KH Birth By Sleep Final Mix (PS4) - Wheel Master (LV1 Critical/Terra) *No Zero EXP/No Damage*
4Birth by Sleep... This is something I've been meaning to do for a while but kept putting it off because... I simply didn't want to do it... BBS is so slow and boring and you have to do so much command farming to get anywhere on Lv1. What makes it worse is that I didn't want to do just Lv1, I wanted to show people what "true" Lv1 is...
Now for those of you who are not familiar with Lv1 in BBS, they made a huge change in 2.5 by adding some hidden properties to Zero EXP that scale your damage up if you are too low. This is something that KH2 does normally in-engine however in BBS they made the damage floor way too high and it makes multi-hit moves do an absurd amount of damage. Because of this, the HD version of BBS has a stupidly easy Lv1 that in many cases is actually easier then just playing Critical Mode normally. This is the gimmick of this challenge, do every boss fight WITHOUT equipping Zero EXP and benefiting from 2.5's damage scaling. This is a challenge I often dub "PSP Lv1" as it scales the game back down to how Lv1 played on the PSP version.
The difference isn't really visible yet but it will very soon. In DDD I was able to go most of the game doing decent damage but not here... BBS has THE WORST level and damage scaling in the entire series and by the time I reach Radiant Garden, I will be doing 1 damage per hit and there is no Spirit Roar or Balloonra to save me. By the end of each character's stories, fights will start getting really long and bosses will be immune to the only commands I have that do any actual damage.
Also... NO, I WILL NOT DO MYSTERIOUS FIGURE WITH THIS RESTRICTION! For post game I will do Vanitas with every character and I will do all the arena stuff with Aqua at the least. MF though, no way I will ever do that horrible horrible fight without Zero EXP. I'll show MF on normal Lv1 since the normal Lv1 tricks don't work on him so he is genuinely harder on Lv1 then he is normally.
With that out of the way, onto the boss... This is the worst first boss I ever seen... This boss is way too strong for this early in the game and there is so much randomness that you have very little control over it. The main problem is his attacks come out so fast with so little start up lag that it feels like he deals contact damage at times. The other main issue with randomness is the wheel he throws. No matter what you do, the wheel will randomly bounce off the walls and come at you and hit you from off screen. The boss is also too large so if you try to combo him, you will often go airborne and you have no movement options in the air and you have a huge amount of landing lag so there is basically nothing you can do.
When you do enough damage to him, he will go on a rampage and if you are close enough, he will damage you. This is ANNOYING because it means you have to snipe him from a distance when he gets close to his second phase to not get hit. His charge attack is also kind of random and hard to predict when you have to guard. The best way to handle this is to Dimension Link with Aqua after reducing him a little bit lower then a bar and then just spam at afar. If you have Aqua's D-Link at max level, she will have a few good spells and a really powerful Finisher. Both her and Ven also have Cura and you don't have any Cure magic at this point in the game so that is useful.