How do you kill the final boss of Guacamelee?

This Skeleton Face Guy (Caraca?) instantly owns me.

Here's the list of things that you have to deal with all at once in this battle:

• He only telegraphs his upcoming attack a few frames before it lands. I have not yet been able to determine how to dodge any of his attacks, even if I could figure out which one is coming in time.
• He seems to randomly switch between the world of the living and the world of the dead. So in addition to having a fraction of a second to figure out how to dodge, you also have to in that same time figure out whether you need to switch worlds.
• He also seems to randomly change the color of his shield. So in addition to dodging his attack and making sure you're in the right world in a fraction of a second, you also have to figure out what attack to use (which you may not always be in the right position for, given whatever dodging maneuver you have to use) before he disappears, less than a second later.

Seriously? There has to be a trick to this. Nothing else in the game has even approached this level of insane precision and instantaneous reaction.

How do you even touch this guy, let alone kill him?

Solution 1:

Calaca only has two attacks: the Side Claw and Sky Stomp. Both can be avoided by jumping diagonally, so once you get the timing down (it's pretty consistent) you can dodge before he even appears. I don't currently recall whether you can simply roll through his attacks; if so things get even easier, though you have to pay attention to roll towards him so the extended shockwave won't hit you once the roll is done.

Once you can dodge consistently, you can hit back. If he's in the wrong world, don't bother trying to attack him unless you have good reflexes, just swap after dodging and wait for the next attack (he tends to stay in the same word for a few hits in a row, and I don't think he ever switches after only one attack). It is sometimes a pain to notice the correct shield colour in time, but I've never really had a problem with it. Your attack will still hit even if he's almost done teleporting away; as long as the shield is visible you can hit him. Attacks that break shields also do damage, so you don't need to concern yourself with trying to hit him after the shield goes down. Then use a roll to cancel your attack's ending lag and get ready for the next dodge.

Calaca has 300 HP. Assuming you hit him once per cycle with the correct attack, that's 20 damage per cycle (he only uses red, green, and blue shields, and your red/green/blue attacks all deal 20 damage), meaning you need a minimum of 15 cycles to defeat him. On the other hand, his attacks deal 50 damage to you; you start the game with 80 HP with every 3 Heart Chunks increasing it by 20, so by getting about 7 chunks you can increase the number of hits you can take by 1.