One Finger Death Punch is a great game, but there's a lot going on all at once and if you can't keep up with the changes you probably won't be able to do well. Every single level will most likely be different than the last one you have played and if you don't know what you're getting into, adapting might be quite difficult so I'm going to talk about all the things that you are going to encounter, from modes and skills, to a couple of tips.


First off, you should know that the game has two different Game Modes which are the Arcade Story Mode and the Survival Mode. First let's go over the Arcade Mode and talk about some of the levels and such.






ARCADE STORY MODE
The Arcade Story Mode sees you going on a long journey through hundreds of battles and different battle types. There are three different difficulty levels which are Student, Master, and GrandMaster and in each one you play the same 200+ levels which get harder in each difficulty. Throughout this mode, you will encounter 14 different types of Round which are as follows.




MOB LEVELS
The Mob Levels are the simplest levels that you can play through, but in most cases can also be the longest. Because they are so simple compared to other levels, Mob Levels usually get evened out by having you face many more enemies. In the first difficulty level of the arcade mode, the number of enemies you face in a Mob Level can vary from 50 to roughly 200 bases on how far into the game you are. Mob Levels are the only levels in which you can encounter and learn about new enemy types, which are usually determined by the color under them and all basic enemy types can appear in any Mob Level. The objective of Mob Levels are to defeat all enemies of that level without dying. You generally start off Mob Levels and most other levels with 10 lives and you lose one each time you are hit and if you have lost all lives, the game is over. Most enemies, except for Brawlers will require anywhere from one to four hits and the button that you press will depend on a combination of their location in relation to you and their color.


Brawlers are special enemies that may require anywhere from 4 to 20 or more hits to kill. As you are fighting a Brawler, the buttons that you need to press will flash across the screen as you are attacking. Sometimes a Free Hit enemy will appear. When you attack these, the game will freeze and you have to hit the enemy the number of times that the screen tells you.


The number of times that you miss an enemy will affect the rank that you receive at the end of a level and if you can go the entire level without getting hit, you will receive a perfect badge on top of that. At the end of each round, you get points which add up to make your Mastery Score. Points are awarded based on your rank and badge, as well as how many enemies you killed, how many items were used and destroyed, and how many enemies you killed in a short amount of time, which spawns various combos. All of these aspects apply to every game mode.


There are two special variations of Mob Levels. The first will pit you against a smaller amount of enemies such as 15 or 30 but will have you start off the level with one or two lives. The other variation is called Multi Round and in the first difficulty, uses 15 enemies. However, you must beat the same 15 enemies four times in order to win, with each set being quicker than the last.


DEFENDER ROUNDS BOMB ROUNDS, AND DAGGER ROUNDS
Defender Rounds, Bomb Rounds, and Dagger Rounds are all very similar to each other. In Defender Rounds, you don't actually move but have your character stand in the middle of the screen as enemies appear on both sides throwing weapons at you. You must hit the corresponding button to knock down the weapons and once you have knocked down all of them you win the level, however you only have one life with these. Dagger Rounds and Bomb rounds work the same way with you standing in the middle of the screen and with enemies appearing on both sides, bur this time you must kill them by throwing Daggers and Bombs at them before they reach you. Like the Defender Rounds, you only get one life for these. With these rounds, you need to be very quick to react because at times there could be 3 or more enemies racing towards you and the slightest mistake could end the game for you.


LIGHT SWORD AND NUNCHAKU ROUNDS
Both of these rounds are quite similar to each other and resemble the basic Mob Levels except that you play using either a sword or nunchucks. These rounds are both usually very fast and all enemies take just one hits aside for the last enemy. In both rounds, the final enemy is a Brawler, one who usually takes a lot of hits to defeat.Both the Light Sword Round and the Nunchaku Round are featured in the Survival Mode as well and in Survival Mode, the speed in which the enemies run after you is based on how much of a kill streak you have and there are no Brawlers in this version.


THUNDERSTORM AND RETRO FILM ROUNDS
Both of these rounds are similar to each other and are like the Mob Levels except that the colors of the screen are different which may make it just a bit harder to play. In the Thunderstorm Round, the entire screen is mostly Blue with the occasional flash of lightning, which for a split second may make it hard to see where enemies are and to react to them. The Retro Film Round features a screen that is gray and in this round all enemies are gray as well as buttons which means that you won't be able to tell what button you need to play just by looking at the color. These are one of the more challenging rounds since you won't always know what button needs to be pressed.


SMASH ROUNDS
Smash Rounds are not concerned with how many enemies you kill but with how many objects you smash. Objects are in the background, not on the main screen, however when you attack an enemy it is possible that the enemy could land in the background temporarily and smash an object that's there. It's possible that an enemy might not land on an object or that when you attack an enemy there simply are no objects there so it's possible that you will need to attack a large amount of enemies before you can even smash one object. On average for the early levels you need to smash about 15 to 20 objects. If objects don't appear fast enough it's also possible that you could fail the level by facing enough enemies to get hit a couple of times.


SPEED ROUND
Speed Rounds are time based rounds and they give you a certain amount of time to beat a certain amount of enemies and these levels can also be quite tough because missing or getting hit, going the wrong way, or doing something else could cost you some time and you really can't afford to lose even a second when you need to kill 90 enemies in just 61 seconds. This kind of a level would be pretty easy if all of the enemies only needed one hit to kill, but the game throws out all enemies at you, including those that need three or four hits and even Brawlers.


SURVIVAL ROUNDS
In the Story Mode you can also find Survival Levels which kind of serve as a way to take a break from the main game and to earn a few extra points and they are completely optional. If you have already done a Survival Round, you can skip past all future Survival Rounds or you can still go through them for the extra points. In these Survival Rounds you are given the win no matter how you perform and you are given 5 lives to work with. These rounds are perfect if you want to get a few extra points or if you want to work on a new skill.


BOSS ROUNDS
Boss Rounds are the big bad rounds of the game where you face off against the strongest enemies you can face. The set of buttons that you need to press will change after each set. First you might need to press Right Right Right, but after you do that the boss might spin around and you need to press Left Left Left. Bosses always have a lot of health and in order to beat these rounds you might need to hit the boss anywhere from 20 to 100 times or even more and as you get deeper into the game you will start facing more than one boss at a time.






SURVIVAL MODE
There are three different kind of Survival levels to choose from, all of which allow the use of skills and add points to your Overall Mastery Score. Survival Mode works the same as the Survival Round in the Arcade Mode but lasts a bit longer because of having more lives and the Nunchuck and Light Sword Rounds also appear here and there after amassing certain amounts of kills. The second Survival Mode is called Blind Survival and is the same as the regular Survival Mode but all of the colors are gone which means you need to already know which enemy gets what button presses. The final Survival Mode is called No Luca No Survival and also works the same way as regular Survival but every now and then a cat will come and fill up half the screen and the only way to get rid of the cat is to move the cursor onto the cat and off the screen but this will only get rid of the cat for a few seconds and this is based on the No Luca No game which is also made by the same developers.






SKILLS
You won't make it too far into the game if you don't know how to use your skills. Some may be very useful while some you may not like, but all of them will help one way or another. When you first start off you are allowed to have 3 skills at any one time but as you start beating the various Arcade difficulty levels, you will start unlocking more spaces. In total there are 21 different skills.

WEAPON RAIN
With this skill after every 35 kills, two weapons will drop from the sky. This seems good if you need a weapon but weapons appear fast enough on their own really and don't enough damage to warrant having an entire skill spot for it.

The following skills all work the same way. You have CLUB MASTER for Clubs, SWORD MASTER for Swords, and STAFF MASTER for Staffs. These three skills allow you to hold each weapon for three times longer once you attack an enemy that is holding that weapon. You also have THREE ARROWS, THREE DAGGERS, and THREE BOMBS, which will award you with an extra two arrows, daggers, or bombs when you kill an enemy who is holding them.

LIGHT EM UP
This skill is activated every 32 kills and what it does is place a large bubble around the player and whenever an enemy steps into this bubble, the player can successfully attack them, regardless of how far away the enemy is. This skill is activated for 10 seconds.

UNARMED MASTER
This skill is activated after 26 kills and works for 10 seconds and like the LIGHT EM UP Skill, it extends the reach of your attacks, but only by a little.

SLOW ENEMIES
This is one of my favorites and it is activated after 30 kills and lasts for 10 seconds. This will decrease the speed of all enemies by 25 percent which gives you some time to breath or time to attack in a suspenseful situation. This is a great skill to have for both Arcade Mode and Survival Mode.

BRAWL MASTER
This skill activated after killing a Brawler and it makes your next Brawl battle 25 percent slower which means the buttons you need to press in a brawl will appear and disappear slower.

FREEZING POINT
This skill activates after 27 kills and when this is active, your attack will freeze all enemies on the side of the screen that you have attacked. Like the SLOW ENEMIES Skill, this is useful if you need some extra time to get out of a bad situation.

DEEP IMPACT
This is another one of my favorite Skills and it activates after 37 kills. This is very useful for both modes because hen you use it, all enemies on the field are killed.

HEAL
Of all the skills, this one is my favorite because it gives you one extra life, though you need to kill 99 enemies in order to unlock it. Even though it's the hardest to obtain, it's a must have, especially in Survival Mode because it's an easy way to get back a free 10 to 20 lives over the course of a full game.

DEFLECT GREY
This skill activates after 85 kills and will deflect one hit from a grey enemy which means that if they hit you, you won't lose a life and none of your combos will end. However this is only for the grey enemies that only take one hit, no other enemies are affected by this skill.

DEFLECT COLOUR
This is like DEFLECT GREY but is the skill if you want to deflect one hit from one of the colored enemies. This one is a bit easier to achieve because you only need 70 kills to activate it.

WEAPON THROWN
This skill will be active after 18 kills and it throws the next weapon that you pick up. I feel this one is a bit useless since most weapons can either be thrown by themselves or would probably do more damage if you hold onto them so I wouldn't suggest using this skill. Ever.

IRON FIST
After 32 kills, this skill will force all enemies on the field to back up a bit and allow a little extra time for you to think over your strategy.

VENOM FIST
This skill activates after 40 kills and is mainly for enemies that take more than 1 hit and lasts for 20 seconds. When this skill is active, all enemies are just a bit slower to react after they are hit. Not that useful.

GREY OUT
This skill activates after 30 kills and lasts for 10 seconds. What this skill does is turn all colored enemies into gray enemies. This is useless really because depending on how many enemies they're are and how many of them are colored, you might only use like 3 or 4 fewer clicks per use.

SLOW ASSAULT
This skill works like SLOW ENEMIES and activates after 32 kills before slowing down the enemies for 10 seconds.

If you want to have the best shot at winning, you need to always have DEEP IMPACT and HEAL equipped, no matter what mode you are playing because those two will always come in handy.

Hopefully this can give you a few ideas on what you are going to expect and maybe a few ideas on how to get better at this game as well. You probably won't be able to get to 2500 Survival kills like me any time soon, but you can get a better feel for the game and what it has to offer.