Buster Big Bosses

Note: A chunk of the bosses have "Overworld" versions and "Arena" versions. Overworld versions take place on the overworld maps, and consist of the boss attacking and chasing you relentlessly until it runs out of health. Once that happens, the boss will start running towards a specified location on the map. During this period you can attack the boss, causing it to drop money. This is incredibly helpful with grinding. In most cases, moves from the Overworld phase are carried directly into the Arena phase.

Arena versions are simply the major one-on-four fights with the big boss, taking place in a special arena tailored for their respective gimmick. This is where the real fight begins.

Sproink/Hoggles
https://i.imgur.com/p2kwlaR.png
"A middle-aged Yo-kai who loves public baths. He likes sneaking in after closing, turning the water up hot and having the place all to himself. Once all warmed up he can even shoot fire from his red piggy nose!"

https://i.imgur.com/ZOQocpp.png
"Hoggles used to be a little piglet of a guy until he ate a broth made of other Yo-kai- then he got huge!"

Sproink is the first boss of the game, and is a bit of a doozy to lead with. In the Overworld phase, Sproink only has three attacks, Bucket Bash, Roast Pork, and Pork Drop. Bucket bash is a single melee hit attack with both his buckets, Roast Pork has him breathing fire out in an area in front of him, and Pork Drop has him leap into the air and then slam back into the ground. This is a very common move with most of the bosses, most bosses with an overworld form have some variety of it. Overworld phases have very little strategy to them besides standard rushdown tactics.

Once the overworld phase is done with, Sproink will run over to the bathhouse. The bathhouse arena is rounded, with four hot tubs taking up a good chunk of it, leaving an almost x-shaped/cross-shaped area for you to fight without going into the water. The water is completely safe to go into, however. Sproink retains Bucket Bash, Roast Pork, and Pork Drop, but also gains two new attacks, both of them adding projectiles to his repertoire. The first is Chuck the Bucket, where he throws one of his buckets forward. This is a very easy to dodge attack. The second is Hogwash, where he slides a bar of soap across the ground. If this hits, it doesn't deal a lot of damage (even at higher difficulties), but it does make you slippery to control. You'll have to go into one of the pools in order to wash it off. Hogwash is also the first instance of the game's unavoidable homing projectiles with annoying status effects.

Of course, this isn't all to the fight. Once he's down a bit of health, Sproink will walk into one of the pools, and use Hot Water, turning the entirety of the pool into a massive pool of lava. Standing in this drains your health rapidly, and also cuts you from a large chunk of the battlefield. In order to turn the pool back to normal, you'll have to activate a mechanism next to it that drains it and then fills it back up with new water. Sproink can knock you out of this, since it takes a few seconds and you're completely vulnerable. When he uses Hot Water, Sproink will always use it on a second pool as well, but never more than that.

Aside from it cutting off a lot of space and being hazardous, there's another reason why you'll want to deal with the lava pools immediately- Sproink will sometimes take a break in one, restoring his health in ridiculously large chunks. It can easily undo minutes of progress in a few seconds, and it gets even worse at higher difficulties. Sproink's Soultimate Move, Squealing Boil, has him instantly turn 2 to 3 of the pools into lava. After this, however, he'll get tired and be open to attacks. Hitting him enough during this will cause him to enter "Chance!" mode, leaving him completely vulnerable for a few seconds.

Sproink is easy if you know what you're doing, but if you're a newcomer or have low-level yokai, he can be a real pain to deal with. At low levels, even the easiest versions of Sproink's lava pools can nearly instantly kill any partners, and his attacks in general deal major amounts of damage for that early in the game. Obviously when you're a high enough level he becomes a joke on almost any difficulty, as he's the lowest level boss in all three difficulties.

Hoggles, meanwhile, is Sproink's "Inferno" recolor. Hailing from Not-Hell, the Infinite Inferno, alongside three other bosses from there. As you might expect from a recolor, his fight is almost exactly the same, with the major difference of being, well, much stronger than he was before. Also, inexplicably, his versions of Bucket Bash and Roast Pork have different names (Bucket Bonk and Smoked Bacon). They are the exact same moves with no changes, its weird. His Soultimate is also renmamed to Potbelly Boil, but thats a thing with all recolor bosses. Hoggles also has some AI differences in his Arena fight. While its mostly the same, Hoggles will use Hogwash a lot more than Sproink does. When he uses Hot Water, he will now go for three pools rather than two, and will heal himself more frequently, and for a lot more damage. These two changes make the fight much harder, and incentivizes the player into dealing with the pools almost instantly.


Gutsy/Goldy/Glitzy Bones
https://i.imgur.com/SNMqTQc.png
"A skeleton Yo-kai who lurks atop the school, playing with his beloved Crank-a-kai. He's always dropping medals through his body, but his crow friends are kind enough to pick them up."

https://i.imgur.com/fqwK6Zo.png
"Gutsy Bones got lucky, winning a Crank-a-kai loaded with cash! He spent all his winnings on making his body gold and partying every day, but he's since found out that it's lonely at the top."

https://i.imgur.com/Efn9HR6.png
"Gutsy Bones got himself covered in diamonds, but he's more interested in seeing what comes out of the Crank-a-kai next than in the fact that he's now the most valuable Yo-kai in the world!"

Two important things to note before we get into strategy. First, all three of the Bones are functionally the same fight, not even having the slight behavioral changes that other recolor bosses have. They have higher damage, and that is it. Second, the Bones are Arena Only bosses, meaning they have no Overworld phase. This makes them some of the shortest bosses to beat, making them excellent for grinding purposes.

Gutsy's fight takes place on either the Springdale Elementary rooftop, or on a random piece of road on Mystery Way if you're fighting Goldy and Glitzy. The arena is the same in both, a large rectangle. Gutsy himself is completely stationary, and you can attack him from every except for the far left of the arena. Because of this, high damage characters are completely capable of taking out large chunks of his health in a matter of seconds. Gutsy himself has a single attack that he performs himself, that being the Boneshaker. This is functionally similar to a drop and fall move, as Gutsy slams his fist on the ground, hitting in a wide circular area.

The rest of Gutsy's attacks come from the Crank-a-kai that's with him. Crows will fly in and give him a coin, which will pop out one of five different possible capsules. The most common two are the Red and Black capsules. Red lets Gutsy use Red Hot Capsule, which will drop four to five flaming balls from the sky onto a specific party member. They will target areas where the player has been before falling down. Once the fireballs hit the ground, they will leave a pool of magma that will stay there for several seconds before disappearing. These deal passive damage when you stand in them. This is Gutsy's most annoying attack, even though it may seem very easy to avoid. In solo play, the AI partners have no idea how to dodge the fire, and will most likely end up standing in it and dying. If he uses this too many times, it could easily wipe out a very unlucky party very quickly.

The second capsule is the Pitch Black Capsule. This will summon a rectangle of darkness roughly 1/4th the size of the arena. Standing in this square will cause the screen to darken by a considerable amount, as well as deal three hits of damage if the player stands in it for the first few seconds. This patch of darkness will appear in one of four spots on the arena, randomly rolling whether or not it covers one rectangle of ground, or all four. This attack is Gutsy's weakest, as the damage it deals is very low, and it doesn't do much else to hinder players. The biggest flaw is mainly that you can attack Gutsy from anywhere in the arena, and his attacks are very easily telegraphed. It can be a problem if it runs into a use of Red Hot Capsule, but otherwise its fine to tank the damage and just keep attacking. If you CAN dodge it while still attacking, you'll want to do that.

The next two attacks aren't actually even really attacks. Getting a green capsule will cause Gutsy to use Cool Green Capsule, which, instead of anything that could help him, creates a healing circle on the arena that your party can use to recover. There isn't much beyond that, its a help, not a hindrance. The second is the Booby Prize, where Gutsy pulls a bomb from the Crank-a-kai, and then throws it into the arena in a panic. This one is technically an attack, as if you leave the bomb too long it will explode, but its very easy to avoid. What you actually want to do with this is to interact with it, which will cause you to kick the bomb back at Gutsy. The way the bomb is kicked depends on your positioning, so you have to angle yourself if you want to kick it while its on the far left. When Gutsy is hit by the bomb, it will tear off the bandage on his chest and reveal his heart, putting him into "Chance!" mode and leaving him open.

The final capsule that Gutsy can roll is a gold one, which activates his Soultimate Move, Jackpot Jive (Gold Rush and Rolling Bones for Goldy and Glitzy, respectfully). This will create five massive circular warning areas that cover the entire arena. Four of these warning areas will drop a pile of bones, while the last one will drop a skull, all while Gutsy does the Thriller dance in the background. Due to how large the hitboxes are on this attack, its basically unavoidable, meaning you will have to tank the damage. Sometimes it misses, but you'll have to get really lucky for that to happen. Oh yeah, and sometimes enemies will spawn into the arena, mostly skeleton yokai like Dazzabel, Rattelle, and Skranny. This happens so rarely, though, that its basically a non-factor into the fight itself.

The Bones are the easiest bosses in the game, no matter how much damage they deal or how stupid the AI party is. Even at high difficulties, its possible to still win without your teammates, mostly because all of his attacks are highly telegraphed and easy to dodge for a player with a functioning brain, or they're actively working against the Bones themselves. The randomization is an issue, especially if he rolls his Soultimate, but even then that's just easy to ignore and continue. Red Hot Capsule and Boneshaker are the only recurring moves that you'll ever have to really avoid.


SV Snaggerjag/Styx Mk. VI
https://i.imgur.com/UjcYCHz.png
"The guardian spirit of Catfish Pond, who flies into a rage if he sees anyone mistreating his beloved lake. The fish respect him a lot for this and will do whatever he asks."

https://i.imgur.com/XCV6Nzc.png
"The Styx Mk. VI fishes souls out of the fabled river of the underworld- no sinner can escape his net. On good fishing days, he sings sea chanties (sic) that resound throughout the inferno."

Snaggerjag starts out his Overworld phase with three attacks, which will actually be his entire moveset throughout the fight until the halfway point of his Arena phase. We'll start with his first two, Fisherman's Fist and Keep it Reel. Fisherman's Fist is similar to Sproink's Bucket Bash, but Snaggerjag uses both of his fists to slam the ground, giving it much greater range. Its a heavy hitting move as well. Keep it Reel has him swing his fishing line antenna out in a move with frankly ridiculous range. It hits like a brick, and your best move is to get away from him as soon as the warning markers appear.

Before we get to his third move, I'm going to cover his Arena, Catfish Pond. It is a donut shaped arena with a large lake in the middle. You move around the outer edges, while Snaggerjag can only move over the pond itself, while still getting close enough for you to very easily hit him with any attack. With how much ground Snaggerjag's attacks can cover, especially when you factor in his third move, the fight can get very cramped very quickly.

Speaking of, Snaggerjag's third move is Catch of the Day, where he dips his fishing line into the water (Or ground if he's in the Overworld phase), and fishes out one of three catfish minions. The three are based around different attributes, and are even color coded to fit. First is the red fish, Grumpus. He can boost his defense to make it harder to kill, and has a low range body slam attack that basically requires him to be next to a player to perform. He's the one most commonly spawned, and depending on the difficulty, can be the easiest or hardest one to deal with.

The second fish is blue and named Shuten. Shuten's attack has him firing a long, thin stream of water as a projectile. He isn't summoned very often, but he isn't much of a threat compared to Grumpus or our last catfish. The final one is Meditatum, the green fish. Meditatum has no attacks, but can activate a large healing field to heal itself and Snaggerjag for a small amount of health. Leaving Meditatum in the battle can lead to trouble, so taking care of him is top priority when he gets fished, which thankfully isn't too common. Snaggerjag can have multiple catfish out at a time, and likes to use the attack very often, which can lead to your already small space getting even fuller.

Snaggerjag does actually gain two new attacks during his Arena phase, but they need to be talked about together due to how they work. The first is Oil Spill, which Snaggerjag will only use at around 1/3rd of his health. He fires a volley of purple sludge from his mouth, creating patches of it on the ground. Stepping on one will activate a debuff that slows down your running speed, but it also does no damage. The run speed debuff is the most important part here, as Snaggerjag will ONLY use this attack when he's about to use his Soultimate Move, A Fisher's Life.

For this attack, Snaggerjag will fly to the center of the arena, and depending on his health, either instantly go into the Soultimate, or use Oil Spill. When he uses A Fisher's Life, he will dive into the lake, and a massive golden catfish will pop up in return. This catfish will fire a continuous, unblockable stream of water in either a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction, creating a wall of damage that you will either have to tank, or run away from. This is why Oil Spill is used right before it, in order to prevent the running option. It deals a lot of damage, but with a competent healer you can easily come back. For some reason, this attack is capable of killing his own fish. When the gold catfish dives back down after it does a full rotation, Snaggerjag will pop up, dazed. Now you can attack him repeatedly in order to activate his "Chance!" phase.

Finally, Styx Mk VI, Snaggerjag's Inferno counterpart. This fight both differs and is incredibly similar to the fight with Snaggerjag. Almost everything is the same, though his fish have been renamed to Scarp for the red, Zeybrow for the blue, and Gemble for the green. The name of his Soultimate has also been changed to Ferryman Shanty, but it functions the same. The actual big change here is that Styx has a new attack, called Troubled Water. This attack creates a few water towers that will spread out across the Arena until they hit a wall. They are actually fairly hard to avoid, and hit had, impressive for his only real projectile attack.

Snaggerjag and Styx are direct counterparts to Sproink and Hoggles. Sproink has a bit of puzzle solving to him to make the fight easier, and is always in range of a standard melee attack. Snaggerjag has no real gimmicks, simply requiring navigating well to overcome his attacks, and spends a lot of time either just out of reach or too close for comfort. Characters with decent range are definitely the ones you want to pick for this, alongside someone who can heal up quickly after taking heavy damage.


Slimamander/Eyedra
https://i.imgur.com/XBfhG3x.png
"A Yo-kai like a large snake, but with three heads with massive gaping mouths. It's body is covered in thick hide, rendering the sharpest blade useless. Its only weakness is the eye you may spot in its mouths."

https://i.imgur.com/wFXWIB2.png
"A huge salamander Yo-kai that lives in the underworld. Those fixed by his red-eyed gaze will cower in fear before being swallowed whole."

Slimamander and Eyedra are another Gutsy Bones case, where they have the same boss fight with no real changes. Well, Eyedra has one change, which we'll cover in the next paragraph. In addition to this, Slimamander is by far the simplest boss in the whole game, not even having Gutsy's bonus of randomization. Slimamander is also like Gutsy in that he doesn't have an Overworld phase, taking place in a single arena just outside of Springdale Elementary. The arena is cone shaped, the borders surrounded by flames, with Slimamander stationary at the very top.

From here we move on to Slimamander's attacks. All four of them. The first one also doubles as his overall gimmick, the Blazing Belch. Slimamander will fire out a cone of fire from one of his three heads, each head shooting it out over 1/3rd of the arena (middle head breathes down the middle, left to the left side, you know the deal). At the start Slimamander will only fire one stream of fire, with two spots being free to move to. At this point, one of the heads will open up, revealing an eye. The eye is the only part of Slimamander that's targetable, making it his sole weakspot, as you might have guessed from his description.

This is how the battle goes for the most part. You have to pick the head that has the eye in it, while also avoiding the fire. Halfway through the fight, Slimy will mix it up and have two of his heads breath fire, covering more area but making it a bit easier to figure out where the eye is. Though sometimes he will trip you up and have the eye open before the second flame comes out. This is actually where the major difference with Eyedra comes in. Eyedra's some difference is that he starts the battle by breathing two flames at once, and that's it.

Slimamander's other two non-Soultimate attacks are really nothing to write home about. The first is Slurrrp, where all three heads lick their tongues, dealing damage directly in front of them. Its easy to avoid, but its fast enough to catch you off guard. He uses it so rarely you'll probably forget it existed by the time he uses it again. The third attack has Slimamander summoning up two Mander's Eyes (Eyedra's Eyes for Eyedra). These are reskins of the Patroleye enemies, which means they float up to you and shoot a weak laser. They are very bottom of the barrel minions.

The final attack is his Soultimate Move, Triple Trouble, or Warty Wallop for Eyedra. Slimy starts the move by spending agood time charging up, and then performs an unavoidable melee rush with all three of his heads. This can bring your health down a good deal, but there's one crucial thing I' overlooking- you can create a safe spot. One of the heads, while charging, will have the eye peeking out from its lips. Attack that one enough and it'll fall into its "Chance!" phase, creating a safe area while the other two heads continue their attack.

Slimamander's gimmick is something that worked specifically with Yokai Watch's original battle system, and really doesn't seem to work anywhere else. The fight is tedious mostly because you spend a lot of it doing the same thing over and over. Eyedra adss anything to the fight, but overall its a disappointment. Its also a fight where AI partners get in the way more than they help, as they usually do not react well to the reaction speed needed to avoid most of Slimamander's attacks. There isn't much of a strategy here, you attack the eye until he dies and avoid the attacks that cover most of the screen.


Gargaros
https://i.imgur.com/k1KZxwr.png
"A massive red Oni that appears in children's dreams as the embodiment of their worries or fears. Defeat it during the dream and once you awake you will have really grown as a person."

There are three different Oni in the game, colored red, blue, and black to represent difficulty. While technically these are recolor bosses, as each only has minor differences from the rest, the Oni fights in Busters are actually all surprisingly different. Each has different attacks and patterns, which is why I'm splitting them up into different sections. We'll start with the easiest Oni, Gargaros.

Gargaros is the first boss in this guide without a specialized arena, instead he can show up in every arena. Theoretically, at least. The arenas that Gargaros shows up in are Mt. Middleton, Flower Road, and Shoten Temple (At least I think he shows up there in Ultra mode, its either that or the bathouse). Mt. Middleton is an off-circle arena, functionally flat despite having large bumps on it. It's the perfect area to introduce the player to the fast paced Oni fights, as its large and spacious. Flower Road is a vertically rectangular arena with a fixed camera. It adds some more difficulty to the fight by being cramped, and the camera can be an issue when trying to track Gargaros, as you can't lock onto him. Shoten Temple is one we'll get to later.

Overworld Gargaros is technically the first boss you fight, though he is unable to be beaten until later in the game. His attacks are basic, mostly because they've been ripped from the Busters sections from Yokai Watch 2. His attacks are Iron Swing, Incinerate, and Crash Landing. Iron Swing is a fast, single hit melee attack with his iron club, with its short range making it easy enough to dodge. Incinerate is copied directly from playable yokai who have that as an attack. It creates a large burst of fire underneath one of the party, burning them. It is also very, very easy to avoid. Crash Landing has Gargaros leap into the air, and then crash back down. This is similar to some other bosses, who have very similar attacks, but those ones will teleport directly over you most of the time. Gargaros will only crash into the place he started, making this another easy attack to avoid, especially with its long start-up.

Gargaros has a fourth ability he can use in the overworld section, though it isn't specifically an attack. Sometimes, he will stick a party member with an Oni Bomb. The bomb will hover over the member's head for thirty seconds before it explodes, dealing a lot of damage to them and anyone nearby. The only way to get rid of it is to run over to a glowing blue mark on the map, which will safely dump the bomb off.

Once beaten, Gargaros will make a run for the Arena the mission dictates. In his Arena phase, Gargaros keeps these three attacks, minus Oni Bomb, while also gaining three new ones. There is anything worth talking about in regards to the old moves, however. Incinerate's hitbox and animation become a lot larger during the Arena phase, making it harder to dodge. While both Iron Swing and Incinerate are very common, Crash Landing will be used very rarely, though it has no changes.

The new moves he gets during this section are Full Swing, Onislaught, and his Soultimate Move, Iron Anger. Full Swing is a stronger version of Iron Swing, with Gargaros instead swinging it like a baseball bat and hitting a large area in front of him. Its fast, which makes it hard to dodge, but it doesn't deal major damage. Now, oddly enough, we're going to talk about his Soultimate Move. Iron Anger has Gargaros leap up and then slam his club to the ground, creating a narrow, short hitbox in front of him that does deal a significant amount of damage. Its actually his easiest move to dodge in this phase, I had to purposely walk into it in order to get a sense of the damage it does. I have no idea why its his Soultimate.

The actual highlight of these new attacks is Onislaught, which will have Gargaros charging at you like a bull, turning his entire, massive model into a hitbox. This attack is almost impossible to avoid, especially if you're fighting him on Flower Road. Before using Onislaught, Gargaros will always "lock on" to someone, and charge at them after a bit of starting lag. It doesn't deal a ton of damage, but it can be incredibly annoying to try and deal with. He also loves to spam it, so you'll always want to be aware of where Gargaros is. Of course, there's a bit more here. After using Onislaught a few times, without warning he will follow up with an Onislaught that combos into multiple other ones, leaving him as a massive, fast hitbox that can cover the arena in seconds. After using this maneuver, Gargaros will become tired, and you can attack him to make him enter his "Chance!" phase.

Gargaros is the most basic of the three Oni, fitting since he's the first one. This doesn't mean he's a pushover, despite having a lot of easy to avoid attacks. Onislaught can tear through multiple party members' health bars, and its near unavoidability doesn't help this. The fight is about dealing damage as fast as possible, and taking every opportunity to take advantage of his chance phase.


Ogralus
https://i.imgur.com/RkGybTi.png
"A twin horned blue Oni that appears in the dreams of children the night after they tell a lie. Only those who come clean can escape! Honesty is the only way to escape this nightmare!"

Ogralus is the second Oni, this time a blue one. Ogralus' Overworld phase is nearly the exact same to Gargaros', with the change of Incinerate being replaced by Waterfall. Waterfall is a far more annoying move, as it will either have Ogralus drop 4 streams of water in a square pattern around himself, or have him create two in a line either vertically or horizontally, usually within a gap between the two waterfalls. The waterfalls stick around for a few seconds and their hitboxes remain active during this period. Other than this, he retains Iron Swing and Crash Landing, and can still inflict the Oni Bomb effect, though this time they're blue instead of red.

Ogralus' Arenas consist of the Special Sea Ring, Shoten Temple, and Mt. Middleton. We'll talk about the first two later, and we've already covered Middleton, so we can just move on to talking about Ogralus' Arena fight. This is a completely different beast from Gargaros, despite still retaining Iron Swing and Crash Landing. Ogralus will barely move, only changing where he is on the stage by leaping off-screen and then falling back in a new area. He remains invulnerable until the animation finishes, meaning he has a lot of periods where you just can't hurt him.

He can still chase after you to perform Iron Swing, however, and he'll use Crash Landing a lot more often than Gargaros did. Waterfall gets a similar change to Incinerate, becoming much larger, but still retaining the same pattern. it's even more annoying to deal with in this case, as he will absolutely spam it, leaving no areas away or near Ogralus safe. The waterfalls will also leave behind a puddle of water that doesn't do anything and is purely cosmetic... for now.

Ogralus doesn't retain any of Gargaros' Arena attacks, but gets two new attacks. Soap Bubble and Iron Frost, which is his Soultimate. Like with Gargaros, we'll cover his Soultimate first because it has less to do with his overall strategy. Iron Frost is, for the most part, the exact same as Iron Anger, with Ogralus leaping up and then slamming his club down with a very easy to avoid hitbox. However, a big change happens here, that being a water tornado that is spawned at the very end of the hitbox. It starts out small, but quickly grows giant sized, and remains on the stage for like, a goddamn minute. With this and his spamming of Waterfall, the arena cane become incredibly cramped.

Soap Bubble, however, is by far Ogralus' most used attack. It has him spitting out a soap bubble, which will immediately target oen of the party and continue chasing after them for a few seconds. The bubbles pop eventually, and can be taken out by an attack as well. Being hit by one will cause you to take minor damage, and give you the slippery effect that Sproink and Hoggles could give you with Hogwash. Only you don't have anywhere to wash it off... except you totally do, those puddles the waterfalls leave behind can very easily clean you up.

Near the end of the fight, Ogralus will start spitting out bubbles with bombs inside of them. When one pops, the bomb will drop to the ground, and almost instantly explode. Obviously, you don't want one near you. If you pop one while its near Ogralus, then the bomb will go off and stun him, putting him into "Chance!" mode and finally giving you some respite.

While Gargaros was about brute force, Ogralus is all about tenacity. Even high level players can have some difficulty, as a single wrong move can result in a party wipe due to how frequent and powerful his attacks are. This fight is probably the closest the game gets to being an outright bullet hell, as Ogralus has so many different ways of locking you in and keeping on your toys. Ranged characters are supremely recommended here.


Orcanos
https://i.imgur.com/oMUHvKh.png
"A terrifying black Oni with twisted horns that enters the dreams of lazy children and spanks them with his massive bat. If you don't want to get a rude awakening you'd better make sure you do all your homework!"

Orcanos is our final Oni, and he's black to show off how dangerous he is. Orcanos is basically the same as Gargaros and Ogralus in the overworld phase, with him having Iron Swing and Crash Landing. His unique attribute here is that he can use his Soultimate Move, Nightmare Beat, during it as well, making him one of the few bosses that can pull something like this off. Unfortunately, Nightmare Beat is functionally the same as Iron Anger, meaning that its very easy to dodge. He can still inflict Oni Bombs on players too, of course. Orcanos is actually rather pathetic at this stage.

That changes when you get to one of Orcanos' Arenas, either Old Elementary Yard, Special Sea Ring, or the Infinite Inferno. At the start, Orcanos only has a few attacks, those being Iron Swing, Nightmare Beat, Onislaught, Crash Landing, and a new attack called Iron Tornado. The returning attacks all work like they did for Gargaros, except that Orcanos can't use the multi-charge version of Onislaught. There isn't much to be worried about here... except for Iron Tornado.

Iron Tornado has Orcanos spin around rapidly with his club out, creating a black wind around himself. This turns Orcanos into an absolutely massive hitbox, and unlike Onislaught this deals multiple hits, and is completely capable of locking a player into it until it ends. A single use of Iron Tornado is enough to drain a party member's health completely, even at higher levels. To add insult to injury, at the end of the attack Orcanos will throw the tornado he's created as a projectile, potentially dealing even more damage.

His second new attack is Cluster Boom. Four bombs will appear in a square pattern around Orcanos, and then drop to the ground and explode. This takes the place of Incinerate and Waterfall, but will only show up late into the fight. It's strong, but it has enough room around it to easily dodge. Its kind of worse than either of those two attacks in every way, but at least its amusing.

When he gets to around 1/3rd of his health, Orcanos will do something unique- use his second Soultimate Move, War Paint. Okay I'm not sure if this is a Soultimate, but I have nothing else to really call it. This move happens once, and causes Orcanos to gain a white pattern across his body. This boosts his attack, speed, and spirit (special attack, basically) for a long while. This is the most dangerous part of the fight, especially if he decides to use Iron Tornado. If you get unlucky and all four of your party members end up up taking a War Paint Iron Tornado, you're done. Fortunately, once Orcanos is done with this, he will return to normal and be dazed, allowing you to put him into "Chance!" mode and quickly finish him off. This chance mode can only be activated once, however.

Orcanos is basically a beefier Gargaros, with most of the same attacks, plus some things to make him even more dangerous. That said, the strategy here is the same as Gargaros as well- kill him before he kills you, and do it quickly. War Paint can put a dampener on this, but the only move you really need to worry about is Iron Tornado.