Silent Hill 2

PlayStation 2

AnteLasic 23 Feb 2023 20:11

Since I had some trouble with this and the strategies I found online were a bit hard, here's an easy way to do it.
You essentially want to use only side movement (R1, and L1 by default), you can run sideways by holding square (might sound obvious by it took me a bit to learn). Start by moving in a circle around the middle. go behind the bed, and close to the opposite wall. After a few second the boss should be stuck constantly moving in a small circle in the very center of the room. Then once clear fire of a shot and immediately start holding R1/L1 and square to resume running in circle. Since you're moving side ways you can start moving in a safe direction much faster since you don't have to turn around. Otherwise with the rifle the bats would get you most of the time. Just keep running and the second you see the bats change direction and start going away, fire of a shot. Then run again until the next wave of bats goes away. Think it takes about 16-20 shots on normal. It takes a bit of time, but it's far safer to not get hit then while running around with a gun/shotgun.

GreatOneBeast 2 Mar 2023 05:39

My strategy was to use the great knife. It takes 3 swings on normal to kill her. I used the edge of the bed as a sort of barrier to keep her from hitting me as I got my 3 swings off.

GoJamBe 1 Jun 2023 02:02

This achievement was making me hesitate to tackle this set, but those strats don't sound too bad. Thanks for sharing guys, I might give it a go after all.

Whithbrin 11 Nov 2023 01:12

Great knife is the way. I found it really easy with that strategy.

GreatOneBeast 11 Nov 2023 01:16

@Whithbrin Congrats! Glad to be of help.

Whithbrin 11 Nov 2023 01:19

@GreatOneBeast I didn't expect a response! Yes, thank you for the strat.

Gubila 15 Jun 2024 16:05

As I understand it, she must be attacked, otherwise the trigger will not work? If you come to her without ammo, and just run in a circle for 5 minutes, after which she dies herself, but this achievement does not open.

Gubila 19 Jun 2024 16:09

Yes. And at the Normal action level she is very easy. Moves slowly, easily escapes from moths.

WeskerHunk 4 Jul 2024 18:34

Is this even possible on Hard without the Hyper Spray? After many attempts of failing to avoid any damage in this fight with every strategy I could find or think of I just gave up and decided to stand in place while firing the Shotgun (it seems to miss less than the rifle) and tanking the damage. It took over 4 minutes. She may have more health than the Pyramid Heads on top of being much harder to avoid taking damage from. I managed to beat every other boss on Hard in the first playthrough without taking damage (minus Eddie since 5 hits are allowed from him, but I got the strategy down and with a bit more luck he shouldn't be that hard if I cared to keep trying), but this one I just couldn't manage.

AnteLasic 4 Jul 2024 20:24

I've written down my strategy up above. TL;DR - Just run sideways in a circle between the 2 walls (behind the bed and close to the opposite wall). The boss will just be stuck in the middle shooting bats. The second you see bats fly in a new direction, shoot with the rifle then immediately hold L1 or R1 plus square to continue running in a circle. This way the bats should never hit you.
It's been a while so memory is not is a bit foggy, but I remember it being very easy to do this way.

valts 5 Jul 2024 12:23

@WeskerHunk

On Action Level Hard Mary/Maria boss has 20K health (8K on Normal, 4K on Easy and 1.2K on beginner).

Handgun does 120 pts. of damage, Shotgun: 500-1000 (probably less with distance), Hunting rifle: 500.

An overhead swing with the Steel pipe does 800 pts. of damage. An overhead swing with the Great knife (the same attack that 1HKOs James in apartments) does ~3K-4K plus 500-666 extra.

None of the Hyper spray colors but green (green is banned because of 1HKO obviously) apparently have an effect on her, so no stunning.

Can you even hit her with the Chainsaw?

I don't believe there are any reasonable tactics to do this battle on Hard without taking damage.

I had her AI glitched once in my testing though. I ran for the most distant wall at the very beginning of the battle and used the Hunting rifle. Didn't reset the camera so I was seeing the James face most of the time. For some reason she just floated around the middle of the room and didn't spawned the moths once.

WeskerHunk 5 Jul 2024 14:28

@AnteLasic I read your strategy, but I didn't manage to actually get her stuck consistently in a way that she couldn't hit me. I did find a spot where her physical attacks were unlikely to hit me and if I didn't look at her direction she wouldn't spawn the moths, but she still hits me every now and then, so for such a long fight it wasn't feasible to rely on luck. Did you try on Hard too or only on Normal difficulty? I'm curious to find a way to no damage her, but it doesn't seem like I'm understanding correctly how to do that. Do you have any videos that I could use as reference for your strategy? The only no damage videos I could find for this boss on Hard were people just surviving without attacking her until she died by herself, which should be easy, but for what I understand it doesn't work for the achievement, right? At least that's what I got from Gubila's first comment here. And even if it works that's such a major cheese that honestly it would feel more honorable to do this on Normal legitmately lol.

WeskerHunk 5 Jul 2024 14:44

@valts Ouch, 40 rifle shells is way too much and less than what I had after the double Pyramid Head fight. And that's because I wasn't missing shots and even hit them both at once a lot of times, and I'm preety sure I got every Rifle ammo pickup in the game and didn't use the Rifle anywhere else (though I hadn't unlocked bullet adjust yet since this was the first run). These last bosses are insane bullet sponges on Hard, but at least double Pyramid Heads weren't actually hard once I found the right strategy. This one though may be too much, you made the right call allowing this to be done on Normal, where I'm sure (no sarcasm) it wouldn't be unfair. The other bosses are alright with the right strategies, some practice, the right controller type in double Pyramid Heads' case and enough resources. But this is either you outright bug the boss or you don't no damage it on Hard while actually fighting it as far as I can tell. By the way, thanks for those damage values, that's really cool information to know! I never thought the shotgun could actually do double the rifle's damage under ideal circurnstances. It makes sense, but it's hard to test.

AnteLasic 5 Jul 2024 18:40

@WeskerHunk I honestly don't remember weather it was Hard or Normal, it's been a while since then. And sorry, I don't know of any videos playing like that.
Odd that she can still hit you. It's not so much that she get's stuck, and more so that she's too slow to move anywhere when you move in a large enough circle. She should just be doing a small circle in the middle.
That means I might have done it on normal mode, and she's faster on hard perhaps? Don't remember her actually being faster on hard though, even when I played on that difficulty normally.
If the differences are actually that big, then I really don't know what to do. I remember most popular strategies online were a problem exactly because they are so inconsistent. The only consistent one was actually running the timer out. Sorry to say, but it seems on hard, luck is something you have to have. Maybe try the knife as it seems to do most damage so it would at least make the fight shorter and it would be easier to get lucky. If you have at least one more ending to do, maybe try on normal.

WeskerHunk 6 Jul 2024 12:02

@AnteLasic That was actually my first run (in the PS2 version using Retroachievements, I already know the game inside out due to the Enhanced Edition on PC), so no big deal, there were still many runs ahead. It's just that I wanted to do the damageless bosses on Hard for extra self satisfaction, but Mary really isn't worth the trouble. Anyway, I got this on my second run on Normal mode and honestly she was a piece of cake without actually trying to follow any complex strategies. She is VERY slow on Normal, so it's just a matter of running to one side of the room and unloading the rifle on her until she gets close or starts using the moths. I didn't even have to change to tank controls and strafe. It took me 2 tries just because in the first one I got greedy and shot too much with the rifle while she was already in the proccess of summoning moths. In the second try I barely saw the moths anyway because I kept shooting while she wasn't visible, and even when I did it was easy to dodge, just a matter of not getting greedy.

WeskerHunk 6 Jul 2024 12:16

By the way, the double Pyramid Heads are the same. They are much slower on Normal and don't seem to get faster while not visible like they do on Hard, so I easily got another no damage on them in this second run (and didn't even need tank controls+strafing either), even though it was no longer necessary. I love Silent Hill 2 and it's story alone justifies it's position as the most well regarded game in the franchise, but if there's one thing this game doesn't excel at is difficulty. On Normal everything is a cakewalk and you may as well be playing on Beginner, but on Hard they go overboard with some stuff. Also, when it comes to dodging enemies outdoors it doesn't matter the difficulty as no enemy seems to have been designed for the outdoors. None of them can actually get close to you unless you get caught by surprise with a camera angle change or something, unlike the first game, where there were enemies made for outdoors, that could easily keep up with the player, and enemies made for indoors, that were slower to better fit with the cramped environments. There just isn't any truly well balanced difficulty for the entire game or at least most of it. I'm hoping the remake adresses that, and that hopefully it doesn't screw up everything else. It will never replace the original of course even if it was perfect and I'd also like to just have a version of the original with balance adjustments, but at least I can hope the remake avoids that issue. One can dream at least.

Cassievania 10 Jul 2024 08:10

None of these strategies really worked well for me, so I just sort of ran in circles around the bed, using it as a reference for how far away to stand to not get hit by the tentacle and to not trigger the moths. I used the handgun for its speed and fired about 70 times.

cavedweller2000 3 Aug 2024 20:30

After several failed attempts with a rifle, I did it first time using the Great Knife strat! Thanks for the tip!

GreatOneBeast 3 Aug 2024 21:30

@cavedweller2000 Congrats! Glad to hear more people like the strat.