Are you struggling to do a perfect run of a boss/level? Here’s a way to (sort-of) cheese the checkpoint system to ensure you get 0 damage and complete the challenge without having to restart the level every time you fail.
Help, I Hate Doing These Challenges
This guide is meant for after you’ve completed the full game and are trying to complete the 0 damage challenges on the Rewards Board.
Checkpoints are everywhere in this game, including during each segment of a boss fight and are usually right after the phases individual phases. This method works for all bosses and all levels and doing so counts for the no damage challenges (I would never have been able to do them myself otherwise).
General Tips
- Start the level on Easy. This will allow you to get more damage in on enemies and will allow a larger window for timing on beats. Both of these will make the fight much faster.
- Use parries every time there is a chance of you getting hit. I find the dodging is not nearly as safe as parrying. Lasers and long attacks rarely miss (i.e. Kale’s small lasers, Rekka’s charge and grab, QA-1MIL stage sweep) but parries block all attacks from any direction.
- Use only basic combos. By this I mean the light attack combo. These are easy to break if you have to parry something in the next beat. Heavy attacks take two beats to finish and you can’t interrupt their animation. Spam your partner abilities every time they reload to help do background damage. Don’t worry about how it affects your score, that’s not important for the challenge.
- Start the section that needs to be perfect at full health. You can check the health bar throughout the fight to make sure you haven’t been hit. Sometimes you can get hit and not notice, so any missing health will be a quick indication you need to restart.
Checkpoints
Checkpoints are always placed at the start of major phase changes indicated by a short cut scene. These will always save the exact state your health and reverb bars were when you reach the checkpoint. You can use this to strategically restart without losing progress.
- Go through the fight as you normally would, doing your absolute best not to get hit. Check your health bar regularly to make sure you haven’t taken any damage.
- If you take damage, immediately pause and select Return to Hideout.
- Go back to the couch and select Play.
- The level you were just playing will appear. Select Continue Stage.
You will appear at the last checkpoint (presumably only a little before where you quit). Your health will be back at max and the game will continue as if you had never taken damage at all. You can do this as many times as you’d like and you will still meet the requirements for doing a 0 damage fight. This will make the challenges much easier and save you time from having to do the entire level all over again. If you already knew this, great! This is for anyone who didn’t.
Good luck to fellow completionists out there!