Some people don't want to be dashing daring heroes; they figure that the greatest achievement is a good life worth living rather than some inane adventure across the realm. Others only object to the "dashing" part: if that's you, you're in the right place!

Why do a punch-only run? Why, just because you can! Guns are so uncivilized.

In this guide, I'll walk you through a dashless run chapter by chapter, with remarks on general techniques to get by and tips for specific difficult rooms.

The rules for a dashless run are:
- Tsunami can't dash except in Breakout and Reclamations.
- In rooms with green barriers that must be crossed to reach the exit, she's allowed one dash per unavoidable barrier.
- Bonus points for dashing as little as possible in the Prologue.

For a dashless run, you'll first need basic familiarity with the controls: how to move, shoot and throw weapons quickly. You don't need to master the dash though.
A dashless run will be very hard if you never finished the game at least once. Actually, it'll be very hard even if you finished the game several times, it *is* a challenge run after all. ^-^

Breakout is little different from normal; just don't dash when you don't need to.

This is where the challenge really starts!

The first few rooms are not too hard but be careful not to get swarmed when there are multiple enemies as you can easily get stunlocked, without the ability of dashing away.

When conveyor belts gets introduced, it becomes a bit more challenging. Thankfully, conveyor belts are either directed towards the exit, orthogonal to that direction or slower than you can run.

2-3 can take a few tries.
In the first room, move up-right a bit before you try to cross, so that you can recover and not hit a red barrier even if the thug hits you before you reach the other side.
In the second room, I recommend staying on two lanes and switching with slight right or down movements to avoid boxes. It'll be easier if you take advantage of a small exploit: there is a sweet spot between any two conveyor belts where you don't stand on either and won't be pushed back. It's actually a sweet line so if you find it you can run much faster in between the two lanes for a bit.

2-4 will take more time than normal since you can't dash past the guards. Remember that they shoot in bursts of 3 and that you can take 3 hits without dying. You can stay close to them so they have less time to shoot you (smaller length in their cone of view) or stay away to have a slight chance of them missing their shots. If needed, take a rest after a group of guards to recover.

2-5 is tight; without dashing, you must not be caught by the wrong barrier in the wrong lane. The patterns are fixed so if you keep trying, you'll eventually learn the positions of every barrier, but even without that you can run down-left to increase the time you have to react. You can also try to find a sweet spot to rest, but that's not terribly useful.
For the last set of barriers, you barely have enough time to run to the exit so you'll have to pass as close to the barriers as possible.
(Jump to 4:11.)

After this chapter, you should have a good sense of how fast you move in every direction.

The struggle is real in this combat-heavy chapter, especially for the last room.

In the first couple rooms, it might take a few tries to avoid being bodied, swarmed and killed by a thousand cuts; you'll get the hang of it and it'll only feel that much better to gun down the punks!

I trust you can do the first four floors by yourself; it's more challenging than usual but nothing impossible.
For the first part of the gauntlet in 3-5, you can do it however you want, but I find it easy to use grenades on the big bots and magnums/shotguns for the punks.
In the second part, you need to mind your surroundings to avoid being caught between a grenade and a hard fist. The punks are priority targets because they throw grenades which restrict your options; the big bots are priority hazards because if they hit you it's almost game over; the small bots are dangerous only insofar as they can stagger you into a big bot's strike or grenade.

Have fun!

Commute takes place mostly in the confined space of the train car. That's problematic because the less room you have, the harder it is to evade the enemy.

For the first few waves, I have no specific advice. Be good at timing the enemy's attacks and staggering them. Be good at hitting and moving back ever so slightly so they strike the empty air.

Once security guards come in, things are a bit more interesting. If you take them outside, you won't have to kill them as fast because some won't be shooting at you right away. Take the SMG, but don't use all the bullets.

The police car can be scary at first, but you have two unequally viable options:
- The first strat is to run against the rotation of the minigun precisely at the moment when it is shooting at one of the three directions which you can run orthogonally to, in order to minimize the time spent in the stream of bullets. Done correctly, you'll tank a couple hits but survive; you need to succeed several times in a row, which involves a fair amount a luck with regards to the bullet spread, but the later stages are somewhat easier since the minigun rotates faster.
- The second strat is to stand against the down-left door. For some reason, the bullets pass right through you in this spot; it's stupidly easy and anticlimactic when you find out. You can go get a glass of water while you wait for the police car to realize the futility of its efforts.

Finally, the final wave.
Ah, the final wave. Four big bots, and at best seventy-some bullets.
Laugh at their stupid faces while they send their own allies to kingdom come. Watch with growing unease as they close in, unfazed and uncaring. Tremble and sob against the wall while they turn helpless little you more two-dimensional than a McDo steak.
The game expects you to evade by dashing across the train while the minigun comes back to mow the big bots down, but you don't have this luxury: you cannot cross the wagon without taking a hit, and you certainly can't stand still against the door for several seconds. You need to take them all down without any outside help.

Here's the strat: as soon as the doors open, empty your SMG mag into a big bot; that will stagger them enough to let you run past without taking a hit. The two on the other side will have entered the car, and the one on your side you didn't hit is walking menacingly. Sneak past back into the wagon; pick up a gun you had conveniently laid in the right place and move out again. Now, two or three of them are walking towards you and others are staring confusedly at the ground.
By then, you'll have provoked enough friendly punching to get rid of most of the small bots so they're mostly inconsequential.
You need to abuse the AI who has the object permanence of a two-year-old; try to finish the big bot you attacked before (about 30 bullets is enough) to make the situation more manageable. If you can gun down a second one, but that's not the priority.
Lure the big bots outside and make them lose sight of you so they go to sleep. Go around, hit them a bit, run away as they turn around, disappear again, repeat. Eventually they'll fall. If you played Spikes punch-only, you know that feeling well.
(Jump to 8:21.)
(I execute this strat poorly in the video, but with practice, it becomes more reliable.)

Did you beat Commute 4-5? Wow, I'm impressed!
Now, I hope you're into BDSM because the following chapter is going to involve a lot of self-inflicted pain.

Oh, the first few rooms are nothing too bad. You can throw swords to get rid of fencers or bait a lunge before moving in, and you can pick up a SMG to trivialize the rooms you still have ammo for.

Actually, that's not optional. Pick up a SMG with full ammo, you need it. At the end of 5-2, drop the SMG in the elevator before you get the key; then when you come back with the key and activate the elevator, pick up the SMG before the screen fades to black to keep it to the next floor.

Now you have a SMG on 5-3! Great! It'd be super useful, but don't use it at all, leave it in the elevator and use the same trick to bring the SMG to 5-4.
To beat 5-3 is not easy, but it's not too hard either; throw discs whenever you can and destroy close by fencers to make sure you always have room to breathe and it'll be fine. Ah, and try to bait javelineers into killing each other to survive their ambushes.

Now, you have a SMG on 5-4! Great! It'd be super useful, but keep it in reserve for now, and clear the barriers to the key. Don't use your SMG in the first three rounds of the gauntlet; figure it out.
You can technically use up to 28 bullets in the gauntlet (leaving you with 4 for the last floor), but you probably don't want to use more than 15 to be safe, so use the SMG sparingly to give you that tactical edge over the javelineers in the fourth wave; it's practically impossible without.

Did you survive to 5-5? Wow! And with a half-full SMG even!
Now, you can't skip the glass footbal without dashing, but you can still cheese it by gunning down your opponents as they spawn. In the right position, just down-left of the middle, you don't need to move at all for the entire event.
If you wasted bullets before, you can quickly drop the SMG to save a bullet by punching the ball, and you can pick up then throw a sword another bullet each wave.
That'll teach them to bring swords to a gunfight!

The airship. Yeah, you tried not to think about it until now, but it's there and will gladly remind itself to you if you forget for the time it needs to recharge its minigun.

You don't have enough time to run from one protection to another in the downtime it needs to recharge, so the solution's simple: you have to start running while it's still firing.
See, the airship moves a bit like it's attached to a rubber band, and the rotation of the minigun also has a lot of momentum. When it's still adjusting its aim, and the stream of bullets is on the side you don't need to go through to progress, well, you can just run forward and the stream will follow just behind you. Oftentimes you might need to wait for a cycle or two bravely cowering behind a pillar until the correct pattern emerges.
Good luck!


The other levels are harder than normal, but much fun and there's no special strat to get past. The SWAT are trigger-happy; be respectful of their reaction time when they know which side you're going to appear from.

Typhoon is hard enough on normal, now why'd you have to bring this on yourself?! Are you some kind of freaky masochist?!
Geez, okay, since you're here for advice, here it is:

If she gets a straight melee hit in, you die. So, don't. But you need to get in melee range to hit her! Two solutions:
- Strike at exactly the right time to hit her when you enter her range.
- Bait a strike from her first so even if she hits you in the follow-up you don't die and can run away to recover.

You need to be very mindful of where she dashes around. If she comes close, slash before she gets her bearings and she'll dash away. If she stays uncomfortably close and personal, and you are reaching the end of your combo it's time to move back!
Try not to fight too close to the borders, those are risky because you have less directions to escape to, and she is more likely to dash close to you.

If she summons javelins, you can take a breather. Don't attack her: the javelins are uninterruptible but she is so the javelins will still fly at you while she might simultaneously prepare another attack.

If she charges up for a spin and you hit her thrice, you're dead; even two hits is cutting it too close; even once is risky! If she charges up for a spin, you need to RUN.
If she preps her gun, you also need to run, but towards her this time. It is possible to survive a gun attack, but it's unlikely, unreliable and seriously don't count on it.

In the latter two cases, you'll sometimes be in a position where you just know death is coming. There is no escape, you're too close or too far or caught at a bad moment. In desperation, you can throw your sword in the split second of realization: she'll always dash to avoid a projectile and that will interrupt her current attack. Be prepared to run away from a follow-up though, she won't pause just because it'd be convenient to you.
But beware: swords are in limited supply on this rooftop. If you run out of them, there's nothing I can do for you, even if it's technically possible to beat her punch-only.

Notice that you don't have the same range horizontally, vertically and diagonally. Neither does Typhoon. Horizontally, you always have the same range; in other directions you sometimes have less than her so try to engage horizontally.

Keep up and don't make a mistake under pressure, or if you make a mistake, be lucky so she spares you, or sacrifice a sword to buy yourself another chance. Keep getting hits in every now and then, until finally, finally you succeed!
If you spend a couple hours, you'll eventually make it work. It is possible, you can do it!
(Jump to 6:10.)

So you've beaten Tyhoon dashless? Congratulations, you're now part of a very restricted circle of Lithium City experts!
What's that? You want more? You don't think it's enough to do the entire game dashless with Tsunami except the parts where it's absolutely required and even then, overcoming the police car and the airship because you just don't care about what's impossible, now you want to do it with Typhoon too?
In the Prologue, that chapter where she walks like one-fifth as fast as Tsunami runs because she just can't be bothered to jog?
Alright, fine, let's do our best.

Gotta warn you, I don't think the Prologue is possible dashless, and it stings, that there's a section where it's theoretically not impossible and yet still inhumanly difficult.
My best guess for how many dashes you need for the Prologue is 5, but I only managed it in 6.

Unlike any other killable enemy in the game, the agents Typhoon faces don't run out of ammo; probably because she's a very law-abiding citizen she refuses to pick up weapons that violate physics so egregiously.
However, every fight happens in bullet time, which gives you enough leeway to split between the bullets with as much class as a Matrix character!
Slashing with your sword, even without hitting anyone, can be used to move quickly forward in an emergency, but is followed by a long moment of downtime; use that power cautiously.

Here's a breakdown of how many dashes you need for each room:
0-1-0: 0. Nothing to do but exit.
0-1-1: 0. The guard is unaware of you so you walk behind him until he's in kill range without dashing.
0-1-2: 1. It's impossible to dodge the first bullet while approaching the guard. One dash is enough to get in melee.

0-2-1: 1? With a lot of luck, you can slip between the bullets of the first volley. The second one is dodgeable as well, and that point you might be close enough to dash once and kill. Unfortunately, it requires too much luck and not enough skill for me to try very long; my best is evading one volley, dashing a first time through another volley and dashing a second time to get in melee.
0-2-2: 1. You can have one guard shoot the other and dash to evade the right bullet, bait the right angle, get behind the right guard.
0-2-3: 0. Yes, you can! Wait when you enter to avoid being spotted by the guards; if you only attract the attention of the topmost one, the other two will turn towards the noise and ignore you like the corpo automata that they are. Then, walk to the cut down the rightmost one (slash the air to avoid bullets from the one guard with two braincells). Move back left to safety, peek out to bait three shots, get behind the leftmost guard, wait for the right moment while your human shield heroically protects you then cut down the last guard.

0-3: 1. There are two possible spots where (with a bit of luck for bullet spread) four guards will shoot each other. You can use one dash to simultaneously dodge and move towards the last guard to cut them down.

Thanks for reading and if you actually try everything in this guide, bravo for your dedication and courage!

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