Mega Man Zero - 100 Point S Rank Run [Part 2]
185This is part 2 of my 100 point run of Mega Man Zero. This time I’ll be taking on Blizzack Staggroff, facing off against the four Guardians, and defending the Resistance Base from Hanumachine. Lots to go through in this part, here are the notes.
-For Bizzack Staggroff’s stage I decided to do a “stealth” challenge, meaning that I don’t set off any alarms while inside the Secret Base. To facilitate this, I enter the level with an unusual weapon combination of the Buster Shot and Triple Rod. The buster is useful to shoot the Guard Pantheons from afar and stun them, avoiding having to wait for them to turn around to attack them. The Triple Rod is used to pogo on many enemies, especially the guards when descending a ladder. Blizzack Staggroff himself is a punching bag, just like in MMZ3. In this case I use a variety of different weapon hits to create a satisfying combo that shreds him in no time. Of particular note, the charged Triple Rod doesn’t incur long invincibility frames so you can toss it into the middle of any combo.
-Fefnir’s stage and battle are both unremarkable, the only thing you need to keep in mind is that in order to achieve 100 points on the stage you need to defeat 91 enemies, which is absurdly high. Aside from that, when engaging with the enemies jumping out of the helicopter, staying at the top of the hill and letting them approach you is the safest way to tackle that section that I found.
-For Leviathan’s stage I made the terrible decision to pogo off the bomb enemies in the cave, which took hours to figure out how to do consistently. The remnants of the stalactites are infuriatingly difficult to circumvent. I also perform the ship skip by doing a bounce off a fish, but I forgo doing any pogos off the missiles, I’d had enough precision pogoing by that point. The Leviathan fight is extremely detailed and my favorite in the game. There’s far too much too discuss about it so I can’t fit it in this description, please check out my video “Dancing with Leviathan” if you’d like to learn more. I’ll post a link to it at the end of this description.
-Harpuia’s stage is pathetically short, with the only remotely interesting aspect being the sky high platforming at the very end. His fight on the other hand is rather engaging. His attack pattern is notoriously exploitable and the ice chip makes short work of him, so instead I elected to integrate as much Triple Rod usage as I could. As it turns out, the Triple Rod is fantastic at both knocking him out of the air and also dodging his eventual rising slash by pogoing off him. This method is very satisfying to me as it’s a case of simultaneously dodging and dealing damage in style. While Harpuia is on the ground you can get 3-4 hits in before jumping up and initiating the pogo. If your timing is exceptional it's possible get 5 hits, but it’s very risky and not particularly necessary. All in all, the movement in this fight ends up looking very fluid, it’s super rewarding to pull off correctly.
-While Phantom does have a randomized attack pattern, the fact that you fight him at the start of the stage means that you can choreograph this fight, as the RNG value will be the same each time. With proper planning, the fight can be sped up tremendously. There are many potential paths you can take in terms of pattern manipulation. In this case, one specific thing I do is intentionally attack the wrong mirage to break him out of his illusion pattern and setup more favorable conditions.
-Hanumachine is a bit of a tragedy. His “stage” suffers from a lack of any bespoke level design as you’re just trudging through the Resistance Base. His fight is equally baffling, it can’t have been playtested in any reasonable capacity. I say this because they surely would’ve figured out that he’s disgustingly susceptible to knockback in a neutral state. All you have to do is wait for one of his attack patterns to end, then you can push him into a corner and simply slice him to bits. In this case I deliberately replayed the level until he gave me the ideal pattern, which is the aerial fire spin. A simple dash forward avoids his flames and places you in a perfect position to combo him. Probably the sloppiest example of stage and boss design in the game.
Here are the timestamps for the stages and bosses in this part:
00:00 - Secret Base | Blizzack Stagroff
03:56 - Desert | Fefnir
07:13 - Secret Base | Leviathan
10:18 - Subway Ruins | Harpuia
11:54 - Abandoned Factory | Phantom
14:22 - Resistance Base | Hanumachine
Played using the mGBA core in Retroarch, recorded with OBS. Hope you enjoyed this part, comments and questions are welcomed as always.
Dancing with Leviathan:
https://youtu.be/NniWr5LK7JA
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