The Oneechanpon: The Oneechan 2 Special Edition Survival Mode FAQ
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Hello!
After hours and hours played on Oneechanbara 2 SE (that I'll abbreviate as
OCB2 from now on), and more hours thinking about how to improve strategies,
I finally take the time to lay those ideas on "paper".
This FAQ won't lead you through OCB 2's Story mode, because, well there's no
special need for that as it's quite straight forward. It also won't cover the
Quests as Roufas2008 already covers it on his FAQ.
As the name implies, it will cover the Survival Mode. Up until a few weeks
ago, I played this mode rather casually, but now I want to see how far it
goes, perhaps finish it, if it's even possible? As the rest of the game, this
mode can be played in cooperation with a friend. I play both types and I must
say that it's really interesting to play this in cooperation as it improves
the Survival experience.
I would like to thank Catz, my Survival Partner and Ishmael who gave me the
last push to transform a topic into a proper FAQ.
Document History :
2008/05/10 : Posted as a GameFaqs topic
2008/10/16 : Conversion into a proper FAQ and submitted
Now on to the guide.
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Table of Contents
I) Controls & System
II) Characters
III) Items
IV) Survival Mode Presentation
IV) Basic Enemies
V) Bosses
VI) Records
VII) Conclusion
======================================
I) Controls & System
OCB2 is a beat them all/hack and slash/DMC-like so you'll recognize the same
control scheme that you see in most games of this category. Being a DMC
player I'll sometimes refer to DMC terms or make comparisons, I'll stay on
topic though :)
For neophytes to cancel a move into another move is to input the command of
the second move before the end of the first one. If you do that, you'll chain
the two moves together. In OCB2 you can cancel slashes into rolls or rolls
into slashes for instance. There are other types of cancels which will be
mentioned below.
I)A) Controls
I)A)a) Standard controls
Left Analog Stick : Move the fighter
Right Analog Stick : Move the camera
L1 : Sword Cleaning/Full Reload. Pressing L1 while idle will remove all the
blood from the sword or reload all 5 bullets on your weapon.
If you cancel a cancelable move with L1, you'll get a Small Sword Cleaning
(SSC)/Small Reload (SR). As the name implies, it will only remove a small
amount of blood from the blade or reload 2 bullets instead of 5. You can also
cancel the SSC/SR into another attack. If you do it early, almost no
blood will be removed (as the animation will be shortened). However, even if
you cancel the SR instantaneously, you'll get your two bullets. Huge
advantage for Kiku and Hana here.
L2 : Tag
R1: Target Lock-on
R2 : Tag
Triangle : Kick. Note that the Kick attacks are the weakest in the game.
Also, Saki and Aya have a 2 hit combo with Kick, just press Kick another
time.
Square : Sword Slash. Some slashes can be cancelled into SSC or SR.
X : Jump/Roll. Every character can double jump. In DMC, the ascending
phase of a jump makes you invincible. It's not the case here. So if a ground
attack is coming and you jump, if you're still to close to the ground, you'll
still get hit. For instance, the ground shockwave from Evil Baloo will hit
you if jumped a little bit late (even though you don't touch the ground...).
It'd be best to double jump right away.
Circle : Character Specific Attack
Select : Open Item Menu
Start : Pause
Digital Up : Active character stats
Digital Right : Map zoom change
Digital Left : Open Map
Digital Down : Quest status
==================
I)A)b) Input Combinations
There are combinations of Directions (on the Left Analog Stick of course) and
buttons that give universal actions :
Forward + Kick => A roundhouse kick that strikes a large area in front of the
fighter, it also moves slightly forward.
Back + Kick => A sweep that strikes a large area in front of the fighter and
knocks down enemies. Of course, it doesn't hit flying enemies
Jump + Kick => According to how fast you input this you can have two
different attacks. If you press Kick while you're still in ascending phase,
you'll do an upward kick (UKick). You'll be able to attack a second time in
the jump or do your double jump. If you press Kick after you reached the peak
of the jump, you'll get a downward kick. You won't be able to double Jump.
Note that during a double jump, the upward kick is not available. So you can
either do :
Jump -> DKick (or Slash or Circle) or
Jump -> UKick -> 2nd Attack (DKick or Slash or Circle) or
Jump UKick-> double Jump -> 2nd Attack or
Jump -> double Jump -> DKick (or Slash or Circle)
But you can't do Jump -> UKick -> double Jump -> UKick -> 2nd Attack.
Forward + Slash => A thrusting sword move (I'll rip-off DMC's name and
call it "Stinger"). This is the standard move that has the longest range.
It's unfortunately a pretty weak attack.
Back + Slash => An upward sword move that launch enemies in the air (I'll
also rip-off DMC's name and call it "High Time"). Depending on the character,
if you hold the Slash button, your fighter will launch the enemy AND will
continue her motion to end up airborne. If you do the extended Hight Time,
it'll count as a jump. So you can double jump after it. Also a weak attack
but has the advantage of launching opponents. If you do the ground version,
you can cancel it into a roll.
Left/Right + Slash => A circular sword move where the fighter knocks down her
immediate vicinity. Eva is severely advantaged with this move because of
her long ranged weapon. This move having a large area of effect, to
compensate, it's damage output is quite weak.
R1 + Up/Right/Left/Down + Jump => A roll/cartwheel/flip in the direction
pressed on the Analog stick. R1 + Jump and no direction will perform a
forward roll. You can cancel Rolls into SSC or SR or Slashes.
Note that the best feature of rolls is that you're completely invincible
while doing it. And as you can do rolls one straight after another you can
extend your invincibility for as long as you want.
Jump + Character Specific Attack => Suicide attack. This attack has a great
range, it'll damage almost everyone in the area but will cost the girl a
notable amount of life. This is really not recommended to use it in Survival
Mode. However, you're invincible while doing it. You already have lost life
anyway so...
======================================
I)B) System
Except from the basics of every beat them all OCB2 offers some interesting
mechanics.
I)B)a) Sword Cleaning and Reload
In OCB2 there are two types of gameplay, the girls that have to manage their
sword's blood level and the girls that have to manage their ammo.
For the first type, they have to clean their sword regularly. As you slash
away, the sword gets soaked with enemies' blood. There's a gauge on the
screen displaying that. The more it's filled with blood, the less it'll do
damage and the slowest the attacks will be (meaning it'll change timing to
chain attacks too).If the gauge is full, the sword can get stuck in enemies
and the girl will be completely open for attacks. You have to keep your blood
gauge at a low level at all times, below halfway full is good.
For the second type, the girls have 5 bullets and use one at every press of
the Character Specific Attack. Once you've used up all your bullets, you
can't do any more Character Specific Attack and if you do anyway, the girl
will look at her arm and see that it's empty. It's a short animation, but
you'll be open if you aren't careful.
I)B)b) Cool Combo
Using Cool Combos is the most efficient way to play, so you'll want to master
it and, unfortunately, as it's TOO good, you'll be only doing these. So
you'll pass on using kicks or custom combos. Even though the game let's you
chain almost everything into everything, the power gain of using Cool Combos
decreases the incentive of playing creatively.
So what are Cool Combos? They are Sword only combos that you get when your
timing is well controlled. So it's Slash -> Slash -> Slash etc.. until the
end. If you get a white flash on screen on an attack, then you hit at the
good timing and your Cool Combo is starting. Once you lost the timing (say,
at the 4th hit), you can give it up as you won't be able to restart a Cool
Combo in the same chain, even if you time the other hits properly. Likewise
if you fail to get the timing for the second hit, you won't get a flash ever.
Just restart from Slash 1. You can do Cool Combo in the air.
Cool Combo Starters
You'll never have a white flash of a Cool Combo on the first hit of course
as the flash indicates that you cancelled the previous hit with the good
timing. There's no previous hit for a starter :)
The classic way to start a Cool Combo is to press Slash.
For some characters, like Riho, Makoto, Kiku and Hana, you can start a Cool
Combo with their Character Specific Attack.
You can also start a Cool Combo with a High-Time canceled into a roll. If you
do, it'll replace the first slash of the Cool Combo.
You can start a Cool Combo with a Shotgun shot cancelled into a roll with
Reiko, if you do, your first hit will flash! It won't be replaced as if you
started with a cancelled High-Time.
You can cancel a Right/Left Character Specific Attack into a front roll with
Eva to start a Cool Combo.
Cool Combo Follow-Up
After a starter, you have to press Slash at the good time to continue your
chain until you get to the Cool Combo Finisher. To train for that, you can go
in Practice mode. Every attack has its properties displayed on screen.
The Red part : the part where you can't cancel the move
The Yellow part : the time during which the attack effectively hits
The Deep Blue part : the part where you can cancel the attack into something
else, like a roll or the next slash.
The Light Blue part : the frame window for Cool Combo
The Grey Part : the frame window for the Accelerating Rave Combo
The Purple Part is Aya/Saki specific, it's the frame window for the Heart
Grabbing move.
So for your Cool Combo, you have to practice so that you press the button for
the next hit when the cursor is on the Light Blue part of the current Slash.
Note that you can insert a roll or a SSC/SR (after predefined hits) into a
Cool Combo without losing the Coolness. For instance, Saki can do a SSC after
the second, fourth and seventh hits of her Cool Combo. Eva can do it after
each of the three first hits of her combo. As mentioned in the Controls
section, if you do a SSC in the middle of a Cool Combo and press immediately
Square for the following Slash, you'll remove almost no blood from your
sword, so it's useless to do it. You have to wait a split second before
inputting the next slash. In any case, it's not very efficient.
If you insert a Kick in your Cool Combo, you'll lose the Coolness. You can
still continue your combo of course but no more flashes.
Inserting a roll into a Cool Combo could be a good idea. However, the timing
is sometimes really tough. So it's not really practical. An example of good
use for this is with Kiku/Hana, after your third Slash, if you used bullets
and that your next zombie is a little off your range, you can forward roll
and do the Cool Combo Finisher, now at the good range.
Also, for Kiku/Hana, you can SR after the second slash which is very nice as
you can do the following : Slash -> Bullet -> Bullet -> Slash -> SR ->
(anything) As you notice, the short combo, uses 2 bullets but with the SR at
the end, you're still at full capacity. Hence, this combo didn't use any
bullet :)
A nice property of Cool Combo hits is that they hit harder than their
standard counterpart and that you can counter/interrupt enemies attacks with
a Cool Combo move. For instance if a huge zombie is charging at you while you
do a Cool Combo, after one or two "Flash" hits, his attack will be
interrupted and you'll be safe. It also work on bosses but they can eat more
flashes before being interrupted so it's a little bit trickier and riskier.
Cool Combo Finisher
When you reach the end of your Cool Combo (provided your character is at
maximum combination level) you'll reach the Cool Combo Finisher. This move
is extremely awesome as the fighter is completely invincible during the whole
animation so you can go through any attack launched at you by enemies or
bosses. For most characters it also has a huge area of effect and great
power.
So the real purpose of Cool Combo (except that each hit hits harder) is to
reach this move.
Sometimes, it's better to reach the Cool Combo Finisher sooner so characters
having customizable Cool Combos can have an advantage over Aya/Saki who have
a long way to go before getting there.
As you can see Cool Combo have tremendous advantages over other moves.
You have to master this to go deep in Survival Mode.
==================
I)B)c) Accelerating Rave
Yeah, this is a made up name. Well, this feature is funny to do but overall
not very useful. You have to start it after the second or third hit of your
standard chain (check Practice mode again). Then you have to input following
hits with proper timing and an accelerated rhythm (hence the name). If you
reach the last hit or miss the timing mid combo, you'll get the Accelerating
Rave finisher, which is often a standard move with more knockdown property.
This combo is interesting to use when you have plenty of zombies in front of
you. As you'll be very slow while doing it, it's not recommended to use it
if you have crows, cops, spiders or puppies around/behind you.
It also has less interruption properties than the Cool Combo and does less
damage so... you'll draw your conclusions about this :)
==================
I)B)d) Berserk Mode (BM)
Here again, two fighters groups. Those who can BM (Aya, Saki, Riho, Makoto,
Eva) and those who can't (Reiko, Kiku, Hana).
When you fight zombies, you get covered with blood, you can see the amount of
blood with the gauge which is the girl's portrait next to her life bar. When
it's full you enter BM. It's worthy to note that if your combo rating is
High, entering BM will cause a huge explosion. The explosion's radius and
power is proportional to the combo rating. If you are in a Sensual or Violent
rating, it can even clean a room.
When in BM, you move faster, hit harder but the hits you receive hurt you
twice more and you gradually lose life. However, you can heal with red orbs
and Mud Zombies hearts from the inventory. Those two items also raise your BM
gauge when you're not in BM. A little bit for orbs and between a third and
half of your gauge for hearts.
BM is excellent to clean rooms fast but it's also very risky to use in deeper
levels of Survival Mode because of how weak the girl becomes. Bosses can kill
you in 2 or 3 hits. Spiders and cops can also annihilate your progression
easily. On the other hand, hoping to go deep with no BM character is a tough
challenge as enemies and bosses are getting really really resistant in lap 4.
To conclude this part, to go deep in Survival Mode you'll absolutely need to
master Cool Combos and manage well your BM gauge.
======================================
II) Characters
OCB2 allow you to pick between several girls who have quite different
gameplay types. If you can get through Story Mode quite easily with any
girl couple, in Survival Mode you want to put your personal preferences aside
and go for efficiency. For instance, I pretty much don't like Reiko, but I
can't ignore her usefulness. We'll cover character comparison later. Here,
I'll present the girls and there specific properties.
II) A) Aya
The emblem of the OCB series is a good overall character but is also the most
classical character gameplay-wise.
Her Character Specific Attack is throwing knives. You can throw two in rapid
succession, before throwing another one.
She can use two kicks in a row, the second one will be a mini launcher. Note
that you can insert how many slashes as you want between the two kicks.
Her High-Time is extendable.
Nothing much to say about her Accelerating Rave, it's not one of the easiest
to pull out.
Her Cool Combo is great. The 2nd, 4th, 7th and 9th hit are SSC cancelable.
She can enter BM of course.
She has an additional attack : Heart Grabbing. This is instant kill on
enemies but the most interesting part is to perform this on Mud Zombies. If
you do, you'll kill them of course but also get their heart. You can then use
it from the item menu to either increase your BM gauge or heal you if you
already are in BM mode. Great asset.
To do this, you must enter Forward + Slash after the 3rd, 6th or 9th hit
of the standard slash combo.
==================
II) B) Saki
Aya's sister, a.k.a : Grappling-Loli looks like a sadist sometimes, always
yelling and doing over-the-top grabs. My favorite character by far.
Her Character Specific Attack is a run... that you can cancel into a grab
when you are close to an enemy. Press Circle once to run, then when close
press a direction + Circle to perform the desired grab.
Note that you can only do the Back + Circle grab if you have combination
stat maxed out.
If you approach an enemy from the back, it'll automatically turn around when
grabbed...
Here are the follow ups :
-> Up + Circle : decapitates the zombie with a kick
-> Left/Right + Circle : rips off the zombie's Right/Left arm (good to remove
guns from cops)
-> Back + Circle : Suplex + Torso rip-off, this is instant kill...
You can chain them together in not particular order, except that you can't do
anything after the suplex one.
Every direction will do the same thing on Puppies (stab), and Spiders and
Bosses (downward slash)
Also, you are invincible when you are doing the grabs!!
If you jump up toward a zombie and do the Character Specific Attack near
their head, she'll grab it and throw the zombie. (Doesn't work on Mud
Zombies)
She can use two kicks in a row, the second one will be a mini launcher. Note
that you can insert how many slashes as you want between the two kicks.
Her Forward + Slash attack is not the standard thrusting move but a
shockwave. It has a good range but is pretty weak. Nice to hit a zombie
group.
Her Accelerating Rave is OK, a little bit easier to do than Aya's. It starts
after the 3rd or 6th hit of her standard chain. At these spots you can also
do the Heart Ripping move.
Great Cool Combo with a nice finisher. Her Cool Combo is a little bit more
dangerous to use than Aya's as her 4th hit is really slow to come out and has
almost no range. Still an overall good Cool Combo.
The 2nd, 4th, 7th hits are SSC cancelable.
As her sister she can enter BM.
==================
II)C) Reiko
The Shotgun Wielding Biker is a good hybrid.
Like Aya, her Character Specific Attack is long range shooting. But she can
direct her shots by adding a direction. So she can slash in front of her,
cancel into a shotgun shot behind her or to her sides. She can only kill Mud
Zombies with her shotgun, but in deeper levels it takes A LOT of shots to
kill them.
She has the advantages of a pretty nice Aya-like Cool Combo albeit shorter
but it hits fast and also to the sides, the finisher is OK. Her 2nd and 6th
hit are SSC cancelable.
Her Accelerating Rave is the hardest to perform as the rhythm changes every
two hits. There's no use wasting time to master hers.
Her High-Time can be extended.
Her Suicide Attack is a dashing move, like her Cool Combo Finisher BUT it
still hits behind...
She can't enter BM so it's a good thing for Wings management, not such a good
thing for healing but she's also protected from double damages which will
destroy BM girls in laps 3 and 4.
However, I have no idea why the player controlled Reiko can't BM when the
CPU can in stage 6.
Also, strangely enough, CPU non-BM Reiko and player controlled Reiko don't
have the same animation for the back roll (not that it matters).
==================
II)D) Eva
The big girl is the definition of crowd control. She has the longest range
and can hit enemies almost from the opposite side of the room.
Like Saki she can do different Character Specific Attacks if you add a
direction :
-> nothing or Forward + Circle = a long ranged piercing move
-> Back + Circle = A High-Time looking attack but it also launches a
shockwave. A vertical one, so it's less interesting than Saki's shockwave.
-> Left/Right + Circle is where Eva shines, it's a better version of her
Left/Right + Slash move, it hits something like 350° around her and you can
easily cancel those into a roll, into a Cool Combo. The Cool Combo will start
at hit 1 already flashed.
Even if Eva uses her sword for her Character Specific Attacks, using those
won't raise the sword's blood meter. The BM gauge will raise normally.
Her Cool Combo is short, can be SSC canceled during the first three hits, 4th
and 5th have nice areas of effect. The finisher is not that great though.
If I don't need the invincible frames, I rather use something else like her
Character Specific Attacks.
Her Accelerated Rave is the same as Reiko's so, hard to do.
Her High-Time can be extended.
Her Suicide attack is not a wide area attack like for other characters. Her
sword goes into the ground and makes a shield around her. Enemies have
to be very close to be hit by that.
She can enter BM, and for her, it's the only way to kill Mud Zombies.
==================
II)E) Riho
The first of the second sisters couple. Fighting in a bikini or maid outfit
goes well with her Character Specific Attacks where she takes (sexy)
poses dealing damages to enemies around her via nosebleed I suppose.
Her Character Specific Attacks have area of effects so it's really useful to
make yourself a path through a mob of zombies. She can chain poses up
to 4 times.
She also have a 4 hits Sword combo. You can freely alternate swords and
poses to make her Cool Combo, beware not to reach the 4th hit of Sword or
Pose too early so that you can extend your combo to the maximum of 7 hits.
I usually use : Slash -> Slash -> Pose -> Pose -> Slash -> Pose -> Finisher
With a preference for the Pose Finisher that has a greater area of effect.
I do this in this order as after the second Pose the direct area around Riho
is cleared so I use the 3rd Slash which is a hoping forward Slash to get
near the next enemy.
You can use a Pose to start Cool Combos but as a Flashed attack has better
properties, I prefer not to waste a flash on an area attack.
Poses are her preferred way to kill Mud Zombies.
She has her own animations for Kick and Forward + Kick Attacks, not that it
matters...
A funny Accelerating Rave starting after her second sword hit. Well, her
attacks are all funny anyway.
Her High-Time can't be extended.
As seen above, her Cool Combo is nice for area cleaning and its length is
customizable so it's really versatile. Great asset here.
She can enter BM but you have to decrease the TV's Volume as she moans all
the time while BM'd :3
==================
II)F) Makoto
Riho's younger Sister. Wielding the graphically longest katana in the game.
Eva cheats so it doesn't count.
Her attacks are really slow and hit small areas. Her standard Sword combo
has 4 hits.
Her Character Specific Attacks are a series of up to 5 powerful punches that
can kill Mud Zombies. As her sister, she can alternate Slashes and Punches
for her length customizable Cool Combo.
Her Cool Combo is very straight forward, with hits that almost only hit
forward. The Slash Cool Combo finisher is of course invincible but doesn't
hit anywhere but forward. It brings shame to Cool Combo Finishers. Her Punch
Combo Finisher is a little bit better but also harder to get.
No area of effect so it's very tough to clean areas with Makoto.
To do so you pretty much have to rely on her Accelerating Rave that can be
started at the second hit of her standard Slash combo. It has a great range
and is somewhat in the easy-side of the cast to do. Then again, it still has
the drawbacks of Accelerating Raves : a lack of mobility.
Her High-Time can't be extended.
She also can enter BM.
==================
II)G) Kiku/Hana
Kiku is Hana's older sister and both come from another game, The Senko
(Dragon Sisters). As seen earlier, their gameplay is quite different as they
use bullets as Character Specific Attacks and aren't bothered by blood.
Kiku and Hana play exactly the same. The only difference between the two is
the animation for their first two bullet attacks (Punches for Kiku and Kicks
for Hana). There's also a difference in their cup size, where Hana completely
defeats her sister.
The first two Bullet Attacks are close ranged (shorter range than Sword
Attacks), the the 3rd and 4th have slightly improved range, the finisher is
a wide range attack. Bullet Attacks can kill Mud Zombies.
All that make them really close ranged fighters.
As for Riho and Makoto, Kiku and Hana can insert Character Specific Attacks
into their standard Slash combo to extend their Cool Combo.
Playing them will force you to manage your ammo as without their bullets,
they are pretty weak.
As mentioned earlier, if you know what can be canceled into SRs you won't
run out of ammo.
The 3rd hit of their slash combo is SR cancelable. Their rolls are SR
cancelable. You can cancel a Slash and a Bullet into a roll. SRs can be
canceled into a Slash immediately without losing the reload.
Having this in mind you can do :
Slash>Bullet>Bullet>Slash->SR>Roll>Slash>Bullet>Bullet>Roll>SR>Slash Finisher
At the end of this combo, your ammo will be at the same level as it was
before you started it.
Their Accelerating Rave is relatively easy to do and starts after the 2nd
slash.
Their Hight-Time is not extendable.
Kiku and Hana can't enter BM mode
As you can see the character cast is vast and the girls don't really play the
same. There's a lot to do before mastering all characters.
======================================
III) Items
In order to do well in Survival Mode, you'll have to optimize your Item
Management. It's really important as an good or bad item drop can totally
change the flow of a Survival game. Don't use an important item expecting to
get another one soon except if you feel lucky of course :)
Here are the items' description :
- Green Crystal : It resplendishes a large amount of life. However, even
using 3 wouldn't refill a maxed out life bar. Not by much though. It's an
invaluable item for Survival Mode.
- Red Crystal : It momentarily increases the power of your attacks. Very good
to use on a tough boss if you're in a bad shape and want to shorten the
fight.
- Blue Crystal : It momentarily increases your running speed. It a pretty
much useless item.
- Invincible : This ultra rare item makes the girl invincible for a short
period of time. Best used in combination with a Red Crystal. Use it wisely as
you have 99,9% chance of not getting another one in the run.
- Wings : This item is the one you'll see the most. Used to remove half of a
BM gauge, it's important to manage your BM character(s). You'll be hoping for
these all the time if you picked two BM-enabled characters.
- Hearts : This item has two uses, it can raise your BM gauge and if the
gauge is already full, your character is BM, so instead it will heal her. Its
Healing factor is well below a Green Crystal's but it's really abundant as
you can get one from every single Mud Zombie... If you picked Aya or Saki.
You can heal them easily in a Mud Zombie filled room.
Here's an example of situation :
Saki has low life, 2 hearts in the inventory and a halfway+ filled BM gauge.
She can either hit the Mud Zombies until she BM's (being careful not to have
a high stylish rank so that you don't accidentally kill all the Mud Zombies
by entering BM) or use a heart to fill the Gauge. Now she can heal.
Here is the tricky part, if you are too close to them, the first three
slashes that are necessary to use the Heart Grabbing move can kill the Mud
Zombies. So you have to be far enough not to kill them with your first 3 hits
but close enough so that the Heart Grabbing move can connect. The Heart
Grabbing move can hit numerous enemies at the same time, so you can get 3
Hearts with one go. Also, note that the Heart will go into your inventory 1
second after the move hits.
I personally use Hearts if I'm 100% sure that I'll get new ones. So, I do
the Heart Grabbing move, and if it connects, I immediately open the inventory
before the hearts get in, use as many hearts as the number of Mud Zombies
I just hit and close the inventory, then the hearts from the move enter my
Inventory and I'm back to full 3 hearts.
After that you can use a wing to get out of BM if needed.
If your Heart Grabbing failed and you got the shockwave, killing the Mud
Zombies, you can get out of BM or try on another group.
- Revive : This rare item allow a dead character to come back to full life.
However, you can still use Item Management on this one.
The thing is to check which one should die if two characters are in critical
condition. If you have a BM girl and a non-BM one, you should let the non-BM
one die as it's way harder to get green healing crystals than hearts to heal.
If you have two BMs or two non-BMs, let die the one you're most comfortable
with, so that you'll get a fresh one to play with.
Of course sometimes, you don't have the luxury to insure who'll die first.
Then it's your call between letting the run go or using the revive.
About item drops, I didn't find any special pattern except that if you are
full in crystals, you don't tend to get many more. However, even if you are
low on green crystals, don't expect to get one right away. There'll be a
slightly higher chance to get one but you still have to wait.
So far, I've never encountered an "invincible" item drop in Survival, if I
used one, after the run, I go play Stage 5 to get another one as there's an
mandatory one there. I did get "revive" items though.
In terms of rarity it goes like this from Usual to Rare :
Wings -> Green Crystals -> Red and Blue Crystals -> Revive -> Invincible
Note that Mud Zombies start appearing at room 9 So if you have a BM
girl in bad shape and no heart, you'll have to keep her out, and come into
the ring only to grab red orbs, then tag out immediately.
======================================
IV) Survival Mode Presentation
IV)a) Concept
The concept of the Survival mode is to clean rooms one after the other until
you die or get to the end. So far, I've never finished it so I don't know if
it even ends.
When you killed the last monster in a room, you'll have 3 or 4 seconds to
grab orbs and items. After that, you'll automatically leave the room. Be
careful not to leave an item behind. If possible, always keep the last zombie
alive, do your shopping then kill the last zombie.
The survival mode is the best mode to level your characters up. Pick Aya or
Saki and the girl you want to level up. With Aya/Saki, do the full Cool
Combo. It'll rapidly reach Violent combo rating. As you know, killing enemies
while the combo rating is high will grant you bigger yellow orbs. Just loop
Cool Combos, then tag in the girl that needs level up and grab all the big
orbs, the back to Aya/Saki etc...
The structure of the Survival mode is based on laps.
A lap contains 24 rooms with bosses every 4 rooms. When you reach room 24,
you get back to room 1 but with an increased difficulty setting.
I did some tests comparing the damages dealt on enemies in lap 1 and in story
mode and reached the following conclusion :
1-1 -> 1-24 : Normal
2-1 -> 2-24 : Hard
3-1 -> 3-24 : Violent
4-1 -> 4-24 : Berserk
So I have a good hope that lap 4 is the last one. Now will there be a room
4-25 with BM Reiko??? I hope not >_<
IV)b) Getting Ready
OK, first you have to pick a couple of girls. To do so you have to evaluate
them.
There are 3 groups of girls :
- Group 1 : Aya & Saki who can BM and grab hearts from Mud Zombies
- Group 2 : Riho, Makoto & Eva who can BM but can't grab hearts
- Group 3 : Reiko, Kiku & Hana who can't BM nor grab hearts
Of course one of the characters should be someone from Group 1, the
problem lies in the best choice for the second slot. Having a second girl who
can BM can be very useful but also very dangerous. As a reminder, when
your character is in BM she takes double damage.
In the first laps of survival, it's still OK but in lap 3&4 it becomes really
risky. Also, if you have to manage entering and exiting BM, you'll have to
heavily rely on random item drops for wings. In exchange, you'll less rely on
Green Crystals item drops as both characters can heal with hearts.
There's no definite best choice for slot 2 as either someone like Eva or
someone like Reiko can effectively take the second slot.
Here's a short review of the characters that I'll try to sort by
effectiveness (which is unfortunately not always my preference). Ranks 3, 4
& 5 were really hard to define.
1) Aya : Full combo composed of fast slashes, ranged attacks, Heart grabbing
enabled, Aya doesn't really have any weakness
2) Saki : Her full combo is a great room cleaner but is also a little bit
more dangerous than Aya's as her 4th slash is really slow. No ranged attacks
but her run can provide her some nice invincible frames.
3) Eva : She has awesome crowd control abilities so it really helps a lot in
a room filled with dangers like cops or puppies. Unfortunately she lacks a
good invincible combo finisher as it only hits forward.
4) Reiko : She has most of Aya's advantages : good fast standard combo and
range attack. She can't grab hearts but can't go BM anyway so it's fair. She
needs an area attack though... other than her suicide one.
5) Riho : This one has a great advantage in area attacks with all her poses.
The problem is that they are quite slow. Her ability to dig herself a tunnel
in enemy groups is good. She suffers from Group 2's disease though.
6) Kiku&Hana : Very short combo, so you can reach the invincible last slash
quite fast. They are a bit short in area attacks as the first one available
is on the 3rd bullet. A little bit lacking in the damage output area.
8) Makoto : She's severely lacking in the crowd control department, not much
attacks with area of effect except the Accelerating Rave kick combo which
doesn't do much damage and is not really safe. She also has really slow
attacks with the sword and short ranged ones with the punches. AND you
have to manage her BM gauge...
======================================
IV) Basic Enemies
An interesting note that applies to both enemies and bosses is that when you
hit them they'll always be pushed back toward their back. So if you attack
them from behind, they'll be pushed back toward you. This way, they won't
be pushed back out of your range.
It's important to set priorities to enemies. Here again, several groups
Group 1 : Cops, Crows
Group 2 : Puppies, Spiders
Group 3 : Mud Zombies, standard zombies, huge zombies
To dispatch cops, the best strategy is to turn clockwise (or counter-
clockwise, your preference). Don't hit a group of cops more than 6 times
(unless you reach an invincible hit) or remain in the same area for too long.
If you do that, all the other cops from the area will lock you and shoot you.
The thing is to do 5 hits, and do a quarter circle clockwise, 5 hits, QC...
so that the cops lock and shoot at your previous location. It's a bad idea to
get in the middle as you don't know where the cops will lock when you get
out. It's ok to do that if you kill them all with an area attack (other than
the suicide attack which is... suicide in survival mode).
Crows are dangerous as they can hit you while you clean up which can
lead you to get hit by other enemies around you that you were supposed to
incapacitate. For most people, Forward + Kick is a good weapon against them.
They do make a noise before attacking so you can roll away shortly after
hearing the sound but you don't know where they're coming from so it can
become tricky.
Puppies are especially dangerous in packs as they can gang up on you to
give you a nice 4 hit combo for half of your life bar. Don't underestimate
them. They also scream before attacking but they have homing attack, so
running won't do much. Either roll or use your fastest attack to counter
them. If I see them I'd counter, if they're off screen, I'd roll.
Spiders are tricky. First of all, they most of the time do 2 attacks in a
row. If you get hit by the first time, rolling is the best choice to evade
the second one. Double jumping it is risky. As you are in hit stun, hitting
to interrupt the second one can be tough too. Be careful with spiders as they
deal a lot of damage.
For the rest no strategy as they are easy enough. Keep in mind that if you
are hit by an enemy that is set on fire, you'll be set on fire and will
take additional damage. You may want to immediately tag out. (If you don't
keep the other girl out for a specific reason).
Mud zombies can be killed by :
- Aya : Heart ripping
- Saki : Heart ripping or grappling moves
- Eva : She can't kill them
- Reiko : Shotgun
- Riho : Poses
- Kiku/Hana : Bullets
- Makoto : Punches
Of course, BM'd attacks kills them too.
Them being non-BM slash resistant can be a blessing (coupled with the fact
that they seem to cover you with more blood than other enemies). If you need
to restore your life when playing with a BM-enabled character, just slash
them until you BM, heal with heart, use wings. Be careful not to kill them
with the initial BM burst which area of effect and power depends on the cool
rating. (no rating -> little burst, Violence -> room-sized burst)
======================================
V) Bosses
As with other enemies be sure to use cool combos are the Flash-attacks
from Cool Combos can interrupt attacks. Something like 2 or 3 flashes in a
row -> staggers the enemy. Except for Evil Baloo (and sometimes Eva), If you
hit a boss with a Cool Combo in their back, they can't' interrupt you.
Here the "x" refers to the lap number.
x-4 Saki
Saki is not a threat at all. Run up to her, jump over her, you'll be in her
back. Give her a full combo. Try to start a combo a little bit before she
reaches mid-life so that it finishes when she has less than a quarter.
As she'll be in neutral status after your combo and be below mid-life, she'll
transform and hence will be extremely vulnerable during the transformation
-> new combo -> the end.
A BM Aya can kill even a 4-3 Saki in one full Cool Combo.
Against Saki the longer the combo the better, so you have to lengthen
Riho's, Makoto's, Kiku's and Hana's by interlacing Circle attacks with Square
attacks.
==================
x-8 Reiko
She's a little bit shotgun friendly, so you'll have to roll during the whole
fight to move. Try to be on her sides at all times and roll toward her back.
Wait for her to start a combo (which she'll whiff) and do yours on her back.
Then roll again... For Reiko, it's also : long combo -> nice.
When you put too much pressure on her, she'll flip away and shotgun spam.
Be careful of her feints. Sometimes she'll do a couple of hits so, you'll
believe you can hit her in her back, but she'll roll and High-Time -> shoot
you. Tricky.
==================
x-12 Laurel & Hardy
Here you have two enemies, with one, the little one who likes to go off
screen and then rush you from there. When she rolls toward you, don't
underestimate her speed or overestimate your jump. You have to double jump
really early so that she misses you.
She also has a 2 hits attack (she screams to announce it). If you take the
first one, you can't roll out of the second one so be careful. Luckily she
has less vitality than her big partner. A good strategy is to take out the
little one first, ignoring the big one as the little one tend to behave like
birds : interrupting you when it's not the best time. Except she hits hard...
The big one has two behaviors regarding your distance to her. If you're far,
she'll launch her weapon all across the room. This attack as some homing
abilities so rolling is the key. Luckily this attack doesn't hurt much.
She'll also do the wave attack which is quite fast (Makoto can't outrun it,
she has to roll). Usually after a wave she does the same thing (attack coming
out of the ground) but only around her at mid distance. Either stay far and
snipe her or go up and close and slash her while the spike comes out around
you.
She also have a 2 hits combo with her ball that you can't really anticipate,
and a "barrier" attack when she swirls her ball around her. You'll see a wind
effect around her. Don't touch her as you'll be repelled.
As we saw, killing the short one first is best (she has low vitality so it's
fast), especially if you're far from the big one. This way she'll do the
homing ball which won't hurt you as much as other attacks. If she does the
wave, you'll hear it coming so you can roll multiple times to be safe. Once
the small one is dead, go to the big one, get on her back and cool combo her
away.
As other enemies, when you hit her, she'll be pushed backwards, so if you
are behind her, she'll be pushed towards you (nice physics here :p) hence,
you can land a full combo. If you are in front of her, she'll be pushed out
of your range and you'll have to do another approach.
==================
x-16 Evil-Baloo
This one is frustrating as he seems easy but his attacks are way too fast and
unpredictable hence you get hit without seeing anything coming... To fight
him in 1st and 2nd laps, Reiko is awesome as she can snipe him to death
easily, later you can also do it but the shotgun's damage input would make
the fight last more than 30 minutes... Combined with faster and heavier
sneaky attacks, you probably won't survive this long.
He also has several attacks :
- claw swipes that have a long range, little start-up and a large area of
attack. Be careful, if you are behind him, he'll do a 360° claw swipe for
sure.
- Dash : he'll do a short dash/headbutt. Almost no startup so being in front
of him at short range is a big no-no. It also hits the front/side. You have
to be on his side but behind his front legs to be safe from the dash.
- Run : he chases you, if he reaches you -> headbutt. You can only flee. Be
careful with slow characters.
- Ground stomp : he slams the ground after having howled (after the howl,
he'll either do ground stomp or claw swipe). You can see this coming and
roll through it but you have to REALLY anticipate a double jump to jump
over it.
As with the little boss and her roll, you are vulnerable to ground attacks at
the beginning of your jump, so you have to take some height fast (-> early
double jump)
- Super Ground stomp : he'll do this after he reaches mid-life. He'll jump in
the air and when he lands, the whole area will be affected, so you have to
either roll or double jump over it. He doesn't have to howl before doing it
so try to always have him in sight (he can do Run -> SGS or Howl -> GS-> SGS)
Needless to say that this attack hurts.
The strategy is to always be at his side. Not to close so that you don't eat
his claw swipes but not to far, because... you know, you have to hit him
eventually. Try to be at your sword's max range. Do 2 or 3 cool attacks MAX
then side roll.
You can do more than 3 cool attacks if you want as, most likely, the 4th or
the 5th will either be a stun hit or be an invincible hit but you have to be
extra careful because if he doesn't get stunned or attack you right out of
the invincible frames -> ouch.
In theory, this boss is easy as it's 3 Slashes -> side roll -> repeat, but
something goes wrong every time :'(
==================
x-20 L&H's return with crows
This one is a tough one, as usual, kill the little one first to focus on the
big one afterwards.
Don't even think of killing crows first as there are really too many that
respawns anyway. However they respawn when you step in the center of the
room, so if you keep the fight in the same area of the room it could be
crow-less. Still, a risky strategy as you'll get hit by the bosses when you
attack the crows...
So, you pretty much have to ignore the crows and hope they won't hit you. If
you hear them launching an attack, you can blindly roll though. Another bad
thing is that they'll mess up your auto aim.
Sometimes I think of using a Suicide Attack to kill all the crows. I've seen
fights where it could have helped.
The best thing to do is to use area attacks once in a while. If it's a Cool
Combo finisher as Aya's or Saki's it's even better. Cool combo with poses in
it with Riho could also be a great asset. Makoto would have to rely on kicks
combo if she wants to clean up.
==================
x-24 Eva
This is a hard version of Saki's fight, she has a lot more vitality than Saki
and can summon enemies (not that they are a bother...). Here again, after
hitting mid-life, she'll transform.
Be extra careful of her wide horizontal slashes as they can hit you even if
you are behind her (remember that it's her best point when you play her...).
She'll always do two horizontal things, and afterwards, you're free to combo
her back. Side-roll through the first one to get behind her, front-roll
through the second one to get close then start your combo.
When BM'd she has some kind of barrier attack like "Hardy", she'll use it as
a counter if you're too close, so don't stay close too long.
Also, be careful of her attack when she plants her sword in the ground and it
gets out around her, this deals a lot of damage. (When the CPU uses it it's
not a Suicide Attack anymore of course -_-). It has quite a long start-up so
you can see it coming and roll back, but she often use it unexpectedly. After
this attack you can combo her, so, if you read it, it's a bliss.
I usually use power up (Red Crystals) on the x-12, x-20 or x-24 bosses as
killing the short one fast is the key. Also, when Eva (boss) is BM, it's best
to finish her quickly. Be wise with your "invincible" usage as you most
likely won't get another one in your run.
======================================
VI) Records
Now onto the records. I've played several Survival games but started to keep
track of records only very recently. I play either coop or single.
Here are our/my results :
Saki/Eva [coop] -> 4-12. It went pretty well overall, we didn't use the
revive nor much power ups. We were surprised-kill by a wave so we didn't have
time to heal. Not sure we could have beat the bosses anyway, but the fight
went short.
Aya/Makoto [coop] ->3-16. We had a very poor item drop patterns, very very
few wings so we were almost always BM for one and on the verge of BMing
for the other. Needless to say that boss hits, spiders and cops were awful
enemies. We used a revive... on 2-16 or 2-20. It was really a bad run
overall.
Aya/Reiko [solo] -> 4-20. I Had to use a revive (that I got from this very
run) on 4-12 and invincible on 4-16. Reiko suffered heavy damage against cops
in 4-x so I was out of green crystals and had to revive her. Then BM Aya ate
a wave from Hardy -> Game Over Yeah...... Then again even if I did beat 4-20,
taking on 4-24 without invincible, only one power up and one character would
be mostly a lost cause.
======================================
Conclusion
Well not much to say here except that I really enjoyed writing this and I
still love playing this game after this long. Must be the game with the best
Hour/Price ratio (outside of fighting games).
You can contact me about the game at
[email protected].
If you want to share strategies or records, feel free to provide them and
I'll update this FAQ with proper credits of course.
Quick anecdote on this game. I bought the first OCB and this one at the same
time. I played the first one and was hugely disappointed. So I didn't even
try OCB2. Almost 6 months later, I finally tried it. I'm still hating myself
to have lost 6 months on this game ahahah.
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