Native Dancer boss battle guide: tips, tricks, and strategies — No More Heroes 3

In Polygon’s No More Heroes 3 boss battle guide, we’ll show you how to defeat Native Dancer. We’ll demystify each phase of this mysterious battle by explaining each of the boss’s attacks, showing you how to avoid taking damage, and sharing general tips, tricks, and strategies.

Native Dancer: Hide and seek

After Native Dancer unceremoniously defeats Black Knight Direction in front of your eyes, you’ll have a new opponent for your eighth-ranked battle. The mystery fighter runs around the small town where your boss battle place and you must find him. Each time you do, he gives you a new skill to round out your Death Glove skills:

• Death Slow makes everything within its area of effect slower.
• Death Rain creates a shower of attacks on enemies inside a small range.
• Death Force grabs a single enemy and tosses them.

With these new talents in hand, it’s time to face off against this mysterious foe.

Native Dancer: Phase 1

Grid View

• Image: Grasshopper Manufacture via Polygon
• Image: Grasshopper Manufacture via Polygon
• Image: Grasshopper Manufacture via Polygon

During the first phase of the Native Dancer boss battle in No More Heroes 3, your opponent performs a series of fast melee attacks. His most common attack is a simple sword combo that you can block or dodge.

The boss also has a set of special moves he does periodically:

1. The first is a combo that ends with a rising slash.
2. If you see Native Dancer building energy with a swirl of wind around him, watch out. After charging up energy, he performs a powerful dash attack.
3. His final special move during this phase is a wall run up the tower in the center of the battlefield. After running up a few feet, he dashes from the tower at you with a single flash.

Since Native Dancer’s melee attacks are easy enough to telegraph, perform a perfect dodge against them and punish him.

One of Native Dancer’s few long-range attacks is an exploding kunai that he throws after dashing backward. Get away from the projectiles before they explode, and then rush in and counterattack.

Native Dancer: Phase 2

Image: Grasshopper Manufacture via Polygon

In the second phase of the Native Dancer boss battle in No More Heroes 3, your enemy does the same moves, but with more intensity.

The boss upgrades his projectile attack with three exploding kunai this time. He also has an upgraded move he sometimes performs after he wall runs. Instead of dashing at you from the tower, he jumps in the air, flips a few times, then does a ground pound that has a large area of effect. Don’t try and dodge or block this attack. It’s better to just run away from it to create distance.

Native Dancer now casts an ability called Night Reaper Mode which creates two clones of him. These doppelgangers have much less health than the boss but perform the same attacks, so defeat them quickly.

Image: Grasshopper Manufacture via Polygon

Use the new abilities Native Dancer gave you to gain the upper hand on the three attackers. Death Slow is great if all of them corner you. You can use the skill’s ability to slow down your enemies to focus on the weaker clones first. Death Rain will passively damage the boss and his clones if they step into the ability’s area of effect.

You can use Death Kick and Death Throw to scatter the enemies across the battlefield so you can isolate a target. Getting overwhelmed by three Native Dancers can be difficult to manage, so don’t be afraid to run away and create distance.