5 Tips to Save the Mexiverse in Guacamelee! 2

When the Mexiverse is on the brink of collapse, it's gonna take one spicy luchador to pound it back into shape. You'll have to be fast, strong, and vaguely chicken-flavored to save the Darkest Timeline. Here's 5 tips for Guacamelee! 2 to get you in fighting shape.

5 Tips to Save the Mexiverse in Guacamelee! 2
Good ol’ Juan the agave farmer. He’s got a pretty good life; wonderful wife and kids, a nice home, and local renown for stopping a megalomaniacal demon. But this isn’t exactly Juan’s story anymore. No, this is the tale of a world where Juan failed in his first adventure, and the ramifications that resulted. He (“he” meaning “you”) is gonna have to bust out every trick in the big book of lucha libre to save the Mexiverse from total collapse. Here’s 5 tips for Guacamelee! 2 to help you bring a little light to the Darkest Timeline.

1. HONE THOSE SKILLS!

The first and most obvious addition to the Guacamelee! formula this game introduces are the Skill Trainers. In the first couple of hours, you’ll encounter a handful of individuals in towns that give Juan advice on how to improve his skills. After talking with these folks, you’ll unlock their respective skill trees in the Skills menu. Spend a little money and maybe meet a few criteria, and you’ll unlock all sorts of bonuses like health and stamina upgrades, stronger attacks, and new grappling techniques. You can upgrade any way you like if you’ve got the cash for it, but you’ll need every other skill on a tree to unlock its ultimate skill, so might have to commit for a while if you really want it.

5 Tips to Save the Mexiverse in Guacamelee! 2. Incoming thorny unpleasantness.

2. BUILD THAT HIT COUNT!

It’s always fun to build up a high hit count for posterity’s sake, but there’s also a practical reason this time around. Many abilities on Flame Face’s skill tree revolve around building up your combo. Unlock them, and you’ll earn gold bonuses and gold multipliers, reduce the stamina cost of your special moves, or even eliminate the stamina costs altogether, provided you can reach a certain hit count. Remember, defensive actions like dodging also count towards your combo, so you’ll want to really monitor the fight so you don’t take a hit and lose it. Though, there’s another upgrade that makes it so you don’t lose your combo until you take three hits, so if you’re having trouble, pick that up.

5 Tips to Save the Mexiverse in Guacamelee! 2. Don't pick fights with chickens, you won't win.

3. EMBRACE YOUR INNER POLLO!

In the first game, Juan’s chicken form was mostly useless. It moved a bit faster, and could get him into tight spaces, Morph Ball-style, but that’s about it. The first time, however, the chicken form was a curse. This time, Juan adopts the mantle of Pollo Power by choice, and becomes all the stronger for it. In your chicken form, you can still fight more-or-less like normal, with a basic combo and grapple attacks. Your hits are a little weaker, but they come out much faster, and you have a smaller hitbox. While you can’t perform your usual special moves like the Rooster Uppercut, the chicken form has its own special moves like the Chicken Shot, which can fill the same general niche. The chicken form also retains most of Juan’s movement skills like rolling and wall-jumping, so you can, theoretically, win any fight in either form.

4. PRACTICE THOSE FAST SWAPS!

In the later stages of the first game, jumping puzzles requiring you to swap between the land of the living and the land of the dead mid-flight were fairly common. This mechanic has returned, but with an extra wrinkle: there may be times where you’ll need to both flip dimensions and switch to chicken form in a single, snap action. This can be tricky, because you’ll need to watch for openings and signals for two kinds of moves, which can very easily make you go cross-eyed. Practice fast-swapping whenever you get a minute. For a basic exercise, start a combo as Juan, continue it in chicken form, and finish it as Juan, all while flipping dimensions. Your thumbs and eyeballs will appreciate the effort later on.

5 Tips to Save the Mexiverse in Guacamelee! 2. "Summon your eagle powers!"

5. BE PATIENT!

It’s tempting to go running off in search of treasure whenever you get a whiff of it. There is definitely no shortage of secrets to uncover, increasing gradually as you progress and unlock more abilities. However, don’t feel like you need to rush back through a map you just explored right after obtaining a new ability. The map keeps track of unexplored areas with colored dots corresponding to unbroken special ability blocks. They’ll be your reminder, so just keep on progressing until you have all of the skills you need. It’ll all still be there when you’re ready for it. If you go rushing into a mini-dungeon half-cocked, you may inadvertently dead-end yourself in an area requiring a power you don’t have yet. It’s demoralizing to waste all that time on something you can’t even obtain yet, to say the least.

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