Look at the achievements, 43% cannot get past that boss.

You can stun him with tsuba guards even if not all lanterns are lit. To do damage to him you need to hit the golden bags on his body, otherwise you will deal next to no damage.
You can cheese him with sorcerers if you want, then you also don't need to light the lanterns and can focus on defending. Otherwise all woodcutters will also work but you need to put in a bit more work, but 2 cycles of lightning the lanterns should be enough to kill him normally.

As in, can't do it on the timer, or can't do it at all?

This boss took me days and days of effort. I'd log in and make two or three attempts, then quit, every day for at least a week. In the end, Ascetics and Woodcutter Combo worked for me, but it was always difficult and close. One key thing I found is that lighting all the lanterns protects against the small worms. Also, be sure to switch between attacking and defending with the villagers when the worms strike and then recede.

Is there a way to keep the boss away or is it just RNG? Seems like every attempt I get a game over because the centipede decides to camp Yoshi. I first thought the lanterns were meant to ward it off but the game hints state that's to highlight the weak points.

Huh this boss is hard ?
As usual from soul like player analysis
1) It will do a roar before charge to you. At this point, all villagers are defending girl.
2) when it charge toward you, it has minor tracking capability and limited turning speed.
3) keep strafing around lantern, until it tired and stop. Estimate the time it stopping the charge, command "everyone charge and attack"
4) Keep hit with whatever you have, until it start roar again (step 1)

You should always always stick around the boss, never run away or defend girl.
Let the villager defend the girl, you just focus dance with the boss.
I only lit up 4 exact lantern at the very start of the fight (the 4 nearest to the girl before boss engage)

I always defended against the worms, finding the villagers unable to do the job alone. In general I stayed away from Yoshi, and that seemed to keep the boss away as well.

@Skillflow Sorcerers aren't available yet.
@Black Hammer at all...
@h3xC@ the problem is that when the worms fall, all the lanterns go out. Sending out two to light the closest ones alone means that I am too close to Yoshihiro and she will at least take half her health in damage from the boss alone, and I need to help because two less villagers near her.
And nobody here can agree on whether the villagers can defend Yoshihiro alone or not. Not in my experience.

Originally posted by Lord Byte:

@Skillflow Sorcerers aren't available yet.
@Black Hammer at all...
@h3xC@ the problem is that when the worms fall, all the lanterns go out. Sending out two to light the closest ones alone means that I am too close to Yoshihiro and she will at least take half her health in damage from the boss alone, and I need to help because two less villagers near her.
And nobody here can agree on whether the villagers can defend Yoshihiro alone or not. Not in my experience.

Yeah I haven't had much luck leaving villagers to defend her against the grubs either. I've tried a few different sets of villagers, Most helpful seems to be stacking woodcutters, archers didn't seem to do much against the boss and I'm not sure their damage is useful against the grubs. Can't tell if ascetics are helping against the grubs either.

It's by far the worst boss in the game and the only hard level I've played in it so far, to the point of failing it in its own right rather than just missing the side objectives.

Basically it comes down to one thing: does the boss crawl on the ceiling immediately after you start damaging it to a small sliver of its health, or not. It can be completely impossible if you get it doing that every single time, and it seems essentially RNG if it'll do it or not - it does not seem to be attracted to the player or any villager type consistently, at all.

Some people have done this level, and the 3 min timer version of it, without breaking a sweat. Others are getting skill checked by it many, many times over. It's just dependent on whether the boss decides it would rather not take damage right now, or not. Some people are getting a version of this where the boss just sticks in place after the first stun and gets damaged by regular attacks to the face, allowing it to be killed without a single cycle of lights. And some people ... aren't.

I like the game and I'm glad I persisted through it, but for real, nothing like anyone's run on this level on youtube happened to me in my game. My record for it is somewhere around 4.22 after about 30 attempts. There's something legitimately bugged about how the level behaves, I've literally replicated every single villager placement and attack from other people's runs and seen nothing like the results.

ed - should mention how I beat it. Same situation as you, going through it the first time, grinded everything you can get at that point, looked up multiple youtubes of people doing it, blabla. 100% upgraded woodcutters and suzaka's flame did it eventually, you just have to get lucky and hope it sticks around in damageable form long enough each cycle. That's it. That's the only strategy. It just completely ignores stuns and IDCLIPs through to the ceiling, making ascetics totally worthless.

The Ascetic stun proved very important to me. Also, hitting the tongue causes more damage, from what I'd learned. I tried to focus my attacks on that and the weak spots. I don't recall the worms extinguishing the lanterns with regularity, it may have been the boss with coincidental timing, but that's supposition on my part.

OK maybe different gamer has different talents.
This is how I do.

1) at least 1 Ascetic, at this point they still don't do any damage.
But it is very helpful to chain freeze the boss if you willing to have less DPS unit, then get more

2) balance amount of archer and woodcutter. Try to reach tier 3 at least got the special skill for them.

3) before start fight, position 1 any unit at the nearest 4 lantern.

4) Start fight, ask the nearest to lit up the lantern. There is a chance, by the 4th lantern you try to lit, the boss is very close now.

5) after done lantern lit, assign everyone to defend girl

6) yourself NEVER COME NEAR TO GIRL, just pick a lantern and strafe the charge

7) If you run back to girl and "Trying to defend the girl", you will create more risk to the girl by having the boss moving closer to the boss.
YOU SHOULD NEVER DEFEND THE GIRL FROM SMALL WORM

8) the boss is coded to have very high focus attention on player as long as you don't run to another side of arena

Look man, you're probably getting knotted up over things you shouldn't and you're not noticing things you should.
When all the lights are on, the larvae die. Archers are useless. Ascetics are your friend. Woodcutters are okay.
You don't need a billion upgrades for Soh or the villagers, though maxing Ascetic is advised.
Samseng offers good advice.
Anyway, you need to watch the boss. All its attacks are telegraphed and the annoying charge is visible even in the dark.
You can risk going to Yoshiro (if you want) as long as you time it correctly (mukadejoro doesn't charge back-to-back. There's always a window of time in-between charges. Still, I don't recommend doing it unless you have to).
The villagers will be overrun by larvae if you're not helping to pick them off somewhere or you're not lighting lanterns. The way to deal with this is to use Ascetics to slow the larvae down around Yoshi so you can fan out your crew to light lanterns again. Just run a full circuit. They're not that incompetent. As long as mukadejoro isn't attacking Yoshi, the villagers can defend her long enough to get the lanterns lit. Then all the larvae die. If Yoshi takes a hit, it doesn't matter. It's not a challenge run.
Ideally, you should aim to kill it before it puts out the lanterns. This is 100% doable even on the first playthrough. This was the strat I used.

5 Ascetics or 3 Ascetics and 2 Woodcutters. Suzaku's Flame. (Optional: Charged Oka Dance)
Position villagers ahead of you beside lanterns on the circuit you're about to run (none behind you). You can send them through the defilement wall without triggering the boss. (The mukadejoro will always attack by the time you're on your way to the 3rd lantern. Be prepared to dodge.) By the time you reach the last lantern (make note of where the boss is, you don't want it on the ceiling so wait until it's on its way down or it's already on the ground--also make note the lantern-lighting animation takes forever), the first villager will be done and can be recalled to light it. Once it's lit, dogpile it and keep it stance-broken. If you're lucky, you can get it looped, going in circles, as Ascetics stun it for you to hammer into oblivion. Otherwise, you keep it guard-broken because the Ascetics slow it down enough for you to do that. Suzaku's Flame does it outright. If you use charged Oka dances, these will also do the job if Suzaku isn't enough.
If it gets away from you and puts out the lights, default the villagers on defense and start having them light the lanterns on a full circuit. The larvae won't kill Yoshi before you finish unless she already got hit by something or you let her get overrun before deciding to get the lights. Dogpile the boss again and kill it.
Be aggressive. Defense is not your friend.

If you're still having trouble, post a gameplay video. OBS is free.

[Edit: Charged Oka is apparently not available at this point in the game. Irrelevant. I did the initial run AND challenge run without it. Don't sweat it if it's not available. Suzaku is enough.]

Originally posted by Lord Byte:

Look at the achievements, 43% cannot get past that boss.

Yeah achievements... that's not an argument at all. You do realize that sometimes people drop a game because they want to play something else, or have other occupations, or are on vacation, or whatever.

advice about "Charged OKA Dance" is irrelevant.
At that point, the SOH passive tree is not even unlocked yet.
It is also near impossible to max upgrade Ascetic.

Remember, this is "3rd boss" and the "3rd village".