Cuphead - A Complete Overview for Platinum

This guide is meant as a review for the people which might be interested in going for the completion of all of the game achievements. Being an achievement hunter myself and having already obtained this platinum, I will go over the game and its achievements, analyzing them to the best of my abilities.

Also it should be noted that this in not a comprehensive guide on HOW to obtain said achievements, since I think there is more that enough material online for basically all of the games I will cover, which will be able to help you gain the specific achievements you might still need. This guide will instead go over the game and will show you what you should expect while achievement hunting for this game.

One thing that should be clear to all readers is that this guide is a reflection of the game at the moment in which I am writing about it, so it might not be completely accurate if much time is passed as there might have been more updates released with adjustments and so on. The only thing I will try to always keep up to date will be eventual new achievements that might be released in the future. Of course keep particular attention to multiplayer-related achievements, since they might be affected by server closure or simply by drop in popularity of the game which might affect the easiness of which you might find the other people needed to obtain certain objectives. This of course might not pertain to the game in question since that's a common disclaimer I put on all my guides, so it’s just a warning.

Last thing, of course this will NOT be a spoiler free review, since the goal is to analyze what is necessary for the platinum it will be necessary at times to discuss the contents of the game. That said, it’s also not a full spoiler review, so when is not needed I will not spoil the contents of the game. For this reason you might want to avoid reading this review if you don’t want to risk any kind of spoiler to the game and maybe go back to it only after you’ve played your first run and are ready to hunt for the remaining achievements you might be missing.

Now, for the guide itself, it will be divided into four sections, the first one will be a brief general overview of the game and its achievements, the second will focus on the game itself and its pacing, the third will cover particularly difficult achievements to which you might want to put more focus compared to the rest, and the fourth will draw the conclusions based on the previous three analyses.

Cuphead includes a total of 42 achievements, with 14 of them tied to “The Delicious Last Course” DLC, so you will have to buy that also in order to be able to reach you 100%. Of the 28 achievements tied to the base game, 6 are story-related and unmissable, while the 22 remaining are mainly divided by miscellaneous ingame feats and different endings.

Due to the nature of the game, there aren’t really missable achievements, as each level can be cleared an infinite amount of times, so all achievements can absolutely be obtained in a single savefile. Although I should say that certain things are not immediately doable the first time you face a level, this will force you to replay certain levels multiple times to achieve 100%.

Cuphead is definitely of the best-built videogames I’ve had the pleasure to play in my life, which allowed me to really enjoy it even if I’m usually not that into most games of this genre. If you really like platform/run and gun games this is definitely a title worthy of being played. Despite this I’ll be blunt, it’s definitely not an easy game. What I mean by this is that while it’s not THAT difficult to just play and finish normally as it only requires a bit of time and dedication to become good at, going for the platinum it’s an entirely different thing. At the moment I’m writing this guide it definitely sits inside the top 5 most difficult games I’ve reached platinum with on my Steam account, alongside other titles of the caliber of Hollow Knight and The Witcher 2 (due to its permadeath mode).

The only thing the MIGHT make you game at times a bit easier (and definitely opens a lot of possibilities for it to be even more enjoyable than it already is), is the fact that it has a co-op mode which can be both local and remote. Honestly I’m not exactly an expert on the matter since I just played the local co-op with keyboard and joypad with a friend of mine, but if I remember correctly to make work of the remote co-op there are setting which might have to be adjusted (but again, in complete honesty I barely remember it being a potential problem, so don’t just take my word for it).

One of the peculiarities of this game is that while it doesn’t possess many achievements, the average level of their difficulty is pretty high if compared to most titles (especially for those of the DLC). What I mean to say is that usually most games have a bunch of easy achievements and then just a few difficult one which pertain to the most challenging sections of said game, Cuphead while does indeed have a few really easy achievements to get, there are a lot which require a certain level of skill to obtain.

The goal of this section is not to explain how you can get certain achievements or how you should face the various challenges, but mainly to list the things you should prepare yourself for the most. For this reason I won’t cover all of the hard achievements of this game, but just those that I believe to be the most advanced or which require the greatest level of skill in a certain aspect of the gameplay of Cuphead. Which means that in your work towards platinum you might find yourself stuck on a certain achievement which might not be mentioned here and that just means that I my personal opinion/experience there is another one which is simply harder or longer to obtain.

For this game I’ve selected a total of 7 achievements of which you should take note of (yeah, I wasn’t kidding when I talked about A LOT of hard achievements), which are “Pacifist”, “Beat the Devil at His Own Game”, “High Roller”, “A King’s Admiration”, “Paladin” and finally “Ranger”.

“Pacifist” I’d say that more than difficult it’s a tedious and long one (of course it’s still anything but easy, but comparing it to others on the list personally I found it to be much closer to the easy side). It requires you to pass all of the run and gun levels without killing a single enemy and since most of it really depends on your platforming skill, just requires you to retry each level until you manage to do it for all of them.

“Beat the Devil at His Own Game” requires instead to finish the game on expert difficulty, which is unlocked after finishing it on normal. So, after beating the final boss you’ll just have to beat again all bosses on a higher difficulty. This might sound hard, and it is, but again since there is no particular rule, like a minimum on the score you have to get on the levels or whatever, I’d say it’s also on the easier side of the list. (Personally I’m kind of ashamed to admit it, but like some of the other achievements, I got past parts of it while on co-op, although keep in mind that this a mechanic perfectly allowed by the game).

“High Roller” will have you beat King Dice without taking damage. And here we start with the harder parts of the achievements since this one already has a particularly strict condition to it. Now, the thing that the no-hit part of its description it’s actually misleading as it can be done just by finishing the fight with AT LEAST three lives remaining (it’s been a while since I did it, but I’m pretty sure that this is also the way I managed to do it and considering that with the DLC content you can go up to 9 lives, while it might not be the easiest thing, it’s perfectly doable).
“A King’s Admiration” is a DLC achievement which is strictly tied to “Checkmate” and all you have to do is to clear everything that’s required for it, but by beating all bosses one after the other. Now this is another achievement which just requires you to clear a challenge without the need of extra limitations, but the problem is the fact that you have to face 5 bosses in one go. Some of these bosses don’t really present much of a challenge, personally I found the Bishop and the Rook to be the most frustrating, but depending on your skill I can also see how the Queen could be a problem.

Much like the one before, also “Paladin” is both from the DLC and also strictly tied with another achievement, which in this case is “A Horrible Night to Have a Curse” (which is by itself a pretty advanced achievement, although it’s also pretty easy if compared to this one). Once you’ve obtained it you’ll have to beat a total of seven bosses to charge up an item unlocked by that challenge. While you’re wearing said item you’ll be stuck at 1 hp, but the good news is that for the seven bosses any boss in the game counts (as long as you’re doing it in at least normal difficulty), so you can just face the ones you feel more comfortable with. Another thing which makes the achievements much much easier is that there are ways for you to gain more lives even, so in the end it’s not as crazy at it might sound initially.

The last point is about “Ranger”, now here I’m talking about it specifically since it’s technically the most advanced in the game, but the challenge includes basically all the achievements which force you to clear all bosses of a particular island with at least grade A and they are “Sheriff”, “Boss”, “Mayor”, “King” and of course “Ranger”, which only refers to the bosses of the DLC. Now, the DLC includes some of the most difficult bosses of the entire game and that’s mainly the reason why I’m using this particular achievement as an example. Of course getting a grade A on a boss it’s not as haunting as the grade S, but the problem here is that to gain all achievement of this type you’ll have to get it on every single boss of the game, so it’s definitely a pretty long process even if you have more than enough skill already. The requirements to get grade A is tied to how many parries you perform against the boss, how much time it takes you to clear the level and how much damage you take and while I’d say that for most of the bosses it’s not a problem at all (if fact you might even clear many levels just during your normal run), the problem here is the fact that ALL of the bosses are required here, including those which you might not be particularly good at for one reason or the other. (This is another achievement which I at times cleared while on coop, so if you find yourself stuck at certain bosses you might just let someone good at the game lend you a hand).

This is not a long game, but it’s definitely a hard one and at the same time it’s also one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had in a while, plus since the individual levels don’t take much time you can play it casually if you don’t have much spare time, or on the side while playing another title.

As I’ve said, I kind of cheated with the 100% since occasionally I played in coop and I’m pretty sure that made the process easier at times. But honestly while the hardcore pursuit of achievements is it’s own thing, it’s also true that gaming it’s mainly about enjoying the experience, so I’d tell you to feel free to experience it any way you want, especially because it’s clearly intended by the developers that you’re allowed to unlock all achievement in coop if you desire. (Especially since you can go back to challenge yourself in a second moment and clear all levels solo).

Unfortunately for the purpose of this guide I can’t give you a personal prospective on the time you can expect to reach platinum. And this is due to both the fact that I’ve played also a lot of coop and the fact the it mainly depends on you skill level and the way you decide to confront the challenges. Personally I’ve taken almost 30 hours to finish it (the internet puts the game at 20-30 hours, with many people specifying that for an amateur player 30 hours might be expected for the platinum. Honestly this looks a bit optimistic considering my completion time, but maybe me and my friends were just slow, so I don’t know what to tell you).