Tips for beating Black Bean on Crazy Mode

A small compilation of tips for beating Black Bean on Crazy.

Introduction

This assumes you've done the legwork necessary to get the Leopard costume. Why? Because you wouldn't even dare to entertain the thought of facing Black Bean on Crazy without this, that's why. This magical garment boasts ridiculous base and elemental damage, 75% damage reduction and doubled crits gained on your crit counter (and for those who haven't memorized the entire game in and out after 5 playthroughs, visible pots and chests on the map too...).

If you can't beat Tokaron (who's ridiculously hard and a true difficulty spike), consider using Popon. You'll have to mash the dodge button in order to make her hop around like a mad monkey on the tiny platform in the first part of the fight, but it's not that hard. Once you get to the second part, you'll notice that her Dragon Slayer sword removes his armor effortlessly without even drilling so just spam Dragon's Breath until he's dead while dodging everything (especially his forehead lasers, do not even think about attacking while he's releasing them). The cool thing here is that you can (and should) continue after a game over as long as you have Power Oils left, HP items don't matter here since Tokaron will just one-shot you anyway with any of his attacks. Using Energy Oils right before getting killed will make the fight last longer, you'll definitely want to keep a full drill bar. Afterwards, you should get the Unbelievable Phantom Hunter achievement, the incredibly sexy Leopard costume and the sequel to your suffering.

The Battle

Now that you're perfectly prepared and fully and completely ready for this, make your way towards Black Bean. Bring along Pierre (he's able to heal your entire HP bar up to 3 times in short intervals before vanishing), a full stock of items and make sure you learn how to distinguish the true BB from his clones. The true one is kinda blue-ish while the clones are kinda black-ish. I think the real one takes slightly more damage too but it's better to keep an eye on their color.


The most important thing about fighting him in this mode is that you must be aware of WHEN to attack at all times. Spamming your attacks did the trick in previous difficulties but not here, there's tons of stuff in this fight that you'll need to dodge and your Dragon's Breath (I'll refer to this as DB from now on) invincibility frames won't save you from most of them.

• Stay away from the little colored balls that trail from behind a BB and slowly follow you, you don't want your DB to end while one is directly under you since they deal around 55 damage.

• DB when they release the green homing lasers. Running from those is a really bad idea because if some rocks fall and you get stunned while the lasers are following you, you're gonna take gratuitous damage. The lasers simply vanish after coming in contact with you during your I-frames.

• As for rocks, DB as soon as you see a BB shooting a purple laser upwards. It's impossible to not get stunned if you simply jump, you can even jump right before the first rock falls on the ground but the next one's impact will inevitably stun you. If the previous tip wasn't enough, getting stunned as the true BB rolls over you will insta-kill you.

• Their triangle formation where they surround you and spam rocks, electricity, ice and fire is extremely nasty. If you're in the middle of a DB and they use this, you're most likely going to get hit at least once or even twice if you're unlucky. Mash the jump button due to the rocks and run from them ASAP.

• Halfway through, BB and his clones will release organized attacks all at once such as Z Slash, Cold Upper and Final Spark. Run from those and don't engage any of them during this because they all deal ridiculous damage. Cold Upper (the one with ice spires rising from the ground) deals 88 damage and Z Slash deals exactly 100 damage. Definitely do not engage them.

• As for Neo Galaxy, once the red lines appear, hug the invisible walls, perform a DB and... hope for the best. I still haven't mastered this part, I think you're supposed to DB right after the final red line appears on the ground but right before the floating red line appears above you. The nice part is that your 75% damage reduction causes you to receive only 23 damage from the white flash with the blue-ish explosions right before dealing only 8 damage, not that you want to get hit by either.

• The attack where you have to homing attack a spiral of bats? Not much to say about it, just DB the BBs twice quickly (or just once if you're not feeling spicy) as they start preparing the attack and enjoy a brief break because you really can't fail this one. You can also get tons of crits, useful once your Energy Oils run out and you get hit a few times.

• That one single ball of energy they shoot in an straight path is an afterthought but I wouldn't DB through it on purpose.

• The attack where a BB draws a circle around itself with a purple laser before bursting into a pillar of fire is extremely easy to DB through and also a solid chance to get some damage in.

For the second tip, pausing is your ally. Pausing the game allows you to:

• Spin the camera around, extremely useful with all the teleporting going on

• "Cancel" your DBs. Pausing in the middle of an attack makes Parin safely end her action while everything else stays still. This works perfectly to escape out of the aforementioned triangle formation attack if they close in on you suddenly. Just don't pause in the middle of an enemy's attack, I was about to get Cold Upper'd once, paused the game, survived the hit and took damage from the attack again seconds later.

• Fall immediately after climbing the bats. Just don't pause while the bright white from the explosion is still on-screen even if faintly or you might get damaged.

The final tip is, do not be afraid to kill the clones. You should definitely focus on the real one, but if he teleports out the moment you input a DB and your only option is hitting nothing or a clone, do the latter. I'm not sure if this is just a coincidence, but I've noticed that after killing a clone, either the true BB or his other clone will start rolling, trying to hit you before vanishing and rolling over and over again. This is the perfect chance to deal massive damage (or at least kill another clone, which also leads to a less perfect chance to deal some damage when BB summons another one). Just do not get hit because the real BB will insta-kill you, but you need to abuse this risk. You know how Black Bean releases a few random attacks before summoning a clone at the very start of the battle? Pray that you get a lucky start with him rolling around as much as possible or using his colored spheres attack.

Keep at it and eventually...

Outro and A Call for Help

I hope this was useful since there's almost no info online on beating this Black Bastard and that none of this was too obvious. I'll accept any and all additional tips and suggestions. Please message me if you have beaten the balls to the wall insane Crazy Mode's boss rush and have some tips on beating it, especially on Prince who makes me use all my consumables no matter what during his freakishly long battle and even if I did manage to get past him, Tokaron and BB would just end me. I may or may have not given up on ever getting that last costume.

[essen]

Thanks for the great tips!

About Neo Galaxy, what you want to do is dodge while there are explosions, then when they stop look at the red lines/circles forming around him, then a little after the 3rd circle appears dodge and DB aiming at the center of the circles. This will avoid all damage AND hit BlackBean at the same time!

About the Prince fight, yeah, that one's tough, but I think it's also a question of learning the moves, dodging when appropriate and attacking only when it is safe to do so, and probably only attacking via Jump then Attack since it'll aim for you. One important thing to note though: he's weak to lightning so equip the right Gear for the fight.