Yep.

[Bean]

(6) Crea & Prea / (Viddler #6)

Here's one of those rare two-on-one boss fights for you. Granted, these elves don't really do all that much other than hover around while I slice and dice, but eh. This is the shortest recording session yet, although the video itself is still a good ten minutes long. Uh, yeah. That's about it. Easy stage, easy boss, good times.

[Bean]

(7) The Zero 1 Bosses / (Viddler #7)

I wanted to hurry this one along a bit, and these next stages helped me out with that as they're all relatively short and simple. Anubis is probably the boss I remember the most from the original game thanks to the rescue mission you had to do after beating him. Hanumachine and Staggroff are two of the more forgettable ones to me. I know when you fight each, but it's not like they really made much of an impact.

I also made sure to switch out one of my Cyber Elves that doesn't activate unless you enter one of those blue doors you keep seeing. Yeah, I was wasting a slot. The one I replaced him with freezes a foe in place for a bit, making him the perfect little dude for when things try to overwhelm you. I've done the next stage as well, but we'll cover that in its own video. It's something else.

[Bean]

(8) Copy X Mark II / (Viddler #8)

This stage... I knew it was going to give me problems going in, so I made sure to set aside around an hour to record this one. Turns out that I didn't need that long to get this one done, but that doesn't change much. This place is filled to the brim with insta-kill spikes. It is very tough to avoid the enemies in this place, too, especially in the final climb of the level. That said, we manage to get through that and endure yet another plot point. Glad to get this level done.

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And this is where my 100 point run is stuck on.

I KNOW I can do it, but those spikes make attempts at the boss few and far between. Also, it was planned with you tripping the laser traps in mind, so I have to farm a few enemies extra, and that sucks major ass.
Traps themselves are a level design element that I could really do without. Then again, they could be actual doors or, well, lasers. I like that you CAN trip them without automatically taking damage. I don't like that they're there at all, timing-based puzzles that force you to stop in place suuuuck in a game like that.
Or any really.

Thank God for the Shadow Dash boot chip!

Simon

[Bean]

(9) Cubit Foxtar / (Viddler #9)

Yeah, it's like you know what to do, but your fingers just can't do it. That said, I was and am content with any A-Rank I can get, and that stage was just the first one where I dropped below getting the S-Rank. Then came this next stage and A-Rank #2...

Okay, I'm getting the idea here. The easier the name of a boss is to say, the harder the level will be. Foxtar took the longest amount of time for me to get through at approximately 45 minutes. It's just so easy to run into too many enemies, and when you don't, miss one jump and wind up slamming yourself into the last set of spikes. I did that on a two-hit run, and I was not happy then. Anyway, I liked the overall result, even if I thought my performance was underwhelming.

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Foxtar is such a bitch. Oh that's racist against women I guess well that's TOO BAD.

Took me ages to figure out how to dodge the flames. Two dashes, then a perfectly timed wall-jump; ridiculous! Absolutely doable, but the toughest move to decipher in the whole game for me. And the whole fight is mostly boring waiting-around style.

And the miniboss can suck my dick, too.

Simon

[Bean]

(10) Glacier Le Cactank / (Viddler #10)

Not a whole heck of a lot I can say about this one. The majority of the stage plays itself if you aren't going for Secret Disks, and the boss is one of the easiest I've fought all game. There were a few mistakes in trying to learn the level, but other than that, this was the shortest recording session I've had. That's just what I needed to cool down with after Copy X and Foxtar.

[Bean]

(11) Volteel Biblio / (Viddler #11)

The first half of this one wants you to stay out of the water or be electrified by it when it reaches its highest point. The second part's arguably more annoying as you have to memorize the location of four mission specific Secret Disks behind a room of 24 doors. I never saw them on the top or bottom levels, so that brings the total down to 12. It doesn't help the old noggin that you have to go through some fights before getting there, and even writing them down still takes a bit of time. Oh well. It's a pretty short stage, all things considered.

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I'd say Biblio's stage is just about the worst of all the Zero stages, the first part is veeeery annoying, and the second is just tedious shit that is the exact opposite of what I want to see in a Mega Man game...or any game really.

Simon

[Bean]

(12) Tretista Kelverian / (Viddler #12)

Tretista's stage is pretty basic until you get to the elevator ride. There, you're assaulted from both sides by three different types of foes. Hope you can use that charged up Recoil Rod effectively here. The two issues with getting a decent score here were with Metarook, the mini-boss, and Tretista himself. They both have attacks that can hit you pretty hard if you let them, so I didn't let them in this run.

We're rapidly approaching the endgame now. In fact, there are only two stages left to tackle in this one! Next time, we get another returning Zero 1 boss before taking on two little troublemakers once more.

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This stage is very fun if you try to do the whole game with only the buster or the sword.

I've done both. For some reason, though, I didn't get the minigame both times .

Simon

[Bean]

A part of my problem has been that I don't use EX Skills or that Shield Boomerang enough. I'd have seriously saved me a lot of trouble had I have done so. You're going to see me get hit plenty in the next stage when there are enemies right below me that I could have taken care of from afar, and I didn't think to do things the easy way.

I wanted to do one of my informative and skilled runs on a game in this series for a good long while now, but I just don't think I have what it takes to post 100s in every level of the game, especially when it comes to the final stages that just seem to go on forever with danger everywhere plus having to contend with the refights on top of that. Heck, I'm not even sure I could post S-Ranks (96+) across the board.

Still, it's something I keep thinking about every now and then, and all these past no-hit attempt series have definitely improved my overall skill at these games. Maybe one day. For now, I'm just content with getting the last two videos of this one uploaded over the next couple of days.

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I'm itching for an LP of the Zeroes, because I know I'm damn good at them, not 100-every-level good, but I can totally S-Rank every game except for the final level, because that's kinda insane (I did already). But I'm taking it slowly. First the classics.

And yeah, in just about every Zero game but the first (for obvious reasons), the downstab EX skill is the single most useful one of them all. You should aim to get it first and never take it off; it really shines in some stages...like the next .

Shield Boomerang's appalingly useless, though; it certainly deals a lot of damage charged, but DPS-wise, as it takes so long to deploy, it loses out. Noncharged it's damn pointless most of the time, and generally, as it cuts your mobility so much, you should never even think about using it.

Except for Hard Mode in Zero 2, I guess. Maybe 1, but the bosses aren't that hard in 1. Though I've never really gotten into using it, I prefer the sword; usually, I'm a big buster fan, but not the single-pellet shot one of Zero 2's hardmode. And Zero 3 has a chargeable Recoil Rod on Hard Mode, which deals less damage than the boomerang, but Boomerang sucks, SO...

Simon

[Bean]

(13) Phantom & the Baby Elves / (Viddler #13)

Sub Arcadia is the second to last stage in the game, and it's relatively easy... so why am I jumping into cyberspace to make things easier? Well, that's simple. We've got an optional boss to take down, one that hasn't been seen since the original Mega Man Zero. Phantom's back, and I believe he has some new tricks up his sleeve. I remember fighting him the most in the original game thanks to that bomb defusing mission. That was painful.

What's even more painful is that I have to hear those dang baby elves laugh over and over again, but at least this time, I'm going to get a chance to put them out of their misery. Seriously, they might be my least favorite characters in the entire series to this point.

[Bean]

(14) Final Stage - Omega & Ending / (Viddler #14)

Well, this has been a pretty quick series. Helps when I don't have to go around filling it all up with text. Still, maybe I should open up my yap and talk about the game instead of doing a completely silent run. Also, be sure to have some time for this one because this final video's over 25 minutes long. Yeah, they just love to talk in this game.

Overall, I'm pretty happy. I managed to finish this series with an overall S-Rank, the first time I've ever managed to complete that feat. It helps that the damage bar is a lot more lenient than in the past two titles. Out of the points I lost out on in mission score, only one of them was not because of taking damage itself. In case you want to know, I finished with a 1549/1600 or a 96.81%. Yes!

[Bean]

(1) Intro - A Fatal Forecast / (Viddler #1)
(2) Opening Stage - Maverick Hunter HQ / (Viddler #2)

It's been a good long while since I've done this, not that it really feels like it's been half a year. Huh. Still, I felt the need to cap off the SNES trilogy now that I've finally got the time and energy to do it.

The first video once again covers all the pre-game playing shenanigans. Here, I show the intros to both the SNES and non-SNES versions of our featured game. The second part gives us our first taste of playing as Zero himself. While other games would make him more fun to play as, this was one of the main selling points of the game back in the day.

[Kilgamayan]

Uh oh, incoming Megaman X3 boss patterns! :V

[Bean]

Uh oh, incoming Megaman X3 boss patterns! :V

Personally, I can't wait to fight the one that rushes into the wall.

[Kilgamayan]

Oh man, I love that one.

[Bean]

I should say right now that I'm going to reupload the first two videos on YT. The quality was screwed up because I used the wrong format. That's what I get for taking such a long break, huh?

Edit: The new links for the Youtube videos are now up. My bad on botching things up like that.

[Bean]

(3) Blizzard Buffalo / (Viddler #3)

Glad I don't have a case of cold feet, but you might if you aren't careful in how you move around our opening level. It's fairly easy for the most part, but enemies are put in positions that can be a bit tricky to dodge if you don't know when their ambushes are coming. That's going to be a recurring theme as we go along here.

We also get our first upgrade which happens to be my favorite in the game, but I'll be darned if I didn't miss that dang jump a few times in some scrapped attempts before finally getting it right.

[Bean]

(4) Blast Hornet / (Viddler #4)

Never nice to see the winner not really be the winner in votes, but you have to set a deadline at some point. Blast it all. Anyway, the stage itself goes all over the place in quality throughout. Even then, there isn't too much I can say about it for style, but that's kind of a running theme in this game. Still, we get to learn about Zero's greatest fear and throw in some plot development just to see what the bad guys are up to. Sure, why not?

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Okay Blast Hornet is called "Flying Shadow Ninja"? That's so fucking abysmal and yet so funny at the same time. Holy shit Capcom. You are the masters of name giving.

And yes, this stage really shows well how stupid X3's design can get at places. Disregarding completely atrocious segments like the (shadow ninja venom assassin killer) BOXES (of doom!), you were right in pointing out the later (mk. 2 the return of the revenge of the) BOXES (: the reckoning) stupidity; the setpiece alone doesn't make any sense ("stack this wall of boxes up to the ceiling, he'll never get through!"), but that afterwards boxes constantly fall like they were stacked sky-high through the hole in the ceiling...

This is a far cry from how X1 handled stuff, for example: Consider the randomly falling rocks in Sting Chameleon...randomly? No, there was a guy above making the quakes. Things had a REASON for being there in X1. X3 just throws shit at a wall, which could be forgiven if it were a great obstacle, but it's not even that. It's pointless and stupid.

This stage's music rocks though.

Simon

[Bean]

(5) Tunnel Rhino / (Viddler #5)

If you're an experienced Mega Man X player, this stage probably won't give you too many issues. For newbies, this place can just drill in the point that common enemies are a threat that can't be taken out as easily as other cannon fodder in previous games.

Because of when this stage is being done, there's an extra battle to go through in Bit. His pattern is predictable, but he can get you focused so much on dodging his projectiles that you forget he also has a mid-air dash attack of his own! Look out!

Also, the reason Hornet has that "Shadow Ninja" tag is that the bots in the Special #0 Unit are all assassin type of robots. Magna Centipede also had that stealth thing going on when you were fighting him. I guess the parasites from Hornet's cannon are supposed to be considered shurikens. The midboss does have that going for him, too. Still, the stage itself is mostly pointless outside of that, so whatever. At least Rhino's follows a pattern throughout.

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This is, without a contest, the worst stage in the game. It showcases perfectly all the problems X3 has: Tons of unneccessary fluff to collect, long stretches of nothing happening, normal enemies dealing far too much damage, uninspired stage design (most of the stuff doesn't DO anything, if it's even there, like the mud, that's just so pointless) that just wastes your time, and ramming attacks for everybody.

I heard somewhere that due to a glitch, Rhino in his boss room will never use the drills ever. In the refight, he works properly.

Things I didn't know: Crabs reacting to the charge, and Bit having a secondary weakness. Thanks for the education!

Oh, and Subterranean Barbarian got a good laugh out of me.

Simon