Day 44: Engels

Let's recap on the bosses we've covered so far in the Top 10:

We have a spear wielding phantom with the ability to manipulate water and ice, furry Fidel Castro with electrified blades, and a zombie punk rocker. According to the list, today we talk about a giant robot.

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Yeah, that progression makes sense. Today, we're talking about Engels from Nier: Automata.

Tasked with taking out a Goliath class weapon, 2B and 9S explore an abandoned factory until 2B gets attacked by two giant saw blades upon reaching the end of the level. Your best bet on taking these sawblades out is to simply shoot at them with your Pod while avoiding the sawblades' attacks. You can even hack away at the sawblades with you sword if it gets stuck. This first phase can be a lengthy battle, but it never gets boring as you're constantly dodging both sawblades' advances.

When the blades reach half health, they'll retreat and join the body of the much larger Engels, and the real fight begins.

Engels will try and jab at you with its sawblade hands (sometimes it'll throw out one at a time but others it'll try and hit you with both at the same time), firing a plethora of missiles at you.

You need to keep dodging Engels' attacks and either slash at its sawblades hands with your sword or shoot at it with your Pod until 9S flies in on his YoRHa to act as support. After that the fight continues.

Engels will now try and crush you with his sawblade hands, perform a powerful and difficult to avoid slam attack with its arms, and even go beneath the platform you're fighting Engels on in an attempt to break off a piece of it to take 2B down.

Keep attacking Engels until a cutscene occurs where he tries to shoot more missiles at you, but 9S hacks into them so the missles end up hitting Engels instead. This only enrages the giant robot causing it to try and slam its arm down on 2B yet again, but 9S sacrifices himself by flying his YoRHa into the attack and he winds up stuck on top of the giant mech.

With 9S out of commission, Engels powers down yet again, and 2B uses this opportunity to run to the top of the boss in an attempt to save 9S. The climb up has 2B fighting off smaller mechs as Engels powers back up again. Upon reaching the top of the boss, 2B must now fight off hordes of Machines before attempting to repair 9S. After fighting the Machines off, a 2B's YoRHa arrives, and 9S tells her not to worry about him and to finish off Engels.

The final phase of the fight is an epic flight battle where you shoot at Engels with everything got, all the while Engels is attacking you with missiles, shockwaves, a giant lazer from its face, and more slashes with his sawblade hands.

After a while, 9S will get in contact with 2B to inform you about Engels' weak point on its upper left arm, and how you should attack it to bring the boss down. In the middle of attacking it, however, Engels will knock 2B far away and she has to fly back to him, all while avoiding the boss' face lazer and hordes of bullet fire. Eventually, 2B makes it back to Engels, where she rips off the boss' arm and uses it to beat the ever loving piss out of it.

After a few moments of giving Engels a taste of its own medicine, 2B jumps out of her YoRHa, and stabs the boss in its eye, powering it down for good and finally finishing the fight.

The fight against Engels has it all. It's fast paced, it's fun, it's challenging, it's cinematic, it sets up the tone for what the rest of the bosses, and by extension the rest of the game, will be like, the boss has an epic design, and the music is absolutely glorious.

And all I have to ask after talking about this boss is...what six bosses could possibly top this one?!