Whenever I think of Cyalm, I think about how easy of a boss it is. To start off, it has such basic patterns and attacks that it would be nearly impossible to be damaged to half health, let alone die. It simply flies past my head when I think about how people have such difficulty with Cyalm. Normal bosses have 2 phases, and the second phase usually starts around half health mark. Cyalm simply doesn't have this. He has 1 phase. You do the same damage to Cyalm with the stars as all of the other fights. So we have a major difference already, and the difference is that the minimum amount of health that you have to do on a boss is 150%. I can understand dying on Shallare. I can understand dying on any of the other bosses. But how is it possible that you have an issue so bad that you die to Cyalm?
Let's talk about Cyalm's attacks. Cyalm has 6 different attacks, each with easy to dodge and consistent patterns. The only one out of these 5 that you could call "RNG" would be the attack where Cyalm teleports around you and tries to attack you using his two weapons. Cyalm teleports in random locations around you, and waits around half a second before lunging towards you with his two weapons. How can one be damaged by this? It escapes me. You would have to have a terrible reaction time in order to be damaged at all. On top of this, Cyalm spawns a significant distance away from you while doing this attack, and you can easily jump over him when he lunges at you.
Next off, we have the second easiest attack to dodge, Cyalm's symbol. Cyalm simply throws his symbol at you, which can be dodged by just walking to the side. This attack is incredibly simple to dodge. Combining how far away Cyalm is when he throws his symbol towards the player, and the speed of the symbol, this is one of the easiest moves to dodge. It escapes me how people manage to be hit by this attack, let alone any other attacks.
After that, we have the easiest attack to dodge. This attack spawns crystals or triangles (whatever you want to call them) behind the player. The only way that you could possibly be hit by this attack is if you intentionally walk into them. Cyalm rarely attacks the player during this attack and just is flying off to the side where the player can shoot stars at him. All you have to do is just walk and not stop during this attack and you won't get hit. So how do people get hit by this attack? Don't know.
Fourth on the list, we have Cyalm's hardest attack to dodge, but that isn't saying much. It's still incredibly easy to dodge, regardless of how hard you think it may be. In this attack, Cyalm teleports to the center of the circular arena and shoots crystals in 8 different directions. This sounds difficult, however, the crystals are spaced in a way where it would be incredibly easy to dodge. The only way that I could see a speedrunner being hit by this attack is if they were in the middle of the arena where Cyalm teleports to and didn't have enough time to react. Being hit twice? Not sure how that would happen. If you are on the outer edges of the arena or even a bit close to the middle, it wouldn't be hard at all to dodge this attack. You can simply just get in a position where you are in between the crystals as they spawn.
In addition, we have the fifth attack. In this fifth attack, Cyalm teleports near the player and shoots out 9-10 crystals towards the player. In order to dodge this attack, all you need to do is just step to the side, or just continue moving like you probably already were. The only foreseeable way that you could possibly be damaged by this attack is if you stopped moving at all, or walked directly into the crystals that Cyalm was shooting. For this attack, you have more than half a second to react. Unless you are one of those people who press one key at a time, which you shouldn't be doing as a speedrunner, it would be incredibly difficult to be hit by this attack.
Finally, we have the last attack that Cyalm will throw at you during this fight. This attack is 3 waves of crystals that spawn and are thrown at the player, each of them spawning half a second after the other. In this attack, Cyalm teleports away from the player and starts throwing them. You have around a second to react and run away from this attack before being hit. If you are caught in the direction of this attack, you can still simply just jump in between the waves of crystals. If you react properly, you can simply just move to the side and get out of the general direction of the waves of crystals.
In conclusion, I don't see how it's possible under any circumstances to die from Cyalm. The simple patterns of all 6 attacks by Cyalm coupled with the fact that you only have to take away 100% of his health instead of 150% or more of Cyalm's health makes it nearly impossible to die on. I simply don't understand how it is possible for a player like DooshBag1711 or any other veteran speedrunner of Adventure Forward 2 to die by him. I understand that if you are on a good run or have stress at the end of a run that you could be hit by Cyalm, but speedrunners are the type of players that break boundaries and have ungodly reaction times and optimization. For all of Cyalm's attacks, there is simply a massive amount of time that you can react in between attacks, and the simplicity of dodging the attacks that it confuses me on how someone would die to Cyalm.
I think that somewhere in the vast obscurity of the future—someone would die to Cyalm. Time and time again has proven that consistency is never 100, and I am lucky to have quit before I ultimately, eventually failed World 7 Symbol Reset. Because you can only do something so much before slipping into the dark Voixer of failure—and then you keep dying to Cyalm. No matter how hard you try, how much practice, after that first Cyalm death—you will never first try Cyalm again.
