Mega Man Zero 4 - 100 Point S Rank Run [Part 3]
237This is the third and final part of my 100 point run of Mega Man Zero 4. This time I’ll be fighting Craft once again, going through the last few stages, and taking on Dr. Weil inside the depths of the Ragnarok Core. Here are some notes about this part of the run.
-I wanted to wait to detail the fight against Craft until his second encounter. This fight is probably my favorite in the entire MMZ series. His attack pattern is so much fun to dance around and find openings to do long saber combos. What I particularly love is that aggressive play is heavily rewarded. By being active and destroying his bombs and missiles before they contact the ground you can create safe opportunities to land hits on him while the hitboxes of the explosions are out of your way. In addition, his bayonet charge and laser cannon attacks offer amazing combo opportunities if you read them quickly enough. The thing that enables this quick pattern reading are the fantastic audio cues that Craft has. Every single attack and movement has a bespoke voice line and/or sound effect to go alongside it. For instance, the distinct click noise as he prepares the laser shot lets me know to dash jump over him without needing to process any visual information. These are the design principles that the best stylish action games such as Bayonetta follow, and as a result this fight is a joy to play.
-Teleporter Base is another one of my favorite stages in the game. I really enjoy how you have 4 mini stages present within each hallway that require a different approach to efficiently navigate. I choose the left hall first so that I can time my jumps across the platforms and avoid all the falling debris and resulting lava splashes. I go to the bottom hall second because I grab the Gangagun drill in the first hall and want to use it to bypass the block section with the Tellybombs, it saves a ton of time. The remaining halls can be done in whatever order, but I go up first then right because there’s a specific tactic I want to use against the boss.
-Ragnarok Core is the final stage in the series, with very fitting music and atmosphere it can be a brutal journey facing off against all the bosses and Dr. Weil. My personal recommendation is that you steal the Faital weapon to use against Fenri and Tech Kraken. I start with those two first because in my experience they have the highest chance of hitting you. Fenri isn’t too bad if you don’t play too aggressively, it’s just that occasionally he can retaliate with no warning. Tech Kraken on the other hand can either fill the room with projectiles or do absolutely nothing, in this case he chose the latter. After those two I recommend Popla Cocapetri and Noble Mandrago, those two also have quite a bit of randomness in terms of giving you patterns that are either easy to work around or demanding to dodge. Thankfully after you get those first four out of the way the rest of the bosses are more consistent in their difficulty, though they still require concentration to avoid simple mistakes.
-Now for the final fight against Dr. Weil. His first form isn’t actually too bad, the most dangerous thing is being too reckless when going for hits and crashing directly into him. I end up being too careful and whiffing a few slashes but it’s not a big deal since he gives so many opportunities for you to damage him and I want to wait for him to summon his blades so I can steal one with the Z-Knuckle. All of his attacks are very consistent to dodge and have multiple methods of doing so. Unfortunately he didn’t show off his EX Skill in which he summons the MMZ3 bosses here but I didn’t want to drag the fight on more than I already did.
-There are two things in Dr. Weil’s second form that pose a danger, first is taking damage from the horn hitbox when going for slashes on his core. The second is the triple energy ball attack that splits apart as it hits the edge of the screen. That attack can be dodged either by very precisely standing next to the horn and letting them fly over you or by destroying them. I practiced for a long time to find the correct place to stand near the horn and would get hit about half the time so I elected to use a charge slash and wiggle back and forth to destroy the projectiles. I did manage to avoid getting caught by the green webs which I’m pleased with, he spammed them a lot during this fight. This was my first attempt making it to Dr. Weil during a recording so I’m quite pleased that I managed to get away with a win, though I will say that my nerves were quite high as a result of that.
Here are the timestamps for the stages in this part:
00:00 - Ragnarok Control Room | Craft
02:20 - Teleporter Base | Randam Bandam
07:25 - Teleporter Circuit | Cyball
09:39 - Ragnarok Core | Dr. Weil
Played using both the mGBA and VBA-M cores in Retroarch, recorded with OBS. I hope you enjoyed the run and as always feel free to leave any comments and questions you may have. Next up will be MMZ1.
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