Tales of Innocence R Ruca Solo: Gardle [Unknown/No Hit]

Ruca Playlist: • Tales of Innocence R R...
I really struggled with this one, the amount of times I messed up the Havoc Impact Restand alone is probably like 50% of my takes lol. There was a lot of frame perfect shit in this on top of the fact that I didn't actually route this combo that well. Usually I try to manipulate the Rage Counters as much as possible but this one I was very stubborn about getting all this stuff in this particular order, partly because of positioning. So basically I would get Rage Counters at the worst times. I was trying to brute force my way through this like putting a fucking square block inside of a circle hole. Anyways, in the end I got this take which was basically perfect, I don't think I could have asked for a better one.
As for the technical stuff in this combo... The Havoc Impact Restand is pretty interesting because the setup is much different than what I'm used to with other human enemies. It requires a forward Jump Cancel after using two Shining Eagles. The forward Jump Cancel into Havoc Impact is quite delayed but has to be done at a precise time, too early and you miss, causing Gardle to recover. If it's too late then he'll get knocked down completely. There are a few different ways to do this one, but my fav is Shining Eagle x2, Jump Cancel, Hell Sword, Havoc Impact. Unfortunately I couldn't actually use it in this combo because of how tight I routed the hit count in this, but maybe I'll try it against another boss.
OVL featured a lot of over the head use of Hell Sword for side switching. Originally I was going to use this in the Gigantes combo but I decided to save it for this fight. The downside is that, unlike other enemies, I can only do the Hell Sword side switching in OVL against Gardle.
As for Gardle himself, he's extremely annoying with his hitbox and movement. Using Shining Eagle twice doesn't work unless you're literally right up as close as possible, like you're basically inside the dude. Hitstun for artes is lower than usual on Gardle so a lot of stuff just doesn't work. I had to route a lot of combo stuff to happen from behind him because the back of an enemy has a slightly higher hitstun than the front. His movement in general is strange and off, it's very easy to slide off of him when he's not looking completely straight. His aerial Rage Counter is bad news for Ruca if Ruca's in the air so I tried to avoid it.
Next boss might be Sian instead of Hasta, I plan to do Hasta 1 and 2 at the same time.
Music: Star Ocean: Second Story R - Wise Men Boss Theme

[@z-v-x8324]

Had Ruca wearing his pajamas CAUSE YOU MADE THAT MAN GO NIGHT NIGHT

[@sidexblaze]

Chicken Cordon got that GYAT