Flash of Steel: A Mercenary's Tale

 Well, for once I am glad I was wrong.

Going all the way back to our now infamous Skill Up Risk of Rain 2 which was part of the reason why I got obsessed with Risk of Rain 2, when Skill Up was describing the characters in the game, one of the characters he mentioned was the Mercenary.

Described as a mostly melee classed fighter, the description for him and what he could do really caught my attention. I said to myself, I'm going to main that one and even before I got the game I looked up more info about him, specifically how to unlock him. As a now veteran Souls player, I believed I would gel with this class and I would enjoy using him. However I kept hearing how he has a very high skill ceiling and that to really get good with him would take a lot of work and also how he is slightly outclassed in the later game when you want to avoid up and close combat and take things out from the range.

I still wanted to give him a try tho and then I got the game and I was immediately floored by how hyper aggressive everything was. The game with its focus on time and increased difficulty, the almost limitless amount of flying enemies (especially my arch nemesis' the blind pest... I hate them so much).

I quickly re-evaluated my love for melee classes and I wanted character who can hit things in the sky, so yes, I started to gravitate more towards Huntress, Commando and later on Bandit and my new favorite character the Railgunner. When I was using melee classes like Acrid and Loader I started to realize how melee character gets overwhelmed very quickly in this game by flying enemies, especially at the higher difficulties.

I actually began to dread using Mercenary then and he kind of consciously slipped to the back of the queue of characters I wanted to use. It is why he is in the back 4 and no longer one of the first characters I aimed to pick up. However, I am so glad I was wrong.

After learning him, I quickly realized the Mercenary is actually more up my alley then Loader and Acrid. He quickly surpassed another high skill level character like Artificer and I think I now enjoy using him more then Huntress. The actually really fun from playing Mercenary is how his gameplay loop is slightly different then everyone else's. You see, at the end of most of my runs, if I am able to control it, I end up with what I called the 'Zeus' build where I simply stare at folks and they die from the constant lighting strikes of my 'Royal Capacitor' equipment. No matter the class up until the Mercenary, to get through the later runs, I would rely on the 'Zeus'. It almost became a bit cliché even tho I was having fun, I felt less 'involved' with my runs and it gave me less self expression.

However with the Mercenary, I quickly discovered a better build for him and it all involves using skills unique to him only. Utilizing 'Blinding Assault' a dashing attack which can be chained 3 times in a row if it hits something and his 'Eviscerate' special which is a semi-heat seeking invulnerable attack which is anime AF when it hits, the Mercenary truly becomes the Demon of the Sky as one of his challenges describes him. Chaining attack after attack whilst attacking aerial opponent after aerial opponent and constantly staying on the offense is a feeling like no other and the mobility it affords him at later levels make traversing stages a breeze. I think this is the feeling Loader mains feel when she wins around the stages like Spider-Man which I never really mastered but the Mercenary is another story. Using him and a combination of 'Shaped Glass' lunar item that boosts damage and 'Lysate Cell' void item that gives me more and more 'Eviscerate' specials (and by default more and more heat seeking and invulnerability) I've been able to beat not only the final boss Mithrix, a Twisted Scavenger and even the incredibility overpowered DLC boss the Voidling without a sweat. This build lets me play Rainstorm (the regular difficulty and how the game is intended to be played) even with RNG items and still succeed.

On top of that, as I mentioned in my previous blog about MUL-T I am a fan of aesthetics and whilst the regular Mercenary is cool enough, his Mastery skin the 'Oni' is hands down one of my favorite skins. It changes a lot and you just look like a bad ass when you use it.

So yeah, the Mercenary it turns out is 100% my jam and I'm happy I eventually took a chance on him and learned him. Funny enough, he also might be one of the characters whom I can not unlock all his challenges because one of there requirement is way to specific and hard. But despite not unlocking everything for him (I heard the skill it unlocks isn't even that great and it replaces the skill I need the most for my build) I am having a blast with him and I foresee him being very high on my eventual Survivors tier list. On that note, next up: The Engineer. Another survivor I don't know if I'll enjoy but hey, I've been wrong before (points to this whole ass blog).

Speaking of next up; our next blog will be our Steam Deck one and boy, is that going to be a long one. Till then tho I'll see y'all on the battlefield.