In addition to playing through your favorite tracks in Rift of the Necrodancer, you’ll be able to complete additional content such as mini-games and boss battles. These tough battles naturally unlock through the Story Mode of the game, but you can also unlock them with diamonds in the Extras menu.
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Rift of the Necrodancer combines visual novel-style storytelling with frantic rhythm-based action to solid effect.
The first boss battle that appears is against Harmonie. Rather than attacking a variety of monsters on a fret-like track, things work a bit differently. In this guide, we are going to take a look at how you can beat bosses in Rift of the Necrodancer, including Harmonie, who appears first, and Reaper, who ramps up the difficulty.
How Are Boss Battles Different From Normal Rifts?
If you’ve been playing through the story (or even just the Play mode), then you are used to the typical rift format by now. Monsters come down the track in three lanes, and you need to account for their pattern while attacking them in rhythm with the beat.
Boss battles work a bit differently. Rather than attacking on the three-lane track, attacks during the boss battle will appear around the screen, with circles closing down around them. As the circle gets closer to the center, this is your cue to hit the center. If you’ve ever played Project Diva, it’s pretty similar to that.
How To Complete Boss Battles
So, with the general format in mind, what do you actually do? There are only three types of moves that you need to do during boss battles, which are found below.
|
Icon |
What It Is |
Notes |
|---|---|---|
|
Purple Circle |
The boss is about to attack. |
By pressing in the direction of the arrow (as the larger circle closes around it), Cadence will dodge an attack. |
|
Yellow Circle |
You are about to counterattack. |
This is mechanically the same as purple circles; just press in the direction of the arrow as it closes around the icon. |
|
Yellow Starburst |
The boss is stunned, and you can continue attacking. |
If you successfully hit the yellow circles, then the boss will be stunned and the starbursts will appear. At this point, you can press any directional button; just do it following the rhythm from the closing circles. |
How To Defeat Harmonie
In total, there are five bosses in Rift of the Necrodancer, with Harmonie being the first one. Because of this, we’ll take a look at how to defeat her as an example.
Thankfully, you’ll get a tutorial for defeating Harmonie, but there are some extra tips to keep in mind. Firstly, about halfway through the fight, she will transform and become a bit more desperate. At this point, her attacks will get a bit more aggressive. Other bosses are similar; once a ‘transformation’ happens, the attacks may get harder to deal with.
When this happens, you’ll just need to continue hitting the purple, yellow, and starburst icons as usual. There are no additional attack types that you will need to focus on.
In order to win, you just need to avoid taking damage more than ten times. Your HP counter will be in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen, as usual. At minimum, you’ll need to defeat her before losing all of your HP.
If you aim to truly succeed, then you’ll need to attack and defeat Harmonie as quickly as possible. This goes for every boss in the game; your goal is to defeat them in the shortest amount of time. Unlike normal songs, the length of a boss battle depends on how good you do.
For example, if you hit every beat and attack Harmonie when the starbursts appear (and don’t miss anything), then you will have a higher score. Even missing one yellow circle can bring down your score, as you won’t be able to attack her when she’s stunned, which adds on to your total time.
How To Defeat Reaper
Reaper is the fourth boss in Rift of the Necrodancer. If you’ve been beating the bosses in order, then this fight may be a bit difficult the first time you do it. Rather than just tapping in the directions thrown at you, there are a bit more mechanics to keep in mind.
This battle starts with skulls spinning in a circle. If you don’t do anything, they will continue to spin. You’ll need press Up in order to ‘activate’ a skull, and then follow the pattern. This is the format the entire battle follows, but the skulls will eventually begin to look different.
There are four skull colors; white, blue, red, and black. The pattern presented by each skull will increase in difficulty based on the order we listed them in. This means that white skull have a simple pattern, while black skulls may trip you up.
In order to activate any skull, throughout the entire battle, you’ll need to press Up. Later into the battles, you’ll also need to use the side arrows to avoid getting hit by skulls. Once you activate a skull, the rest will disappear, and the pattern will begin. If you mess up, you won’t stun Reaper and, in turn, you won’t be able to deal any damage.
For more difficult skulls, it’s very easy to get tripped up. Thankfully, the monsters that appear right before you begin will spawn in the pattern that you need to follow. This will give you a sense of when to tap a button. When these monsters spawn, listen closely so you can recreate it.
The more difficult the skull is, the more damage you will do to Reaper. You can stick to white skulls until the end when they completely disappear (at this point, the ‘easiest’ skull type will be blue). If you are aiming for a higher score, try to activate more difficult skulls to beat Reaper quickly.
Overall, this battle lets you pick the skull that you want, but the longer you wait for a skull to come around the circle, the lower your score will be. There is a lot of time lost as you wait for a white skull to make a full rotation. This is fine if you are just aiming to get by, but if you want to do great, then you may to amp up the skull difficulty.
Do You Have To Spend Diamonds To Unlock Bosses?
The short answer? No. You don’t need to spend any diamonds in order to defeat all five bosses. Each one will unlock through the story. If you don’t feel like playing the story, you can use diamonds to unlock the battle, but this isn’t necessary.
We recommend playing through the story, as this unlocks a lot of content that you would need to unlock with diamonds otherwise. Additionally, you’ll get to know what Cadence is up to in the mysterious city that she was transported to!
If you choose a boss battle from the Extras menu, you’ll have the choice between medium and hard. There are also two tutorials here, so you can quickly brush up on the gameplay if you missed out on the story mode.
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