「Tales of Graces ƒ: Sophie Solo」 Mercurius

Haven't played Sophie in a while but beating this dumb lizard after I dropped my initial run back in ..2015?? Yeah 2015. It feels great.
Anyway, Mercurius is notorious for denying nearly everything the player can do, even as Sophie. It's a really good thing she has other ways to regain CC outside of enemy stuns as it's muuuuch better to make use of the whole stun timer for free hits.
It was fun to play around and eventually find a chain that worked, gotta love them arte skips.
What makes this worse is the reptile weakness, afaik (and i could be wrong) you can't get reptile attribute on a weapon this early and Sophie's only means to hit that is through Rapier Rush, which is unfortunately out of the question due to no damage restriction. So I'm missing out on full weakness too! 😇
Damn it I almost want to run this for real now...
For funsies here's the combo route:
Shimmering Cut (whiff)
Gauntlet Blitz
Dragon Dash
Sword Assault (arte skip)
Spirit Rush (stun)
Deadly Force (CC recovery) [requirements for Fire Dragon Rampage start]
Heal (instant cast) [4CC]
Sidestep R
First Aid (instant cast) [3CC]
Shimmering Cut [1CC]
Dragon Dash [2CC]
Fire Dragon Rampage
Shimmering Cut (whiff)
Gauntlet Blitz
Slash Rose (stun)
Shotstaff Blast
Eagle Dive
Infinitia Soul
Backstep
Accel (CC recovery + hitstun extension)
Shimmering Cut (whiff)
Gauntlet Blitz (arte skip + stun)
Frontstep
Sword Assault (arte skip)
Spirit Rush
Zero Dissolver
──────────
🥊 Sophie Solo
🥊 Chaos Mode
🥊 No Damage
🥊 No Eleth Rise
🥊 1/8 Stats
🥊 2x Damage
──────────
Eleth Pot:
📕 Solitude
📕 Preemption
📕 Enthusiasm
📕 Passion
📕 Restriction
📕 Audacity
──────────

[@branmuffin184]

Damn i miss this game so much. Sophie combos were so fun!

[@JustSamu]

Agreed! This game is always super fun to come back to

[@TailsGt1]

Sophie is so sick. Good job!

[@JustSamu]

She really is a beast!

[@UnlimitedMrX]

Man, Boxune Miku goes Hard. Feel free to screenshot.
When you said that you had a *magical* Fire Dragon Rampage setup, you sure weren't kidding, lmao. God bless Gauntlet Blitz for putting in so much work here as well.

[@JustSamu]

The setup did cost me 2 shortcut slots but I couldn't just not do it, and yeah Gauntlet Blitz/Catastrophe (I really do hate the localized name lmao) honestly her best arte!