Onechanbara - how to deal with the Rampage meter? also blood zombies?

[c0ldb33r]

I picked up the Wii version of Onechanbara last week and I've started getting into it. I'm playing through story mode on normal difficulty. I just beat the first boss battle against the younger sister (saki?). I'm having trouble with two things:

1) How can I manage my Rampage meter?

I know that it fills up as more blood gets splattered on you. I take this to mean that the more zombies you kill with your sword, the more the meter fills up. Is it only when you kill zombies with the sword? How else could I kill them? Kicks? Throwing knives? Is there any way through managing my attack styles to stop the Rampage meter from filling up? How about at least slowing it down?

I know that when it gets full, you enter rampage mode and can attack more quickly but it sucks that your health gets decreases so quickly. I know that you can return from rampage mode using a goddess statue (which are few and far between) or by using the item goddess fragment, but I only have two of those. I'm more interested in prevention than a cure.

2) How can I kill the blood/mist zombies?

Based on the tip that came up when I first met one, I know that I have to do "cool" combos in order to beat one. I have no idea what a cool combo is, or how to do a cool combo. Unfortunately the game manual is laughable and searching the internet wasn't helpful.

The most helpful thing that I could find was a gamefaqs posting where someone said to "shake both controllers up and down as fast as possible". I did that, it didn't help. In fact, that's how I play most of the game!

Any help is appreciated.

[Cryomancer]

I can offer you advice based on my experience with the 360 game. Hopefully this advice is universal, but they are two different games so things may have changed.

The rampage meter fills from picking up the red dots enemies drop. The fragments are usually your best bet, they drop often enough that you can go ahead and use one once you get 3/4ths full or whatnot. Statues are good too but less common of course. I'm guessing the Wii version has character switching? Switch out when your meter gets too high. You can also just let one character get into rampage, switch, and continue from there as the non-rampage one. Then switch back for the boss fight.

When you are in rampage mode, there are things you might not have noticed. For one, the red dots will now give you a slight amount of healing. Have you seen any mud zombies, greenish guys, hard to kill? There should be a move that lets you rip their hearts out, which gives you the heart as an item. When not in rampage this item takes you closer you rampage, but when you are in rampage, it will heal you. This means you have like twice the healing items during rampage, assuming you have 3 healing gems and 3 mud zombie hearts. A fragment in rampage should bring you out of it, too, I believe.



As for the blood mist zombies and the cool combo...this is probably the hardest thing to master. If you've ever noticed a flash of white when you are during your combo, that was a cool combo hit. There is a tiny timing window on every step of your combo that if you can get just right you will do a cool hit, and it will do double damage and things like that. You will probably need to have your combo stat levelled up all the way before you can perform a complete cool combo. Either way, cool combos are very difficult to learn. I still haven't mastered it myself. I'm sure once you get the rythm down it's not so hard, but yeah. If the game has a practice mode, there should be a timing bar that could help you figure it out.

There are videos like this about it on youtube but they are pretty much all for the 360 game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tuk23gRrdw

Hopefully this info helps a bit.