Unsurprisingly Hondo isn't too difficult to beat. His main strategy is to use his flying spinning hook kick. This move comes out quite fast so it can difficult to react if he does it at close range, but he has a habit of doing it when he's nowhere near you. He doesn't tend to use too many of his other moves that much, so he's the ideal opponent to try out all of Natsuki's different moves on.

Rina has several throw techniques, and she likes to use them a lot. You can block her command grabs, but be weary about using certain moves against her, as she tends to use her counter to stop you. In particular, only use Natsuki's concentrated fist move if you are certain it's going to hit, because if Rina blocks it, she is guaranteed to counter it on the final punch.

If you jump back and do a punch at mid range, this usually gets Rina to dash forward, and you can sweep her with a low strong kick. Try using the smash and rend at close range only, at mid range or beyond Rina tends to counter it.

The main things to watch out for with Endo are his counter, and his fast knee strike. His counter isn't actually that good, he'll often do it but miss. But his fast knee strike is much more dangerous -he can only do it when his stun gauge is in the red, but the moment that happens, he's pretty much guaranteed to use it. This takes a lot of health off even if you block it, and can also take quite a bit of stun gauge away. He does have one major weakness though: the autocombo. Use this and he'll try to use his counter, but most of the time it'll fail and he'll end up getting hit.

Another strategy is to use the smash and rend move when he's a medium distance away from you, he doesn't tend to block this. So you can use it, dash back as he gets up, then repeat until he's down for good.

Akira Kandori is the most difficult opponent yet, and she might seem as being unbeatable here. She has several throw moves she won't hesitate to use, and she's also an expert at countering a lot of Natsuki's techniques. The smash and rend and concentrated punch are fairly useless against her, most of the time she'll counter them easily.

The thing is, you aren't really meant to beat her here. It is possible, but it takes a lot of grinding and getting lucky with things like landing sweeps. What happens next in the story mode all depends on whether or not you defeat Kandori here: