Mission 20: La Vita Nuova

One last boss fight…

Boss Fight: Sanctus Diabolica

Sanctus has become even more of a demon than he was before. Although this fight is mechanically much the same as the first fight against Sanctus, there are some new twists.

Strategy

Video Walk-through

When everything's clicking for you, Sanctus will go down after a lengthy fight.

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Nothing different here: you need to get close to Sanctus and penetrate his shell, which will, again, go from whole to half to nonexistent. When Sanctus drops to the ground, you can attack him for a bit before using a Buster supercombo to deal heavy damage to him. The main problem here is that Sanctus has somehow managed to get much more annoying in the time he's spent inside Savior. Like we said, it's basically the same fight, but you can expect a fairly tougher time with it.

At the outset, the strategy from before will work well: wait for his "The Savior is coming!" speech to end, and Sanctus will have his shield up. After that, you can try to Grim Grip his little orbs, get close, and whack him with your mid-air combo. Breaking the outer shell will usually be fairly easy; it's what happens afterwards that will start to cause you problems.

Give him enough time, and Sanctus will regenerate his shield. Try not to let that happen.

First off, the "Burn!" shout and attendant fireballs will still annoy the bojangles out of you; it's in your best interest to simply avoid Sanctus when he cries this out. New annoyances, however, include his ability to teleport, which he'll usually do by disappearing from midair and appearing on the ground near you before attacking. If you can dodge this attack, you can counterattack while he remains on the ground and send him straight to Busterville, but it can be tricky to get the timing down, since he disappears fairly quickly after he swings at you.

Also, Sanctus will periodically raise his sword up and use it as a shield. He can do this on the ground or in the air, but will usually do it in the air. This will reflect all attacks that come his way, making further progress on his shield pretty much impossible. However, if you jump near him and use a straightforward Buster on him, the sword will drop, allowing you to jump back up and hit him with your sword to move on to the supercombo stage. You will probably have to jump from the ground to hit the initial Buster; using Snatch will usually fling you over Sanctus' head.

Second Phase

Eventually you will wear Sanctus down to the point where he is at the last third or so of his life bar. After destroying the outer shell, he will appear from beneath the ground in a cloud of red tentacles, yelling at you about he's going to show you the power of his sword. Indeed he does at this point, filling his sword with power and repeatedly attempting to run you through with it. Luckily for you, a simple roll dodge will be able to move you out of the way. You have enough time to roll dodge away from these strikes if you time it so that you dodge just before the sword strike starts coming your way, or even a bit afterwards, but if you wait too long, you will get hit, and it'll hurt. You'll need to learn the timing on these before you can dodge them regularly, since the last one will take a bit longer to come your way than the flurry that precedes it.

Get ready to dodge out of the way here!

When the last sword strike comes your way, Sanctus will stand on the ground for a second, then jump into the air and regenerate his shield. When you see the final strike being charged up, walk backwards as you prepare to dodge it so that Sanctus will wind up near you after you dodge. You can attempt to strike him with sword blows on the ground if you wound up fairly close to him, but otherwise, simply jump up next to him and hit him in midair before he has a chance to regen the shield. That will drop him to the ground, allowing you to perform another supercombo.

We're not going to lie: this fight can be really annoying, especially if Sanctus chooses to send out those fireballs more often than you can deal with them. They don't deal a huge amount of damage, but are frustration incarnate to deal with. Eventually, though, and perhaps after a few tries, things will click and Sanctus Diabolica will go down.

Boss Fight: False Savior

Video Walk-through

Three punches, and the game is over

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After a couple of cutscenes, it will be Nero versus the False Savior for all the marbles. Luckily for you, this is a short fight. Keep in mind that you will carry over the amount of health you had from when you ended the fight with Sanctus. If you don't have very much of it, activate Devil Trigger or use a healing item.

At any rate, you need to use your Buster here on both of False Savior's hands. He'll attack with his right hand first, pounding it into the ground on top of you. You can dodge this by rolling away to your left just before it hits. Do so, then turn around and use Buster on the fist before it raises up off the ground. After that happens, he'll rear back with his left hand and swing it across your little area. You need to hit this fist in mid-swing as it comes your way. It can be difficult to time this, but if you double-jump as the elbow hits its farthest point away from you, then use Buster in mid-air, you should connect. You'll probably need to try it a few times before you pull it off.

Hitting this second hand as it swings will require some delicate timing.

When the head of the False Savior comes down, use Buster on it to finish it off and end the game. Congratulations! Note that there's a section that plays over the end credits where you have to protect Kyrie from rampaging Scarecrows. Stand near Kyrie and start Snatching the enemies towards you, then repelling them with Streak. If you can prevent her from getting hit for 90 seconds, you'll witness an extra cutscene featuring Dante, Trish, and Lady after the end credits.