Cuphead/YMMV

These things about  are subjective - not everyone will agree with all of them.


 * Alternative Character Interpretation:
 * Thanks to having no dialogue aside from a handful of game over quotes, the Debtors' personalities are rife for speculation. How many of them knowingly made their deals with the Devil? How many of them did so accidentally? Are they evil, or decent people trapped in a bad situation? And what did they hope to gain from their deals in the first place?
 * Did the Devil simply sit back and let Cuphead's greed screw himself and Mugman over, or did he rig his dice roll? After all, this is the Devil that we're talking about.
 * Anticlimax Boss: He starts off brutal and challenging, but the Devil's final phase is a total joke. Why?.
 * Author's Saving Throw: Disappointed Mugman fans were over the moon when the 1.2 patch made him a playable character. Before that, the only way you could play as him if you were player 2 in a co-op game.
 * Breather Boss: Interestingly, Inkwell Island 3's got a decent amount of these despite being the second-to-last major location in the game, probably as a way to balance out the presence of some of the game's hardest bosses. Werner Werman, Sally Stageplay, and Captain Brineybeard don't have much in the way of Bullet Hell, and employ attacks that are easier to read and react to than many midgame bosses. While they still put up a decent fight (and Brineybeard can be tricky if you struggle to keep his barrel out of the way), chances are you'll beat them with only a few deaths to your name, and it's not uncommon for new players to clear them on their first try.
 * Catharsis Factor: Winning a boss fight and hearing the announcer's excited declaration of "BRAVO!" right when you land the final hit. Especially if its a boss that's been kicking your ass until that point.
 * Crosses The Line Twice: As of the 1.2 update, Sally Stageplay's fight has a secret, tougher path. How do you access it? By . It's every bit as a messed up and heartbreaking as it is darkly hilarious.
 * Demonic Spiders:
 * The shrimps at the end of Perilous Pier attack in swarms, and fly at you in arcs that make it hard to shoot them down. Dodging isn't much easier because you don't have much room to move around on the head of the octopus you're riding, and the oyster behind you is constantly pelting you with attacks of its own. And if you're going for a P rank, killing them is not an option.
 * The stone lions in Rugged Ridge are one of the biggest obstacles you'll gave if you're trying to get an A+ rank. Killing them isn't hard, but it is time consuming, and taking your time to kill every single lion you run into will cause you to miss the timeframe needed to get that perfect score. Ideally you want to avoid them, but their massive size makes it nearly impossible to safely jump over them or phase through them with Smoke Bomb.
 * Ensemble Darkhorse:
 * King Dice, full stop. His catchy theme song, simplistic yet cool character design, and unique boss fight make him a very memorable foe, and it helps that he's one of very few opponents to have extensive dialogue to properly characterize him with.
 * Cagney Carnation was one of the very first bosses shown off during the game's prerelease period, and his cute yet creepy design made him something of a fandom darling near-instantly.
 * Grim Matchstick, for being one of the game's best examples of Badass Adorable. His tubby physique and shy demeanor make him lovable from the get-go, and his relentless fire attacks make him an opponent to be feared and respected. Frustrating as fighting him may be, he's far too much of a lovable cuddlebug for fans to hate.
 * Cala Maria. What's not to love about a gigantic, attractive flirt of a mermaid? Another point in her favor is her Adorkable reactions to things going badly over the course of her boss fight.
 * The unused Demon Bat boss shown off in the 2014 trailer has quite the fan-following thanks to its oddly cute and intimidating design.
 * Fanfic Fuel: As mentioned above, the motivations that led to the debtors making their own deal with the Devil are ripe for fanfic fodder.
 * Game Breaker:
 * The Smoke Bomb is practically the only charm you need, because the invincibility it grants you makes it a lifesaver against massive attacks that can otherwise only be dodged in certain specific ways.
 * The charms that give you extra hearts make it a lot easier to survive the game's Run 'n Gun stages and obtain that goddamned P Rank. While using them will weaken your attacks, it doesn't matter when you aren't allowed to kill anything to begin with.
 * Most Annoying Sound:
 * Getting hit results in the jarringly loud and unpleasant sound of breaking porcelain. Already annoying in standard play, but it's downright infuriating when you're going for a perfect run.
 * Dr. Kahl's laughter. It's irritating, condescending, and once he starts he never stops! Once you finally defeat him, his laughter will haunt your dreams for weeks to come.
 * Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: While you'll probably never visit a casino ran by the Devil himself, you can still learn a thing or two from Cuphead and Mugman's situation. Namely that gambling is a hell of an addicting vice, and it can and will ruin your life.
 * That One Boss: Cuphead is a tough game to begin with, but the second you step foot onto Inkwell Island 2, you start fighting some of the really dangerous debtors.
 * Beppi the Clown's fight takes place on a rollercoaster track, and occasionally the coaster will pass through during the second phase onward. And it's that damn coaster that makes this fight so difficult: Beppi's balloon dog spam in his second phase and horseshoe attacks in the third are hard enough to dodge already, but when you have to board the rollercoaster and dodge both its dangerous passengers and Beppi's attacks every few seconds, you've got an annoying clusterfuck on your hands. Thankfully, the rollercoaster becomes a non-issue in his final phase... because the penguin minions he summons pick up the slack. The baseballs they throw are hard to keep track of thanks to how small they are, and because the penguins go out of their way to aim at you before throwing them, you have to keep frantically jumping from platform to platform to avoid them while attacking Beppi.
 * Baroness Von Bon Bon is infamous for the sheer RNG her battle runs on. Before you fight the baroness herself, you have to deal with three of her five food-themed minions. None of them are that bad by themselves, but as the fight progresses you have to fight the current miniboss while more hazards are thrown into the mix: tiny jellybean soldiers that are easy to lose track of, and the trio of humongous clouds the Baroness fires from her shotgun. When you pair them with the gumball machine's Bullet Hell, the jawbreaker's constant homing in on you, or the cupcake's erratic bouncing, you get a confusing mess where getting hit is all but inevitable. Her final phase, thankfully, has her fight you herself instead of having her minions do the work for her... but this time, you're being chased by her castle and her bouncing severed head (which homes in on you!).
 * When it comes to bosses fought in the aeroplane, Wally Warbles takes the cake. Hilda Berg and Djimmi the Great, while certainly not easy, were a lot more manageable for the most part. But Wally's a big fan of Bullet Hell patterns, and no matter which phase you're on there's a lot to look out for. Of note are his second and fourth phases: the second has him assault you with a ridiculous barrage of feathers that are densely packed and hard to fly safely around at your default size. You could cheese the fight by shrinking and thus giving yourself more room to move around... but your bullet range is pathetic while tiny, meaning that you'll either have to get in his face to hurt him or wait until the small periods of downtime where he's exhausted to hurt him, and both options are far from ideal. In the final phase, he's a broken, featherless wreck being carried on a stretcher, but he still has enough fight in him to pelt you with tons of garbage while the paramedics and his own heart throw their own attacks into the mix.
 * Grim Matchstick's fight is set on one of the most dangerous stages in the game: you have to fight him in an autoscrolling level by hopping across cloud platforms that blend in with the scenery, and are hard to keep track of in the heat of battle. When you can only take three hits, misjudging a jump even once is painful because Grim himself is a force to be reckoned with. While his gigantic fireballs in his first phase aren't too hard to dodge, they can really get in the way when you're trying to avoid being skewered by the dragon's tail from beneath. The second phase is even worse, because along with the hard-to-see cloud platforms, he rolls out his tongue and summons a never-ending parade of evil little fire enemies, some of which will suddenly leap right at you at high speed, and with insanely good tracking. His final phase is surprisingly easy in terms of platforming since the rain and dark skies make the cloud platforms stand out more... but to compensate, he breathes fiery bubbles that will explode in complex, difficult to avoid patterns if you shoot one.
 * If you thought Grim Matchstick's autoscrolling was a pain, wait until you fight Rumor Honeybottoms! Her stage scrolls upward, forcing you to constantly scale a series of platforms while she pelts you with annoyingly large and chunky spells. Platform placement is also annoyingly random, meaning you can get screwed over if you're cornered by an attack and end up in a spot where you can't easily get to safety. But the worst aspect of this fight is easily the final phase, where she turns into a monstrous airplane. During this part of the fight she sticks to the bottom of the stage, where you can't easily hit her by default, let alone with the screen constantly scrolling upwards. And both her attacks are obscenely annoying to dodge, with one being a pair of large, indestructible fists that home in on you, and the other being a sawblade attack that comes out fast with very little windup.
 * And if you thought merely fighting her was bad enough? Try getting an A+/S rank on her. It is annoying. Not only because of all the aforementioned problems with the fight, but because the structure of her stage and the upwards scrolling mechanic get in the way of you trying to get your mandated three parries against her.
 * Dr. Kahl's robot is considered to be the most infuriating boss by many, and for good reason: his boss fight is Bullet Hell incarnate. The first phase alone overwhelms you with an obscene amount of attacks, such as a gigantic aimed laser that can block your shots and homing missiles with a huge blast radius. And he can use a giant magnet to pull you into their path. Even if you break free from it, you can easily fly right into an attack because of the sudden change in physics. The second phase is thankfully shorter, but it can also be a pain thanks to you having to shoot his head while it constantly flies offscreen while more homing missiles get in the way. Beat that, and you've got a hellish final phase to look forward to: Dr. Kahl himself pulling out a gemstone that floods the screen with lasers in a really tight spread while electric gates are trying to crush you. And while you're desperately trying to keep yourself from being shot down, he keeps laughing. And laughing. And laughing. And he never shuts up!
 * What an Idiot!: Gambling in a casino owned by the Devil was already a bad idea to begin with. But the second Old Scratch himself stepped into the parlor, Cuphead really should've quit while he was ahead and left the building.