I gotta vent about the Magnamon fight.

I'm playing through on Mega+ now and I'm pretty well at the end of my second run. All that's left before Chronomon now is side quest cleanup. Also the fight with all the Royal Knights, and for the most part I have really enjoyed these fights on Mega+. They've been hard, but mostly in a fair way. Forced me to go into them with some sort of strategy, have a dedicated healer, plan out my moves. The things I want when I play a turn based rpg.

And then there's Magnamon. I had the hardest time against him in my first playthrough on Hard difficulty and now he's been the worst bossfight of this playthrough. Utterly overtuned, move spamming crap. I beat him, but it was not fun. WHY DOES HE DO SO MUCH DAMAGE?! It was not a rewarding challenge to overcome. I went in with a plan. I had my Lilithmon Known Bug'd so she'd be immune to light attacks and could injure him, cutting off his heal. I specifically picked a team of light resistant party members to neutralize that move against them as well. All because I remember in my first fight against him, the most annoying attack he had was Shining Gold Solar System. I had three healers with Great Embrace and multiple Digimon with X-Revive in case things went belly up. None of my team was weak to wind so his other full party attack, Tempest 3 shouldn't have done much. Shouldn't have. Especially since my full party had 9999 base health and no less than 8000 DEF and SPI each. And yet, despite no type advantage and high defenses, Tempest 3 still did 6000 or more HP damage. Which is a lot, but I could manage that. But he has another attack.

I forgot about Plasma Shot.

This attack is RIDICULOUS. I would have my party fully overhealed to 19998 HP and still the only way to survive that attack was to have either the High Field Cross Arts popped or, failing that, have safety guard on them and hope he doesn't follow up with a Tempest (which he almost always does.) So basically he gets a free kill every turn (because OH BOY does he ever love using Plasma Shot every second move) and there is nothing I can do to stop him. Other than Attack Reflect.

So that's what I had to do. And sure enough, yeah, it did the job. I made Magnamon kill itself with it's own attacks. Yipee. I won in the lamest, most unsatisfying possible way because at this point I'm pretty sure it's actually the only way to do it. More lightning resist wouldn't have really mattered. To equip lightning resist gear, I have to swap out light resist gear, then I open myself up to his other move and that hits the whole party and with the damage Plasma Shot was doing, I don't think a little extra lightning defense would have stopped the unstoppable combination of it, followed by Tempest.

It's impossible to just fight him because you get caught in a loop of revive, heal, die, revive, heal, die, revive, heal, die. And all the while, he's also dictating to me what attacks I'm allowed to use on him. And I came in with a balance of physical and magic attackers. That on its own isn't an issue, but on top of everything else he has going for him? He has no weaknesses to exploit. Maybe I'm missing something, but to me it seems there's no good angle to attack him from other than just shut off his one magic attack and then spam Attack Reflect until he beats himself to death.

I dunno man, I mean, Alphamon was annoying. Blade of the Dragon King letting him hit me like 6 times before my turn sucked but at least his damage generally wasn't so obscene that 6 attacks in a row was not a guaranteed death sentence with the right team, gear and heals. Leopardmon was annoying but also... I went in with a full team that was immune to sleep and for some reason he kept using basic attack and Idle Bubble, neither of which did anything to me, instead of Extinction Wave which, if not for Safety Guard, would have just wiped my entire party, so his ai made what would be an annoying one kinda easy. LordKnightmon does obscene damage with Spiral Masquerade and has 9999 speed so he just gets to keep hitting you, but just safety guard up, wear your bubble wrap and be resistant to dark and you'll be okay. Like there were other Royal Knights I had struggles against, but Magnamon is the only one who just feels actively unfair. He's the only one that just feels like there is nothing you can do but cheese him because he has every advantage and no weakness and I just don't think that's fun boss design.

Looking forward to fighting the Olympos 12 on Mega+. For now at least. I'm sure it's a brutal fight so who knows?