You have died.

[prog]

Cave Story has a lot of great stuff in it but I just don't know what this Pixel person was thinking with the end. It's almost a parody of how a lot of platformers have an endboss that's twice as hard as anything that's come before.

A four-stage endboss with a three-bosses-at-once-plus-summoning last stage, without any opportunities for saves or even healing, is a bit much. It's also a real let-down after hours of delightful exploration paced by only somewhat narsty boss fights. This isn't worth getting angry over. baleeted

(I might play it some more if you can skip past the cinematics. Hard boss fights with unskippable cinematics in is bad design. Yugh.)

Comments

[rserocki.livejournal.com]

Found


- Boss Fight #14 -
Gothier Than Thou

This time she actually fights you herself, and it kind of shows why she always
flaked out and ran away all those other times. She'll teleport from place to
place and unleash one of several attacks. She periodically surrounds herself
with orbiting rings that will deflect your shots, but when she teleports away
they will turn into red imps that you can destroy for powerups. Before she
teleports she'll usually either drop a heavy brick or fire a short burst of
black projectiles. Periodically she'll summon three slow moving black spheres
that shoot downward when you pass beneath them. All you really need to do for
this fight is move beneath her when she teleports while firing straight up with
your machine gun. When she starts flashing move out of the way and you'll have
little trouble avoiding her projectiles. In fact, the trick here isn't so much
in beating her as it is in doing it while keeping as much health and ammunition
as possible because you can't save or replenish yourself before the next fight.
After beating her follow the new stairway up to the king's table.

- Boss Fight #15 -
Don't Make Me Angry

The doctor in his first form teleports around the room and throws fireballs in a
way that'll have Dracula calling his lawyer. He can usually be found by
following where the red crystal floats off to. Every once in a while he hangs in
the air and fires a burst of red projectiles that bound around the room for a
short while. There are several ways of handling him, but the best I've found
involve either using the jet pack and machine gun to hang around on the ceiling
where he can't actually reach you while firing down into the top of his head, or
just blasting him with a few level 3 super missiles. Ripping into him with a
leveled up sword also works nicely.

- Boss Fight #16 -
You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry

His second form is, if anything, easier. He moves around in shallow leaps,
occasionally teleporting, and sometimes charging across the screen a bit. Every
once in a while he'll throw out a cloud of red imps that frustratingly don't
offer powerups when destroyed. Again, either hanging out on the ceiling or
nuking him with missiles will end the fight quickly, though almost any weapon
will be effective if you watch his patterns. In both forms the most dangerous
thing to watch out for is the crystal itself, which deals much heavier damage
than everything else. Once he's down proceed to the final room. Again, no chance
to save or revive.

- Boss Fight #17 -
Old Friends

Taking down the possessed Sue will make things easier but you may want to
consider leaving the possessed Misery alone. She continually summons homing
shots and orange blobs, all of which can be destroyed to obtain health, missile
ammo, and weapon energy. Keeping her around can actually help keep you alive a
lot longer. After eliminating Sue concentrate on defeating the core by standing
on the smaller platforms and shooting into its face when it's exposed. When it
looks like a skull it will launch orange projectiles that will race along the
floor or ceiling toward you. When its face is all teeth it will shoot spiral
shots which aren't hard to dodge. When you've hurt it enough it will start
opening its mouth to launch three powerful energy blasts while still launching
the orange projectiles. When he begins doing that drop down and shoot upward at
him to avoid the energy blasts. Use missiles on the core when you have them
available and any other weapons you have charged up otherwise. If you still have
the Life Pot that Jenka gave you you'll never have a better time to use it than
now. When you finally finish him off race for the exit before the place comes
down on top of you. If you saved the girl you can re-enter the prefab building at this point to find a hellish secret level. Congratulations. You've defeated the vile red doctor and saved the universe. Now enjoy the ending and watch the credits to learn the names of all those adorable things you've killed.

Those of you who opted to save the girl have a lot more ahead of you, including
a much different ending should you manage to survive. Such is the price of
heroism.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I found the abovementioned walkthrough rather helpful. I didn't feel the same letdown at the end, but then, I don't play a whole lot of first-person shooters.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Er. Platforms. Not that I play FPS's either, but the point is.

[(Anonymous)]

Coincidentally enough I started playing Cave Story yesterday. I'm facing the final boss right now. Nostalgia's getting the better of me and I'm prepared to forgive the insanely hard sequence of boss battles precisely because it's the FINAL BATTLE, man, it's supposed to be hard!!

I wouldn't forgive this kind of thing in any other genre though. I have a large Weak spot for platformers with bunny people.

I can't seem to find too much information, but this seems to be the work of one person? Nice to be reminded that it IS possible.

[chocorisu.livejournal.com]

OOPS, my dear wife keeps using my PC and logging me out. Sorry about that.

[rserocki.livejournal.com]

From what I understand, it's by one person
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doukutsu_Monogatari

[mwerble.livejournal.com]

In the same way, I'm still frustrated by Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, both of which in which (is that really how I form that sentence?) I'm stuck at the final combat. No one else seems to be having this problem, though, so perhaps it's just that I suck. Very frustrating.

[karlvonl.livejournal.com]

Damn you JMac! I'm addicted to Cave Story now. New Super Mario Brothers and Tomb Raider Legend have been put on hold. :-)

Oh, and as for the boss thing; I never finished Mega Man X4 for the Sega Saturn many years ago, for the same reason. You have to fight like 4 bosses in a row. And if you've played any Mega Man games you know that beating one boss is hard enough, and even if you only have one point of health left at the end, you feel like you've accomplished something, and you're glad it's over.

[prog.livejournal.com]

I'll feel like returning to this fight someday. I think it's a little easier than it looks, with patterns that you can pick up and react to on later iterations.

The real problem, as I said, is the fact that you can't skip past the lengthy cinematics woven into each stage of the fight, and they get very old fast. I argue that Pixel could have added a control to skip cinematics without sacrificing old-school feel.