God of War: Ascension - befriending the Manticore
16The health break-point exploit works in the Chapter 9 Manticore-fight as well. As a result, you can create a "tame" version of the boss, among other strange side effects.
0:00 - Basically, once Manticore is taken past a certain health threshold, it enters a "stunned" state where it's vulnerable to a mini-game. The game normally forces you to do both mini-games to the boss in order to progress. However, if you take the Manticore's health under the threshold while it's locked into Ice Rage, you skip the part where they become vulnerable to mini-game and the fight continues.
0:14 - however, now the game is not entirely certain whether this is phase 1 or 2. For instance, in this clip the Manticore moves around in its more aggressive phase 1 pose but it will also create Manticore Spawn, which it will only normally do during phase 2.
Skipping the first phase mini-game does not softlock the fight, like it did at Chimera. Instead, if you deal enough damage to Manticore, it will eventually hit the second health threshold and becomes vulnerable to the finishing QTE. In other words, this trick can be used in a speedrun to skip the 20-second cinematic mini-game, although figuring out a consistent setup might be difficult.
0:32 - skipping the second phase mini-game and dealing a bit of damage to the boss, it becomes "tame". It doesn't move any longer, Soul Rage doesn't target it and it cannot get frozen either. It may try to lazily counterattack, but none of its attacks can hit Kratos.
1:16 - continuing to do damage and Ice Rage to the boss, it will reach an even more passive state where grabs can no longer connect to it and it also won't turn to face Kratos any longer.
1:33 - a bizarre dance routine...?
1:41 - after skipping the phase 1 mini-game and then passing a certain damage threshold while the Manticore is flying, it will spit out some Manticore Spawn while floating in air. After this, it will enter an odd looking combined state between phase 2 grounded movement and flying. Its attacks cannot contact with Kratos at all since they're all horizontally aligned ground-based attacks.
Any Manticore Spawn that are spawned while the Manticore is flying cannot land on the ground properly and never unhatch. They just float around immobile in an egg-shaped form and do not react to most of Kratos' attacks. They do take damage, though, and will eventually die if you just attack them. Walking into them does a one-time damaging effect to Kratos that can be parried! Grabbing them will cause a displaced grab to take place, after which the Manticore Spawn will finally "hatch", although in a super tiny size. The tiny Manticore Spawn look a bit glitchy, with stiff wing movement and scaled fire attack effects.
2:38 - Doing Ice Rage to mixed flying/phase 2 Manticore while it's doing a ground action will pull it down to Kratos' height, but it will then slowly rise up again once it starts moving.
Damaging the Manticore enough from this point, it'll eventually fall down and become vulnerable to the finishing QTE. Even if you let it recover, it won't start flying again. It might probably be possible to get a flying tame Manticore by skipping both of its mini-games while it remains flying, but that might be difficult...
2:58 - some more footage of the mini Manticore Spawn. Using Ice Rage on an unhatched Manticore Spawn will not kill it but instead cause it to hatch properly at a normal size. Who knew Kratos had what it takes to be a monster midwife?
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