One of the things that I have enjoyed about Psychonauts 2 on the PS5 is the casual nature of the game. You don't really need to be hyper-focused on the controls and the game is extremely forgiving as far as making mistakes is concerned. While this would likely be quite boring for people who are a fan of the ultra-difficult sort of games that are quite popular these days, this is actually perfect for me. The days of me enjoying a game that I have to study in order to be able to play it are far behind me and while I admire the people who are able to play games like that, gaming is more of a casual hobby to me than it is something I aspire to be extremely good at.
Psychonauts 2 was perfect in this regard because it was just a jump around and shoot at comical things sort of story game with some decent graphics and a funny story. Even the main bosses that you would encounter were pretty darn easy but the fun was toying with them and defeating them using various methods. There never was any sort of one way or perfect method necessary for victory and I really enjoyed that.
That all changed when you get to the final boss and I hate it.
You spend the entire game hearing about the evil power of Maligula so it was expected that she was going to be who you were up against in the final battle. That much was fine and the way in which you finally end up encountering her is well-written, amusing, and very well voiced.
Then the battle begins and it is like nothing you have faced up to this point.
Maligula has a wide variety of attacks and all of them hit pretty hard. They hit a lot harder than anything else that you have encountered up to this point and I am not stupid, this was expected and I don't mind that this is the case. I do, however, take issue with this fight being dramatically more difficult than anything else that you have encountered at any point in the game.
It's so much more difficult that it doesn't even seem like it is from the same game. In literally every other encounter you were able to dance around and find some healing things on the ground if you took too many hits but not in this one. In this fight if you do get hit you need to have brought some healing items with you and to be fair, these are readily available at the "vending machine" that is just outside of the room before you get to her. The issue with these healing items is that you only have a limited amount of currency so unless you are quite creative with your save games, you will find yourself out of "money" very quickly and then the fight becomes even more difficult.
I did eventually defeat Maligula, but I never found the battle to be at all fun. Other boss fights that I died in were at least some sort of learning thing that was relatively easy to figure out and that fell in line with the casual nature of the rest of the game. The fight with her included a bunch of unblockable attacks combined with a platform that if you fall off the end of it, you take damage and then get thrust back into the battle, normally at a disadvantageous position on the board.
While you are fighting Maligula you are also simultaneously being pursued by this one enemy type that the only way to really dispatch them efficiently is to cast this AOE fire spell that has a charge up time that immobilizes you. Being stuck in one position only invites Maligula to steamroll you and take away 1/3 of your health.
I found this to be a cheesy departure from the strategy of the rest of the game and while this is by no means hard compared to properly difficult games, it is a dramatic departure from what 100% of the rest of this game is like.
I at times contemplated just forgetting about the fight and watching the ending online which i know sounds lazy, but in this battle I never really felt like I had control and was just running around the board hitting random-ass buttons until I am eventually killed.
Maybe I sound like I am a complainer, but another aspect of this fight that is truly annoying is that there are several cutscenes built into the fight. You can skip them after you have seen them once but this doesn't change the fact that they are going to load every single time you restart this battle. I have never been a fan of cutscenes renewing over and over again especially when they are built into a non-optional fight. This has been my opinion since cutscenes were invented.
One thing that nearly had me throwing my controller across the room was when I had a good run, got arrogant, had her down to something like 1/5 HP, then panicked and started mad-button-mashing and was killed. This is a LONG fight so I was quite upset that I had to restart the entire damn thing over again, cinematics and all.
By the time the fight was done I now had a negative opinion of the game but I gave it a bit of time and calmed down and can say that I think this is a great casual game. I really wish they had quality controlled this last battle a bit better than they did because rather than it being more difficult it is just annoying. It is assumed the final boss battle in any game is going to be difficult but instead of just making it more difficult they made it tedious and LONG instead of just making it something that you had a be a bit more quick on the button pressing to get past.
Psychonauts 2 is available for free with any PS-Plus Extra or higher-tiered PlayStation membership and even though this one fight had me getting a bit upset, I still think it is worth playing