Ys - Unika - 1st boss

Unika certainly provides a different game play. Hugo's Eyes of Fakt reminded of old style plane shooting games. But with Unika now its back to more classical and now more popular hack&slash. Playing with Hugo was good fun, I had some sort of nostalgic feeling, but with Unika game is more dynamic, more challenging. This is also to some extent that I'm playing it with her on Hard difficulty and with Hugo on Normal.

As I said, I'm playing it now on Hard difficulty, and I don't know if its due to that or simply I didn't notice before, but when the boss inhales and tries to pull you in and then bite you, he also sucks in the small bugs. This is pretty nasty, not because he bites, that can be easily avoided with the increased movement of the wind swirl (the green ability). When he sucks in the bugs it recovers its health!!! I didn't pay attention whether we killed all bugs when the boss sucked in or is it because I'm playing on Hard, but this makes a significant difference. With Hugo we killed him with 4 climbs... just now I couldn't kill all bugs 2 times when it sucked in and I had to climb to its head 6 times to kill it!

I also noticed some interesting tricks with the first boss. Don't know if it was because playing with Hugo his eyes fire magical beams and these are 3 beams that kill before enemies get closer and with Unika it is close combat and I have to be more careful in what happens in the vicinity around her, but I noticed some stuff that I didn't before with Hugo.

1. When the first boss shoots his green bubbles you can move next to his mouth that way his bubbles will move forward (later on his bugs will be around the center of the stage) and you'll be able to get a few easy hits on him.

2. I also noticed you can move behind his arms/legs (whatever they are) instead of moving in front of them to reach his mouth. This saves some valuable time.

3. The most interesting of all is Unika can do continuous use of her wind swirl ability, much like Hugo's continuous deployment of thunder bombs. After activating it, keep pressing it more and more and it will be on for as long as you have mana left to use it. This proved very effective against the green bubbles (1 swirl isn't enough to pass through the bubbles) and for killing the small annoying bugs. I still have to see how good this can be when in boost mode with lower mana usage :D Also the green swirl did good damage to the boss when it was stunned, and I used it more than regular hits with the axe as Unika moves when she hits and its more risky that she can fall down.... and then things get complicated :)

Certainly with Unika the game will be more challenging and at the same time this will make it more interesting. At first I was somewhat hesitating to play more than the just killing the first boss, but now I got more hooked up and will go up a few more floors.