The problem with guides is that the strategies they offer aren’t fool proof and they don’t work for everyone. The first example that comes to mind is the strategy proffered for defeating dragon Maleficent in Kingdom Hearts. If I remember correctly (too lazy to pull out the guide), the guide instructed the player to run up the back of the dragon’s tail and up her back so you could execute a flying Keyblade attack to the back of her head. As soon as I got near her tail, she bitch-slapped me across the room. I said screw that and used my tried-and-true RARRRRRRRRRRRR method, where I jumped around like a maniac and beat her dragonhead to a pulp. It worked, dammit. But I guess that’s not a good strategy to offer. The words don’t look as nice, anyway.

Last night I ran into a beast of a story mission. I had to protect a medical crate from waves of Reapers. The guide said there are four waves of them, but I couldn’t get past the second one. I tried what the guide told me to do, which was stand my ground and strafe the bombers with lightning bolts. I always missed one of them, which resulted in either the destruction of the medical crate or the destruction of me. Both ended in a failed mission. The guide also suggested using the Precision attack to slow time down and help aim towards the bombers. Well, when you’re having difficulty aiming quickly with the analog sticks, this method doesn’t help either.

I went to GameFAQs for help, and the lovely piece of advice each walkthrough gave was, “when you beat the bombers, your next wave is….” Seriously, how is that close to a strategy?

I was ready to quit the game, and I really didn’t want to. Thank God for gaming buddies. I e-mailed mine this morning with my dilemma, and he asked me if I tried lowering the difficulty level yet. You can do that?? Did the guide ever mention it?

To the guide’s credit, it does mention it in the very beginning when it goes over the controls and the menus. However, it would be nice if it occasionally suggested lowering the difficulty, especially when the guide points out that a particular scenario is difficult, which it does.  The guide is very good about offering additional tips to difficult areas of the game. It should offer reminders as well about lowering the difficulty when it offers additional tips for difficult missions.

Don’t tell me guides don’t do that, because the guide for The World Ends with You suggested the same for problematic boss fights.

I haven’t retried the mission on an easier setting because I spent all my gaming time hunting for blast shards. I hadn’t really searched for them before, and my gaming coach advised me to upgrade my battery cores a little bit before attempting the story mission again.

So wish me good luck tomorrow night. If I have as much trouble with the same bomber wave again, I may have to vent my anger on the game with a sledgehammer.