Noctuary - (Almost) All Bosses, Parries Only

A true warrior knows how to turn her opponent's own strength against them! In other words, we're going to parry EVERYTHING! Swords? Parried! Magic? Parried! Guns? Parried! Fire? Parried! Fog? Parried! The rules are simple: we're not allowed to use any direct attacks other than Alina's parry technique, activated by using Light Boost in her Swiftness Combat Style. The only exception to this rule is we are allowed to follow up guard breaks. We only get guard breaks by parrying frequently anyway. Now, a few things to note about Alina's parry. For one, it doesn't actually interrupt enemy attacks. While Alina will become immune to damage, the enemy will continue doing whatever they were doing beforehand, whether our parry is successful or not. Additionally, Alina will counterattack immediately, with a dash that triggers an AoE blast. The thing is, both of these can miss. If we parry a long ranged attack, it's possible the dash just might not hit at all, and if the enemy is moving, then they might leave the AoE zone before taking the full damage. Thus, in addition to all the regular challenges of parrying, such as timing our parry with enemy attacks, we also need to make sure we have proper positioning. And of course, Alina's parry costs 1 Light Boost, so if we parry too many times too quickly, we'll run out of Light Boost and be left defenseless. Normally you gain Light Boost through basic attacks, but like the No Basics challenge, we use Madam Bonfia and Ms. Lori's Blessings to allow us to gain Light Boost over time, and when taking damage. This means there is some damage tanking involved, to replenish our gauge, but it becomes increasingly perilous as bosses start dealing more damage later in the game. Note that unlike the Alina Only challenge, we are allowed to be KO'd and revived by Fancia, just as long as Fancia doesn't attack while we control her. Our DPS on any given fight, as you might imagine for a parry only challenge, is very dependent on the fight itself. More aggressive enemies give us more opportunities to parry, but enemies that are too aggressive, or with moves that do too much damage to damage boost through will leave us with little Light Boost to actually attack with. Overall, though, our DPS is generally much lower than normal. And that brings us to the "almost" in the title, because this was the first boss challenge I've done in this game where it wasn't actually possible to complete every boss. In particular, there are three bosses that, as far as I could tell, were genuinely impossible. -Skyswimmer and Heartsting were both accompanied by objectives. Both of them had timers, and Heartsting also had a gate we had to defend that was being swarmed by regular enemies. We simply didn't have the DPS to take them down before the objective went down as well. Ultimately, these are both relatively minor bosses, though, so if it was just these two, it wouldn't be a big deal. -The real bummer here was The Outsider. Yes, this boss challenge doesn't include the final boss. Apparently The Outsider just straight up does not take damage from Alina's parry. It probably has something to do with the fact that the AoE that spawns from the parry appears right underneath any enemy hit, and The Outsider technically floats just outside of the arena. Whatever the reason, though, total bummer. Still, everyone knows the real final boss is Noxistasia anyway, and she's here, so, there's that at least. (p.s. apologies for the reupload. I accidentally left out the Evolving Darkritter 1 on my first upload. Whoopsie)