Welcome to the first part of my 100 point S rank run of Mega Man Zero 4. Although this game is quite different in a number of ways compared to its predecessors I believe the unique aspects present open up interesting gameplay opportunities in both stage traversal and boss fights that make it a ton of fun to play. Here are some general notes about the run and then some specific notes about the stages in this part.

-Just as with MMZ3 I’m playing from a fresh save file, this means I’m not carrying forward any of the EX Skills, Cyber-Elf levels or armor chips. On the topic of chips I won’t be crafting any during this run, I’m sticking with base Zero for the whole game. Most prominently this means I don’t have access to the double jump or rolling slash. This is primarliy because I don’t want to bother farming for parts rather than for additional challenge.

-For this run I did my best to put an emphasis on using enemy weapons stolen with the Z-Knuckle as much as was reasonably possible. I actually really enjoy the Z-Knuckle as a concept and I try to use a variety of weapons in different scenarios rather than gravitating towards just the strongest ones such as the Axeloid weapons. In fact, the only self imposed restriction in this run is that I’m not allowed to use the Axeloid at all which actually changes the fight against Dr. Weil’s second form quite a bit.

-Now to get to the routing choices in this part. Once I clear the opening stages my immediate objective is to acquire Flame Fang and the Hacker Lv.2 elf as soon as possible. The reason for this is that using Hacker Lv.2 allows you to cancel the triple slash into Flame Fang, similar to the special armor combination in MMZ3. The difference here is that it also gives you access to the rising triple slash as well giving the player a choice between dong a safer combo or a longer more damaging one. The first three bosses I go after are Genblem, Kraken and Mandrago. I do make sure to gather 150 E-Crystals before Mandrago to feed the elf and get Hacker Lv.2 since the rapid 4-hit combo is useful against both her and the ant miniboss in her stage. Kraken is second because I need to clear two stages before I can use Hacker Lv.2 without incurring a score penalty. Given that both Kraken and the miniboss are both weak to Flame Fang it’s an easy second choice, that and Ice Javelin will be useful in Pegasolta’s stage.

-Pegasolta is the fourth boss taken on for the purpose of getting Thunder Stab. On the surface Thunder Stab appears nearly useless compared to Gale Attack and it’s certainly true that its use in boss fights is severely limited. However for stage traversal its ability to extend the range of your dash attack, stun enemies and most importantly generate ground and wall crawling sparks when contacting a wall is invaluable. Its use will be immediately apparent in the upcoming stages.

-The Hanging Gardens where Pegasolta resides deserve special mention as being a mostly trivial stage with the exception of one specific enemy which makes it far more irritating than it needs to be, that is the Triaformer, the small three pronged enemy which generates energy stars in place and then fires them at you. On it’s own this isn’t much of a problem, the issue is that their placement is completely random each time you play through the stage, no amount of planning will allow you to precisely attack them, you have to react to them as you move, sometimes while in mid air as the wind is pushing you. These things are the primary cause of resets on this stage, the best tactic you have at your disposal is to fire half charged buster shots in advance and hope they land as you arrive to their position which is what I do in the second half of the stage after the miniboss since I want to use Ice Javelin on Pegasolta anyways.

Here are the timestamps for the stages in this part:

00:00 - Caravan | Sub Core
01:15 - Area Zero | Carnage Force 0
03:06 - Particle Beam | Heat Genblem
06:13 - Deep Sea | Tech Kraken
09:13 - Underground Forest | Noble Mandrago
11:54 - Hanging Gardens | Pegasolta Eclair

Played in Retroarch using both the mGBA and VBA-M cores, recorded with OBS. Hope you enjoy watching and as always feel free to leave comments and ask any questions you may have.

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