Arguably the hardest trophy/achievement in RAD is I Am Bat Man. This is almost entirely due to the complicated addressed in our review. Simply put, melee combat is not as advantageous as ranged combat, leading to more damage and a higher likelihood of death. So when you do De-Made style, which removes your ability to have any character modifications, it hinges on your skill and luck. Thankfully, it isn’t quite as hard as you might think.
As mentioned in our other guide, RAD is a dynamic game with static elements. This is a fancy way to saying everything is random until it’s generated. I can’t speak on how far the game generates in advance, only that it stays relatively the same no matter how many time you reload a level. Adding new items and experiences will result in slight changes, like a different quest but that’s about it. Anyway, the point is, once you know what to expect, you can plan ahead.
With this out of the way, I did find an arguably gamebreaking exploit that makes this even easier. You see, every time you load the hub space, Shermie’s shop’s stock is replenished. She seemingly always has hot sauce and a floppy, which means you can always start a level with full health and obtain as many floppy disks that you could possibly want. If you reload a level a couple times you’ll know exactly how many items need it and which enemies give them, allowing you to accurately anticipate, if you want to get really far into that side of things.
Set Up
Anyway, exploits and tricks aside, there is a lot more to this than simply buying hundreds of floppy disks, full health and learning what dangers lurk in the future. I strongly suggest having at least a healthy reserve of cash, something I did not think ahead to obtain, and obtaining the Mega-Leg melee weapon. I got this fairly early on after finishing my second run, so you should get it with relative ease. What makes the leg great is that you can mitigate damage and deal more damage as long as you’re not too weak.
As for runs themselves, I strongly suggest playing through the first stage or two to see if you get enough resources to say this is the run. But, if you just want to do it, all you really need is perseverance and possibly a bunch of resources.
Tips and Tricks
Part of what makes this task so difficult is how annoying certain enemies are. Good news is, since you can’t absorb rads, it means you don’t actually need to kill most enemies. In fact, only those that are related to exits, bosses and more problems then they’re worth will need to die. This isn’t overly helpful at the beginning, though it becomes invaluable on the last stage.
Surprisingly, the middle two levels are the hardest of the six to beat. This is largely thanks to the last area requiring an arena battle and a lot of these are easy to get overwhelmed. Also, if you’re super lucky like me, you’ll have to kill Barkley and B’Donk, two bosses that have strong close range game and are easy to overwhelm players. My advice is to be smart but bold. I actually found Barkley super easy when I stopped trying to mitigate his attacks and simply killed him. All you’ll end up doing is being on the defense forever.
The key to the last area is to exploit pushing enemies over the edge and focusing on getting to the end. I was most worried about the areas where you need to kill robots to unlock the gate and escape the cage but if you can get them in a bad position and simply run back, often times you can just activate it and escape without fighting. This is the ideal way to play, as some of these enemies are extremely difficult with melee combat.
Ironically, the final boss, the colossus, is shockingly easy. You can see a melee run above but it just comes down to watching for his attacks and putting pressure on him. This is also a fight with plenty of health and resources, so if you’re on the fence, simply disengage, obtain resources and come back fighting.
