How to be successful with Hanako Yamada in Dark Deception: Monsters and Mortals.
Contents
How to Hanako Yamada
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Context
Welcome once again to another guide in the How To: series. We’ll be continuing the Yandere Simulator character train with the transition to the Mortals side now that the only Monster of the DLC has now been covered. Thankfully, these should be more interesting to cover since they are nowhere near as powerful as Ayano is. I was initially gonna cover Taro (aka Senpai) first, but a different character has gotten my attention instead now that I’ve used her. Ladies and gentlemen, we will be covering Hanako instead!
Just like in Ayano’s guide, I have zero understanding of Yandere Simulator lore and will not be attempting to. However, Hanako is a special case, as I know literally nothing about her outside of “she is Senpai’s sister” in the game. As a result, this part will be really short, so let’s just dive into the discussion since I have nothing left to talk about in the overview.
Background Info
There was a lot of speculation regarding how Hanako was going to work in Dark Deception: Monsters and Mortals. Many of us were speculating she would finally be another Speed class Mortal because PenPen is currently lonely in that category and needs some friends that aren’t going to murder her in Maze Escape. Well, it turns out PenPen got her feelings brutally hurt, because not only is Hanako not a Speed Mortal, but her attacks can still hurt her in Maze Escape thanks to a bug.
Interestingly, Glowstick Entertainment decided to make Hanako a Ranged Class Mortal, which threw everyone in the community off when she first released. This class designation means Hanako excels at dealing damage from a distance and has a really bad light attack, while having the health and shard drop rate of a Balanced class characters. The differences come in with her speed and damage. Sharing this trait with Cybil, Hanako’s damage output from her light attack is pathetic and her speed is just a hair above average, allowing her to be about the same speed as Balanced class Monsters.
However, Hanako is a very unique Mortal, as her heavy attack is actually quite similar to Penny from the Monster side rather than following what Cybil does with hers. When Hanako’s heavy attack is used, she blows a kiss at the target and it creates a floating heart projectile at them, dealing 25 damage per heart. These hearts have large hitboxes, making them more difficult to avoid the closer the target is to Hanako. Furthermore, these hearts are able to pass through walls, making Hanako able to get free hits from around corners and on completely inaccessible areas opponents need to traverse a while to get to her. 25 damage per heart is the same damage as Penny’s eggs, but unlike on Penny, 25 damage is very acceptable damage for Mortals standards, making Hanako’s damage output fairly decent if she consistently lands them and had good aim and prediction.
That being said, she has many weaknesses thanks to being similar to Penny. The hearts travel very slowly, even slower than eggs. This is obviously a bad thing since it means opponents can dodge them with enough space, and it also does not help that Hanako’s firing speed is slower as well, which makes consecutive hits somewhat challenging when initially picking up Hanako or against experienced players. The hearts also cannot break bananas, Air Screamers, or Police Officers, making her have to use her light attack to get rid of all of them, which doubles the time and can make her lose her targets.
Unlike Penny, Hanako does not have 400 health, instead only having 180, making her much frailer and easier to handle up close. However, these weaknesses are a fair tradeoff for her since her hearts are harder to avoid when properly spaced thanks to the larger hitbox and the fact she straight up ignore walls, making her very campy, but also rewarding skill when she is mastered, something more than half this game cannot do thanks to simplicity, rng, overpowered stats and ultimate, or a combination of them. And since we’re on the topic of Penny, Hanako’s ultimate ACTUALLY does things when compared to Power of Love, so how about we begin talking about it?
UItimate: Fangirling
Hanako’s ultimate ability in the game is a ranged attack that is referred to as “Fangirling.” When this is activated, Hanako shoots one flaming heart in each direction of her, totaling to four hearts. These hearts travel with the same speed as her heavy attack hearts, but they will deal 40 damage on impact with opponents who come into context with them (the description says 50, so either this is a bug or a typo in either the game’s spaghetti code or in the ult description). This is useful as a crowd control tool that allows Hanako to try and handle multiple enemies at once if she gets swarmed, but can also be used solo to help assist her damage output or to finish off someone who’s in the health range quicker.
The hearts unfortunately do not inflict the fire debuff like they would suggest thanks to their appearance, but they do also bypass walls similar to the heavy attack ones, making their use applicable for camping as well. Hanako also regains 30% health when using the ultimate, making it useful as a free, but slightly less effective medkit for last resort situations if she is low on health or in Agatha’s Hello Friend! range.
Overall, this ult ability isn’t exactly the greatest when compared to many of the other Mortal ults, but it is still nonetheless a nice supportive addition to Hanako’s kit, as it allows her to fight off multiple people herself, provide some nice healing to herself in emergencies, and most of all, actually does things, allowing Hanako to actually do things as opposed to Penny.
Maze Escape
In Maze Escape, Hanako is similar to Penny in the sense that she is a great defensive character, but sucks at playing offense. However, unlike Penny, who needs to play offense to even do things in this gamemode, Hanako being on the defensive on this mode since she’s on the opposing side makes her a decent choice for the mode. Her hearts and Fangirling being able to go through walls makes collision not much of a factor when launching her ranged attacks, making her able to spam hearts more efficiently than Penny, especially on maps such as Monstrum Madness. However, she cannot shoot upwards or downwards with the hearts, making her height-dependent depending on the map. Hanako is overall not a terrible pick for the gamemode and can be quite good when mastered, but she can struggle due to her frailty and reliance on distance, making her have a high learning curve when factoring in her weaknesses and reliance on a streamlined projectile for damage.
Hanako’s maps are fairly straightforward. She enjoys maps that have a lot of walls to send her attacks through, as well as ones that restrict movement. Deadly Decadence fits in the wall department since the entire map is a maze and the walls are thin enough to see other players’ health bars through, allowing her to predict their movements and attack safely. Monkey Business is also a decent choice for most of the same reasons, but the banana traps can be troublesome thanks to needing to be forced to use her light hit for them.
Crazy Carnevil is a good map for her as well, although she cannot cut people off with her projectiles as well as Penny here due to the projectile speed of the hearts being slower. Elementary Evil is almost as good as Monkey Business, but the fake portals can take off large chunks of her health, severely affecting her survivability. Akademi Assault is decent thanks to the tight space of the school, but the stairs are not recommended to fight at since Hanako cannot aim upwards or downwards, making her easy to invalidate in those spots.
Stranger Sewers being a wide open map and linear means the Monster players have an easier time avoiding the heart projectiles here. Silent Sacrifice is also this way, but more chaotic thanks to Air Screamers and Pyramid Head posing threats. Finally, Monstrum Madness is not a good map for her thanks to all the elevation spots and the Boss Brutes and steam traps causing chaos, making it easy for her to die here if she is not careful.
PvP Matchups
- Performs Well Against: Murder Monkey, Gold Watcher, Hangry, Penny, Brute, Robbie
- Performs Decent Against: Ayano, Dread Ducky, Clown Gremlin, Nurse, Malak
- Performs Poorly Against: Agatha, Fiend, Reaper Nurse, Lucky
The speed classes prove to be troublesome in particular for Hanako since they’re able to outrun her and shred through her health quickly, and their speed makes them quick to dodge the hearts she throws at them. Lucky is Lucky, and Lucky is broken as hell and has a speed boost with a barrage ultimate that can one shot her from full health. Many of her other matchups are largely dictated by skill, such as Malak being able to obliterate her is she’s too close with Eye of Suffering or Clown Gremlin being a pain since she can’t kill the clones with her heavy attack.
Soul Collection
In Soul Collection, Hanako is stronger here thanks to the lowered stats the Mortals have. Her slightly above average speed helps with gathering shards, and her designation as a Ranged class allows her to outrange and fight many different Mortals similar to Cybil. However, unlike Cybil, Hanako’s hearts being projectiles allows her to bypass various ults such as Darkest Desire, increasing her time against Dawko in particular. However, she can get screwed pretty bad by PenPen and the Support classes who are considered meta in this gamemode due to them being able to outrun her and have ults that are impactful to themselves and their survivability. As a result, Hanako isn’t making waves in the gamemode, but she’s a very nice addition to something that’s pretty much ran by the supports and a few other lucky characters.
Maps are largely the same here, but Crazy Carnevil and Akademi Assault are still bugged on this gamemode for some reason.
PvP Matchups
- Performs Well Against: Doug, Nikson, SuperHorrorBro, Cybil, Senpai, Hanako (herself)
- Performs Decent Against: Dawko, Evans, Vince, PenPen, 8-BitRyan
- Performs Poorly Against: Bierce, Info-Chan, Heather, Borisov
Pretty much all the support classes bar Dawko shut her down easily. Bierce can self heal fully to make her an absolute pain to kill, Heather can reduce the damage of the hearts from the heavy attack and Fangirling, and Info-Chan can buff her attack and gain 50 health back to force two extra hits on her. Dawko isn’t a good matchup either, but Hanako completely invalidates Darkest Desire with the projectiles being able to bypass the glitch status while he cannot hit her in return, making it slightly more manageable.
Borisov is also her worst power class matchup since he can use Cool Down to slow her down to a crawl and finish her off easily unless he’s too low on health. As stated earlier, PenPen being a speed class means she can avoid the hearts well and hit for small amounts of damage, and she can also be extremely annoying with Shooting Star to stunlock Hanako while chipping her health away. However, this is also PenPen we’re talking about, so being able to aim hearts well and outpredict her can make the matchup less miserable.
Closing
Hanako is essentially Penny, but actually somewhat decent, actually functional, and has an ult that actually does things. She is very similar to Penny, but Mortals are more defensive than Monsters, making the style of projectile spamming much better than trying to play offensively with it. As a result, Hanako is a better designed Mortal due to this in mind, and it makes her a fun addition to the Mortal roster. She isn’t broken by any means and likely isn’t going to make huge waves in the game, but she definitely has the potential to be a solid mid-tier Mortal going forward. Thanks for the read, and if you made it here, I hope you have a cold pillow tonight and you have a good day! I’ll be working on these new guides throughout the week and updating pre-existing ones with new content as the days go on. I’m a busy person, so it likely won’t be immediately, but they’ll be done eventually!
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