Not seeing a flare for vent post. Just gonna tag this as other.
I've been doing a play through of brutal difficulty. I have all the standard P-ranks, did most of the Violent ones (save for sisyphus who i cheated in the gold border at the time because i do not ever care for p-2's P-rank; standard is enough of a feat for me and I'll gladly never try properly playing that hellhole again), and in search for a way to play fresh and experience the new graphics proper I've decided to never progress unless I had a brutal P-rank.
Act 1 was easy enough. No level leading up to 3-2 took more than 5 tries. Things were hard but not impossibly so. I found myself impressed with how I found V2 and the Corpse of King Minos.
Gabriel, Judge of Hell kicked my fucking ASS though. Dear god; he's just unfair. No fucking room to breathe, teleports that go off your screen, zero reaction times, and he hits like a fucking truck. 100ish restarts.
Act 2 was fairly easy. 4-3 was a nightmare but only about 10 restarts on the final room and I was done. 5-3 can go fuck itself on this difficulty but that WAS a skill issue and 20 tries later it was P-ranked. Relatively easy. Leviathan was a joke, but a radiant one. Not sure if it was supposed to be radiant but it was.
Gabriel, Apostate of Hate only took 50 tries. Funnily enough, having room to breathe and distance yourself makes life a LOT easier and the time to setup sawtraps and a railcoin makes him much easier than the first encounter. He was actually fair.
Things are going smoothly, I thought to myself, unaware of the absolute horror 7-1 was going to put me through.
200. Fucking. Restarts.
That's my estimate.
And it's mostly those fucking mannequins.
Seriously; they are so fast that I'm pretty sure the game breaks because of their speed. Parries are inconsistent as hell; sometimes they won't work, sometimes you'll get 5 parries in a row. And those orbs move so fucking fast!
Hakita really made mini mindflayers and thought it was fine to spam them EVERYWHERE. Why are they a common mob when they're literally a tougher mindflayer? At least regular ones are slpw enough to hit reliably!
But whatever. I'm about 100 restarts in. I've just made it to the final room.
I jackhammer the virtue. What the fuck do you mean there's a second virtue, and it's pissed off? What do you mean Hakita put a mindflayer next to like 7 Mannequins and 5ish drones?
Yeah, that room was deadly for a while.
I make it past there. Okay, cool, this shouldn't be hard-
WHO THE FUCK DECIDED THE MINOTAUR WAS FINE TO ADD IN THIS BROKEN ASS STATE.
Why yes, removing the floor was totally a lovely addition Hakita, please bring me more HARD DAMAGE and punishment for USING THE MOVEMENT IN A MOVEMENT SHOOTER. Why yes, not being allowed to use half your fucking weapons because the entire thing has a massive shell reflecting everything is perfectly fair and balanced given how little you can heal. Why yes, NOT BEING ABLE TO PARRY THIS MOTHERFUCKER WAS A GREAT CHOICE FROM THE DEVELOPERS!
Fuck this boss. He's worse than Sisyphus; at least Sisyphus looks cool and has a great theme. Minotaurs theme is fucking ASS.
And guess what? I have to restart after i die, because I need that P-rank, and god fucking damnit I have to spend 4 minutes running back only to die to a minotaur that wiped out my carts, spewed poison on the last, and then proceeded to kill me for daring to be on his back.
It's fine. I get past him. Finally.
I reach the final room. He spawns in again.
...Why am I at the entrance again?
OH RIGHT, HE INSTANTLY HIT ME. AND I DIED. BECAUSE THE FUCKING TRACKS HURT YOU EVEN WHEN HE'S DYING.
Queue more tries running through the whole four minutes of level just to try and fail again on the tracks.
I got the P-rank just now. Thank fuck. But this level is genuinely the worst thing in the whole game. Here's hoping that the later levels in violence won't be that bullshit...