challenging action RPG with dedicated and uninterruptible animations) has been lovingly referred to as “SoulsBorne” since then.

Sekiro does something that SoulsBorne games haven’t completely managed to do for me yet though- and that’s force me to accept and learn their style of combat.

I’ve played through the first Dark Souls at least 15 times, and I’ve gone through Bloodborne maybe more, but beside an absurdly small number of them I couldn’t tell you the basic move-set of most bosses or enemies in the games.

See, I’m an avid fan of flailing, rolling, blocking and cheesing enemies or bosses until I’m strong and arguably overpowered enough to decimate them with pure muscle. Shadows Die Twice stripped that away from me, and I’ll admit that I didn’t go down without a fight.

I spent hours standing up in front of my TV, dashing and shouting and mashing the L1 button to “parry,” by definition, but moreso just hope and pray to a higher power that I deflected anything that came near me. After countless agonizing deaths and a couple NPCs suffering from Dragonrot (a disease afflicting those that fraternize with your player character as you die more and more), I learned that I really couldn’t just brute force my way through this game like I could with all the others.

As much as I tried, I realized I was basically corpse-running my way back to an enemy to give them another opportunity to hand my head to me in ten seconds- and oh man, did I try:

•Standing on the other side of fire to see if they’d walk in to it.

•Attempting a stealth kill to take out one HP segment, and then hiding until they stopped searching for me, before I realized that their HP fully regenerates if the fight ends.

•Looking up ways to boost stats earlier than usual to buff my character up.

Each time, Sekiro and FromSoftware wagged a finger in my face and said “nuh-uh, stop that.”

Eventually, I gave in, and that’s when I started appreciating the game even more than I already did (which was a lot).

Now, in Sekiro, the main focus of combat is parrying and wearing down a “Posture Bar.” Damaging posture is just as important as damaging health, if not more. These successive parries throw enemies off balance quicker and allow you to strike them down. The timing is just generous enough to let you freak out just a little bit, but excellent timing rewards you by dealing heavy posture damage and sometimes allowing an immediate execution of foes.

Reduced invincibility frames also encourage being more aggressive with your parries, rather than dodging and dashing your way through a fight most of the time like in Bloodborne.

Armed with this knowledge, I … continued treating this like Bloodborne for just a bit longer, dancing around and spamming parries while trying to mash the R1 attack button to beat enemies down. After having my ass delivered to me promptly each time, I really started watching my opponents’ movements, and learning how their weapons moved and struck. I started piecing together combos and pauses and openings in defense, and I became one with the Shinobi spirit this game encourages you to have; Blasting through tougher enemies with well-timed parries and counter slashes, and collecting their useful loot like it was candy held by a wimpy, defenseless and postureless baby.

The thing that Sekiro does with stats and stat-boosting items is a genius move for the SoulsBorne series, in my opinion. Gone are the days of tedious power-leveling (mostly), as are the days of frantic corpse-running. To boost your maximum HP and Posture, you need to collect prayer beads dropped by the tougher, mini-boss like enemies in the game, and to boost your attack strength, you have to defeat big bad bosses. There’s no avoiding those stronger dudes if you want to be stronger your self.

A very cheesy thing I’ve done in older Souls games was fight fodder enemies repeatedly or even use those frame-perfect glitches to “GET 40000 SOULS IN ONE HOUR” so that I could level the heck out of my stats and “Incredible Hulk” my way through the game from there. If someone was a bit too tough for me, I’d skip past them, and if I died and dropped all my Souls in a fight, I would sprint past everything in a desperate attempt to regain my stuff before even thinking about engaging a foe.

In Shadows Die Twice (and eventually thrice), you can’t raise your stats unless you face those strong opponents and overcome them- a mantra that SoulsBorne games like to emphasize, but Sekiro forces upon you. Sure, you can learn new skills and combat techniques; Something akin to the Weapon Arts of Dark Souls 3, but these things won’t carry you through a tough encounter. If you want to become stronger, you WILL learn enemy attack patterns and you WILL defeat them and triumph. You WILL become more inherently skilled at this game in the process, not just overpowered.

If you die, you’ll lose half of your experience points (used to net you a Skill Point automatically upon reaching the level up threshold), as well as half of your currently held currency. So, you won’t lose everything you have, like in the older games, but …

There’s no getting that back.

Yeah, that’s gone for good. You can run back to that guy that killed you, but you won’t regain anything previously lost other than maybe some dignity.

I prefer this, honestly. I feel that It makes you calmer in a weird way. Instead of running back to that tough guy- knees weak, arms heavy, with vomit on your sweater already- mom’s spaghetti- hoping you can run over to your Souls and mash (X) fast enough to pick them up before anything goes wrong, you just need to accept that what you’ve lost is gone and move on. You can return to your foe with a calm mind, not worried about that potential gain-back.

I might not be explaining my sentiments as well as I’d like. I just feel that I don’t get as depressed over dying in Sekiro as much as I did in any other SoulsBorne title. They keep death scary while somehow managing to also make it less discouraging.

I like that shit, that’s all.

In conclusion, I believe that Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice teaches you to accept your losses and keep trying, more than Dark Souls or Bloodborne ever did, and in a much better way.

I believe that FromSoftware is taking a much-needed step in the right direction with their new IP, and keeping things fresh and exciting in a world full of Japanese history games and Dark Souls clones.

Also, thank Buddha for that free jump button. How did FromSoftware go from the worst jump in a video game to one of the best?

[strangeaegis]

Constantly stuck

Between “I couldn’t leave them behind”

And “Who the fuck would miss me?”

[strangeaegis]

It’s weird how sadness evolves.

Years ago I was listening and relating to “I’m not sad anymore, I’m just tired of this place” and “I won’t sink too deep.”

Now I spend almost every day relating more to “do you really want to live your life or keep cleaning the bile off your sink?” and “I know that it’s selfish punching out early, but who’s going to miss me?”

I cant tell if I’m worse off for feeling this way, or getting stronger every day I’m still around.

[strangeaegis]

Shrodinger’s Snake

The theory that in any cardboard box you find laying around, there is a possibility that Solid Snake is inside it, but also a possibility that he’s not.