An absolutely perfect boss in "It Takes Two"

I've been seriously enjoying playing this 2-player game with my real-life GF. She is not a gamer so I have to be patient and I think that this is kind of the entire point of the game and a big part of the story in the game. This couple in the game do not get along very well but they realize by the quests that they take on in their magical world that they must work together and when they do cooperate, fantastic things can happen.

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Just like you would expect in any game, the bosses start out relatively easy and then get more difficult. None of them have been so difficult to make us want to quit though even though this last one took us a very long time to get past.

Leading up to this boss we had plenty of time to get used to our two guns that are very different from the other person's. Her gun is some sort of rocket launcher that detonates things and my gun is some sort of sap thrower. The sap weighs things down and is also explosive... but it does no damage of its own.

Up to this point killing enemies consisted of me getting some sap on them and then my GF blasting them. The beetle boss though, the sap doesn't stick to it and this becomes obvious right at the start. They even say something audibly about how it wont stick.

Just like many other things in this game when what you already know doesn't work, you probably have some sort of environmental something or other that you haven't noticed up to this point so look around we did and noticed that there are these little holes with grates on them all around the room. When I shot my sap gun at them they fill up so we found out that this must be the key to victory.

That's not to say that it was easy though, because my GF is not so good at adjusting the camera angle and running around at the same time. Anyone like you and I that has played a lot of games like this it is like second-nature but for her, especially when the beetle is constantly charging at you, it can be quite tough.

To make matters even more tough for my partner, the AOE attack the beetle does spreads out and you have to jump over it. Again, this is not something that is difficult for people like us who have done this in many other games but for her, she doesn't really even know where the buttons are so if I say to her "just hit X to jump" she has to look down at her hands to find out which button X even is. In that time she gets knocked down a few more times and does a bit of a temporary death.

There is no perma-death in this game though so as long as I don't also die, the fight just continues.

Just press Y really quickly - and look at your hands to discover which button Y is if you are like my GF - and provided your partner manages to stay alive you lose nothing.

hurting the boss isn't that difficult but the only one that can do it is the girl character because my sap gun doesn't do any direct damage. You need to get in the distance from the beetle and either dodge out of the way or wait until the beetle is just over one of the grates that is filed up with sap and then it explodes and hurts it.

Once you have it figured out it is actually quite easy but that's what I like about the bosses in this game. They can be a bit tough to figure out at first but once you understand the one trick at each of them, it is just a question of a little bit of patience both in the game and in my living room since I can't really relate to not knowing which button dodges or forgetting which one shoots the rocket launcher.... my GF frequently forgets both and we laugh about it a lot. I do NOT get upset with her even though sometimes I want to shout "just shoot the sap thing, what is wrong with you?" J/K.

Do this just a mere 4 times and the beetle goes down.

The best part about this game is that even if you do both get downed at the same time the only thing you have to do is start the battle over and at that point you are already clued into the big secret of the boss and it goes by a lot faster. It's just fun.

It isn't too easy but I am yet to encounter anything that would necessitate getting online to find out the answer and man, do I really hate it when a game becomes something so cryptic that you need internet help to get past it. That's not fun... that's like doing research IMO.

This game is fantastic for casuals and it has done wonders for my real life relationship because finally we can bond over something that previously was just a hobby of mine, now we can do it together. That's pretty amazing when a game can make that happen.

_{unsourced images are screencaps from my own gameplay}