Lies of P (DLC) - Arlecchino No Damage (Difficulty 5 with Restrictions)

Описание: This fight comes close to the pinnacle of the action genre: great music & atmosphere, unbelievably fun defensive gameplay at a base level, and so many attack patterns to contend with that I'm still finding new things to learn and improve on over 30 hours later.

Arlecchino is supremely challenging to beat both casually and going for a No Damage in Boss Rematch, although each for different reasons.
His first phase is very mix-up heavy, with many tests of reaction speed and subtle branches each combo he does can take. However, once you've progressed on the fight enough, his basic combos (and their associated mix-ups) become second nature, and the killer of runs are his sidestep extensions he mostly employs post-33% HP; these are never easy to deal with due to their speed. For No Damage, I very quickly built a mental model for when he flinches and when he is Staggerable to speed up the phase; it's very consistent (variance mostly comes down to the initial combo of the fight).

Progressing his second phase blind is made a lot harder by the length of the first phase and his bonkers desperation move, which he starts the phase with every time, but once you've gotten past that DM, the second phase is similar to Laxasia's in that you're not punished super heavily for holding out P's Guard, only occasionally sprinkling in Perfect Guards as you get familiar with the moveset. The Break status effect is definitely scary (it cuts your healing in half!) but if you're progressing with more than five Pulse Cells (unlike a certain someone), dealing with the status is at least manageable.

For No Damage, on the other hand... the second phase is RIDICULOUS. Not allowing even a single regular Guard through is nerve-wracking (Perfect Guards have an 8-frame window like KH3's Critical Counter ability, for those unaware) with the multitudinous combo routes he can take, and if you're playing with the Wintry Rapier or a similarly quick weapon like I am, you have to get greedy in the middle of combos or the phase will take A LOT more time.
The scariest move by far for me is his shorter-range LEFT-handed forward stab (3:09): Arlecchino can follow this move up with a lot of super-rare combos, including an aerial Superman stab like in the first phase and a double shoulder-swipe combo (with a slower timing...) that you don't really see anywhere else and are therefore very hard to practice without going into lower difficulty rematches and sandbagging (I did quite a bit of this). His shorter-range RIGHT-handed forward stab (3:24) is his fastest move and dictates how greedy you can be; there were a couple of instances here where I did gamble a bit on doing an extra attack, but you can also react to whether he does it or not and do something of a fuzzy input to still be greedy.

I want to do a Base LV run of the Blood Artist in the future, and possibly play around with removing certain P-Organ upgrades (for No Damage runs, Stamina and Durability gain on Perfect Block are game-changing). Although not an exhaustive list, note that I was running the aforementioned upgrades along with most of the "Enhance ATK" or "Enhance Stagger ATK" ones (including the ones from NG+2) and "Charge Fable when reviving", which lets me get an earlier Storm Stab in during Phase 1.

As a final note, I've gotta give thanks to ‪@StaggerTime‬'s videos for pushing me to optimize this fight to this level, especially attacking Arlecchino during the DM (although you won't ever catch me doing it before the vortex portion of the move). They are the undisputed king of this boss fight, go give their myriad restricted videos of the fight a watch!

Wintry Rapier (+10)
No Guard Parry
No Damage
No Hit
No Defense Parts
No Consumables
No Throwables
No Special Grindstones
No Legion Arm
No "Link Dodge"
No "Perfect Guard causes Stiffness"
No HUD

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Timestamps:
Phase 1 - 0:00
Phase 2 - 1:35
Character Setup - 4:46

PC Specs:
CPU - AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (Overclocked to 4.2GHz)
Motherboard - MSI B450 Tomahawk MAX
GPU - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Super
RAM - Viper Steel Series 32GB (2x16GB) at 3200MHz
Storage - Lexar NQ780 4TB
PSU - Corsair CX750M
Case - Corsair Carbide Series 175R
Main Monitor - Acer XFA240 24" 1080p 144Hz Monitor w/ G-Sync

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