All Boss Phase Transitions Ranked - Cuphead DLC

one of my favorite features of cuphead is not just the amazing animation but also the creative ways mbhr uses said animation to design amazing transformations for the bosses which helps signal a change between their phases i still remember the first time i saw hildeberg hit her final face i nearly dropped the controller or when cagney switches from a happy dancing flower into the evil demon weed we all know he truly is sexy medusa loses her head oh no the devil loses his skin and werner loses to a cat it's not just the animations though it's the concepts behind them the inside jokes mdhr can make a boss have a personality from just the visuals which is a skill that so many developers lack or just don't understand look if you want an actual boss ranking on movesets there are a dozen different videos doing that for this dlc so i wanted to try and get out of my comfort zone and instead rank each of the different boss face transitions in the last course because each boss has multiple phases rather than doing it from like f tier to s tier in a row i will just go boss by boss and rank the transitions as they happen to avoid both confusing you the viewer by constantly jumping from boss to boss but also to save my brain from dying i will also note these rankings are purely subjective and even somewhat arbitrary and they come from no authority i don't have a background in animation or anything it is just ranked based off of what i enjoy about them so feel free to comment your ranks below i'm actually going to start with the secret boss because it only has the one phase context does matter a little and this fight was originally going to be a phase in the final devil fight this would probably explain why there isn't an intro animation really that only leaves us with one thing to rank which is the knockout animation are we really gonna rank those when else are we gonna be able to talk about them like i said context matters and if this was originally a phase in the devil fight it would probably have happened right after the devil jumped out of his own skin he would go down the hole face the two sides of the devil and when you beat them they would get sucked back into the skeleton and we would get the close-up phase of the devil fight something cool to note is how terrified the demon looks when it realizes it's going back into the devil while the angel has a scared but kind of accepting look like saying a quick prayer before it happens i am loving digging deeper into these boss's lore and stuff so check out the original video if you haven't and keep an eye out for the part two one given the context of this fight and how it was just a single phase they turned into a fight probably near the end of the dlc development it might seem a bit unfair but i will still place it in the a tier because of the implication let's move on to glumstone man this dlc is funny he starts out as a stone mountain so i guess he slept for so long that this happened the gnomes literally have a gold mine running inside of him anyways a gnome hits his gold tooth with a pickaxe which would give anybody a rude awakening hilarious intro funny animations s tier the phase 1 transition is also funny with glomstone getting really pissed off and attempting to tear himself free from the stones holding his beard down this facial expression is exactly what someone who's attempting to pull their own beard off would make and instantly having bandages underneath is a pretty good touch another s tier phase two is decent as glum stone breaks the rock you are on and opens that mouth wide those are some scary hippo looking teeth it's a funny animation but very short and there isn't really anything going on once you get swallowed a tier the knockout animation is also just a tier although i will say the sound it makes is pretty off-putting mortimer freeze aka the ice king from adventure time y'all hitting on me has some of my favorite character designs in the entire game saying that the intro is also just an a tier we do get a look at mortimer's freakishly long legs as he comes off the throne and does a little skating flourish to pick up his hat the first transition is kinda eerie as mortimer rings a bell and all the snow cultists raise their arms and some get these really creepy smiles on their faces a giant snow corpse hanging from the ceiling by chains is lowered and mortimer goes inside of it and it can either turn into a fridge or charge you it's surprising unsettling and it's just the star because the second transformation has the snow giant get darth mauled and mortimer gets sent into the atmosphere where he comes down from the sky as a snowflake and does a little dance the whole theme of this fight is really cool so if you want to hear more about it you should subscribe i have an entire video coming out soon on this very cool boss i would actually give this transition an s tier just because of how gorgeous it is the arena changes the expressions it makes yes to all the knockout animation is fun the snowflake melts away and instead of the usual loud explosions we just get mortimer shivering with a thermometer in his mouth and an ice pack on the head s tier i'm gonna give an a to the bootlegger boogie intro we see the cast of the first two phases including the brains of the operation discursed snail the first transition is actually really fun for me it always seems to happen right when this excellent song gets snappy the spider has had enough and pulls on a rope which lowers the light bug down animation is quality but i just like how snappy this feels as tier i have explained in previous videos that the anteater popping onto the scene was a huge nostalgia away from me plus the little hat tip is cute this one is an ss tier just so good and the fight isn't even done because of course we get everyone's ss to your favorite fake knockout the fact that webs are holding it down we have some bootleg workers trying to keep it open and the snail giving us its best knockout impersonation this isn't even taking into account the amount of people that actually got duped by this what a fun joke phase plus the anteater collapsing looks great and then we get this damn snail i survived this with one hp the first time it happened so i got to have a reel thought you could pull one over on me eh moment and then we get the a to your knockout animation which is just the anteater giving the snail a wild ride [Music] the howling aces is just a jaw-dropping experience from the beginning to the end from the way the landscape screeches past the constant planes flying in and out of visibility the fact that canteen hughes is helping you the hot sexy dog lady what this fight is just ss all the way through probably mine and many people's favorite visually in the entire game the first transition is hilarious with a bunch of puppies ejecting from the exploding plane leaving the bulldog to go smash into the landscape miles behind you no really do you see a parachute oh no no knockout for that guy rip the chinu transition is great as it swoops in and grabs the camera although for the secret phase it chomps down on some puppies beforehand the knockout animations are also fun with the normal having sexy dog ladies shocked that you would even do something like this and the secret death animation being pure chaos is that chinook just randomly loses a tooth ss tier all the way through great boss theme transformations just everything [Music] esther winchester is just good humor we start out with a saloon on wheels and can see a wanted poster for this evil cow right before she bursts out of the second story window setting up the western theme perfectly with this music the next transformation is where it starts getting crazy as esther just opens the top of the saloon sticks her tongue out at you pulls out a vacuum cleaner and proceeds to just suck up that entire saloon what a troublemaker look she even walks on her spurs edgy punk the third phase transition actually got me killed the first time it happened i don't know i should have expected but i had a good laugh at this one the vacuum overcharges and sucks esther in and then reveals itself to be an mdhr slow cooker which explodes to an ester made entirely of beef frank staring at herself in horror it's so messed up but so funny in all the right cartoonish ways ss-tier for sure we then see in the next one esther gets sucked into the mdhr prairie dog's distribution can which starts firing her franks at us this one is really just an s tier because compared to the others it's really simple and more of a continuation of the same still great joke after defeat we see a bunch of frank angels playing banjos ascending to the astral plane from the can which has a kind of bullet hole shaped in it my personal favorite plane fight and just great themes and transformations all around finally we get to the final boss of the dlc chef saltbaker himself they really did go all out here there are plenty of great videos on the different animation references and inspirations so i won't go into too much detail on those i also did an entire video on the story of saltbager which you might have already seen the build up to the reveal and fight is great and the intro is a sinister saltbaker do a little prep motion before he begins to slaughter the ingredients the first transition has cell baker slamming the table before popping a shroom and scooping you up exploding in size and doing a finger snap there is a reason this is on everyone's thumbnails just a fantastic example of why mdhr is so loved you can see the amount of work and effort they put into this stuff the next transformation is really evocative as salt baker breaks apart the screen goes away and then we see this like post-apocalyptic end-of-the-world type visuals with the broken baker in the background lying in mounds of his own salt and the remains of the bakery also the skybox animation is dare i say chef's kiss the final phase has a salt form of the baker shatter the remains of the shaker while his heart rises from where it was buried and then twin salt nato's surround us emerging from where the floor drops away we get a pretty solid knock on animation nothing out of the norm happening except some triumphant music yeah they really put a lot of work into this fight not much to say past what has already been said another ss set of animations i don't really have much to say about the chess piece sets a bunch of pretty standard knockout animations the rook daydreaming about what looks like a betty boop inspired guillotine is pretty great and the rook knockout has him losing and holding his own head looks like the king married a gold digger so a bunch of little robin hood chads are here to help you out she also loses her head in the knockout two for two you sly really there's just a lot of losing heads in these chest piece fights the king is playing us for fools look at the slaughter mdhr really outdid themselves on this dlc it is easy to see why it takes them so long to finish a product they don't cut corners and they give the project the time it needs there is a joke or meta commentary somewhere in here about how aaa studios and executives should learn a lesson here but we all know that won't ever happen so what's the use buy and play indie games instead there are just too many good ones out that you can enjoy right now and so many amazing looking ones that we'll release in the future thanks for watching and if you enjoyed the video please hit the like button it does help you

Channel: Pogobro

Views: 373,988

Keywords: chef saltbaker, cuphead dlc lore, cuphead dlc ranking, cuphead dlc animation, cuphead dlc final boss lore, cuphead, cuphead esther, cuphead howling aces, cuphead bootleg, cuphead moonshine

Id: j6s15MiXT48

Length: 10min 14sec (614 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 20 2022