Nelo Angelo

Nelo Angelo serves as a boss and primary rival for Dante and mirrors his moveset. Appears at the end of Mission 4, 11 and 17. Can also be fought in Nightmare Space M20. His fight approaches vary depending on the selected difficulty.

Note: on DMD, Dante Deals 1/3 of Normal damage even in DT.

For Normal and Easy, Holy Water makes this fight scripted. Unless you are playing the PS2 NA or EU release of this game. Dante's damage including Holy Water item is modified into a certain percentage. Therefore, most of these instructions applies to HD Collection and JP PS2 release.

⁽¹⁾ For the first encounter, get in DT and do slash cancel twice then use Holy Water. If you overextend with last hit as he teleports away that is fine he can still get hit from it. Even though, you lose some time. For PS2 NA/EU, you will need to deal another same amount of additional damage before using the item. This means you will be forced to fight him on the second phase.

⁽²⁾ In Mission 11, you will have to use full melee string after using up HW. It doesn't have to be in DT. However for PS2 NA/EU, you are most likely going to do couple of DT slash cancels.

Mission 14 is self-explanatory ⁽³⁾ but, if you are low in budget then you may resort to DT slash cancel till death. This fight was not tested in PS2 NA/EU.

Holy Water is extremely ineffective against bosses in general, so you will have to fight against them with a proper setup. Luckily for Nelo's case most of the time his phases are consistent as long as you execute it right. Keep in mind that position awareness is the key of Nelo's cycle.

None of these fights were tested in PS2 NA/EU version either.

^{Phase 1} Nelo will always start with dive no matter the attempt. What you will need to do here is to DT Slash cancel of double sword ×3 times. On the third cancel, you need to do it with a jump instead of stick rotate, so make sure to jump away from Nelo as far as you can. Some may make a mistake of that jump with a lock-on hold. Avoid that because it will make dante jump backward which has much less distance.

If done right, Nelo will start using his meteor pattern. Run back to him immediately and repeat the sequence except the last cancel, which is regular slash into High Time cancel. Nelo will be stuck in stun animation long enough, so you can reach out the 2nd Phase Bridge before he does.

^{Second Phase} You do have to pray a bit for a good RNG. Because in some scenario you will be forced to hit Nelo from his back that causes him to teleport away and may not give you pattern that ends quickly. Before the final teleport, you need to be close to the broken bridge.

Ideally, you want to hit Nelo same way as ^{Phase 1}, but this time you do 2 hit cancels until you fully built Runes. Jump away for his meteor pattern then repeat in DT.

^Loop Positioning is the name of this fight. At the ^{Start up} Nelo will give you more than enough time to switch Ifrit. You will have to do raw jump inferno to line up properly. Move slightly to the left before kick-13 then slightly to the right and do nade shot > Full charged punch 2× times.

When you jump away from Nelo ^Loop, make sure it's a straight-line jump, so distance will be good enough for him to trigger meteor. The nade shot is necessary to keep up the Runes. After that you repeat the sequence once again which is:

It's important to adjust Dante's positioning whenever Nelo isn't cornered properly just to keep him in check. As long as you jump away from him with the right distance. The loop will keep going. If your orb route is tight then it's alright to stay with kick-13 Lv1 because that will still work. Inferno is the most important move to buy during that point of the run.

If the loop breaks or the fight goes wrong you can ^Recover it again, but you will lose a lot of time. Because it's a lot harder to dodge Nelo in this arena.

Same idea as M11, but this time you need to ensure that you are in the same podium as him. Because, it is a lot harder to salvage the loop compared to M11. Some position will just not make him do the meteor pattern at all ^Stinger. ^Kick-13 example shown here is the sweet spot where you would loop. Make sure to re-align every time after you do kick-13.

^Nade Optimally, you want to start with inferno. This can be achieved by forcing Nelo to do a meteor pattern after you shoot him at good range. Although, he will not give you the same pattern every time, so you will end up in a rough position if he does aggressive charge ^Stinger instead. That's why ^Kick-13 is much more preferable for consistency.

It's good to check the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) if you have general questions regarding the bosses.