Game:

Mega Man Zero 2 (2003)

Duration: 7:36

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14

After the downtime that was the last four stages you have to do this monster of a stage to finish things off. The final stage is an absolute nightmare to do optimally and is usually where you're going to lose a good chunk of your time in an RTA attempt. You need 3 bosses give you a good pattern (Burble and both of Elpizo's forms) on top of having to do alot of hard execution and the stage is littered with spikes for good measure.

The first section is not hard. The saber slash to double kill the bats at 0:11 can sometimes mess you up but that's about it. Zipping into the boss refights is straight forward but you can make it easier by killing both green pantheons.

With the way the stage works you can RNG manipulate anything before the Phoenix refight, so the only boss you can manipulate is Ourobockle (and technically Poler but RNG means nothing against her). The refights are pretty much like any other boss fight up to this point except you actually have a reasonable way to defeat Phoenix.

Second section is quite tough near the end. Inti decided to place an enemy in a really awkward spot at 2:20 which leaves you with two options to kill it (double hit with chain or swing on chain then slash it) with both not being reliable to do. It's possible to do two more zips after the zip at 2:13 though it's not worth going for. The second zip saves hardly any time and the third has a really small window to get (you damage boost, zip, then move across spikes). Even the first zip isn't that big of a time saver (only around a second) and screwing it up can result in zipping into spikes.

Burble can do whatever he wants now so the fight can be pretty bad. You can fight him the moment you enter the second set of bosses so you have flame chip up slash which makes the fight easier. Though if you want the minor time save then you have to fight him second.

The one new fight, The Beetle Bros, is the most interesting fight and the only one which gives the same pattern regardless of RNG. The strategy for them is to double hit them as much as possible (they have separate I-Frames). The fastest you can possibly kill them is right after blue beetle does his tornado attack.

The damage boost at 4:19 is RNG. Sometimes the spider isn't in a good spot to damage boost off of and you have to do the part normally. It's not a huge time loss since the damage boost only saves about a second.

Elpizo's first form is really stupid. He's hard to hit and he can block attacks. While it is possible to 4 combo him, it's only about a second faster and it's horribly inconsistent. Charge Slash into Charge Chain is the best way to take him down quickly and deal with his bad patterns at the same time.

Elpizo's final form comes down to whether or not he decides to spawn a gold platform. If he decides to spawn one then enjoy getting tons of free damage off him. If not then have fun having to dance around his attacks while landing combos. One of the worst things he can do is spawn green projectiles from the floor which makes it not possible to hit him without taking alot of damage. Gold projectiles are also just as bad because they're hard to predict and they hit hard to boot.

Final ingame time is 21:05 (Probably a high 50/low 51 in real time). My first theory tas of this game was a 22:10 IGT so this shows how terrible that theory tas was. Think if you theory tas'd any% now it would be sub 50 RTA/sub 20 IGT. For comparison, the S-Rank theory tas is 51:24 RTA/21:22 IGT.

So with that, that's the Zero 2 ILs! Hope you all enjoyed them and found them useful for learning the game!

Full Time: 2:40.47

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