Game:

Kingdom Hearts III (2019)

Duration: 6:34

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This has probably been the hardest of the "floor is lava" runs thus far and while I do think it's possible, it's absurdly difficult (and possibly partially tied to RNG?), more so than some of the others. Whereas for the other bosses I usually only had to worry about their openings, here I had to deal with both getting the openings and dodging the vines because they'll send you back to the ground. With that being said though, it's also a phenomenal fight and so cool to look at IMO, which makes it one of my favorites.

Regarding the attacks, the first half is reasonable enough since there's enough space between his vine attacks and similarly to Ansem and others, he floats around and follows you into the air, which helped me stay in the air while making the fight look very cinematic. So for the first part, it was just a matter of learning the openings for those attacks more or less. I like that this fight also lets you utilize flowmotion for a bit when he casts the barrier, which I take advantage of at one point to gain some more height.

The DM is where things get really hard. First off, just like with Marluxia and Ansem, the DM resets you to the ground so there's that stipulation to the run. Fortunately, the first 2 combos of the DM have an exact sequence that lets you avoid the vines and stay in the air (as shown in the video), but the problem lies with the third sequence of Xemnas combos after the round of "red lasers, 2 unblockables, red lasers" at 2:56. He sends out two vines that come out in quick sucession so while I can dodge the first, I can't react to the second one. At first, I tried using a shotlock to avoid it like with Ansem, but with how much Xemnas moves and how soon the vines come, it's really hard to pull off and even when I do manage to get it, it leaves me in a bad situation afterwards where I get hit and then vined.

Eventually though, I realized that the vines can carry you into the air too, which I used to my advantage, but it doesn't seem consistent. Sometimes it'll throw me upwards while other times it throws me to the ground, and I don't know what determines that. I've tried getting vined from close to the ground and high up in the air and the vines still do whatever, which has me thinking that part is down to RNG unless there's something in the code that determines what direction the vine takes you consistently.

Because of that, I had to experiment with formchanges and found that I was just barely able to dodge the whole thing by activating a form and then using the finisher, which is where Ultima comes in. The hard part I face with that though is I need to make it to the third stage of the DM with the option to activate a formchange since every second counts, which means I need to use counters during the DM to reach that point. In order to reach that point, just about every action I made in the video up to the DM was deliberate and had a purpose. The sequence I followed was:

3 combos of Ultima Weapon to build up the SC gauge
Switch to Oathkeeper to get Light Form
1 combo of light to get Double Form
2 combos of Double Form with a couple Fires thrown in
3 combos of Ultima Weapon

and that would get me the results I needed. Then it's up to the last stage of the DM sending me into the air. Overall, the DM is very hard to deal with staying exclusively in the air and I probably lost at least 50 attempts to it. Then again, I've only been experimenting with UW, Oathkeeper, and Oblivion, so maybe some of the other keyblades could make it through better like Hero's Origin. As for not getting stunned, I equipped a Master Medal from Flash Tracer A that had Stun Protection since I didn't want to use Nano Gear.

Then there's the second part of the fight which is also difficult because he now starts throwing vines during his other attacks, which changes how I dealt with them in the first part. I think it's still possible to deal with the attacks and dodge the vines, but it's also very precise. Overall, I still haven't managed to accomplish the whole thing and I want to move on to Xion and MX, so here's one of my best attempts thus far instead. I might go back and try to accomplish the run later.

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