I'm talking about the attack where he makes 7 skulls appear around you.

I'm only asking what to do as cuphead, if the skull appears in the lower left or lower right corner

Im at king dice and this fucking dice never ever rolls the way i want to. I only get it to work with p sugar, but the rest of the fight is actual aids that way.

i play on mobile and find it hard to dodge correctly- done the training multiple times, but it's still difficult for me. have any tips?

How do you dodge? I’ve made it all the way to HR 99+ but I’m a Lance/HBG user so I tend to get by with blocks. Any time I try something without a shield I can’t stop getting smacked around. What is this hidden technique of pressing the dodge button that I’m not getting?

The tutorial did a TERRIBLE job explaining, or rather highlighting, how immensely useful Dodging is: both in armed and unarmed combat.

Directional key + Spacebar (jump) while in combat FTW. An enemy doesn’t need to be swinging at you to dodge, you just need to be in combat, with the directional attack crosshairs active.

Dodging backwards creates an INSANE amount of distance, allowing you to either recoup stamina, or in the event of fighting multiple people, you can chain it to create even more distance, allowing you to move side to side, and ‘stack’ enemies in such a way, that you’re only dealing with the one closest to you at a time.

Dodging to the side, and THEN firing off an attack almost ALWAYS lets you get one to connect with an enemy, if not en entire combo; often allowing you to hit them in the back if you’re quick enough.

Float like you’re Peckish, sting like you’re Hungry, my fellow Henrys.

Just finished Cuphead two weeks ago and managed to complete all the achievements attached to it. While I really enjoyed my time with the game, I can't help but compare it to other run and gun games. I mean, this subgenre is too niche (probably even more niche than shmups) which is why I was really happy when I saw the gameplay trailer for Cuphead a few years back. But judging it as a run and gun game yields a slightly different opinion out of me compared to judging it on its own merits. You might say that's a bit unfair to the game, but considering how the devs described it as a run and gun shooter, a subgenre that's probably dying at this point and may only have this game to represent it in the current gen, I think it's fair to at least try and view the game's strengths and weaknesses through this lense. Don't worry, I'll list the positives as well.

Before I begin, I just want to mention that I've checked a few Cuphead posts in this subreddit ranging from months to years ago. Most of them already reviewed and express their opinions on Cuphead without bringing up its run and gun roots or comparing it to other games of the same ilk, which is partly the reason why I wanted to make this post. To try and bring a fresh take on the game. Also, know that I do love the game despite my criticisms to it. I'm also not gonna mention the aspects that have already been talked about a lot of times like the gorgeous animation in the interest of making this post a bit more focused and shorter (even though it's still long).

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Pros:

• Number of Boss Fights

Somehow, Cuphead both managed to create numerous boss fights while never neglecting to polish them and making them distinctive from one another. No other R&G games made that much bosses in one game (19 in total), and that's not counting mini-bosses. I think the only other run and gun game that managed to outdo Cuphead in terms of number of bosses is Alien Soldier (26) but I personally haven't played that one yet. The devs managed to maintain both the quantity AND the quality of bosses and nailed them. There's a few rough edges here and there... and some shmup bosses share the same bullet patterns, but for the most part they deliver. The same could be said with the normal enemies and mini-bosses in the run and gun sections to be honest. That's something commendable.

I also really love the >!King Dice!< boss fight just because of how different it is. Unfortunately, that just made the final boss a bit disappointing because of how normal it is in comparison.

• Overall Length

This is almost unfair to other run and gun games, since most of them are designed to be played in one sitting based on their arcade roots... but yeah. Cuphead has more length and content compared to them. The replayability with the other games comes from repeating the same game over and over to master the game and increase your high score. Nowadays, not many people really does this, so Cuphead benefits from longer length.

• Distinct Art Style

Pretty much a given. Most run and gun games use a war theme by default. Whether it's against armies or aliens, it usually revolves around that theme and that applies to their setting, characters and weapons. Cuphead's theme that harkens back to the 1930s cartoons gives it a fresh coat of paint and made it standout immediately from its peers.

• Having a Progress bar when Dying to a Boss

A nice way of showing your progress through the boss fight as well as giving the players an idea on how close (or how far) they are at beating them. It's also segmented based on the boss phases. The addition of boss quotes that differs depending on the phase you died in is a nice little touch.

Cons:

• Hitbox Issue on Smaller Enemies

I was surprised to encounter this at all. I don't think I've ever experienced this in any other run & gun games that I've played. To the game's credit, it only seems to happen rarely and I've only experienced it on very small enemies, in a game where big bosses are more common than regular enemies. Its occurrence is very inconsistent so it's hard to replicate and capture it, but I did manage to record one instance of this issue during the flower boss fight.

https://imgur.com/a/zducxfX

• Balancing Issues in your Weapon Arsenal

To be honest, I'm more referring to the charms rather than the weapons when I mentioned this, but I do think weapons suffer from this to a lesser extent. Spread feels too OP compared to the other weapons. Lobber is also powerful even with the weird trajectory. Roundabout's strength is ironically too roundabout and seems too situational to be effective. Chaser is probably the weakest one which is not good since I've noticed from streamers that more casual players tend to depend on it heavily. I get that its power is lessened to compensate for its homing ability, but its tracking seems a bit weak. It also tends to get confused on who to track when minions are involved. Charge is probably the most balanced despite being strong because of the slow fire rate and having to manually shoot it.

I do want to address that the Roundabout / Lobber loadout seems to be the go to for speedrunners. I do feel like the way they use it makes it more of an exploit rather than an inherent strength of those weapons, because the quick switching cheese strat increases the fire rate of the lobber a lot more.

Weapon balance are debatable and I know there's some people who's gonna disagree with my take on it, but I think most people are gonna agree with me when it comes to charms. The only useful charms here are the Smoke Bomb and the P. Sugar, and the latter is only relevant if you're having a hard time parrying. Whetstone is probably the most useless charm outside of the apparent speedrun strat of using it against flying shmup bosses, but upon watching the recent speedruns, I don't even see them use it. Heart and Twin Heart are... well, they add more HP for allowing more hits at the cost of damage reduction. Coffee is fine I guess, but I find its effect to be too slow to matter. So really, Smoke Bomb is inevitably going to be the pick for most people. I-frames is just too valuable for this game.

• Lack of Impact in Sound Design and Weapon-feel

Not sure how to describe this well, but for a game that has a fantastic audio for music and sound effects for most aspects, the weapons feel lacking in comparison. All weapons sound a bit same-y when fired, and their hit sounds are too soft to make you feel the impact with the exception of a Charged Shot from Charge and the Spread to a lesser extent. Contrast this to other games like say, Metal Slug which has a fantastic weapon and hit sounds.

I'm aware this is a silly criticism to make, but making the weapons feel punchy and impactful via hit sounds kinda heightens the experience a bit more in my opinion.

• Unrefined Run and Gun Sections

Other people have commented on this already and I don't think it's as bad as the others think, but I do consider the run and gun stages to be a bit weaker compared to the boss battles. Apparently, this part of the game is not supposed to be included since they just want to focus on the boss fights, but in the end they decided to add these platforming levels anyway. They're fine for the most part... but I can't help but feel that the levels are a bit uninspired and unrefined. It's also odd to me that they made these levels optional.

• Lack of Extra Content

Old run and gun games typically don't have much in the way of extra content because they were usually just console ports of the arcade games. But a small number of them did have some extra content after beating the game. Cuphead have no such thing unfortunately. The only content you can unlock is a vintage mode for audio, and black and white color and 2-Strip color for visual filters. This can be unlocked by fulfilling certain conditions like getting a pacifist rank in all run and gun levels. Beating the game in Expert mode and getting 200% completion rate doesn't even unlock anything. This was a good opportunity to add some... I don't know, galleries? Seems like the perfect reward, getting to see the concept art and rough sketches of the game.

Compare this to Metal Slug Anthology and Contra Anniversary Collection which have some galleries to look at. Heck, the PS1 version of Metal Slug have galleries, combat school and another story (collection of mini-games). Some extra modes or content would have been nice.

• RNG on Some Bosses

I decided to include this because it's been a common complaint, even though personally I don't think it's too common to be a major issue. I find that only a handful of bosses are affected by this (such as Grim Matchstick and Baroness). I do acknowledge that this can affect speedrunners in an annoying way if things don't go as planned.

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Despite my misgivings, this is easily one of the best run and gun shooters right now in the market no doubt... and I'm glad they made a game with this subgenre in mind. In one of their interviews, they even mentioned how underrepresented this genre is. I'm curious as to what's next for Studio MDHR. I know they have a DLC planned for Cuphead, but there's no news yet as to when it's gonna be released.

I also want to encourage people who played Cuphead but haven't dabbled on any other run and gun shooters to give them a try. Metal Slug and Contra are good starting points. They're great in their own way and can be finished in one sitting. I only played Gunstar Heroes once a long time ago but that's also considered by fans of the genre to be one of the best ones. It's difficult to get a hold of this one though due to availability.