A Fast Level 4 Victory Against Fistleo
48While practicing the ascent of Slither Inc., I stumbled upon this particular “strategy” for fighting Fistleo and achieving a fast level 4 victory against him. To preface the actual discussion, I need to make clear that for Slither Inc., getting level 4 wins wasn’t a priority. It was the exact opposite in fact, given that I fought the Pseudoroids with the ZX-Saber only while achieving level 4 in their stages proper, I wanted to use the final stage as an opportunity to showcase just how disgustingly powerful Overdrive really is. To my surprise, my very first practice attempt at using the standard HX 5-hit combo resulted in an equivalent fight to what is shown in the video. At first, I passed it off as a mere fluke, but then it happened again. To be honest, at no point during my attempts did I ever deliberately practice this, but even so, I found my success rate to be at or slightly above 50%.
So what’s going on here? Why do several slashes that explicitly intersect Fistleo’s head fail to register as weak point hits? Well, I can’t give an authoritative answer, it’s guesswork at best really, but here are my thoughts on what’s happening.
Being familiar with getting level 4 victories on all the Psuedoroids using Model ZX only, I’m no stranger to the idea of bizarre hit detection playing a major role in these battles. That’s part of what’s happening here, but it’s a bit more difficult to see due to Model HX’s slash sprites having a bit more panache than the others. I’m going to attempt to break this down on a hit-by-hit basis, so for those watching on PC, you can use the comma and period keys to move the video frame-by-frame; this should be helpful in understanding. I’m not sure if there’s an equivalent feature on mobile, but if there is, I recommend using it.
-Unsurprisingly, the crux of this entire combo is the very first hit; land this, and you should be almost guaranteed to land the rest without issue. I can’t discount the possibility, hence the qualifier, but in my case I never struck his weak point after landing the first slash. As can be seen, I initiate HX’s jump slash quite far away from Fistleo. Looking on a per-frame basis, the tail end of the slash barely grazes the side of his head. It seems the game’s internal logic dictates this as avoiding it. The timing for the slash will depend on how quick your inputs are at the start of the fight. Unlike MMZ, ZX features no input buffering at the onset of a battle, so timing is crucial. In this case, I hit him just before he shuffles forward, though, other timings are certainly possible, you just have to compensate accordingly.
-The second hit is the most perplexing. For those unaware, enemies—including fire elemental bosses—have their contact damage hitboxes disabled while stunned by electricity; due to this, I can perform a dash slash through Fistleo. The confounding part is that this slash sprite appears all at once, there’s no lead-up whatsoever. It’s clearly contacting his legs, body, and head; I can only surmise that the bottom of the slash is construed as the origin point, and thus, doesn’t count. Or perhaps the slash comprises several minute hitboxes, the majority of which have to intersect for it to count as a weak point hit. I honestly have no idea, but it does work, and consistently at that.
-The third hit is the first slash of HX’s triple slash. In this case, it’s ostensibly operating using the same principle as the dash slash: the sprite is overlapping all sections of Fistleo, yet doesn’t register as a weak point strike. Moving on.
-The fourth and fifth hits are the most interesting, and the easiest to understand when viewing frame-by-frame. For those following along, pay attention to when Fistleo’s health value changes. For the previous hits, it occurs on the first frame a slash sprite is interpreted as overlapping. For these two hits, there is a short wind-up frame of animation in which Aile holds the HX-Saber behind herself before swinging forward. The exact moment the Saber appears, Fistleo takes damage, and in this instance, it avoids his head, clear as day. The rest of this animation is irrelevant; despite intersecting his head, Fistleo is granted invincibility frames for this hit, so only a strike with a higher combo value can damage him. Hit five plays out in the exact same way; the fight ends with just a poke of the HX-Saber extending behind Aile prior to the full swing having the potential to hit Fistleo’s head.
That’s all I’ve got, hopefully, my musings proved to be entertaining, informative, or both. If you happen to have any insight into the inner machinations of ZX’s weak point system, either theoretical or empirical, I’d love to hear it. It’s quite a fascinating concept that adds a lot of consideration to the Pseudoroid fights. Do feel free to ask any questions you may have as well, though given that I have many myself, I’m not sure how effectively I’ll be able to help. Thanks for watching.
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