Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart: Francois Boss Fight

First mate to Pierre Le Fer, Francois is a giant pirate robot marauder who the player will have to fight at their first encounter in Zurkie’s. One of the more powerful boss fights of Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart, we’ll show you how to beat the Francois boss fight and all other pirate marauders in our guide here!

Read More: Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart Review.

How to Beat the Francois Boss Fight in Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart

To beat the Francois boss fight at Zurkie’s in Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart, players will need to adapt a lot of the lessons learned from fighting the Nefarious Juggernaut, as Francois is also a powerful melee-brute with slow-moving projectiles. In fact, Francois marks the introduction of a new kind of boss called the Pirate Marauder, so all the tips and tricks we’ll lay out below will apply to later bosses like “Wee” Roger, “Not-So-Wee” Roger, Crabcakes McGee and The Tide Twins.

Tips and Strategy

• Once Francois appears, you’ll have probably used up a lot of ammo at this point holding back Pierre’s forces. If you’re running low, your first priority should be to throw out a Topiary Sprinkler or Mr. Fungi to hold him in place while you collect health and ammo from any available crates.
• Throughout the whole fight, red markers will appear on the ground. Stay away from those; they’re about to become jets of fire!
• Francois’ main attack is clusterbomb launcher on his right arm. Bombs launched this way explode and break into smaller bombs that spread out. You need to avoid these as much as possible, they do high damage and can knock you down for a follow-up attack, or push you off the arena. If you see one coming, Phantom Dodge away from it and put some distance between you and it!
• Francois will also jump about from time to time, repositioning himself, and use his other arm to create short-range ground-level shockwaves. Melee combat is not advised, and if you see him jump, immediately move away from where you are to avoid getting crushed.
• At 50-60% health, minions will start spawning in to help Francois. The Lightning Rod, Shatterbomb or Enforcer are great at dispatching them quickly, but the fact that they’re mostly melee attackers means you can just keep backing up to avoid them, though sooner or later you’ll want to thin their numbers for safety’s sake.

Tide Twins Boss Fight

The Tide Twins are a boss fight where players will have to fight two pirate marauders at once, a pair of powerful foes who try to attack the player from two directions and make avoiding them that much harder. Though they both function like regular marauders, here’s some tips to help take the edge off.

• The moment the fight starts, throw as many Doom Eggs as you can. The free background damage is just too good not to have.
• Topiary Sprinkler and Cold Snap will take one of them out of your hair for at least a few moments.
• The speedy hoverboots can help you get around the battlefield fast - if you need health or ammo - use them and the Phantom Dodge to get past to what you need.
• Focus on one of them as much as possible, so you only have to fight them one at a time. Dodging two sets of clusterbombs and shockwaves is very difficult.
• Like before, minions will spawn. A period blast of the Warmonger should clear them out, and make sure they don’t group up too much and get into melee range. It’s very easy to be backing away from one of the Twins into the waiting scythes of a smaller bot. Thin them out whenever you have a moment.

If you’ve just beaten Francois because of our tips, you might want to know more about the arena at Zurkie’s! Or if you’ve beaten the Tide Twins, you should be getting ready for a boss fight soon against this powerful robot foe!