Armed Phenomenon Fefnir - Uncharged Z-Saber Only/No Damage
85While working on my 100 point run of MMZ2, I decided to take a completely unrelated detour and try to defeat Armed Phenomenon Fefnir using only basic Z-Saber strikes. The reason for this is that I was inspired by watching an amazing challenge video by the legendary Mega Man player @HideofBeast, I’ll link his video at the end of the description. This type of challenge is very far outside my comfort zone as I typically rely on methods that defeat bosses very quickly, meaning that I don’t need to become particularly good at consistently weaving around their patterns. As a result, my skills at dodging and dancing around both projectiles and contact damage hitboxes are somewhat underdeveloped. I’ve been taking steps to remedy this, with this challenge being one such example. Here are some details about this fight and the approach I took.
To start, the most glaringly obvious issue you’ll encounter upon attempting this is realizing that Fefnir’s contact damage hitbox is enormous. When combining that with the fact that his head is the target and the Z-Saber’s jump slash range is not particularly impressive, you’ve got a perfect recipe for frustration. You need to make a very specific type of jump to sail past his cannons, hit him, and then return safely. In a vacuum, this isn’t very difficult, however the many flames Fefnir launches at you complicate things tremendously. Explicit knowledge about the shape and elevation of each flame salvo he fires is required.
The start of the fight plays out the same each time, luckily Fefnir follows a strict rubric, RNG is not a factor here. Two free hits are granted before the flamethrowers jet out, this is trivial to avoid. The bombs he launches afterwards have lingering hitboxes so be careful as you jump towards him for a hit. With these four hits delivered, now begins the phase where I’ll utilize a movement loop I devised to consistently avoid his flame rings while also dealing damage. There are 7 salvos of rings and they launch in the same pattern every time, my method is as follows:
-Since Fefnir has i-frames from the slash preceding this first set of rings, I simply jump over this one and wait for the next.
-I jump over the second set and deliver a hit. Be careful when landing after this jump, the last ring in this set is elevated high so it’s easy to crash into it as you double back.
-The third set of rings all launch high so I focus on dodging. When I land, I go for a quick hit but turn around ASAP and make a big arcing left-to-right jump over the incoming fourth set.
-Ring set five launches close to the ground, the easiest jump and hit to perform.
-Immediately followed by the most difficult, set six requires a painfully specific jump and horizontal positioning to successfully circumvent. This is where I would get hit the majority of the time.
-The seventh and final set is another high launch, so once again I purely dodge here. I deliver a quick hit after landing and prepare for the loop to reset.
After that pattern, Fefnir will fire one ring and flamethrower from any intact cannons, as well as any bombs if the top two cannons are intact. You’ll notice that after this first movement loop his top cannons are disabled. It’s also possible to destroy the frontmost cannon, this ostensibly reduces the size of his contact damage hitbox. However, in my experience, actively focusing on the bottom cannons was both a waste of time and made things more difficult. Not only does the movement loop change with the number of active cannons, but the frontmost cannon being destroyed tended to impart me with a false sense of security. With it gone I’d routinely overshoot my jumps and either take damage or strike the back cannon. This is a problem because once all of the cannons are destroyed, Fefnir will settle into a tedious 4 ring pattern that is both boring to play and watch. In addition, the front cannon serves as a great visual signpost for how to maneuver during your jumps in spite of having a potentially larger hitbox, so for me it was both faster and helpful to leave both bottom cannons active.
I hope you enjoyed this battle, you’ll notice that I did end up missing two slashes during the second and third movement loops as I dodged the sixth flame salvo. That ended up wasting roughly 5 seconds, but given that this isn’t meant to be a pure speedrun, I decided to keep this take. Knowing when to let go and preserve your sanity is a skill as important as any other.
MMZ2 Hard Mode Boss Rush video by HideofBeast:
https://youtu.be/Nr6Sk4VgW-Q?t=77
Other Videos By DZ3
Other Statistics
Mega Man Zero 2 Statistics For DZ3
There are 61,623 views in 13 videos for Mega Man Zero 2. His channel uploaded an hours worth of Mega Man Zero 2 videos, or 8.87% of the total watchable video on DZ3's YouTube channel.