The first boss on Signalis: I died at least half a dozen times

For any of your hardcore gamers out there, dying a whole 6 times before defeating a boss really isn't a lot. I've seen some videos of people trying to fight a boss on one of the truly hard games like Elden Ring or Nioh and it looks like it would take me forever and a day to defeat some of them. I'm not that hardcore of a gamer and Signalis doesn't really have a lot of combat options. Like with a lot of the other things in this game it isn't really about having some sort of super-fast button response but simply by finding the one and only thing that is going to get you through this.

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The first boss is referred to as Mnhr or "mynah" and I don't know how we are supposed to figure out why this thing is here or why it is all possessed and huge because of some sort of "disease" of sorts that affects cyborgs, but here we are!

You drop into a medical room of some sort, watch a short cinematic and then you are faced with this rather huge lumbering thing in front of you.

Now if you are like
me and I presume most people, my first reaction was to unload on this thing with whatever weapon i had in my hand. I wasted a bunch of ammo before I realized that the targeting that appears on Myna has an "X" on it meaning that you aren't even doing damage and since ammo is so difficult to come by, you really shouldn't be doing that.

That's a waste of time buddy!

It isn't so easy to tell that one one side of this room there is actually a pillar that you can hide behind. I don't know if this was intentional on the part of the designers but it looks just like the floor and I didn't even know it was there until I was kind of trapped by it.

This is instrumental in victory here because it is the only thing that you can hide behind as far as avoiding getting hit by Myna's lazer shotgun or whatever that is.

The AI in this game isn't terribly intelligent, so if you just move around a bit Myna will continue to shoot into the pillar until she gets frustrated and then summons a couple of regular trash mobs to go after you in a completely linear and predictable fashion.

I don't know why but after a while of dodging the firing on her part she collapses to the ground and if you are like me this seemed like a wonderful opportunity for some offense on my part.. But if you look closely you can see there is some sort of tentacle or vine coming away from her body and if you stand in that, you will take damage.

So while it took me a few times to get the hang of this you need to be at some distance with your handgun at the ready and for a couple seconds or so the creature inside that suit opens the helmet and then you can blast away. This is the only time that she is vulnerable and shooting at her during any other point is a waste of time and ammo.

This reminds me a great deal about the first boss in Resident Evil. It was some sort of huge snake and since we were all kind of new to the idea of vulnerability windows back in those days I think most of us were just busting off caps left and right not even realizing that we were just wasting ammo.

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anyway, getting back to the Signalis fight. This isn't a terribly difficult boss and I think that is by design. The only issue is that you need to be a bit patient since using all weapons outside of this small window of opportunity is a waste of time. You can hurt her until she puts down the helmet.

One thing I found to be pretty helpful was that you don't need to use a shotgun in here. That ammo is far too precious and it doesn't really have the range to take care of this guy anyway. Regular pistol is fine and after you hit it during the vulnerability portion 2-3 times she's gone. She doesn't have another phase, at least for now.

This boss was kind of brilliant in my mind because this game didn't introduce very many options as far as combat is concerned. They couldn't just put you in a slugfest because the combat is very basic. For modern gamers that have never played things around the 16-bit or even 8-bit era, this might seem boring but for me, I really enjoyed it.

perhaps it is my age but if a game is too complicated and requires super quick reaction times and a good working knowledge of all the buttons, I am not going to stay interested in it for very long.

Signalis is a very well-written and produced game that probably didn't use a great deal of resources to get it out the door. It is very linear even though it kind of pretends to be somewhat open. I commend the creators of this game and hope that they turned a profit because for an old-school gamer like me this is kind of a perfect for a 5-hour adventure or so.

_{all uncredited stills are from my own gameplay}