Totally stuck *spoilers abound*

[MindfulOcean]

I'm currently gathering helpers for what I believe will be my last trip to the alternate world. And I absolutely suck at playing this game. I'm good at Metroid, Castlevania, and bullet-hell games, but the weird combination of platforming and projectile dodging has become too hard for me to handle. I had to accept help when the game offered it and eat through two doughnut items to beat the last Erina clone boss, and it was that way with the two bosses before her too.

Something about Rabi-Ribi's combat isn't clicking. With the Erina clone, I had trouble judging when to move in for melee attacks, but in general the problem with bosses is that they literally fill the screen with projectiles that are either hard or impossible (I might have fought one too early) to dodge. Unless you spam the green magic, it's hard to chip away at their health while dodging projectiles. And then some of them will fire beams through themselves making it difficult to land any hits! I had to use all four healing items to fight the blue dancer girl near the grave yard.

What's going on? How is combat in Rabi-Ribi supposed to work? For me, the controls are a little iffy. I'm using a wired 360 controller and it really feels like the wall jump only works when it feels like it.

Also, I don't think I quite get the proper use of the magic. Here is my take so far:

Blue: Standard magic, not good for much.
Green: Homing attack is very useful, and the special restores health which is great.
Yellow: No idea when you'd use this. It does little to no damage and the charged shot is just OK. The special attack sucks.
Purple: Heard about this but don't have it yet.
Red: Shoots both ways and the charge shot is great when bosses stay put. I destroyed the two cat sisters with this one.

Is yellow magic even good for anything? When people say not to use green because of the low health recovery, are they trying to say you should just use red?

[Kona❤Kona]

Erina's hitbox is a small circle on her chest. That is the only place you will take damage.

The Alius fights are pretty difficult since she basically does whatever she wants, can break out of combos, and can kill you very quickly.

As for magic, blue actually does the most upfront damage and will keep bosses in hitstun for a moment so you can rush in and hammer them. Red does comparable damage, won't stun bosses, and has a more useful Boost. Yellow pierces, but that is not very useful in boss fights. Green does low, consistent damage. The healing on it gets increasingly less useful the more health you have.

Note that each magic gives a buff if you stand near ribbon while it is active.

[chaoticenigma]

Green is pretty bad. It doesn't build combo well, it barely heals. The only way to get worthwhile damage with it is to use its secret tech where you pointblank the enemy with Ribbon so that all the shots hit instantly. The boost is great for healing though, but it works better at lower health. The homing does occasinally help to maintain combo on some attacks where the enemy goes into the air but the combo timer doesn't stop.


Purple is also horrible. The charge shot on it has a bit of a slowing effect when it hits. It also slows you down when you go to combo after using the charged shot, so you can't use it to get more damage in with the hammer. Not sure if the boost is good.

Blue is your highest damage magic until later. You can also press up to shoot it diagonally with the normal shot. The charge is good and is one of the ones you'll use to build combo until later.

Yellow is more for maintaining combo when the enemy is on the ground but it's too risky to approach. The charge also helps build combo well. You shouldn't spam the same attacks when building combo, so you should alternate between this and blue as well as throw in some hammer attacks.


Red's boost will burn enemies. It's more useful in a speedrun to get some extra DPS in.


You're also missing Rainbow Magic. You get that when you've found 5 Easter Eggs. The normal shot on it is homing. The charge shot uses up all your MP and costs you 2,000 En. Both shots power up based on how many of the Easter Eggs you've found, and with high Easter Egg count and a lot of attack ups, you can get thousands of damage from a charge shot of this. The homing normal shot also helps for maintaining combo when the enemy is in the air. The boost should generally not be used because anything inside it will get the Bunny Lover buff which halves damage if the opponent is a bunny(should be obvious why you don't want that on an enemy), but it can be useful for the few bosses that are bunnies.

There's also Carrot Shooter, but that one is postgame only. It is very good though and does a lot of damage, if your HP is low.

[Slashley]

Originally posted by MindfulOcean:

--
What's going on? -- For me, the controls are a little iffy. I'm using a wired 360 controller and it really feels like the wall jump only works when it feels like it.

Hmm? The controls for walljumping should be tight in Rabi-Ribi. Do you have the Walljump item yet?

If not, then you've been using a Hidden Tech until now. It only lets you walljump into the direction Erina was facing the moment she jumped. Um, think of it as "only lets you walljump from walls which are behind you, counting from the moment you jump"

Originally posted by chaoticenigma:

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You're also missing Rainbow Magic. You get that when you've found 5 Easter Eggs. The normal shot on it is homing. The charge shot uses up all your MP and costs you 2,000 En.

I don't think it costs 2000 EN, I think it costs something like 40 EN per MP used. Or something. I haven't properly tested it, but I don't think it's a solid chunk.

[Groen90]

For the bosses, take it one step at a time: first disregard offense and focus on dodging, learning the attacks, reading patterns, learning how to get through them without getting hit... when you're confident enough you can dodge everything or most of the attacks anyway, only then start thinking about which openings to use to get in melee range and do some serious damage.

[Iris]

------------Magic-------

Blue has the most damage, but its a bit harder to aim. I generally use blue magic when the boss is on the ground, then switch out to yellow when the boss is in the air.

In general, yellow would do the most consistent amount of damage, since its really easy to aim the charged shot. You would want to keep firing your charged shot whenever you cant get a hammer combo down.

Yellow special is actually really good, it boosts your attack when you stand within the yellow arua, and the giant laser beam stuns the boss as well. This can be used as a combo with your hammer. Start the special, do a full hammer combo on the boss, and the laser will come down stunning the bosss. Now you can do another full hammer combo on the boss again.

Green is really bad other than for healing during its special. The damage is much lower than blue or yellow and should only be used if the boss is super high up in the air.

Red is situational as it can restore your stamina bar allowing for longer combos, but blue is generally better dps.

Never use purple. It does nothing useful.

Carrot is an alternative to blue magic. It does more damage the lower health you are, so it will outdps blue when you are at very low health. It also restores stamina when you are under its special.

Rainbow magic is good for burst damage when you know the boss will disappear for a long time. The homing missles can help a lot too.

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Originally posted by MindfulOcean:

but in general the problem with bosses is that they literally fill the screen with projectiles that are either hard or impossible (I might have fought one too early) to dodge. Unless you spam the green magic, it's hard to chip away at their health while dodging projectiles. And then some of them will fire beams through themselves making it difficult to land any hits!

Pretty much all attacks are dodgable, but if you ever feel like you are in trouble you can always use the bunny amulet which allows you become invincible for 1 second as well as stunning the boss (stunning is useful for continuing your hammer combo)

Whenever a boss attack starts, its generally best to back away from the boss and start shooting magic. You can also tell when this is the case when your hammer makes a metallic sound on the boss. This is important, as hammering the boss during this time will slow Erina's animation down, making it harder to cancel your attack and run away from a pattern.

When the attack stops, you can hammer the boss for free. The hammer does more dps than magic so you want hammer whenever a boss pattern finishes.

[deathleth]

Not much to add, most of it was already mentioned.

Aluis herself is a tricky boss because it's the only melee-oriented one in the game, it's dangerous to approach her blindly. Personally, I try to stunlock her with blue magic shoot within hammer range and immediately process with combo, or use air dash. You might want to do most of the fight using magic.

Blue and yellow magic are great for damage and combos, green loses its use quite fast (it hardly has any use as healing item on higher difficulties), and purple is mostly useless. Can't say about red one, never used though it seems it has a good boost attack like others said, need to test myself.

Wall jump without related item is hidden tech and can be tricky. Like the name implies - "Reverse Wall Jump" - you need to face the opposite direction first, then jump from the spot toward the wall behind your back and hit jump again when you touch the wall (hm... not sure if you need or don't need to press direction button while pressing jump after hitting wall). It took me quite a lot of time to realize that facing opposite direction before jump is the main factor for this technique.

[Ninian]

There is one thing to keep in mind about Illusion Alius that might be encouraging -- as hard or frustrating as she can be, that's as hard and frustrating you can be to other bosses in this game. She's almost a tutorial by inference on how to rapidly build up your combo in this game -- I started getting much higher boss ranks by alternating between dodging during enemy's attack phases and then imitating Illusion Alius' aggressiveness between attack phases. To boot, the climbing ranks increases your damage considerably if you can avoid getting damaged in turn!

[39kk9t]

I guess I'll chime in too.

Do you know of Quick Drop? It can be activated while in midair by pressing Down+Jump. It instantly maxes out your fall speed, allowing for a great deal of vertical mobility(something most bosses don't have, even Alius). It's the most useful secret tech all around IMO.

In addition to remembering patterns, try to keep in mind the cues that can help you recognize the pattern before it starts. I'll use Alius III as an example.

• If she does Bunny Whirl in midair with the sound effect, it's a Bunny Whirl and nothing more.
  
• If she does Bunny Whirl in midair without the sound effect, it's going to continue into Hammer Roll.
  
• If she jumps really high, she's going for a Hammer Drill if you're directly below her.
  
• If she jumps low, she's going to use an Air Dash(up to 6 times in a row, depending on health)
  
• If the fairy is charging, she's going to unleash a charged attack soon.

The vast majority of the attacks have telegraphs(either a certain movement the boss makes before the attack, performing the move after a certain attack, being at a certain health level), and they afford you time to react properly if you know them.

There is a guide on secret techs that covers Reverse Wall Jump, but you can also imitate the conventional wall jump(I call it the Forward Wall Jump) like this:

1. Jump towards a wall.
   
2. Once you're close to it, reverse your direction twice. (if you jump to a left wall, that means pressing Right then Left in quick succession)
   
3. Reverse your direction again, then jump.

It's not that useful against bosses, and it can also disable Quick Drop in some cases, but it can be convenient to jump off walls in any direction.

Don't neglect buffs! Try to get Defense Up and Give ATK Down if you're struggling with dodging, they'll really cut down the damage you receive, while Attack Up with make encounters a bit shorter. There's also Arrest, which can give you a short breather as everything the boss does will be slower. Speedy... isn't exactly good, speed boost and all, but can be useful if you need more horizontal mobility. MP Regen can offer you virtually unlimited mana for charged shots, while HP regen can give you up to 400 HP during the boss fight(provided you spend the whole 5 minutes in it).

Items and badges are also pretty important. You should be able to reach pretty much anywhere by now, so go out and explore a bit! There's a lot of stuff that can help you out if you go out of your way.

A bit on how the combo meter works(from my perspective):
The higher your combo count, the slower it decays. It resets if you don't attack too long.
To increase rank, use Hammer Combo I-IV, charged shots, Bunny Strike, Bunny Whirl, Hammer Roll, Slide, basically anything that deals a lot of damage(Rainbow Egg is particularly useful for this). If you continue to use the same move, the amount of combo rank you earn gets lower, so cycle between those when you see you aren't growing.
Rank decreases if you take damage.
"Stop!" nullifies combo rank decay.

This has already been mentioned several times, but I'll just outline magic again. (unfortunately I didn't keep track of what buffs boosts offer except blue)
Blue is the one with the most utility (staggers, knockbacks when charged, is able to angle shots(uncharged) with Up or Down, destroys some projectiles when charged, pretty good damage too). The boost is alright and gives Defense Up for a brief while.
Yellow is pretty good for your combo count and combo rank with its laser and the reach of the charged attack, but has slightly less damage and no additional effects. The boost is just meh.
Red is good for your combo count too if the boss doesn't move much, but has less damage than yellow(I think) and doesn't have much reach. Another pretty good boost here.
Green restores your HP a bit when charged and also slightly recovers MP, as well as is homing and has the ability to knock back(but not stagger), but unless you shoot it point blank, it has the lowest damage out of all magic types. The boost is really more geared towards large amounts of monsters, but isn't all that bad on bosses.
Purple isn't really all that useful, but its boost can be pretty good.
You don't get orange until Chapter 6, but it has the most damage potential if you have 1 HP left, as well as stagger and knockback. The boost, however, isn't that good.
I've already mentioned Rainbow, but it has pretty good damage(especially if you have loads of MP and easter eggs) and is homing. The boost is only useful against like, 4 bosses, though(although Amulet Cut can come in handy)

Oh, and if you decide to use the Survival Badge, keep in mind you can only heal through items and killing mobs once your HP reaches 1.

Guess that's all I have to add. Hope at least some of it proves useful to you!

[RattyRattington]

Never brainlessly go up to bosses and clobber them thinking that's how you win. Every boss has scripted attacks, so they'll do an attack, then either jump or move around for a few seconds, then do another attack and so forth. You should land some hammer combos + charged ribbon shots when they're in-between their next attack. And while they're doing their attack, you should usually keep your distance and use ribbon magic, and only if it is safe to do so maybe land some hammer hits.

The more you play the game, the more you'll remember which boss attacks are which.

and my personal spell priority list is:

Blue: Has the fastest and highest damage output. +Def buff can help you tank hits when amulet is all used up.
Yellow: Good for keeping up the combo or if your target is at a weird angle. The atk buff is decent, but ribbon's special takes long to hit the enemy and they could fly off screen and waste it
Rainbow: If you have all eggs, it's charged shot does alot of damage + minor healing for you, and you can use green magic to charge your mana fast for another rainbow charged shot. Usually only helpful in boss rush. It's non-charged shot can be used to keep the combo from breaking if the boss is in a difficulty position or if you have no time to attack. The special attack and buff isn't that good unless you plan on spamming b. amulet + supper carrot combo
Green: Usually really bad. The damage output is low and the heals are so minor, it's really only good in boss rush.
Carrot Shooter: Definitely worth switching to when you're near death, works good with carrot bomb badge, the special atk and buff isn't anything too special unless you plan on stun locking the boss.
Red: Good for still targets maybe? I really only use it in the entrace to system interior or anyplace that has enemies from 2 sides of me. The special is only good for high DPS.
Purple: Definitely the most useless in the game, the charged shots slow you down for some reason and the non charged shot is only good for hitting bosses out of reach or when looking for secret breakable walls. The special and it's debuff on the enemy isn't very helpful either.