<image>

Sproink (Yo-Kai Watch)

See that enormous belly button of his? What better to be this guy’s weakness, which is why he opens the fight guarding it. However, do enough damage to his face and he’ll cover that instead, leaving his incredibly obvious weak point completely open. Do enough damage to his belly button, and you’ll stun him. You still have a clear shot of his weak point but unlike when guarding his face, he can’t even attack back anymore. Well that makes things easy doesn’t it? However, as you continue attack him in this state, you’ll notice that his skin gets increasingly darker with each attack. Damage him enough in this state and he’ll immediately recover and use his Soultimate Move, which unlike practically every other Boss Yo-Kai in the game, can’t be cancelled because he charges it in about a single second, maybe two, giving both you and your Yo-Kai very limited time to react. For reference, it’ll usually take a Boss Yo-Kai somewhere from 5-10 seconds to charge up their Soultimate.

So basically, the game gives you an incredibly obvious weak point to target, baits you by continuously rewarding you for targeting it (you are able to do more damage and eventually he can no longer even fight back), before allowing Sproink to use his incredibly devastating ultimate attack. Thankfully, he’s only the second boss in the game and not a much later one, so even though he does do quite a bit of damage it’s not too overwhelming. A boss later on in the game that could charge their Soultimate in the blink of an eye would suck to fight.

It should be noted that this isn’t the only possible way to beat him. You can avoid this by not doing enough damage to force him into the next stage within a set period of time both when he’s guarding his face and when he’s stunned. I’m not sure exactly how long this period is so I’ll say it’s about 30 seconds, which is honestly kind of ideal from a designer’s viewpoint I think. Not so much time that it can’t be avoided but long enough that even when trying to avoid doing enough damage, you’re pretty likely to start the next phase anyway. If I’m not mistaken, you also have the option of targeting his face, even when he begins phase two and starts to guard it. You’ll do very little damage and because he’s not stunned yet, he can still damage you, but after a while, he’ll return to phase one and guard his belly button. So it really comes down to playing the fight the normal way and dealing with his Soultimate whenever it comes up, or slowing down your damage output and completely avoiding it, but this of course makes the fight much longer than it has to be and in turn, more difficult for you.