Tales of the Abyss Anise Solo: Asch 1 [No Items/Unknown/No Damage]

The Asch cutscene mid-battle is just how I remember it!



Game Modifications:
-Gave myself Mystic Symbol
-Modified P. and F. ATK
-Unlocked doll artes
-Modified party


Strategy:
Asch is actually a rather interesting boss to play against for Anise. He's a low iron stance humanoid enemy which means he should be extremely easy to play against in theory, but he's quite difficult for Anise to play neutral against especially when he's at high HP. He only uses quick normals or artes that are difficult for Anise to dodge and punish. The workaround I found for this was to double-jump in mid-air and hope he does just a single normal and then punish that. When he's lower on HP, he'll start using higher committal artes and start to chain artes together which make him much easier to punish.

A fun aspect of Asch and some other humanoid enemies is that he can air recover if they get hit with a knockdown arte! When a humanoid enemy air recovers, they have no iron stance during the animation so it's a free punish. You can see this in action after my first OVL at 0:22.

Another unique thing about Asch is that he uses his MA as a counter to the player's melee MA unless he's in mid-air. Thankfully, Anise has plenty of knock-up artes so it's not an issue for Anise.

Lastly, the cutscene in the middle plays once Asch is below a certain HP threshold and if I try to hit him with a normal while he's not in a combo. It retains my current position in the cutscene so I tried to position myself so it'd make for a funny cutscene lol.


BGM:
And Thus Fate Becomes Cruel - Heroes of Mana