Wow.
Are you sure it's possible to beat mission 3? I've tried several ways so far. If I stand there and shoot him a volcano will start to open under my feet, and after I jump he does his ray and it kills me (or almost does, knocks me down, and as I recover another volcano kills me).
I've tried your guide... to attack him from behind. The thing is he immediately turns around and starts his combo, which is unblockable and too fast for my slow character. The cooldown time after attacking with a sword from the air is deadly as he always hit me with something in that window.
I tried buying more items or increasing the power of my sword but I have yet to be able to take down more than two of his mini life bars before he kills me with just one or two attacks.
Not even the action command of pushing X while near him is helpful. Sure, it throws a bunch of green orbs into the air, but then he unleashes his combo immediately upon the command's completion and kills me instantly.
I really don't think winning against the guy is possible. Not with the main character moving as slow as he does. I was constantly throwing the sword away because of how slow he is with it, and yet having a flying blade of death soaring around everywhere attacking the big guy wasn't helping at all.
Could you either slow the guy's attacks down, speed the main character's up, or prevent him from layering attacks so much? Because seriously, even if I did survive one of his attacks a volcano would always open up beneath me and the main character takes so long to get up he'd take it head on.
Oh, and also yeah, there are an unbearable amount of bugs in this game and dieing by falling is total BS.