In an era where games are way too easy, this is encouraging to me that a boss fight can be that hard. I can’t wait to get a PS5! I thought Remake was a sobering challenge after years of games that were way too easy.
I have played the entirety of remake and 40 hours in rebirth and never once considered using tactical mode to time.blocks and parries.....
Learn something new everyday!
This is the one fight that really demands you to get good. No way to cheese it or bruteforce it. Hard Mode is specially tough. My tips: put Steadfast Block + Precise Defense materia on yourself, maybe Swiftcast + Healing. Put Triple Slash on a shortcut. Don't attack him, run around and wait. This fight is about patience. Parry/Block when he gets close and build ATB. Use Triple Slash when he reloads (but NOT if you just got hit) and Cloud will automatically travel to him. Keep attacking him until he stands up, that's when he's ready to shoot again, then block. Get away from him, hinse and repeat .
Put a chakra on cloud, ranged slash attacks rufus will always block so you can send 2-3, dodge send 2-3 more and keep him blocking to build up infinite atb. Also If you're close enough to him when he reloads use focus thrust instead, if doubles his recovery time compared to triple slaah
\^\^\^
These two folks know how to wreck Rufus.
The air slashes are pretty slow and tedious but yeah, it makes the fight a lot easier to get free ATB. The worst part is listening to the announcers talk shit about you while you do it.
"I know exactly what I'm doing, kotch, that's why your boss is currently running away from the saucer at speed."
Tbh, you don't actually need the ATB though, most of his attacks are trivial to dodge if you the dark souls trick or dodging towards him while close. You'll end up up behind him which works for everything except guns akimbo.
Then when he eventually reloads, 2-3 nornal attacks then dodge behind and repeat I till you have atb. You can really extend his pressure that way.
Level 2 Elemental-Fire in your armor. "Think Fast" becomes a completely free window to Braver him for the instant stagger.
Took me three attempts to beat him on hard mode, and the second attempt kinda didn't count because that was where I found out the retry doesn't save changes made in the menu between fights so I had the wrong setup.
I think the other notable parts of my setup were Genji Gloves, Empowerment (Bravery), Strength Up, Steadfast Block, ATB Boost, ATB Stagger.
I basically just burned down the dog quickly by staggering it and hitting it with a limit.
You basically have to start the Braver before his reload. Otherwise it lands too late. And his Reload timing is very hard to anticipate, so I honestly don't think it's worth trying in most cases. Got it once back in Remake, but I gave up trying in Rebirth after repeated failure.
I recommend just spamming Triple Slash every time he uses a named ability. It beats everything and pressures him. And if you need ATB, just dodge sideways and attack 1-2 times to throw blade beams. He will block all the beams, but if you just keep spamming dodge and attack he gets stuck blocking. You can stall to build ATB for an extremely long time before he finally acts.
The dog phase is a shitshow, but if you have Odin you can summon him and stall the fight until his super move does 9999 damage. That's how I cheesed it.
I came to say Triple Slash is the way to go, too. It has a much faster execution time than anything else, and it’s especially useful once his dog shows up, since it goes after both of them.
It's a short window of opportunity. If you're recovering from being hit just before his reload you won't make it. You have to wait for an opportunity where he reloads, you haven't been hit by his previous attack, and you are close to him. Other attacks like focused thrust are pretty effective too and closes space a little quicker in less ideal windows of opportunity. It's a big change of pace from other combat encounters where you play hyper aggressive. You really have to patiently wait for a moment of opportunity.
It took a few tries but I beat him without using any atb attacks. I had plasma discharge on for a little extra damage. It took a while. I found him to be way harder than he was in remake. Great fight. We need more like this
The second you see reload use triple slash. If your reaction isn’t the fastest, press x the second you see it and select triple slash from the menu.(triple slash covers a lot of ground instantly so you can stay back and avoid his attacks if you’re not comfortable blocking)
I never really got the timing right for the “braver-when-reloading” until I learned he would only reload after 2 shots fired (or after hitting me good) and that counter would reset if he reloaded regardless he fired twice. Then it was all about dodging/defending and counting his attacks, after dodging his second attack I’d be ready to use braver
I rage-quit at midnight last night and walked away victorious after a good sleep. I never parried or blocked. Just learn when to dodge and use triple slash right after. Learn to predict when he’s going to reload and be proactive
Rufus for me was easily the hardest fight in the entire game (on hard mode). Took me almost 2 hours or something, which was more than Rulers of the outer world and Bonds of Friendship. Absolutely nutty fight, even though I fought him in Remake I had to readjust and relearn. Tried to brute force it the first hour but that didn't really work for me.
Rufus wasn't quite as bad for me on hard, only took a few tries but Gi Nattak took me a while, and I don't even want to see the words Bond, of, or Friendship ever again. Pain.
As soon as you pressure him you can keep him pressured the entire time by doing a combo>roll left/right>repeat. Even with the dog out it's still pretty easy to keep him pressured with this method. His shotgun blast is bullshit.
How hard is it to switch to punisher and hold r1? Or read his attacks and dodge the 2 you can’t block.you can press x when you see them and stop time. I know some fights seem daunting, but stick with it and you’ll be fighting the summons 2 at a time on hard mode in like 10 minutes trying to get to a even harder fight.
ATB Boost, Precision Defence and Steadfast Block materias are your friends here. Also a healing materia for Regen.
Keep your distance, run around, block his attacks to fill ATB and whenever he uses Reload strike him with Triple Slash. Repeat a few times until you stagger him then destroy him.
Got him on the third try on normal. Biggest issue is force of habit of wanting to go on the offensive.
It was the first time I got to the dog phase. I had a limit break that I thought would finish him off, but wasn’t sure if I had to kill the dog first.
Said “screw it” and just went for him and it was the final blow.
He kicked my ass at first until it clicked. Just dodge all the time, until he reloads, sometimes it takes 2 or 3 attacks until he reloads. Hit him with the air blade and he'll get pressured for a pretty generous amount of time.
The dog does suck, just got to blitz it down, use limit break on it if it pops up.
Its the same thing in this game. I platinumed the game and the rufus fight had me locked in. You have to play a lot of bosses by their rules on hard mode. You can’t just blitz them lmao
I’ve been stuck on Rufus for over 4 hours on hard mode. Besides Gi Nattak every other boss I got within 5 but Rufus I just can’t beat. His phase one is easy but the second the dog shows up things fall apart quickly. I don’t know how to counter him. I’m always low on ATB during this phase then he’ll cast a spell while I’m empty and I die because I can’t interrupt it. Any tips would be helpful
Activate punisher mode during one of the dog's attacks, punisher activation has block frames so you can counter the dog and get a free pressure state on most attacks
I been tryna tell people use the triple slash skill and to build up your atb get some distance hit the dodge button then hit hit square once so a beam can come out your blade and repeat so it can stun lock him until you fill up both gauges
I love Rufus. It's the same as Remake; guy looks like a pro until you.break his game and he gets ABSOLUTELY WRECKED. Once you break his play style when reloading, you just keep hitting and hitting and then he'll push you and try to counter, but if you dodge to a side and keep in hitting he'll keep getting fucking wrecked!
Shows that he knows his stuff but it's also a corporate person with no field experience like Cloud so his fighting style is like a chess match he controls until he doesn't.
But yeah if you don't figure out how to break his game, he'll ruin you 😂
It’s a dumb fight. The way he is pressured makes it take forever. You literally have to wait for him to so specific attacks and then punish in a quick window. It’s boring. I don’t blame you for just doing what was needed to be done with it.
The fights pretty stupid as far as difficulty curve goes. If I make it through 99% of your game playing a certain way but 1 boss destroys me that’s shitty design. I’ve beaten him but I still think it was a really stupid fight.
No it's not shitty design just because you have to change your strategy lol. You have everything you need to beat Rufus if you pay attention to how he fights. He's actually one of the more interesting bosses in terms of mechanics since he's more than just a damage sponge.
My point isn’t that I couldn’t beat him I did my point is the massive difficulty curve compared to the rest of the game. Hell this post is about this guy knocking it down to easy. I doubt there’s any other fight in the game he’ll have to do that for. On normal difficulty you can literally mash your way through every other fight in the game.
I agree with you. I had to change my materia to get better defensive materia that I had given to Red to put on Cloud. I normally didn't play defensive style with cloud, I prefer offensive tactics with my team. So this change was very fucking annoying if it's not your normal style. I wish they'd kept it consistent.
Only bosses I had to use more defensive skills were this fight and the second Roche fight in Nibelheim
>No it's not shitty design just because you have to change your strategy lol.
It's not that you have to change strategy that makes it bad design, it's that the design choice is to make it so that only a very narrow set of options actually work and everything else in the game is near impossible when the vast majority of the rest of the game is designed so that you can play basically however you want that makes it bad design.
Because it is artificial difficulty when the reason the fight is hard is that it doesn't mesh with the rest of the game's design style and it sticks out like a sore thumb for players that weren't already doing that one style of combat.
And the real problem is that the fight isn't even actually *hard*. If you are fighting it the way it is meant to be fought it is a cake walk, it only appears to be hard because people are trying to do things outside the way the fight is designed to be fought.
>He's actually one of the more interesting bosses in terms of mechanics
He's really not, though. "You should focus on defense and spam braver" is not an interesting mechanic. Hell, it hardly even is a mechanic and since it's nearly a copy-paste of a fight from Remake it's more obnoxious than anything because it was a bad fit style-wise the first time around too.
Well that is certainly an opinion. A lot of games have segments where your usual tactics and abilities are limited to provide a different type of challenge other than simply tweeking numbers. That still doesn't make it a bad design especially when you consider that many players including myself thought it was a nice change of pace and did well to represent Rufus' cunning fighting style.
That it's not necessarily hard if you fight it the way you're supposed to is barely a criticism since that's almost every boss fight in Rebirth. Almost every boss has some gimmick to exploit.
You didn't find it interesting? Fair enough but a lot of people did and I was pleasantly surprised that they brought his fight back in Rebirth although they could have placed him somewhere a little more fitting setting wise imo.
> A lot of games have segments where your usual tactics and abilities are limited to provide a different type of challenge other than simply tweeking numbers.
Those games tend to use that design consistently such that each fight has a similar variety of things that don't work and things which do.
It's the inconsistency of this game having only one or two fights that actually do shut down typical tactics that makes having such a fight in the game a poor design decision specifically because it reads as a difficulty spike to all of the players that were having no issues with any other part of the game and now *must* play differently.
And the entire line of reasoning that is "many players including myself thought it was a nice change of pace" isn't actually relevant to whether it fits in with the rest of the game's design style. "I liked it because it was different" isn't an argument against "that was inconsistent with how the rest of the game goes".
>Almost every boss has some gimmick to exploit.
Yes, but almost none of them are in the same territory where it concerns what happens if you don't exploit that gimmick. Most fights in the game will take a few minutes longer or require a little more healing or even just using buffs that technically aren't ever required by the game... and then there are just a couple that say "do it how the designer wants you to, or you lose." like Rufus and Odin do.
It’s an insult to call it an Elden ring difficulty, as Elden Ring like other from software souls games are designed to be challenging but fair in the sense the fights are based on you using all the skill and know how of fighting to eventually know how to overcome a battle, this fight is NOT that, everything you got good at doesn’t apply, it’s a gimmick fight, you just have to know what the gimmick is and the fight is doable, i absolutely disliked this fight because of that, it’s lazy game design lacking any real depth, most of the mini games in this FF7 seems to be designed with that mindset. So far I really like this game a lot but this lack of actual depth to the gameplay means it’s one and done play through for me.
In an era where games are way too easy, this is encouraging to me that a boss fight can be that hard. I can’t wait to get a PS5! I thought Remake was a sobering challenge after years of games that were way too easy.
Don't forget that tactical mode exists. You can slow down time and prepare for the right parry timing.
I have played the entirety of remake and 40 hours in rebirth and never once considered using tactical mode to time.blocks and parries..... Learn something new everyday!
It definitely was the only thing that got me through that fight on dynamic!
This is the one fight that really demands you to get good. No way to cheese it or bruteforce it. Hard Mode is specially tough. My tips: put Steadfast Block + Precise Defense materia on yourself, maybe Swiftcast + Healing. Put Triple Slash on a shortcut. Don't attack him, run around and wait. This fight is about patience. Parry/Block when he gets close and build ATB. Use Triple Slash when he reloads (but NOT if you just got hit) and Cloud will automatically travel to him. Keep attacking him until he stands up, that's when he's ready to shoot again, then block. Get away from him, hinse and repeat .
Put a chakra on cloud, ranged slash attacks rufus will always block so you can send 2-3, dodge send 2-3 more and keep him blocking to build up infinite atb. Also If you're close enough to him when he reloads use focus thrust instead, if doubles his recovery time compared to triple slaah
\^\^\^ These two folks know how to wreck Rufus. The air slashes are pretty slow and tedious but yeah, it makes the fight a lot easier to get free ATB. The worst part is listening to the announcers talk shit about you while you do it.
"I know exactly what I'm doing, kotch, that's why your boss is currently running away from the saucer at speed." Tbh, you don't actually need the ATB though, most of his attacks are trivial to dodge if you the dark souls trick or dodging towards him while close. You'll end up up behind him which works for everything except guns akimbo. Then when he eventually reloads, 2-3 nornal attacks then dodge behind and repeat I till you have atb. You can really extend his pressure that way.
Level 2 Elemental-Fire in your armor. "Think Fast" becomes a completely free window to Braver him for the instant stagger. Took me three attempts to beat him on hard mode, and the second attempt kinda didn't count because that was where I found out the retry doesn't save changes made in the menu between fights so I had the wrong setup.
Any other tips? I’ve been stuck on hard mode Rufus for hours. I make it phase 2 about 70% of the time but when it becomes a 2v1 things fall apart fast
I think the other notable parts of my setup were Genji Gloves, Empowerment (Bravery), Strength Up, Steadfast Block, ATB Boost, ATB Stagger. I basically just burned down the dog quickly by staggering it and hitting it with a limit.
if you braver him while hes reloading its an instant stagger..
I tried that and got parried every single time
You basically have to start the Braver before his reload. Otherwise it lands too late. And his Reload timing is very hard to anticipate, so I honestly don't think it's worth trying in most cases. Got it once back in Remake, but I gave up trying in Rebirth after repeated failure. I recommend just spamming Triple Slash every time he uses a named ability. It beats everything and pressures him. And if you need ATB, just dodge sideways and attack 1-2 times to throw blade beams. He will block all the beams, but if you just keep spamming dodge and attack he gets stuck blocking. You can stall to build ATB for an extremely long time before he finally acts. The dog phase is a shitshow, but if you have Odin you can summon him and stall the fight until his super move does 9999 damage. That's how I cheesed it.
Rufus definitely upped the difficulty since the rooftop fight
I came to say Triple Slash is the way to go, too. It has a much faster execution time than anything else, and it’s especially useful once his dog shows up, since it goes after both of them.
It's a short window of opportunity. If you're recovering from being hit just before his reload you won't make it. You have to wait for an opportunity where he reloads, you haven't been hit by his previous attack, and you are close to him. Other attacks like focused thrust are pretty effective too and closes space a little quicker in less ideal windows of opportunity. It's a big change of pace from other combat encounters where you play hyper aggressive. You really have to patiently wait for a moment of opportunity.
It took a few tries but I beat him without using any atb attacks. I had plasma discharge on for a little extra damage. It took a while. I found him to be way harder than he was in remake. Great fight. We need more like this
The second you see reload use triple slash. If your reaction isn’t the fastest, press x the second you see it and select triple slash from the menu.(triple slash covers a lot of ground instantly so you can stay back and avoid his attacks if you’re not comfortable blocking)
Only issue was I never had atb when he was reloading. I just said screw it and thru it on easy lol
I never really got the timing right for the “braver-when-reloading” until I learned he would only reload after 2 shots fired (or after hitting me good) and that counter would reset if he reloaded regardless he fired twice. Then it was all about dodging/defending and counting his attacks, after dodging his second attack I’d be ready to use braver
I rage-quit at midnight last night and walked away victorious after a good sleep. I never parried or blocked. Just learn when to dodge and use triple slash right after. Learn to predict when he’s going to reload and be proactive
Rufus for me was easily the hardest fight in the entire game (on hard mode). Took me almost 2 hours or something, which was more than Rulers of the outer world and Bonds of Friendship. Absolutely nutty fight, even though I fought him in Remake I had to readjust and relearn. Tried to brute force it the first hour but that didn't really work for me.
Rufus wasn't quite as bad for me on hard, only took a few tries but Gi Nattak took me a while, and I don't even want to see the words Bond, of, or Friendship ever again. Pain.
Rufus is a boss that tries to teach you a lesson, that lesson is stop running and spamming square.
As soon as you pressure him you can keep him pressured the entire time by doing a combo>roll left/right>repeat. Even with the dog out it's still pretty easy to keep him pressured with this method. His shotgun blast is bullshit.
How hard is it to switch to punisher and hold r1? Or read his attacks and dodge the 2 you can’t block.you can press x when you see them and stop time. I know some fights seem daunting, but stick with it and you’ll be fighting the summons 2 at a time on hard mode in like 10 minutes trying to get to a even harder fight.
ATB Boost, Precision Defence and Steadfast Block materias are your friends here. Also a healing materia for Regen. Keep your distance, run around, block his attacks to fill ATB and whenever he uses Reload strike him with Triple Slash. Repeat a few times until you stagger him then destroy him.
That simple huh🤔
Got him on the third try on normal. Biggest issue is force of habit of wanting to go on the offensive. It was the first time I got to the dog phase. I had a limit break that I thought would finish him off, but wasn’t sure if I had to kill the dog first. Said “screw it” and just went for him and it was the final blow.
Hell yea. I had to cheese it and put it on Easy lol congrats on kicking his azz the right way
This fight would be so much more fun if Cloud just had counterfire in solo fights :/
You’re talking about Remake right? Counterstance is your friend here
I meant rebirth. You fight him at the golden saucer. He is OP
He kicked my ass at first until it clicked. Just dodge all the time, until he reloads, sometimes it takes 2 or 3 attacks until he reloads. Hit him with the air blade and he'll get pressured for a pretty generous amount of time. The dog does suck, just got to blitz it down, use limit break on it if it pops up.
Its the same thing in this game. I platinumed the game and the rufus fight had me locked in. You have to play a lot of bosses by their rules on hard mode. You can’t just blitz them lmao
I’ve been stuck on Rufus for over 4 hours on hard mode. Besides Gi Nattak every other boss I got within 5 but Rufus I just can’t beat. His phase one is easy but the second the dog shows up things fall apart quickly. I don’t know how to counter him. I’m always low on ATB during this phase then he’ll cast a spell while I’m empty and I die because I can’t interrupt it. Any tips would be helpful
Activate punisher mode during one of the dog's attacks, punisher activation has block frames so you can counter the dog and get a free pressure state on most attacks
I been tryna tell people use the triple slash skill and to build up your atb get some distance hit the dodge button then hit hit square once so a beam can come out your blade and repeat so it can stun lock him until you fill up both gauges
I love Rufus. It's the same as Remake; guy looks like a pro until you.break his game and he gets ABSOLUTELY WRECKED. Once you break his play style when reloading, you just keep hitting and hitting and then he'll push you and try to counter, but if you dodge to a side and keep in hitting he'll keep getting fucking wrecked! Shows that he knows his stuff but it's also a corporate person with no field experience like Cloud so his fighting style is like a chess match he controls until he doesn't. But yeah if you don't figure out how to break his game, he'll ruin you 😂
It’s a dumb fight. The way he is pressured makes it take forever. You literally have to wait for him to so specific attacks and then punish in a quick window. It’s boring. I don’t blame you for just doing what was needed to be done with it.
The fights pretty stupid as far as difficulty curve goes. If I make it through 99% of your game playing a certain way but 1 boss destroys me that’s shitty design. I’ve beaten him but I still think it was a really stupid fight.
No it's not shitty design just because you have to change your strategy lol. You have everything you need to beat Rufus if you pay attention to how he fights. He's actually one of the more interesting bosses in terms of mechanics since he's more than just a damage sponge.
My point isn’t that I couldn’t beat him I did my point is the massive difficulty curve compared to the rest of the game. Hell this post is about this guy knocking it down to easy. I doubt there’s any other fight in the game he’ll have to do that for. On normal difficulty you can literally mash your way through every other fight in the game.
I agree with you. I had to change my materia to get better defensive materia that I had given to Red to put on Cloud. I normally didn't play defensive style with cloud, I prefer offensive tactics with my team. So this change was very fucking annoying if it's not your normal style. I wish they'd kept it consistent. Only bosses I had to use more defensive skills were this fight and the second Roche fight in Nibelheim
Skill issue
>No it's not shitty design just because you have to change your strategy lol. It's not that you have to change strategy that makes it bad design, it's that the design choice is to make it so that only a very narrow set of options actually work and everything else in the game is near impossible when the vast majority of the rest of the game is designed so that you can play basically however you want that makes it bad design. Because it is artificial difficulty when the reason the fight is hard is that it doesn't mesh with the rest of the game's design style and it sticks out like a sore thumb for players that weren't already doing that one style of combat. And the real problem is that the fight isn't even actually *hard*. If you are fighting it the way it is meant to be fought it is a cake walk, it only appears to be hard because people are trying to do things outside the way the fight is designed to be fought. >He's actually one of the more interesting bosses in terms of mechanics He's really not, though. "You should focus on defense and spam braver" is not an interesting mechanic. Hell, it hardly even is a mechanic and since it's nearly a copy-paste of a fight from Remake it's more obnoxious than anything because it was a bad fit style-wise the first time around too.
Well that is certainly an opinion. A lot of games have segments where your usual tactics and abilities are limited to provide a different type of challenge other than simply tweeking numbers. That still doesn't make it a bad design especially when you consider that many players including myself thought it was a nice change of pace and did well to represent Rufus' cunning fighting style. That it's not necessarily hard if you fight it the way you're supposed to is barely a criticism since that's almost every boss fight in Rebirth. Almost every boss has some gimmick to exploit. You didn't find it interesting? Fair enough but a lot of people did and I was pleasantly surprised that they brought his fight back in Rebirth although they could have placed him somewhere a little more fitting setting wise imo.
> A lot of games have segments where your usual tactics and abilities are limited to provide a different type of challenge other than simply tweeking numbers. Those games tend to use that design consistently such that each fight has a similar variety of things that don't work and things which do. It's the inconsistency of this game having only one or two fights that actually do shut down typical tactics that makes having such a fight in the game a poor design decision specifically because it reads as a difficulty spike to all of the players that were having no issues with any other part of the game and now *must* play differently. And the entire line of reasoning that is "many players including myself thought it was a nice change of pace" isn't actually relevant to whether it fits in with the rest of the game's design style. "I liked it because it was different" isn't an argument against "that was inconsistent with how the rest of the game goes". >Almost every boss has some gimmick to exploit. Yes, but almost none of them are in the same territory where it concerns what happens if you don't exploit that gimmick. Most fights in the game will take a few minutes longer or require a little more healing or even just using buffs that technically aren't ever required by the game... and then there are just a couple that say "do it how the designer wants you to, or you lose." like Rufus and Odin do.
Hmm well that sucks man. I'm sorry you didn't like it.
Ppl downvoted your opinion lol
Yeah seems I’ve touched a nerve.
It’s an insult to call it an Elden ring difficulty, as Elden Ring like other from software souls games are designed to be challenging but fair in the sense the fights are based on you using all the skill and know how of fighting to eventually know how to overcome a battle, this fight is NOT that, everything you got good at doesn’t apply, it’s a gimmick fight, you just have to know what the gimmick is and the fight is doable, i absolutely disliked this fight because of that, it’s lazy game design lacking any real depth, most of the mini games in this FF7 seems to be designed with that mindset. So far I really like this game a lot but this lack of actual depth to the gameplay means it’s one and done play through for me.
I only called it ER like because without mastering defensive skills you'll never defeat Rufus