I know what you’re thinking. “Balan Wonderworld‘s bosses are so easy that babies could probably beat them!” And you’re not wrong! For most of the game, at least. The final boss is different though. You know how every other boss has costume crystals and keys that spawn endlessly in the area? This one doesn’t have that! For this one, you effectively get three lives. If you screw up, you’ll quickly find yourself stressed out, and not because you simply died. Trust me, you want to go about fighting this baddie a certain way.
Once you clear all 12 of Balan Wonderworld‘s other bosses and collect enough Balan statues, the doorway to the final boss will appear. As you’re no doubt aware, his name is Lance and that’s a terrible name for a villain. Upon approaching the door, you’ll be asked to choose what costumes to bring. I’d suggest bringing anything with a ranged attack. The Inky Painter costume works well, but any projectile will do, really. Save for the ones that fire automatically, I mean. The Pumpkin Puncher will also do nicely. The picture shows me bringing Aero Acrobat. Don’t do that. That was a mistake.
When phase one of the fight against Lance kicks off, you’ll have your first chance to hit him. He calls forth four copies and stands amongst them. They then rocket toward you one after another. You’ll be able to tell the real deal, because he’ll leave a pink trail, whereas the others have nothing of the sort. Move left and right to avoid their attacks and keep your eyes on the one with the pink aura. When he comes at you, fire away. It’s worth mentioning that, if you hit him with a jump instead of a melee or ranged attack, knockback is applied. This can easily knock you off the platform. Suffice to say, you don’t want to jump on him.
Why’s everybody makin’ fun of my pants?
If you manage to hit him, he’ll fire a series of beams at you. Just run around in a circle and they won’t hit you. Easy. After that, he’ll summon three waves of enemies. If you let him, anyway. Fight the enemies, but keep an eye out for a purple aura on the ground that appears underneath you. When you see it, move. It gives you plenty of time to avoid damage. A tentacle will show up because Balan Wonderworld is a Japanese game. Lance will then show up, which leaves him vulnerable to attack. After hitting him here, he’ll do the beam attack again. Big whoop. After you hit him a second time, the enemies he summons on the next wave will be different. Their stomps create shockwaves, so watch out.
Just like every other boss in Balan Wonderworld, three strikes and Lance is out. As this game is still Japanese, he turns into a giant dragon and you need to beat him with the power of friendship. No, I’m not joking. In the initial part of his second phase, he will pound his fists and create shockwaves. You’ll be good to go here no matter what, unless you have no costume and you fail to jump over the shockwaves. Then Lance will shoot a beam, but it’s not a real attack. It’ll knock you down and a cutscene will play.
Whichever costumes you had on you will get replaced with Aero Acrobat, Air Cat, and Dusk Butterfly. Lance has three giant eye things show up, so you likely already know what to do here. Using Aero Acrobat is the quickest, as that just means that you have to tap the game’s only button in mid-air near an eye and it’ll get auto-attacked.
The next phase is rougher, because all three available costumes kind of blow. You’ll have the firefighter outfit, the chess piece, and the Invisible Man. As you likely guessed, the latter is useless here. But the other two can’t exactly aim on more than one plane, so you’ll need to get lucky. I prefer the firefighter because you can at least get lucky and hit one of the eyes by timing your shot. But honestly, this phase doesn’t even matter. You can hit him, or you can just hang out and avoid attacks. The next phase will show up regardless.
In Frost Fairy we trust
Finally, you’ll get Frost Fairy, the dolphin, and Inky Painter. The other two barely matter. Especially Inky Painter. If you want to end this fight fast, switch to the dolphin when the phase begins. Lance will drop water tunnels in the arena, even though that’s not an attack and can only help you. You’ll have a brief window to jump into one of these and get shot to the front of the area. Then switch to Frost Fairy and air step right into an eye. If you miss, you’ll have to wait for another turn. If Frost Fairy falls into the abyss and you lose the costume, exit to the title screen and start the fight over. If you simply run out of time, the second go-around for this phase will give you more time to use Frost Fairy to attack the eye.
Now, this is extremely important. Lance uses the real version of that beam attack here and pounds his fists again. But the beam attack burns the ground and touching it after will hurt you. It makes great gameplay sense to use Frost Fairy here, but don’t. If Frost Fairy gets hit, then, as far as I’m aware, it’ll be impossible to win the fight. Either use the dolphin or buy a bit of time with Inky Painter if you must. After this attack ends, Lance will get tired and slam his stupid face into the ground.
All you need to do is use a small part of Lance’s arm on the right to walk up his arm. Then, use Frost Fairy’s air step to jump to the higher space on the arm on the right. Then, once again use air step, but then drop onto the glowing thing on Lance’s head. I don’t see how you could hit this with Inky Painter or the dolphin, so I hope you saved Frost Fairy. If you didn’t, Lance will continue to blink until he recovers, at which point you’ll get kicked back to the hub. And you’ll have to start over from the beginning.
The good news is that, if you followed my instructions, that probably won’t happen. Probably. And just like that, Balan Wonderworld is over and you can sit and be surprised that the developers decided the final boss wouldn’t be a total pushover. Well, that’s it. You’re still here? Read my review then. You’ve clearly got enough time on your hands.
