After gathering some feedback (and, again, needing to fix some minor bugs), I adjusted the UX of the chaingear fight a little to make it clearer how the boss works. It was never my intention to obfuscate information, but turns out the iconography I've used to convey the message was everything except clear for some players.
A cleaner UI for the Grab Shield bar
I've redesigned the Grab Shield bar to make it clearer that you can't grab the 'gear until it's depleted. This was originally meant to be conveyed by the small "grab button" icon close to it, but some players did not find it clear at all - especially while playing on smaller displays. Now, the UI is slightly clearer without affecting the difficulty of the fight - it's still ye olde Chaingear, just a little bit more transparent w.r.t. the amount of information you have, asking for less guesswork.
Old UI
New UI
Difficulty adjustments for Beginner and Easy Chaingear boss fights
I've realized that people playing the game at Easy or Beginner do not necessarily want to go through the wringer of a full chaingear fight and are there mostly for the lore, the arcade endings or just to have some good time after work. So, I adjusted the difficulty of the boss for just those two difficulty levels:
At Beginner, the Chaingear will now deal 50% less damage and its armor will withstand only 10 hits
At Easy, the Chaingear will now deal 25% less damage, while its armor will break after 12 hits
The fight at Medium and higher remain unchanged. The beam attack was only slightly altered to be able to hit another chaingear more than once, with no effects against other characters.
However, the boss gained a new attack at Medium and above (which you will probably see very rarely): with full super bar, the Chaingear can now unleash a rotary plasma beam attack, but only if its shield is up. This is mostly for flavor purposes, since it's unlikely to trigger this in an arcade run
Bug fixes
Fixed a bug that prevented Callowman's grab from doing any damage to the chaingear in certain stage sections
Fixed Apple's win quotes against the Chaingear
Fixed a missing picture from the gallery (one from Yume-Yume's ending wasn't properly registered)
As always, thank you for the amazing feedback! I'm reading all of your messages and trying to make Exploding Judo Federation a better game!
Till next time!