The duchy is in danger. The Prince of the Night, Balor, was commanded by the Emperor to send his soldiers forth to kidnap the Duke from King’s Corner. After hearing of the devious deed, a band of heroes rose to the occasion and embark on a quest to bring peace to the land once more. Are you a bad enough dude to stop the enemy and save the Duke? This is Maximus 2.
Succeeding Maximus: The Sword of Dawn, Four Fats’ slew of wacky and action-packed titles grows with Maximus 2. In a similar vein to Toon Shooters, Blackmoor, and Smash Club: Arcade Brawler, Maximus 2 has its roots in a comedic and lighthearted feel with characters and monsters paying homage to familiar faces in media of days gone by.
Some examples of these would be the likes of Golden Axe, Battletoads, Streets of Rage, Adventure Time (yes, that Adventure Time), and many others. Keep your eyes peeled when you play the game, especially if you’re an oldschool gamer, because if you might miss these little tidbits if you blink! But homages to nostalgic icons aside, let’s talk about Maximus 2.
Maximus 2 is just like its predecessor — a beat-em-up with an RPG twist. You choose from a pool of characters and go on an adventure to defeat the forces of evil. Along the way, you will gain experience and level up, as well as new duds for you to wear while you kick bad guy butt. The challenge here is that the enemy will be skillful and ruthless.
They will not relent when they attack and they will seize every opportunity for you to stay down. As it is with Maximus 2 paying homage to oldschool games, it may have also somewhat emulated the difficulty of these as well.
To players new to this genre, it could be punishing. But that’s why we’re here! If you wish to know how to fight more skillfully and save the Duke and the duchy, read our beginner’s guide to Maximus 2 below!
DISCLAIMER: While we are aware that each of the different characters have different stats and different moves, this guide covers general strategies that may apply to most, if not all, of them.
BASIC TIPS AND TRICKS
These tips will help you get through the majority of the game. Most of these also apply to many other beat-em-ups out there.
Combo!
How does a beat-em-up play and how can it be won?
For anyone unfamiliar, you go around places to fight bad guys, occasionally pick up food from the trash (it makes perfect sense in context, we promise), use dangerous litter to hurt the baddies, and then you reach a boss at the end of the level. Usually, in other modern games, it might sound like a piece of cake. But granted that this game is inspired by older titles, the difficulty increases considerably each level. In the first few items, we will discuss some basic rules that apply in any beat-em-up. The first most important way to gain the upper hand in any fight is to execute combos.
Combos are a rapid string of attacks performed onto an enemy. The easiest way to perform a combo is to get in the enemy’s face and hammer the attack button repeatedly. After executing a combo, the enemy will be sent flying. You can do this repeatedly and in most cases, any enemy caught in the radius of the last strike will also be sent flying. Sending the enemy backwards will give you time to regroup and re-assess your situation.
After waiting for the enemy to get up, be careful as they might retaliate with an attack fiercer than yours! If you happen to catch them off-guard or dodge the enemy’s strong attack, you’ll be able to combo them again into oblivion. In some cases, walking over their downed bodies will allow you to pummel them on the floor. This causes even more damage to them.
One of the more exciting things about performing combos is you can even try chaining these with your special attacks. Each character in Maximus 2 has their own set of special moves that can be added to a combo. What matters here is that you constantly experiment and see which combos work for you. Eventually, you’ll find a really good combo that’ll help you get through enemy hordes.
Enemy hordes are common in games like these, but it’s better that you take each of them out one by one.
Try to Focus on One Enemy at a Time
The enemies will swarm you in every direction. While it’s nice to take them out in droves, doing so could mean suicide.
Instead of going headlong into the enemy horde, try taking out your enemies one at a time. This is of course by singling out the enemy you have damaged the most. If you managed to bring down the health of one soldier, focus on them until you beat them. Killing off your enemies one at a time will be more consistent than trying to take out multiple ones simultaneously.
The logic behind this is that taking out one enemy at a time will whittle down their numbers at a more consistent pace rather than trying to hurt many enemies at a time. The latter means having to stay in front of a lot of them, and this means contending with their attacks. If at one point, one enemy that you missed actually hits you, the rest of them will follow and eventually combo you. It will hurt and it will greatly reduce your chances of survival.
To further illustrate what we mean about survival, fighting one enemy means they’ll be busy reeling from your blows. They will stagger and it will keep them from fighting back most of the time. This means less damage done to you and more time for you to regroup when you’re done with them. Consistently thinning the crowd out will also help you get to the end of the level quicker.
There is a caveat to fighting enemies one on one, though. The caveat being you will most likely be fighting groups of enemies at a time. After swinging at them, decide on singling out the most damaged one of the lot and take them out while the enemy regroups. Repeat this until you’ve successfully dispatched the enemy group.
Putting yourself in the middle can get you in trouble as we will explain in the next item.
Never Turn Your Back to the Enemy
In almost any fight (even in real life), turning your back to the enemy is always a risky move.
The enemy can be unpredictable and might even use this to their advantage. You can get jumped, grabbed, stricken on the back of the head, and more depending on the creativity of the assailant. In any beat-em-up, this is an easy way to lose your lives.
More often than not in a beat-em-up, enemies love to gang up on your character. Turning your back to them gives them an opportunity to strike. As much as possible, keep your character facing them all the time. If there is anyone behind you, try jumping over them or running around them. Doing this gives you the opportunity to get the jump on them if they haven’t turned around yet. Otherwise, it helps to always be on your guard.
Not keeping your back to the enemy could also keep you from being “accidentally” chucked into bottomless pits. Just imagine doing so well forcing an opponent into one such pit when their buddy comes up from behind and sends your sorry butt hurtling into the abyss. It won’t help your cause at all. Either they are all being forced into the pit or you fight them off yourself.
This leaves us to highlight a way you can take advantage from being cornered.
Fight from a Corner
What happens when you corner a beast?
With nowhere left to go, a cornered beast will most likely fight back with twice or thrice the ferocity. In this case, you must become this beast. You will have to purposely get yourself cornered.
Of course doing so does come at a price: getting juggled by the enemies. The greatest advantage you have while you are cornered, however, is that you will be able to pick a fight with your enemies all at once and not have to worry about turning your back to them. Combo them and retreat into the corner.
If any of them appears the most wounded, pursue them and take them out immediately. After which, return to the corner. Do this repeatedly until the enemy group has been thinned out. The hard part comes when you might somewhat get overrun by them.
The enemy has grouped together and is marching at you non-stop. You might have little space to move and keeping them all in a single blob could be quite dangerous for you. When one swings, the rest of them will, too, and you’ll get juggled into the wall. If you aren’t careful, this will rapidly decrease your health. Once they start to close in on you, jump over them and try to lure them away from the corner. Dispersing them should let you pick out the weakened ones.
Corner fighting is a good way to deal with enemies in tighter spaces. Against some bosses, this tactic may also be viable, but it’s best used against plain grunts, especially if there are a lot of them on screen. Upon mastering this technique, you’ll find yourself eating dirt a lot less.
To help you weaken enemies as you corner fight, there is also making use of anything in the terrain.
Make Use of Traps and Terrain
Suspicious objects on the floor? Mechanisms moving in the walls? What are these?
As these may seem harmful to you, they might also be dangerous to the foe. Anything that might be moving in the background or on the floor, mechanical or otherwise, could be a trap. While these are usually designed to give the player a challenge, they are also there for the player to use against enemy soldiers. These may range from spike traps to moving wall panels, giant rolling stone balls, and others.
These are pretty daunting at first since they can hit you for a lot. The best way to deal with these is to first observe their behavior and dodge them when you can. Not being able to do so could send your hero to an early grave. For a fast-paced game, caution is key in Maximus 2. Don’t rush into a room, especially if you happen to find traps in it.
Apart from traps in the walls and floor, you are bound to find pitfalls in some stages. These take out chunks of your health whenever you fall in, so try not to. However, you can abuse these and have your enemies fall into them instead. It could happen if you combo or throw the enemy in.
This may also happen to bosses if you get a hold of them. This does not work on large bosses like Krakulon, the Headless Knight, or the Frost Maiden but bosses that walk around and fight like you like the Executor. In short, only some bosses that can be thrown around can be tossed into pitfalls.
As you fight, you may notice that some enemies also ride some beasts. These mounts can be stolen!
Commandeer Mounts When Able
Long ago in a game called Golden Axe (and similar games like Captain Commando), there were times enemies would be astride vicious mounts.
These mounts came with special attacks: whipping tails, powerful kicks, fire breath, and more. In games like Captain Commando, they were robots instead of tamed beasts. The robots were equipped with flamethrowers, cryo guns, and massive tasers. But these are a little too far-flung into the future. Maximus, instead, went the Golden Axe route with its own beast mounts.
These mounts offer a great boost of speed, allowing you to get away from the enemy quickly. But like the games that have come before it, the mounts also come with their own special attacks that can be done by pressing one of your character’s skill buttons while riding them. This is what each of the mounts can do:
- Dragon – Spews a torrent of venom. The venom can hit downed enemies.
- Griffin Chick – Puffs out a plume of fire that damages everything directly in front of your character.
- Owl – Shoots out a radioactive pellet that flies in a straight line. This one has the longest range.
Gaining these mounts can be tricky. The enemy will arrive on them and they have full control of the mounts. This means that they will have full control over these beasts and if you aren’t careful, you’ll get your character a face full of radioactive owl spit. You will be able to commandeer their mount after striking them a couple of times.
Once they “offer” you their mount, walk on over to it and press the attack button. Now with the beast under your control, nothing should stand in your way! Just don’t take too many hits while riding the mount or it will run away. By run away, we mean that it will leave the level for good and you will have to rely on your basic skills once again.
After taking too much damage, you might wonder how you’ll have to heal your character (unless you are Penrose the Heart).
Break Objects for Food When at Low HP
What will you find in a garbage can? How about a box? An arcade machine? Will you find food good enough to eat? Spare change?
It’s been a longtime tradition in many beat-em-ups to hide useful items inside objects that lay about. The objects that hide these can range from anything we’ve mentioned up there. Some of them were also lamp posts, benches, chairs, tables, and anything you might find in the setting of the level. Maximus 2 is a bit more simple where you will be able to break boxes, barrels, and yes, trash cans for health (yuck!).
Finding these is a blessing, but don’t break open just any object you find. Breaking an object open when you don’t need it could be detrimental to you, especially when you’re fighting a lot of enemies or a boss. Your character will pick these up immediately regardless of how much health they lost. So you might waste the food.
The best approach to keeping food around is to not destroy any of the objects you find unless you need to. Try to see it this way: if you know that the box in the boss arena drops a hock of meat, break it later. When you feel like the boss is pushing your health bar to its limit, that is when you break it open and eat the meat.
The appearance of food is greatly affected by your Luck stat, though. That’s something we will discuss next!
Build Your Character According to Your Playstyle
How do you play in any action game?
Do you swoop into a swarm of enemies and swing your weapon about wildly? Do you prefer to outlast them in a duel using superior amounts of armor and health? Would you rather prefer to jump into the fray, deal a lot of damage, and then get out when you need to? This is something you must first assess about yourself before you take a look at the stats available in the game.
Like a lot of action games, Maximus 2 has a bit of something for everyone. How you fight can greatly change the outcome of your run. What matters here is that you are comfortable with it. Here are the stats of each character and what they do:
a. Attack – Raises the damage you deal with your basic attacks. Higher damage dealt lets you get through your enemies and the bosses much quicker.
b. Health – Gives your character more hit points or HP. More HP means a sturdier character. Less dying, too!
c. Magic – This stat makes your character’s special attacks more powerful. This includes their two skills and their ultimate skill on the upper right corner of the screen.
d. Luck – The last stat on this list gives your character a better chance to score critical hits. It also makes them more likely to find food in objects.
For this guide, we built Julius to have a ton of Luck (pictured above). His critical strikes are frequent and he can easily find food in most of the objects he breaks. The Magic stat, which we didn’t increase, means that his Whirling Sword, Dragon’s Gambit, and Wrath skills only hit as hard as his basic attacks. They’re used as combo additions. Depending on you, you might not see this build as practical, but this is the beauty of the game: you build your character the way you’d want them to fight.
Bolstering the bonuses that raw stats give your character are Talents. These special skills, mostly passive, come in pairs — you only get to choose one of the two when you reach a certain level. Just like the stats, pick one that you feel might be more of how you play. For instance, Julius’ most recent upgrade in this guide is between more damage mitigation and some slight damage reflection both while blocking. We opted for a more aggressive playstyle, so we picked the latter. Both stats and Talents may be reset for a gold fee if you’d like to start over.
Although death is highly preventable through these stats and Talents, not all of us are skilled enough to keep our characters from dying outright.
Use Your Continues Wisely
Extra lives! Who doesn’t want them?
They keep us from losing the game entirely and allow us to (usually) continue where we have fallen, especially in beat-em-ups. Maximus 2 has a similar system to traditional extra lives, but it also has a Checkpoint system.
The Checkpoint system only works if you happen to tag the flags with halos. They are found scattered in each level — you just need to keep your eyes peeled. After tagging one of these, they’ll “brighten up”, and this will signify that you can respawn here. Continuing from a Checkpoint comes at a price, however, and that’s having to fight the bosses and enemies again at full health. Be careful not to get clobbered!
Using a Continue, however, is a bit more tricky. While this does grant you a second (or third, or fourth, or fifth) chance on the spot, these are all finite. Using them up and getting knocked out as soon as you get back is a waste. We highly recommend that, instead of doing this, try saving your Continues for when the boss might have their health down. When the boss’ health is, for example, a sliver and you happen to die then and there, this is the best time to use up a Continue. Don’t waste them.
There is a way you can earn your Continues back, though, and that’s through watching ads.
Watch Ads to Earn Continues
Ads are everywhere! Well, okay, not everywhere in Maximus 2.
Call it an invasion, but this is one way developers can earn from their free games. Don’t feel bad about watching ads on a game you really like, you’re actually supporting the developer in doing this! To put this into perspective, watching ads is a way you can send money to the developers without having to pay for anything. All it takes is your time and patience.
The best part about watching ads in Maximus 2 is that you can earn Continues from them. Each day you play will get you at least a maximum of 5 Continues. You’ll have to watch 5 ads to earn the Continues per day, but this amount is already quite a lot. If you follow our directions with the previous item, you’ll be spending your Continues sparingly.
With all the basic tips covered, you’d probably be wondering how bosses should be tackled. They are one of the biggest hurdles in the games, after all.
BOSS TIPS AND TRICKS
Bosses may very well be the bane of every player’s run in Maximus 2. They can be unforgiving and they can be quite tough. The worst part about this is they force you to play the next level with what health you have left after fighting them. To deal with these bosses, we cleverly made an acronym for you to remember: WACS! Let’s see what it means.
Watch the Boss
This is going to be the hardest part of fighting the boss.
Watch the boss for attack patterns or behaviors that they exhibit when you do anything to them. For example, if you stay away from them, do they attack you with projectiles? Do they use melee attacks when you get too close? You will get hurt from time to time and you might even die, but that’s all part of the first step. Along the way, you’ll figure it out and you’ll see little cracks in the boss’ movements.
Once you get better and you’ve figured the boss out, you can proceed to the next step.
Avoid Their Attacks
After dying a few times or at least sustaining a hefty amount of damage, this is where you get to exercise your finesse.
Dodging the attacks of the boss will help you explore the possibilities of hitboxes and timing. In turn, doing this will also help you memorize what you need to do in case you need to fight the boss again. If you’re playing multiplayer, you can also do this to keep yourself alive long enough for you to save your friends or flex on them with your mad dodging skills.
When you see that the boss is open, give them hell!
Charge at an Opening
It’s like what you see in the cartoons: the wily mouse leads the dumb cat into the mousehole. The cat gets stuck, the mouse comes out from the other side, and the mouse spanks the cat’s butt with an oversized board.
When you catch the boss doing something stupid or it’s an attack easily avoidable, this is your chance for a counter attack! Combo them, deal as much damage as you can before they get back up and recover from what you dished out.
The next part is where you relent.
Step Aside
Giving into your rage will only cloud your judgment.
Constantly attacking a boss without pause will only get you hurt. They’ll get up and eventually knock you down or even toss you aside. After giving them your combo, step back and reassess your strategy. This will help you breathe and it’ll definitely make the boss fight a lot smoother. There’s nothing wrong with fighting a boss while being cautious. Just don’t be too cautious because hesitation also leads to defeat.
After that, you have to do it all over again.
Repeat
Start from the top.
Watch the boss, avoid their attacks, charge at an opening, step aside. The cycle will repeat after every combo or so until you master their patterns. No boss fight will be perfect (unless you practice a crazy lot), but you’ll be able to deal with this boss better than when you first encountered them.
This will be even more prominent when you fight harder bosses along the way or meet them for the first time. Pain and death will be inevitable for your character, so starting from the Watch step is always a learning process. Keep at it!
All in all, Maximus 2 is a game that requires skill and practice. Just keep in mind what you’ve learned in this guide so far:
- Master your combos and try to maximize them when you can.
- Whittle down the enemy one soldier at a time.
- Try not to turn your back to the enemy, especially when there are a lot of them.
- Find a corner in the stage and fight from there. You won’t have to worry about enemies coming from behind.
- Using traps and bottomless pits will help you defeat your enemies.
- Take the enemy’s mounts for a speed boost and an extra skill.
- Destroy objects for food but only when you need them.
- Continues should be used wisely.
- Watch ads for more continues. You get 5 a day.
- When dealing with bosses, remember the WACS acronym.
Behold, a guide to Maximus 2! Knowledge is power and now you can use it to wield it against Balor, his soldiers, and possibly the Emperor himself (we are hinting that you should give Hard Mode a try)!
Do you have any tips or tricks you’d like to share for Maximus 2? Is there anything we might’ve missed in this guide? Let us know in the comment section down below!