Enemy Showdown: Sundowner (Metal Gear Rising)

For some, the new regime of ADVENT represented the dark period of the future. For others, it was an opportunity to stop being told about "war crimes-this" or "code of conduct-that".

As for XCOM in heavily modded playthroughs, it’s yet another heavily armed weirdo from nowhere. Unfortunately, working for the aliens this time around.

Sundowner is a ruler-esque enemy that dual wields his customized Bloodlust swords: he can appear on missions starting at Force Level 7 and will have an increasing chance to show up on missions as time goes on. He won’t appear on missions that Rulers can’t appear on (or in which a Ruler is already slated to appear).

Unlike Rulers, he takes normal turns with special conditions required for him to have a chance of reacting against you outside of that. However, he can make sword attacks without it immediately ending his turn: this means that he can attack at least twice once he gets close enough to XCOM.

His health is akin to the vanilla Viper King’s, and will get ruler-specific adjustments to his health values if Beta Strike or similar gameplay options are activated.

Like a ruler, his health doesn’t reset across missions after you deal enough damage to him to force him to run away. Unlike a ruler, his armour *does* reset between missions, which will be explained by his below abilities and items:

The Bloodlust swords
Special swords that specialize in shredding flesh and metal alike. These do an ok amount of damage, but cause long term bleeding in units along with shredding armour points.

These are also your reward for defeating Sundowner: you get two copies of his sword into XCOM’s inventory ala a ruler’s corpse once he is killed.

ADVENT Cyborg
Grants him immunity to fire and poison, along with various mental effects like stun or disorient. Freeze grenades are recommended if you need to delay him.

Justice
Like the Skirmisher ability. Grapples you and then hits you with his sword.

Explosive Reactive Armour
Every time Sundowner takes an applicable attack that would be mitigated by armour (psionics and attacks that completely pierces through his armour bypass this):

1) That damage is rendered completely inert due to an ERA piece exploding. If the damage shreds armour, that still applies, but he otherwise does not take HP damage. This consumes one armour point *after* any shredding has taken place,
2) Anybody who’s too close to him at the time of the ERA going off will take damage and have a small chance of being disoriented.

Specialists, psionics, and any class that can attack multiple times easily (e.g Iridar’s akimbo class) are to be highly recommended if you can’t afford the cost of using explosives to strip away his armour away.

Fired Up
This ability fires once Sundowner has either lost all his armour OR has taken enough HP damage. This grants Sundowner three action points per turn instead of two, and allows him to sometimes react to taking damage from XCOM. Be prepared for him suddenly attacking trying to follow up on someone.

(It also nerfs him a bit stat wise so this does not cause a guaranteed code black)

Max and Ozy for porting over the Sundowner cosmetics.
Platinum Games for making Metal Gear Rising in the first place