KH3 - Lv. 1 Critical Mode Part 6: Grim Guardianess

Level 1 / Zero EXP Critical Mode New Game (No keyblades from NG+) No Stat Boosters (including AP Boosts) This is a really fun boss. It spells out very clearly for me that it's not easy being good at KH and there's a lot to consider when fighting it out against Mother Gothel. Had a good time doing this battle over and over again, learning how to behave and react during different phases, and this is about as good as it got (could still use a lot of improvement). After all the attempts, it still mystifies me when the boss just randomly decides to do nothing, usually just when you've activated Countershield and are waiting for an excuse to block to go into Flurry after two blocks. I came up with the best meal possible at this point from the ingredients available, selling all other ingredients I didn't need to make it so that I could manipulate the Chef's recommended meal thingy to get the effect I wanted. As always, I find +1 str/def/mag and +10% HP/MP to be the best effect possible, so I keep retrying until I get that. Since I've advanced both Kingdom of Corona and Toy Box until their last bosses, I am doing Toy Box's boss with the same meal still in effect. After I'm done with the two worlds and unlock Monstropolis and Arendelle, better meal options are accessible. I guess I could either do the Toy Box boss first as the easiest of the two or this one, but it seemed a more rational choice to finish Kingdom of Corona first because it grants you the Ever After keyblade. It's pretty much as good as Ultima Weapon (?) in terms of effectiveness except you get it in the beginning of the game and not the very end. Ever After helps with Toy Box's boss, whereas Favourite Deputy is of very little use in this fight. Besides flying around and trying to hit Sora, the boss performs a number of intriguing actions. It can summon bats and then KO Sora at full health in critical mode by juggling him in the air after you get hit by the bats. Definitely dangerous and the sheer number of bats makes it hard to block without Countershield activated, unless you just dodge (probably the best idea). Its pollen can make Sora sneeze but blocking its ground headbutts seems to do a decent job in preventing the sneeze status (wtf is this) from being incurred. My least favourite variable is definitely those flowers that start blossoming towards the end of the battle. They can get hold of Sora and if you fail to get out by whacking them with the pointy end the boss can actually KO Sora at full health. I generally choose to get out of this situation by activating Countershield's finisher, which automatically liberates Sora from his flower prison, but wasting Countershield early can be rather disheartening. I guess I could've sped things up a bit by using a shotlock towards the end but the boss was so close to dying to direct attacks anyway. I even stopped blocking when I was this close to the end.