Guide for Cuphead - Cala Maria

Cala Maria is a fun, but infuriating fight. I can't stress enough how much RNG there is to attack order and timing that can easily take you from an A-rank down to a defeat. I will try to mitigate them as best as possible, but it is possible that it will take additional attempts to get the desired outcome.

Phases

The 3 phases for Cala actually increase in simplicity of the descriptions. Each phase has some RNG however that can turn runs into nightmares when you might be aiming for a particular ranking.

Phase 1

During Phase 1, Cala will rely mostly on undersea friends to try and kill you. These will usually mix and match. Certain pairings can be a lot more troublesome than others. I divide these into the left side problems and right side problems.

Left Side

The left side will focus on enemies coming up from the water. There are 3 to watch for:

1. Sea-Horse (heh) - The horse will travel back and forth along the bottom of the screen. It shoots a jet of water straight up. The water doesn't deal damage, but it is a strong current that constantly is moving you to the top of screen.
2. Cannon Turtle - The turtle will do one pass from right in front of Cala along the bottom of the screen until it reaches the other end. During this pass, it will launch mines straight up. These mines detonate around the middle of the screen and fire off small bullets in 8 directions.
3. Sea Urchins - These will arise all across the left side of the screen in random patterns. You can shoot them to deflate/destroy them, but they aren't too difficult to move around. There will be pink ones in the set. These are really your only parryable things in the whole fight.

Right Side

The right is most things that Cala will shoot at you. Once again, there are 3 variations to look for:

1. Red Fish - She will come out of the water holding a red fish. It will shoot a volley of little projectiles. It's not too difficult to dodge them.
2. Yellow Fish - She will come out of the water holding a yellow fish. The yellow fish shoots a homing attack that will track you for a little while. It's not terribly hard to navigate around.
3. Ghost Pirates - She opens her mouth and 3 pirate ghosts will come out of it. The three of them will go straight for you. This is the most annoying of the right side attacks. Paired with any of the three left side attacks can be a huge pain.

In terms of strategy for surviving this phase, I'd highly recommend being skilled in switching between the full size and mini plane. The extra mobility of mini plane will give you a much better chance to dodge the ghosts or other projectiles.

You know you'll be done with this phase when 2 electric eels arise from her sides. You'll then be in phase 2.

Phase 2

In Phase 2, Cala will drop using most of her undersea minions. There are two attacks during this phase.

1) Cala opens her eyes wide and a green light fills the left side of the screen. This green light will turn you to stone. You will need to rapidly tap buttons (I usually went with and ) until you break out.

2) Electric eels will rise up around her and periodically fire off a bunch of small electric balls. You can destroy the eels by shooting them.

On their own, each of these attacks is not too difficult to contend with. Combined, you can begin to take extra and largely unnecessary damage. My best solution here is to actually have a 5-card super saved up. After a bunch of eels get on screen, you will want to activate the super and move in. The blast from the attack will not only deal a bunch of damage to Cala, but also clear out the majority of the eels. This one clearing of the board should be sufficient to get you really close to moving onto to Phase 3.

Phase 3

This phase is where the true trouble of the Medusa vision becomes terrible. After her head breaks away from her body, you will be entering a tunnel. You cannot touch the walls of the tunnel at all.

In addition to the walls, you will need to avoid Green skulls orbs and spike pillars. The green skulls will move up and down slightly while the pillars will be in the middle of the tunnel and static.

By themselves, these won't be too troublesome. What really ramps it up is the Cala herself will still be sending out the stone vision every so often. Getting hit with this is the same as during Phase 2. This can be a bit of RNG if you're aiming for the A-rank.

My best suggestion here is to move past (or try to at least) the pillars or green skulls as soon as they come on screen. After that, you will begin to slide back towards the middle/left side of the screen. The goal here is to give yourself either ample space in front of you to tap out of the stone or be just past it so it doesn't hit you. Even with this, I had major trouble dealing with it at times.There might be a small window right next to Cala to have the shot miss you completely, but it's likely too risky to pull off while maneuvering in the tunnels.

Difficulty

This might be getting old at this point, but there isn't much that changes here.

Simple - On Simple, Cala's fight ends after completing Phase 2. No tunnel problems from Phase 3. The attacks during each phase are less hectic as well.

Regular - Patterns are as described above.

Expert - Frequency of the eye beams seems a little higher and thus more annoying. Even though I found this boss to not be too bad, the increased eye beam use ruined quite a few runs while trying to complete this boss.

A-Rank Tips

For A-ranking Cala, weapon loadout isn't too important (plane levels don't change much here).

In terms of health, I can't stress enough how important being flawless through Phases 1 and 2 are. The RNG of her eye beams causing damage in Phase 3 means you really want to maximize your health up to that point. Is it possible to get an A without a perfect Phase 1 and 2? Yes. But it just becomes a lot harder.

For parries, it comes down to the puffin/urchins in Phase 1. Getting 2 in a single cycle of this attack is reasonable. Cala usually does this attack twice during Phase 1 as well so getting the 3 shouldn't be too difficult. Just keep in mind that your regular bullets can quickly kill one before you parry it.

I used a fully charged Super at the start of Phase 2 for this boss. If you're building your parries, it should easily be there at the start of Phase 2. Using this strategy, I was then able to get close to a second full charge in Phase 3. If not, you can easily use some single cards as well instead. It can be difficult to get up to Cala in Phase 3 to use the full super as well through the tunnel. Personal choice there. I've tried both depending on my mood and found them equally viable.

Videos

Simple

Regular

Expert

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