“Stop there!” It’s Hong Meiling! She’s guarding the entrance of the Scarlet Devil Mansion. It seems this Meiling is real, and you have to defeat her to pass. Each boss in Luna nights has a few different types of attacks they cycle through on a schedule and one high damage spellcard they use when at low health. They may also have other actions they do or change an attack slightly under certain conditions. Meiling uses a shield and pauses when you throw knives at her from the front while she isn’t attacking.
For her first attack, she throws a rainbow sphere of light in your direction. This is easy to jump over. You can collect graze from attacks. For later in the battle when you’ve used some MP or Time, you can get some from this attack by jumping when the rainbow sphere is closer to you. Meiling then floats up to one side of the screen and rapidly throws rainbow light spheres at you. You can avoid this by running in the opposite direction and attack her using auto aim. She can’t use her shield during any attack or landing animations. When she lands, you can throw more knives at her. While she moves in between attacks, you can avoid her shield by throwing knives from behind her. Remember that if you attack while time is stopped it uses Time instead of MP. When you run low on MP, stop time and use that instead. MP recovers while time is stopped.
Meiling’s next attack is to float to the top of the screen on any side and then very quickly fall towards you. One way to dodge is to wait until she starts falling and then start running away, and another is to jump right before she hits you. If you jump you can get graze points, but it is also a little riskier than just running. After this attack, pause time during the landing animation and start throwing knives. Remember to use stun knives too as they do more damage. Another trick is that if you throw that max number of knives for one time stop but still have more Time, you can quickly unfreeze and freeze time again to reset this. She will repeat this quick landing attack twice. She then does the attack where she throws multiple rainbow spheres at you. Something about using auto aim during this attack is that auto aim might miss if you or Meiling moves too much. Try to run far away quickly the moment this attack starts and then use auto aim while staying still. If you use auto aim while time is stopped, the direction the knives go is decided while frozen and they don’t readjust if your target’s position moves when you unfreeze time.
After the last attack, Meiling restarts the cycle of her attacks. Remember to pause time often and attack during her attack and land animations. A strategy I used a lot was to pause time and then throw as many stun knives as possible from behind her. This deals a lot of damage at once but also shocks her, so she stops for a short amount of time. Something about this room that I didn’t notice at first was that the water under the bridge splashes around during attacks, and that it’s not just for effect. If you stop time while surrounded in a splash of water, you won’t be able to move.
Continue dodging Meiling’s attacks and attacking her until she is at low health. After she does the attack where she rapidly shoots rainbow spheres at you, she will land and start a dialogue stating that Sakuya is strong and that she has to use her last stand. This is her most powerful spellcard. When I first saw it, I didn’t know what to do, but it is actually very simple and easy to get around. Her spellcard is just a little wall of light that she throws in your direction. It is small enough to jump over. Before she throws it though, she has a long animation where she summons the power to use the spellcard. Stop time, go behind her, and throw as many stun knives as you can. After a few stun knives you may need to step back because piling them all in the same place causes them to go on top of each other and will eventually be thrown so high they will fly over Meiling’s head. When you step back to throw stun knives, they create a nice line of knives that won’t go over your target.
When you run out of Time, keep throwing stun knives while time is not frozen. Meiling can’t change the direction she throws the spellcard in once she’s started the animation. Going behind her and using this strategy deals the most damage at once you can do in this fight. Her last stand spellcard is used at the end of every attack cycle and doesn’t disrupt the order of her attacks. Continue to attack and dodge, and then eventually you will defeat her! Once Meiling is defeated, another dialogue starts. Meiling begrudgingly declares that Sakuya can pass the bridge. She leaves you with the advice, “I’m not your only enemy”. What does that mean? Remilia’s game is beginning to sound complicated… now, you can pass the bridge and go to the next stage!