To cherry Bushido Ball, you need to win against five opponents without losing as any character. But after doing it twice with Yamada, I decided I wanted to play it more so I started trying cherry with other characters. After many hours of pain and suffering (and fun, of course) I’ve done it!

During this challenges, I’ve mastered these martial arts:

• “Dash attack”, performed by attacking right after a dash. Highly accelerates a ball, giving it a weird trajectory too. Trivializes early opponents, later opponents won’t be impressed. Rather inefficient on Chiyome. Yamada has something similar with his side attacks.

• “Block”, performed by pressing “left” (away from your opponent) and attacking at the same time. Resets ball’s movement and hurls it very high, above your opponent. With the right timing, you can stun them and thus force a win. Use this art whenever you feel overwhelmed.

Also, there are two special abilities that use a resource that I call “bushidos” (these boxes that appear every second successful hit):

• “Double-tap ability”, or simply 2tap, performed by pressing attack button twice in quick succession. Costs a small bushido. The effect differs for each character so I will discuss them in the character section. Key for winning this game.

• “Charged ability”, performed by holding down attack button until at least one full bushido is charged. The amount of bushidos charged improve the ability’s effect. Always expend only one full bushido. Similarly to 2tap, it depends on who you’re playing as. A bit less important for winning.

Now, the characters, sorted by how much I enjoyed playing them:

• Yamada, or the absolute GOAT of this game. Slow, can’t dash sideways, his attack is very narrow and his charged ability is fairly weak. Benefits? His 2tap. The bombs he spawns can and will confuse opponents at any difficulty level. His side attacks are very strong though do depend on your reaction speed a lot. Unlike other characters, Yamada has one strategy that’s effective against any opponent: position yourself at the center of the arena, reflect the ball and spam bombs.

• Ayumi, or what if Yamada but fast and cute. She’s fast, has good attack swing, can spam a strong 2tap! The main thing that holds her back is that her traps are less efficient than Yamada’s bombs AND can be used against you! Her playstyle is that of a mastermind, manipulating the arena until her opponent can’t keep up. (What a delicate way to say that you must spam 2tap and hope it’ll be enough…)

• Kotaro, because if you can’t defeat them - join them! He got me my first win because, when I played this game as other characters, this hell of an opponent absolutely destroyed me. Fun fact: Kotaro’s charged attack is so fast it sometimes can dodge a well-timed Tomoe’s chain. It’s insane. He has many advantages: good attack swing, great 2tap, OP charged ability… but his main draw, the reason why he’s the strongest in my mind is that you don’t have to fight yourself. Not having to fight Kotaro is OP.

• Raizo, or “why did they make this?”. I refer to his 2tap. Why? It’s entire thing is that it’s unfair. It’s good for forcing wins and weak for anything else. The worst thing is, this character doesn’t have that many strengths to begin with! The only two good things about him are that he’s really good at dash attacking and his 2tap. And as I said already, dash attacks are rather bad against later opponents.

• Tomoe, how do I dare to put her so low!! Don’t get me wrong - she is strong. She has the best attack swing in the game after all. Her dash attacks lack the raw speed of Raizo’s but it’s compensated by giving the ball really weird trajectory (because of the attack’s angle). As you have undoubtedly noticed already, I’m a big fan of 2tap abilities, and Tomoe… doesn’t have a good offensive 2tap. Her chain is a nice defensive tool but it sucks at actually winning. And you end up stacking on bushidos in hope that your charged attack will get through this time (and it doesn’t happen that often…)

• Chiyome, my final boss! Terrible attack swing, the lowest attack power, and a teleport instead of a dash which might seem like an advantage but it’s actually a huge downgrade. You see, when you dash, you often will smash into the ball on your way. But it won’t happen when you teleport. Yes, she leaves a tree stump in her initial position and it does help a little bit but it’s not even nearly enough to offset the issue. So how have I won as Chiyome? Good old 2tap :) Kunai is sooo strong, it can carry Chiyome through the entire tournament as long as you use it intelligently. Yes, I turned on my brain instead of spamming 2tap at every opportunity - what an occurrence!

So that’s all I got to say about this game. It was incredibly fun! Hopefully this write-up will be entertaining to someone, or maybe even helpful :O