Uploaded March 2013 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
This is a general strategy for killing Paavo quickly and minimizing damage, using some little tricks that are pretty easy to replicate. It may be possible to skip two of his phases if I can iron out the damage calculations, but at the moment that's theoretical.
This focuses on the first battle in Spaceport: Shuttle (level 26), and one of the best tricks involves avoiding the laser turret that he summons in his fourth phase. You can actually just walk toward the bridge where you entered the arena, switch to Stealth form, and sit beneath the lowest laser to completely avoid damage. It trivializes this section and makes sure your health is high so that you can potentially tank damage from the Burrowers in the sixth phase.
Even easier, the laser turret is broken in that if you don't look at it, it never fires its lasers. As long as you never turn toward it after it rises completely out of the ground, you can stand around as long as you want unhurt, even though the sound effects start.
For the general fight against his sword phases, it's important to know that Paavo has very strict thresholds for the amount of damage he can take before he gets knocked back and triggers his explosion ability. This means that combos are cut off once they hit this mark, with the last hit dealing normal damage and draining his health bar as much as it should, but leaving him invulnerable to all others. Once you bring his health below another threshold, it activates his next phase.
The easiest way to approach Paavo is to run toward him and jump shortly before he's close enough to attack. The vast majority of the time, getting this close to Paavo will make him perform a basic two-hit combo which is a horizontal attack. He always swings at the same rate, so jumping slightly before he begins his swing means you have just enough time to double jump to avoid both attacks.
From here, since you're already in the air, using a Jump Attack is effective and deals a fair bit of damage while simultaneously leaving him open to another combo. Fatal Flurry is the fastest and one of the most damaging combos in the game, so you see me use that immediately after landing, but other moves like the Flashing Sword (Square combo) are serviceable while dealing slightly less damage.
Once you've hit Paavo with a combo, he'll start charging his explosion attack, which you can exploit if you manipulate his pattern a little bit. Your distance from Paavo generally will determine the attack he uses, particularly after the shockwave, so standing far away after his explosion will typically make him use either Throat Slash or Time Thrust.
Throat Slash oddly leaves Paavo vulnerable to the Gun form's grenade, meaning you can instantly deal damage to him after he leaves the explosion. Additionally, the grenade stuns him, which you don't usually see. The grenade is pretty strong and lets you avoid getting stunlocked. Since Throat Slash is one of a few options Paavo has here, you'll occasionally see the grenade do no damage, either because he returned to his normal attack AI or he used Time Thrust.
Another option is to use the Hammer Smash, which will drain much more of Paavo's health than your combos can. Because the Hammer Smash is one attack, Paavo takes all of that damage and then turns on his invincibility, whereas your other options generally involve combos that lose hits and damage because of it.
What I do in the video is perform a Jump Attack to open him up, Stun Thrust to deal a little bit more damage, and then perform a Juggle Slash followed by a Hammer Smash.
(Be careful with switching between the Stun Thrust and the Juggle Slash: if you are holding buttons after the Stun Thrust while you try to perform the Juggle Slash, Nevin will go straight to the Hammer Smash. This will leave him vulnerable because of the time it takes to wind up, and Paavo will undoubtedly hit you. )
To show how effective this is, I manage to take off almost half of his health bar before his first phase is over.
As a note, after finishing one of the interstitial enemy phases, it's possible to hit Paavo with a Hammer Smash a little bit after he jumps back down to the arena. That lets you instantly deal a lot of damage and trigger his recoil quickly.
As one final kinda funny thing, you can use the Alt Pounce to leap back across to the bridge Paavo destroyed while entering the arena. It breaks the fight completely and he just stands still once he transitions to sword form because he can't follow you.
Alt Pounce: [ youtube.com/watch?v=zR0GzmTJJH4 ]
There may be some more efficient ways to play this battle, but these few strategies are a good starting point.
This is a general strategy for killing Paavo quickly and minimizing damage, using some little tricks that are pretty easy to replicate. It may be possible to skip two of his phases if I can iron out the damage calculations, but at the moment that's theoretical.
This focuses on the first battle in Spaceport: Shuttle (level 26), and one of the best tricks involves avoiding the laser turret that he summons in his fourth phase. You can actually just walk toward the bridge where you entered the arena, switch to Stealth form, and sit beneath the lowest laser to completely avoid damage. It trivializes this section and makes sure your health is high so that you can potentially tank damage from the Burrowers in the sixth phase.
Even easier, the laser turret is broken in that if you don't look at it, it never fires its lasers. As long as you never turn toward it after it rises completely out of the ground, you can stand around as long as you want unhurt, even though the sound effects start.
For the general fight against his sword phases, it's important to know that Paavo has very strict thresholds for the amount of damage he can take before he gets knocked back and triggers his explosion ability. This means that combos are cut off once they hit this mark, with the last hit dealing normal damage and draining his health bar as much as it should, but leaving him invulnerable to all others. Once you bring his health below another threshold, it activates his next phase.
The easiest way to approach Paavo is to run toward him and jump shortly before he's close enough to attack. The vast majority of the time, getting this close to Paavo will make him perform a basic two-hit combo which is a horizontal attack. He always swings at the same rate, so jumping slightly before he begins his swing means you have just enough time to double jump to avoid both attacks.
From here, since you're already in the air, using a Jump Attack is effective and deals a fair bit of damage while simultaneously leaving him open to another combo. Fatal Flurry is the fastest and one of the most damaging combos in the game, so you see me use that immediately after landing, but other moves like the Flashing Sword (Square combo) are serviceable while dealing slightly less damage.
Once you've hit Paavo with a combo, he'll start charging his explosion attack, which you can exploit if you manipulate his pattern a little bit. Your distance from Paavo generally will determine the attack he uses, particularly after the shockwave, so standing far away after his explosion will typically make him use either Throat Slash or Time Thrust.
Throat Slash oddly leaves Paavo vulnerable to the Gun form's grenade, meaning you can instantly deal damage to him after he leaves the explosion. Additionally, the grenade stuns him, which you don't usually see. The grenade is pretty strong and lets you avoid getting stunlocked. Since Throat Slash is one of a few options Paavo has here, you'll occasionally see the grenade do no damage, either because he returned to his normal attack AI or he used Time Thrust.
Another option is to use the Hammer Smash, which will drain much more of Paavo's health than your combos can. Because the Hammer Smash is one attack, Paavo takes all of that damage and then turns on his invincibility, whereas your other options generally involve combos that lose hits and damage because of it.
What I do in the video is perform a Jump Attack to open him up, Stun Thrust to deal a little bit more damage, and then perform a Juggle Slash followed by a Hammer Smash.
(Be careful with switching between the Stun Thrust and the Juggle Slash: if you are holding buttons after the Stun Thrust while you try to perform the Juggle Slash, Nevin will go straight to the Hammer Smash. This will leave him vulnerable because of the time it takes to wind up, and Paavo will undoubtedly hit you. )
To show how effective this is, I manage to take off almost half of his health bar before his first phase is over.
As a note, after finishing one of the interstitial enemy phases, it's possible to hit Paavo with a Hammer Smash a little bit after he jumps back down to the arena. That lets you instantly deal a lot of damage and trigger his recoil quickly.
As one final kinda funny thing, you can use the Alt Pounce to leap back across to the bridge Paavo destroyed while entering the arena. It breaks the fight completely and he just stands still once he transitions to sword form because he can't follow you.
Alt Pounce: [ youtube.com/watch?v=zR0GzmTJJH4 ]
There may be some more efficient ways to play this battle, but these few strategies are a good starting point.
