During the course of NieR Replicant Remaster players will come across all manner of dangerous and monstrous enemies that they will need to defeat. Since Earth has been altered by many mysterious and bizarre circumstances over the centuries this has left many of the inhabitants of the planet changed in several horrible ways. As main character NieR, it is the player's job to fight through and destroy these enemies systematically.
Where this gets difficult though is when the player has to go up against one of the game's many different bosses. While some of these bosses are just mildly inconvenient, others still will put the player through the wringer as they attempt to survive. The fight against the main antagonist of the game, Shadowlord and his companion Grimoire Noir, is definitely up there as one of the more difficult fights in NieR Replicant Remaster. This guide shows players how to beat Shadowlord and Grimoire Noir.
The thing about the fight against these two bosses is that there are two phases to the fight, and the player will need to fight the bosses one at a time back to back. Grimoire Noir is the counterpart to NieR's own book, Grimoire Weiss, and as such has similar abilities to the other book. Luckily though this fight isn't really very difficult, and those who remember the fight against another book, Grimoire Rubrum, will notice that the fight plays out basically in the same fashion. There are really only three attacks that Grimoire Noir has at its disposal:
In order to finish this fight, the player will want to initially rush straight at the boss and start dealing damage. While Noir can deal a decent amount of damage, the boss will also spend a lot of time just floating around so the player will want to rush in like this to attack whenever possible. After attacking the boss a few times the player will probably see Noir start the charge attack, which means that they will want to dodge out of the way as quickly as possible. From here Noir will either switch straight into a defensive barrier or use its page swarm attack. If the boss uses the barrier there is really nothing that the player is able to do other than wait for it to end. If Noir uses its pages though the player will want to immediately begin hacking a path through the pages to get to the book. Once a pathway is revealed they will be able to safely attack Noir while the pages are still floating, but don't forget to dodge the energy orbs.
Odds are Noir will keep to a pattern of using the charge attack before following up with either the barrier or page swarm throughout the whole fight. A good thing to keep in mind though is that after the boss uses one of its abilities there will be a time frame where Noir is completely stationary. Use this as an opportunity to toss some magic at it before attacking with a melee attack. Magic will actually do a huge amount of damage to Noir.
As soon as the player manages to bring Grimoire Noir down they will then need to face off against the main antagonist of the whole game, the Shadowlord himself. This boss is extremely proficient in both melee and magical attacks and even has a pretty solid assortment of defensive abilities as well that can make for a pretty frustrating experience for the player if they aren't careful. The first thing that players will want to keep in mind is that the Shadowlord can chain together a series of melee attacks if the player gets too close, so this will want to be avoided whenever possible. The player will want to begin the fight by rushing the boss and throwing out a chain of combos at Shadowlord. If done correctly this will stun-lock him and prevent the boss from attacking with his own combo. The player will want to do this until Shadowlord leaps straight up into the air and then dodge backward quickly to avoid his air attack.
After this, the player will then have to deal with Shadowlord's very deadly magical attacks. The player will want to dodge to the left or to the right when one comes their way to get out of the way of these attacks before coming back in to deal some melee damage to the boss. Once again the idea here is to avoid these attack and then keep up the assault to prevent the boss from being able to attack the player back. If Shadowlord does manage to hit the player or lock them into a combo just try to dodge or block whenever possible to avoid taking too much damage.
The biggest issue with the first part of this fight is that the Shadowlord has a set of wings that allow him to jump around and move across the map very quickly. The player will want to keep their eyes on him whenever possible and dodge out of the way when he launches himself at the player. The player shouldn't forget though that they have access to magical attacks as well, so they can actually toss their Dark Lance attack at the Shadowlord from a distance to stop him from moving and then rush in for a quick combo. Those who don't want to attack close up can also just use ranged attacks whenever possible to deal damage.
About halfway through the fight though Grimoire Weiss will grow tired due to all of the stress and be unable to continue fighting. This means that NieR will have access to any of his magical abilities and must instead finish the fight with only melee attacks. Players won't be able to use their magic to stun or harm the boss from far away, so being fast becomes an incredibly important part of finishing this fight. Players should try to dodge through Shadowlord's attacks from here on out in an attempt to get as close to the boss as physically possible. Players should remember to always keep up the assault and be as aggressive as possible to bring the boss down. They should also keep in mind that this is the last fight of the game, which means that they shouldn't worry too much about saving any of their recovery items.
NieR Replicant Remastered can be played on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.
