Loretta, Knight of the Haligtree - Review (No Summons, No Magic Tricks, No Damage)

Loretta, Knight of the Haligtree is another outstanding horseback boss that utilizes significantly more magic projectiles that's actually not poorly designed compared to the projectiles in the Red Wolf of Radagon fight. I finally get to present the Parrying Dagger that turned out to be in the one caves I missed in Limgrave somehow. Thankfully it's accessible early so I can try it out on the majority of parryable bosses. I originally wasn't going to parry in this fight because there's no riposte however the stagger from the parry is long enough to inflict a decent amount of damage plus it made the fight a lot more fun. If only I had the Parrying Dagger sooner so I could have parried the Draconic Tree Sentinel.

My strategy of course centered around the parry stagger landing a charged heavy strike and a running light strike then Loretta usually would follow up with a summon bow attack that I could just roll through. The beginning of the fight allows a charged heavy strike due to the cinematic magic summon jump, I just have to start running away immediately to avoid getting tagged. The first phase glintblades and the glintstone stars can be avoided by running to side however once the second phase starts the glintstone stars becomes more problematic in that regard which is why I start rolling instead. I generally preferred a specific polearm animation to parry due to some attacks being very awkard to consistently time which is why you'll see me run up just to back off. To get this specific attack I would keep my distance until the opportunity initiates that typically followed after the glintblade attack.

The second phase gets more aggressive magic projectile wise with wider hit boxes because of an increase of projectiles. Like I mentioned at the beginning, this doesn't trivialize the fight with RNG like the Red Wolf of Radagon. The tracking is slightly increased which is why running was no longer viable for me. There may be a specific trick to avoid it consistently because I did avoid those by running a couple of times but I'm not sure what I did differently. The second phase summon bow attack requires a slightly different timing to roll through so that wasn't a huge deal but works very well when there's a combo of magic projectiles being shot. This in my opinion is how combo attacks should be handled instead of visually confusing the player with excessive attacks including tiny evasion windows of opportunity from the boss.

I really enjoyed this fight. There were attacks not presented in this footage unfortunately, the magic enchanted polearm sweep attacks which were satisfying to evade but it's unfortunate that they seem to have a somewhat low occurrence for some reason. I don't really have any significant problems with the boss itself and it's probably one of the most solid designs in the game so far in my opinion. I do feel that the arena is too big though and it could have been reduced about fifty percent without any issues.