Game:

Mega Man Zero 3 (2004)

Duration: 2:42

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8

The hardest stage in the game. This stage is long, full of hard tricks and it's very easy to die.

Best way I can describe the first section before the first miniboss (first tower of buttons) is learn the position of the moths and shoot them before they get a chance to be onscreen. Makes things much more manageable.

The wall jump I do at around 0:06 is pretty tricky to do. If you're not confident doing it that way, you can just fall to the left side and quickly jump up to the platform. Once you get the timing down, the spike enemy will never hit you.

When dealing with the tower of buttons. Timing your charge shots right will let you hit multiple buttons. The buttons themselves are kinda weird and I don't fully understand them (sometimes, they take less damage from a shot). It may be based on the position of the charge shot or the button, but I'm not sure about this. The first one isn't too bad, but the second one is much worse. You have to hold jump very briefly or you'll just hit one side.

It's possible to do both tower fights faster than what I do here, but I've never been able to do it outside of TASing. It's possible to push the first two buttons onscreen when you enter the room, but it requires doing a very precise pea shot to do enough damage to fully push the button on the opposite side of Zero (most of the time, the pea shot does nothing).

The damage boost at 0:48 is not worth going for in a run. It's a very minor timesaver and you have to jump on a pretty specific part of the platform to make it over the moth and damage boost forward.

Having Normal Head + Light Body + Quick Foot makes one cycling the spinning wheel miniboss more doable, but it's still tricky to pull off. I find it more consistent doing the combo from the right side of the room compared to the left (and damage boosting off the spike enemy to avoid getting frozen). It's most likely overall faster killing it from the left side, but it's pretty picky to do (For reference, the TAS does it from the left side).

Spike skip is so scary when you don't set it up and just wing it. Your only clue of knowing where the platforms will be is when you enter the room, you may see a platform coming out of the wall (here, it was already fully out). You pretty much have to switch the direction they are going in to make it across or else the jump leading to the first explosion enemy is really dumb to do. It also makes the end part where the fire enemy is a bit easier (easy spot to get blocked by a platform).

It's possible to jump over the explosion enemy at 1:52 in theory. It's a stupid frame perfect trick involving you being on a certain sub pixel. I've never done it outside TASing.

The platform climb at the end leading to foxtar, I damage boost off the explosion enemy to climb the wall over switching to recoil to save a few pauses. There's a way you can do the climb with the platforms moving in the opposite direction, but it's another thing I've only done in a TAS setting. With the way this stage works, you need a health drop to do this part. I got two in this attempt, but reaching this part without a single health drop is the worst feeling.

With the new route. The combos done during the foxtar fight is different, but she gives the same pattern. Pea shot - Charge Slash - Triple - Up Slash - Down Slash does 32 damage. Do that twice and that's the fight.

There's a faster way to do the second combo when fighting foxtar which saves half a second. For anyone curious, the strat is here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4Ub4CSdIw0

I should mention that if you do the boss strat I do here, you want to avoid wall jumping or shooting the wall.

This is the first stage with a significant gap between IL and Theory TAS. The biggest loss of time (about 5 seconds) is the moving platforms at the very end. Theory TAS arrives at this part with the platforms in a decent enough position that doesn't require any waiting. There's also minor time loss from both the towers (probably about a second to a second an a half) from waiting for the last button to be hittable. The rest is just from movement.

Done with this stage forever...

Actual Time: 2:06.43
Theory TAS Time: 1:56.71

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