Just after dealing with Brightside, Knuckle Sandwich will present you with Brightfang Bruse. He’s tough, but he isn’t invincible.
Brightfang Bruse will take many attempts, as his minigames aren’t the easiest.
Preparing for Brightfang Bruse in Knuckle Sandwich
Brightfang Bruse is a pretty challenging boss to take down. If you want to have a much easier time, then you will want to prepare accordingly. You can do the fight without any of these items, but you’ll find that they could save you a lot of effort.
Bathbombs are an incredible tool. For the maximum effect using these, you’ll want to have three Bathbombs per character (you can get away with giving Echo two, if you haven’t used the Stink Bomb yet). These deal good damage and will help you greatly during a certain section of the fight.
Also, equipping either character with a reviving item would help you greatly. You would have come across a few of these at this point, so I hope you’ve been picking them up! If you’ve only got one, give it to Echo. She is at a higher level than you and will last longer.
Filling the rest of their inventories with healing items and Fresh Herbs will do you well, too.
It is hard to prepare for Bruse’s fight considering that you’ll be locked in the electricity room before the fight, and won’t be able to leave. Salvaging anything you can in there is needed, as well as healing your party at the vending machine if you haven’t done so already.
Fighting Brightfang Bruse in Knuckle Sandwich
Bruse is a tough cookie, and that’s reflected through how little damage you’ll be doing from your attacks. I want to preface this next part on fighting him by stating that the vast majority of the damage you’ll be dealing will be from perfectly solving his attacks, as he’ll then get hit for some decent damage. So don’t worry too much – at least in the first half of the fight – in dealing damage from fighting him directly.
He has a lot of attacks, which I’ll be taking you through one at a time. Also, don’t be tempted to use the goblin just yet!
Phase One
His first attack will be simply a normal attack, where he’ll disappear. Lightning bolts will shoot down and advance toward you. Don’t use the lightning bolts as a signal for when to attack. Instead, ignore them and keep your eyes peeled on your characters. The moment he appears, dodge. Ignore the lightning, as he will sometimes fluke you and appear ahead of time.
In the first phase, he will use the following minigames as attacks. Remember, dodging them perfectly not only evades all damage but hurts Bruse, too!
Thunderdome is a relatively simple minigame, where you’ll have to move your character around to avoid lightning bolts. A warning will be displayed in the lane that it will shoot from. In later iterations, an orb of electricity will be floating around the perimeter of the arena for you to dodge through jumping. My strategy for this was to stay close to where lightning struck, as it typically wouldn’t strike twice, at least not immediately. This prevented me from getting cornered by simultaneous lane strikes.
Zap attack and Zip attack are both minigames you should be familiar with if you fought the Zipzaps in the electricity room. The only difficult one here is the Zip attack, where balls of electricity will shoot down the lines. This happens so quickly that you may struggle to react. If there are any lines without connections, immediately stand under them. Otherwise, you’ll need some lightning-quick reactions.
Lacklustre isn’t an attack, but it will reduce either your party’s attack or speed. This actually isn’t too consequential, as you would have been doing hardly any damage anyway.
Finally, Chain lightning will feature, which is one of the easiest to complete. In the field, don’t be on the same horizontal or vertical axis as the little bombs mini Bruse will place. Also, avoid Bruse. This minigame is a slam dunk, as long as you’re vigilant.
Brightfang Bruse will be bombarding you with the above attacks until his health reduces to around 60% to 70%. Then, he will charge up. With enough practice, you can get this far without suffering any damage. If a character or two has taken a hit, then you’ll need to play very carefully.
Before he gets to this point, you need to make sure your health is high.
You can do this by using healing items, or by using the Friend Dimension skill that Echo should be holding. The round after he announces that he’s charging up, make sure to use the defend skill on both of your characters.
He will unleash a devastating attack, but both of your characters should survive it if you’ve followed my advice.
Phase Two
For the next three rounds, Brightfang Bruse will have reduced defense and won’t be attacking. Use these rounds to unleash hell. Make sure to use your goblin now, and throw all the bathbombs and other offensive items that you have. Use any powerful skills, like Complicated Punch, if you run out of items. Use everything in your arsenal, and worry about healing later.
When Bruse gets up, the real fight begins. Like in phase one, most of your damage will come from perfectly evading his attacks, but it is actually worth hitting him as hard as you can now.
In addition to his attacks from phase one, Bruse will add Shriek to his attack roster. This will shock you, which is incredibly frustrating when you’re attacking.
It is vital for Echo to have the revive item as your character will almost certainly get Knocked Out. I managed to finish the fight just fine, but it would have been welcome to have him.
He will start attacking twice on his turns and will be much quicker. Due to your practice in phase one, this increase in intensity should be manageable, although it may require a few tries. Unlike Brightside, you will be fighting till his health drops to zero.
It is pretty useful to have Fresh Herbs during the second half of the fight, although considering most of the damage is still dealt from solving his minigames, it isn’t much of a big deal.
Once you’ve battered him around enough and his minigames are no longer a match to you, you will beat him before long. The beauty of combat in Knuckle Sandwich is being able to master the minigames to deal damage to your opponents, so your muscle memory will soon make fighting enemies over and over again easier each time.
I wish you the best of luck. Now go and deliver Brightfang Bruse a knuckle sandwich he can’t stomach.
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