I was randomly talking about Cuphead with a couple of my friends and remembered that I never completed it so I decided to finally finish it for good. I got the game in late 2020 and played through everything before getting stuck on King Dice around mid 2021 and shelving it for a while. I tried a couple times to try and beat it but gave up until today when I finally managed to beat King Dice and the devil. So i figured I would log it as I technically beat it despite playing most of it years ago.

Cuphead is up there with some of the best Indie games of all time with its incredibly unique art style and creative boss fights. The main attraction is of course the boss fights who all feel really unique and challenging Challenging might be a bit of an understatement actually as this game is actually really hard at time with certain boss fights like King Dice, Grim Matchsticks and Beppi the Clown being some standouts in the difficulty area. Whether its due to the flurry of attacks or the sheer amount of stuff on screen, most of the bosses will slap you around the first few times you try. Despite all that, none of the bosses feel impossible as attack patterns can be learned with enough attempts and after death seeing the progress bar serves as a good motivator to get back in there and finish it off. There are two main types of fights, regular ones and plane fights. The plane fights are quite fun but serve as some of the most challenging fights due to the bullet hell type attacks you have to dodge. There are also 6 run and gun stages which are ok, im not a huge fan of them as they feel quite rushed.

Your attacks can be upgraded using coins obtained from the run and gun stages. These coins can by weapon types and charms to help you. Some are way better than others and you only really need to buy the ones that you are going to use as switching between them isn't really necessary. I personally used the Charge shot type and the Spread shot type alongside the smoke bomb charm as it is insanely OP.

I can't praise this game enough for its visuals and score. Cuphead takes heavy inspiration from the 1920's cartoon animation style called "Rubber Hose". Each stage has a hand draw backdrop that changes when the boss phases change. Each boss looks like something straight out of an old Disney cartoon, alongside Cuphead himself. Each stage is so satisfying to look at I sometimes found myself getting hit as I was too distracted looking at the cool details in the backdrops and boss designs. The score is also phenomenal, every track is a banger. The boss fights go so well with there chosen music its unbelievable. Studio MDHR knocked it out of the park with both visuals and music.

My only complaint about this game is on some bosses the RNG is a bit dodgy. Mostly with the amount of stuff on screen at once, sometimes there is no way to dodge without getting hit. I noticed it particularly while fighting the devil where I would be forced to one side to dodge an attack but have one of the purple demons come from that side and hit me before I can react. Might be a skill issue but I remember some bosses like Grim Matchsticks and Baroness Von BonBon being very RNG orientated and making them more difficult in turn.

Cuphead is one of my favourite Indie games of all time. Its one of the only "hard games" that I have ever been any good at so beating it finally feels like a bit accomplishment lol. I'm currently playing the DLC and will review that once its completed. 100% worth playing.