Hyper Light Drifter - How to Beat the Soccer Kid (Without Charge Slash)

Whether you are early game and need the extra gearbit, or just simply want to flex on your friends, this guide will give you a bit of strategy on how to beat the Soccer Kid the hard way.

Guide To Beating The Soccer Kid

Introduction

The soccer field is an area found in the southwest corner of the center town, unlocked after raising the north and west towers. There, you play a game of soccer to 10 goals against a kid that is on par with some bosses in difficulty. After beating him, you are rewarded with a gearbit.

Now the easy way to deal with this kid's mad soccer skills is by using the charge slash, since you can just charge it up, aim the ball at the goal and generally it has enough force behind it that the kid can't deflect it entirely. See here for a proper guide to beat it every time using that method:

After destroying the bottom barrel, switch to keyboard and mouse controls and position yourself and the mouse exactly like this (i.e. pixel perfect):

Now fully charge a charged swing, without physically moving the mouse, and let go once the screen stops moving. Should be a guaranteed goal.

But what if you don't yet have the charge slash, or want to prove your worth but can't quite seem to beat him? Well friends, you've come to the right place. We went through the tedious process of learning to beat him so that you don't have to. Our efforts yielded a few different ways of tackling him, so choose the best one for your purposes.

Cheese Strats

The first and easiest few methods all follow a similar pattern. Score before the kid can get possession. We're calling them cheese methods because while the devs likely intended their use, they feel too unfair to not describe as cheese.

This is the easiest and most reliable method we found. It's like the charge slash in concept except you just do it with a slash dash.

How to do it:

• Walk towards the goal, kicking the ball twice.
• Hit the ball with your sword, followed by a slash dash.
• Make sure to wait a moment between attacking and pressing dash so the initial sword strike doesn't get overwritten by the slash dash.
• Don't align directly with the kid and you should be good.

*The kid can still hit you even while slash dashing, think of him as a brick wall that can kick you.

• Same thing just a bit harder, for when you don't have the slash dash upgrade.
• Kick the ball twice, but wait a bit longer than before for it to start slowing down.
• A hit with the sword followed immediately by dashing and it's in.

Let's face it, dash strikes are pretty useless, but you can still use it effectively against the soccer kid.

How to do it:

• Slash, dash, strike.
• This is a difficult technique, but if done correctly will score every time, even from across the entire field. Aim directly for the soccer kid; aiming too high or low will allow him to deflect the ball away from the goal.

Another very similar method that requires zero upgrades and only uses 1-2 dashes if done properly. The most difficult and unreliable method in this guide section.

How to do it:

• Walk directly towards the goal, kicking the ball 3 times.
• Almost immediately after the third kick, dash at the ball, which will hopefully knock it past the walking pinball bumper of a goalie.
• Dashing at an angle, towards either the top or bottom of the goal, rather than towards the kid, seems to make the maneuver a little bit more consistent.
• Watching the video will help to get an idea of the timing required, as well as an example of a recovery.

Be ready to dash again once you get knocked down by the kid, as the ball will sometimes stop in front of the goal. You have but a moment to get up and dash into the ball again to score before he kicks the ball out of the goal.

Proper Duel Tips

For sake of this section, lets say you find yourself too much of a chivalrous player and no amount of Gouda or Brie will shake the insatiable desire of a proper duel to the pain with some Fifa champion kid on the side of the road. Well lucky for you we've decided to make a guide for that too.

We're going to define this "proper duel" as any game were you use no abilities, no cheese, and the kid manages to get possession of the ball on more than half of the scores. To put it simply, this is the worst possible way to go against him aside from forgoing weapons and dashes entirely, and your skill at the game will be the only factor in beating him.

The biggest tip I can give is dont get to this point, spare yourself the pain. But if you are a masochist (or just messed up an attempt) and absolutely must beat this kid in this manner, no matter the cost, the first thing you want to do is git gud.

• Once you have a decent amount of skill, here's a few things to remember.
• You have your dash, so you have the mobility advantage and it is a powerful weapon in defense. Just be warned that that child is more fortuitous than you are, so dashing into him is to the same effect as chain dashing into a wall.
• Defense is the most important aspect in this strategy, because as long as you can defend long enough he will eventually give up his assault.
• Destroying the explosive canisters on his side helps get some cheeky points since he will sometimes just keep jumping back and forth in the corner, setting you up for an easy score. Speaking of those canisters, or any other explosives such as your roly-polys, their detonation affects the ball no matter where it is on the field.
• The pistol is by far the best weapon in this situation. It's good for scoring if you get the ball past him and for redirecting his shots on defense. You can't use it to knock the ball away while he is dribbling though.
• Your sword does next to nothing for this aside from recharging your ammo, don't use it. Dashing should be your main method of quickly moving the ball.
• If he loses the ball for some reason, that is prime time to strike. He won't intercept the ball until he gets to his goal.

It is possible to score against him and potentially win without abilities, weapons, or dashes, only kicking. We tried and got 8 points as our high score in that category, and neither of us ever want to do it again. The few tips we got out of it were these:

• Don't be so dumb as to do this challenge.
• Focus on defending. Not being scored on should be prioritized over scoring yourself, since the latter is entirely down to luck.
• Try to intercept the soccer kid vertically, as opposed to horizontally. Going horizontally will either help the kid score on your own goal or just get you knocked down.
• Keep near to the edges of the field when moving in to score. The kid seems to be more likely to knock the ball towards his own goal, and less likely to bulldoze over you and take the ball when doing this.

Also, remember that the ball is weird and only cares about the position of your feet, so if you seem to miss often then try using your shadow for alignment.

Conclusions

Just use the charge slash method. It's so easy that there's hardly a reason to beat that stupid kid any other way. And if you need the gearbits so badly then look up a secrets guide, there's so many better alternatives to suffering through this kid without charge slash or slash dash.

May we one day punt the soccer kid into the sun where he can burn for all eternity.

Source: https://gameplay.tips/guides/9516-hyper-light-drifter.html					

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