Items: Energy Oil(x2), Power Oil(x2), Shortcake(x2)
The area at the northernmost section of the map is completely optional and completely brutal. Your only real reward if you attempt it and come away successful is the swell of pride you'll feel welling up in your chest. Still interested? Okay!
When you enter, you're on a long path that winds its way over an orange glow (lava, probably) far below. There's one small pit to jump, but that's easily done by now. You'll reach double doors at the far end of the chamber. Go ahead and pass through them.
In this next room, there's the carcass of what looks like an old dinosaur. The path ahead is quite narrow, but go ahead and start over the bones. This is going to be a painful revelation, but the bones crumble away as you put your weight on them. They're awfully narrow in the first place, so this doesn't help matters any. You have to rush out to the center area, where there's a long bone that spreads the width of the cavern. That's a safe place to stop and get your bearings, and also allows you to access three gifts to the right and three to the left, if you can walk over to grab them without falling into the lava. The gift boxes on the right contain POWER OIL, ENERGY OIL and SHORTCAKE. On the left are ENERGY OIL, POWER OIL and SHORTCAKE. If you've brought all of that stuff with you already, the gift boxes do no good except toward your level ranking.
If you cross the bones and reach the other side of the lava lake, you'll find another pair of double doors that leads into a battle chamber. When you jump down from the ledge ahead, you'll face a new monster. His name is Black Bean.
Boss Battle: Black Bean
This battle will kick your butt and I really don't know how else to say it. I haven't been able to completely win it, though I do manage to get his health down pretty low. Then he uses an instant kill move that I haven't found a way to avoid. Pointers would be appreciated.
When the battle starts, Black Bean and you will be alone in the arena. It's a pretty straight-forward battle at this point. Just move in and use as many of your launch attacks as you can. Keep his life meter draining and you'll get him down a fair bit before he even knows what happened. Then he'll start dropping little balls of aura as he dashes around. Keep avoiding those while you continue to hammer on your little opponent.
When he's taken enough damage like that, he'll begin to split into clones. These clones don't all take damage that will cause his life meter to shrink. The best thing you can do is have them all attack you from the sides, at which point your Drill Tornado attacks will be your friend. You can do pretty hefty damage if you hit Black Bean with your most powerful attacks at this point.
While Black Bean is split into multiple images, he has a few attacks. Mostly he just fires projectiles of one sort or another. You can dash guard to avoid those and sneak in some hits of your own when you get the chance. When the three Black Bean figures converge on the center of the arena and start to run in fast circles, you'll hear a hum as a pillar of aura slowly spreads. Quickly run to the edge of the arena when you see or hear this happening, and you'll find some bat enemies. You can use them as stepstools to climb above the impending blast. Don't fowl up here or you'll drop and take damage. It's not severe damage, but it's damage you don't need.
When the blast is gone, the bats also will vanish and you can drop to the arena to continue your pounding. When you get his life meter down to around 1/3, Black Bean will declare that he is now made. Rings will soon appear in the cavern floor and as you rush to avoid them, a huge blast will shake the entire cavern. It instant kills me. Let me know if you have better luck and find a way to avoid it.
Edit:
Over on Twitter,
PersepolisBand contacted us with the following advice: "After he shoots the blue lasers, he charges up the 'big one'. He sends out gold rings before the big explosion. Between the 3rd and 4th, use Dragon Flame (Dash Guard + Spin Attack). When you use this you are immortal for a second. Just long enough to dodge Neo Galaxy (it works probably 75% of the time, depending on the player's timing)."
Once you defeat Black Bean, something presumably happens. I've heard it's nothing significant and that there are no material rewards for victory. I wouldn't know, since I've not attained it. When Black Bean is defeated, it's time to go ahead and face the game's final encounters so that you can see how everything ends.
NEXT: Great Fang
