Subset Games Forum

A great game but the fight against the boss was not well thought out. After the first two partial kills when you track it down for the third battle, you've destroyed two of it's weapon systems and it's more difficult to kill than ever which makes no sense. Throwing in the "secret weapon blasts" that it never used before has a "just thrown in" feel to it and seems a bit childish. The hardest battle with the boss should not be when it's heavily damaged. At that point, going into that last battle the emotion that you should begin to feel is satisfaction that you're looking really good at this point so "just don't make a bad mistake here and you should be able to win this thing. Instead you have ridiculous new stuff that's been hidden from you to this point that makes the ship more dangerous than ever --- the result of that is that if you lose during that third battle it creates frustration and makes the game lose some of it's "I can't wait to play it again" factor.

Have you ever played a video game before with a boss fight?

Because having the boss become really insanely powerful after taking a lot of damage is par the course for pretty much every game, except for those few who want to be "trendy" or "paradoic" and have the boss become a pushover at their final form.

Besides, the Flagship NEEDs those bonuses to shields and that superweapon. Otherwise the ship pretty much becomes a pushover. Hell, even having a Zoltan Shield Bypass makes that stage easier as you can take out that missile launcher and/or the shields and/or the mind control before the Zoltan Shield drops.

^ the above assumes you've done the "Cheese it strategy" back in fight 1 and killed all the crew except for the guy in the triple lasers or left one guy around in the main body of the ship. Because if you kill all the crew, another so-called "Chilidsh addition" is added that'll annoy you.

If you need an in-universe justification, it's that the artillery bays, cloaking, hacking, etc. systems are destroyed, so the Flagship's crew re-routed power to other power-hungry systems... much like the player does when their stuff gets damaged.

Now that you know about the Power Surges, you have plans to counter them. I'm somewhat disappointed that the game never gives you hints about any of these capabilities, but they're both (highly exaggerated) examples of difficulties you could run into in your main run: Rebel Riggers and Auto-Assaults that launch large swarms of attack drones that pummel your shields, and Rebel Fighters and other ships with huge laser salvoes. Maybe if the Flagship Construction had a miniature power-surge it could act as a preview for those lucky enough to find it before the main boss fight.

All of that said, the Phase 2 drone surge is usually considered more dangerous than the Phase 3 laser surge, since it specializes in beating your shields down, its beam drones don't miss, and the Flagship's Halberd beam is still intact so it can potentially shred your ship while your shields are down too.

It's really a test of both how well you've upgraded your ship throughout the game (total scrap collected), and how well you can manage a protracted and long fight without letting damage get out of control.