Tales of Symphonia Colette Solo: Yuan and Botta [No Items/Mania]

Time for a showdown with my old rival Botta!
This fight is insanely hard and I hope that it's fun to watch!



Strategy:
Where do I even start with this... I guess it can be boiled down to: dodge Botta's spells and then attack Yuan while Botta is casting his next spell. But obviously, it's a lot harder than that.

For preparation, I'd recommend equipping the Thunder Cape and the compound EX Skill "Life Thief." It's pretty much impossible not to get hit in this fight, so reducing Yuan's damage and being able to heal is helpful.

Let's go over them individually first.

Botta:
Botta is pretty much the same as last time. His attacks are easy to jump over and his spells are Stalagmite, Stone Blast, and Ground Dasher. However, he'll only use Ground Dasher and Rock Breaker when he gets damaged a bit. Stone Blast and Stalagmite can be dodged with running or a running jump. If you happen to be in the air as he casts Stalagmite, jump out of it in order to dodge it. Ground Dasher can be dodged by jump attacking away from him (which I didn't do in the video lol).


Yuan:
Yuan can be broken up into three phases. Each one is progressively more dangerous. In each phase, he prioritizes using a different arte. Phase 1 lasts just about until his first overlimit. He uses Lightning Thrust in this phase which is pretty much just a normal attack with some lightning added onto it. Phase 2 lasts about until his second overlimit. Here, he'll start using Lightning Havoc which is incredibly dangerous. You can't jump over it because he jumps and blocks you with his body. Even if you have a Thunder Cape, it still does good damage and holds you in place forever. The first hit also hits behind him so you can't even punish him immediately. In Phase 3, he starts using Thunder Explosion which functions pretty similarly except it's a one hit AOE around him which knocks you backwards. It's pretty difficult to punish this attack. Lightning Havoc and Thunder Explosion are what make this fight really hard. You can dodge them by targeting Botta at the right angle and jumping over Yuan (Backstepping Thunder Explosion is good but it leaves you vulnerable to a Stalagmite/Stone Blast). You can run underneath Thunder Explosion but it is obviously really dangerous because you can't really know if he's going to use the arte or if he's just going to hit you. I've found that targeting Botta works some of the time so that's the method I decided to go with.

Yuan's normal attacks are also very annoying. They have long range, which means he's able to hit Colette even after a backstep sometimes or after jumping over him.

His spells are Thunder Blade and Indignation. Indignation is pretty much a joke, but it's a good indicator of when he's getting low on HP. Thunder Blade can be dodged with running as always.

Together:
I decided to go for Yuan first because he's far more aggressive than Botta is. Botta is pretty content with just casting spells in the background while Yuan is almost always just gonna run at you.

When they're both still alive, you want to keep a distance from Botta. You want him to be casting at all times. Fighting both of them in melee range is suicide. Ideally, you want to have him cast a spell while you're jumping over Yuan's head or just before you jump over his head so you can hit Yuan from behind safely. They also do this thing where they'll cast Stone Blast and Thunder Blade at the same time. It seems like this is a combo actually programmed into them and it caught me a lot during my attempts.

Once Yuan enters phase 2/3, the fight gets exponentially more difficult since jumping over Yuan becomes more dangerous. At this point, the game plan is the same but there will be less windows to attack and you'll start getting hit a lot more. Something nice about Lightning Havoc is that it takes forever, so you might be able to bait Botta's spell somewhere else and then go hit him for free.

Another thing to note is that if they start casting at the same time, they can't use two advanced spells at the same time. For example, if Yuan is casting Thunder Blade and Botta is casting Stalagmite, one of them casts and then the other has to wait for the spell to end and then cast for a bit longer in order to finally cast their own spell. This was really confusing for me at first since it felt like their spell cast times were incredibly inconsistent.

BGM: The Fate of the Fairies from Sora no Kiseki Zanmai