This article contains spoilers for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

The ending of Fallen Order saw Cal Kestis face off against the invincible Darth Vader, who casually swats Jedi Master Cere aside, blocks all your attacks, and forces you to run for your life as he relentlessly pursues you. In Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, you actually have to fight the all-powerful Sith Lord, and let’s just say this boss is likely to be a stumbling block for many players.

For story-related reasons we won’t go into, you play as Cere during this fight, who is limited to a single lightsaber style, has just four heals available, and doesn’t have many of Cal’s fancy Force moves to fall back on. This means it’s a pure test of lightsaber skill with very little room for error. It took me upwards of 20 tries to finally bring him down, so here’s the strategy that worked for me.

You don’t know the power of the dark side!

Vader is a three-stage boss fight punctuated by short cutscenes, and though you do indeed have to beat him, you only have to get his health down to about 10 percent to end the fight. Vader isn’t actually a particularly complicated opponent, but he hits like a truck, and screwing up even a little will see you quickly sliced into smoking chunks by his red lightsaber.

The battle is essentially a test of what you’ve learned so far. You must parry him successfully to reduce his guard bar, attack when he stumbles, and gradually wear him down. When you put it like that it sounds simple, but you won’t want to make a mistake given how much damage he inflicts and your limited amount of heals.

The best advice is to stay calm, slow down and make sure you nail those parries. Vader’s primary lightsaber combo consists of three slow rhythmic strikes that are quite easy to predict. Once his guard meter is depleted you need to attack with one combo of your own, then switch back to defense as he’ll quickly go on the offensive again. Keeping up the pressure on him at all times is key, and unless you need to heal we’d recommend getting right up in his face as much as you can.

Another key point is to avoid his unblockable and extremely damaging grab attack, which will consume most of your health bar if it connects. Vader seems to like opening the fight with this, so watch out for it in the opening moments and dodge backwards to avoid it. He will also break out other unblockable lunges and slashes during the fight, so be ready to dodge away from him the moment you see that telltale red glow around him.

In his second stage, he’ll begin hurling projectiles at you. These seem to be triggered when you retreat to heal, so if you create some space be sure to dodge them and then heal so you’re not pulverized. It may be possible to use Force pull and push to toss these back at him (like most other projectiles in the game), but we couldn’t pull this off so stick to bread-and-butter lightsaber damage.

His third stage will add some new attacks that will catch you off guard. He now has a lightsaber combo with five strikes, including two unblockable ones that must be dodged. Nailing this is tricky, so if he starts busting out the red unblockable moves just dodge his attacks until he goes back to his usual three-strike combo.

Finally, Cere has a unique “Force Shield” area-of-attack ability that’s incredibly powerful against Stormtroopers, but completely ineffective against Vader. I tried using it, only for him to attack us while we were charging it up and kill me. Even if you can find the right timing it only does some minor guard damage, so don’t bother using it.

I find your lack of faith disturbing

If you’re truly having a tough time with Vader you can of course temporarily drop the difficulty down a few notches or even use some of the accessibility options that slow down combat to make it much easier to parry him. After getting crushed a handful of times I was sorely tempted to do just that, but it’s so satisfying to finally take him down on the default difficulty we’re glad we stuck at it and beat him legitimately.

If I can do it, so can you. Just remember to keep your cool, stay on the offensive, and don’t button-mash.

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