Game:

Tales of Xillia (2011)

Duration: 2:32

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11

-No damage
-No items
-No Free Run
-Unknown
-Double Damage / Triple Criticals used

Wellllll...

It's kind of difficult to come up with a somewhat reasonable statement after around half a year of radio silence and the fact that lately, people have been leaving Tales or challenge runs of Tales games left and right. Let me just state that uploads have been slow and irregular on my channel for quite a while now for reasons I've stated multiple times, and since I'm not out of the woods yet with my career, that won't change in the near future.

That being said, there's nothing actually new to say here - uploads happen whenever and I'm still on this run although it may not look like it and although I'm not working on it on a regular basis for the stated reasons.

Ironically, I've been sitting on this particular take since April, and for some time I wasn't really happy with its quality. Or rather I thought I could come up with a more interesting and entertaining take, but since this boss dictates the flow of the battle to a certain degree, it was more trial&error than actual strategy or progression. After reviewing this take a couple of times, I came to the conclusion that it's not too bad and that uploading it won't do any harm.

Which leads us to talking about Roparde. Alvin can completely destroy the concept of only staggering Roparde with weakness hits by using Demon's Inferno. The arte just screws the intended physics and staggers him anyway, no matter which element Roparde takes on. Of course, only relying on that trick would be boring as all hell, so I let the guy change elements to be able to stagger him with something different (since Squall Shot tends to force a counter immediately).

However, that creates a few issues. To let Roparde change elements, you need to give him room to breathe and execute the animation for changing elements. If you interrupt him too early, the change will not occur. That means that you intentionally stop assaulting him, but of course Namco had to make this a gamble by enabling him to call minions. Sometimes when you want him to switch elements, he will call minions instead, making your life miserable. The thing is that these minions can actually pose a threat. Some of them have AOE attacks with good range. Others have an attack where they dig into the ground and lock on to you to attack you from below, making them invincible during the entire animation and forcing you to be on your toes because evading this attack needs some quick reactions. And naturally, this guy likes to spam his minions, especially when he's low on health.

Roparde's own attacks have good range themselves for the most part, but can be reacted to with perfect backsteps (which I didn't get the chance to show off here), thankfully. One thing to close the distance to him and make some rather unsafe approaches viable is to intentionally attack him with mutli-hitting moves that don't stagger him (e.g. Pulse Shot, Squall Shot when he's not fire-elemental). The high hit-rate combined with the fact that they don't stagger often make Roparde guard, enabling you to rush to him while he's still in his guard stance. That buys you enough time to safely pull off Demon's Inferno or basically anything else you'd like to throw at him.

Overall, Roparde is not too bad of an optional boss despite his minion calling, weird hurtboxes and underdeveloped element-switching mechanic. But he's far from being a major annoyance as other bosses to come, so stay tuned (even if it's Christmas or next year when that happens xD).

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