Part 14: Protect Factory: Hidden Phantom

Extra Stage Thoughts

Man, the beginning of this is so amazing. Ciel keeps it short, the watches are indeed missing and the ominous music plays, then suddenly kukri out of nowhere! And you're thrown right into a bossfight. It's just cool. Phantom is cool, he's a stoic ninja stereotype but who cares. I really like his design and his fight. Also, he's smart. Zero is the priority target, it's very clear now that Neo Arcadia has noticed that he keeps fucking their shit up and sent an assassin. It's to be assumed that the entire attack on the factory was just meant to draw our protagonist out, because Phantom knew exactly that a) Zero is the only competent member of the Resistance, and if something happens, he will show up to fix it and b) he will attempt to fix it no matter what, hence the bombs. Neo Arcadia really couldn't care less about their already abandoned factory - that makes the blowing it up part non-stupid - and it serves a dual purpose: Without an energy supply, as Ciel keeps stressing, the Resistance is finished anyway, and without Zero, they can't even attempt to recover. I think it's really, really interesting how Phantom is gaming the system, too: He knows that Zero is a Hero with a capital Haitch, taunts him with a reminder that his glory days lie way in the past, and assumes correctly that Zero will still throw caution to the wind and try to disarm the bombs.
The bossfight is also intense and even with the prolonging ninja moves really fast-paced (and I love that he immediately charges at you to set the tone), so up until it ends, this mission is really great.

Then you have to revisit the factory with a screen too small for what it requires of you and what was a stupid idea in the first place, and asshole bats added to the mix. Seriously - if you don't take the two bats waiting for you around the Elf enclosure immediately upon seeing them, they at least quintuple the danger of you falling to your doom. Just too much to keep track of while transferring the worker bots, it's an incredibly dickish placement. Nothing much else is a problem - and the time limit is a slap in the face. As you're on rails for most of the mission anyway, it'll never come into place...unless you miss a bomb somewhere. And then it's definitely not enough time to go back and search, because the setup is far too linear to easily reach one specific bomb. Bad, bad level, shame after such a strong start.

Boss Comments



Attacks

• Dash-Slash: Emulating Zero's move, he'll charge right at you, and always does it at the start of the battle. Surprisingly, you can knock him out of it with any attack; goes to show that ninja's shouldn't pick open melee combat. Can chain into another dash (careful, you can't know him out of that one because invincibility!), a jump to the middle of the room followed by Mirage Trap, or a jump to the corner of the arena to begin a Shuriken Flight.
  
• Mirage Trap: Always his second move. He splits into four images, one of which is the real Phantom. He can be told apart from the others due to not flickering as pronouncedly, dunno how to describe it, the baldurdash version should be 60 fps to make it clear. The real one can be damaged normally, but will move after being hit, so no combos possible. Should you hit the wrong one (Saber is dangerous to use, because of the large hitbox), a Pantheon will appear from the illusion and send out a little explosion, which might well hit you. Especially as you have to get away, because Phantom appears over your head, stabbing downwards. If you don't hit him fast enough, he might charge out of his real position; as shown, this isn't always the case, but it could be that he definitely does it if you've hit him once already, and not if you haven't. Or only on the last iteration, because him splitting up can repeat from two to four times. If you hit him every time, after the last, he'll jump up and throw a shuriken, which will split on ground contact. If it's near the middle of the room (or near Zero, not sure) it'll split as kunai in the cardinal directions, so you have to jump over the one on the ground. Otherwise, it'll split diagonally and you have to stay put. This throw can be chained into a charge (very dangerous, as you might not be ready to knock him out of it after having jumped the blade) or a jump to a corner to initiate a Shuriken Flight.
  
• Shuriken Flight: Phantom throws his apparently remote-controlled weapon towards Zero. Jump it. It'll then return, he'll jump on it and fly towards Zero - you have to dash under it, unless you're in a corner far away, but it's safer that way, as at point, he'll throw kunai directly downwards. Don't stay in a corner, and you shouldn't get hit. He'll always drop down in the middle of the room, then chain the attack into another of its type (jumps to the corner), a Mirage Trap (jumps high and lands again, as he's already in the middle) or a dash (again, dangerous because you don't have much room to dodge, him being in the center).
  
• Ninja Vanish (EX Skill): Room turns completely dark and Phantom becomes invisible. He's still there, though, and fires three kunai from his position. He'll linger a very short while after the third toss, then teleport somewhere else. If you hit him at any point, it'll knock him out of the attack, and he'll teleport immediately. You have to hit him four times to end the EX skill. Just fire blindly; you'll hit him most of the time. Triple Rod is great to reach him when he's on the "ceiling". He can chain into this and out of it with every other attack.

Again, I really like his design. The multipurpose oversized ninja star he uses is sheer brilliance.
Key to fighting him is knowing which attack can follow which, as all of them are pretty easy to deal with. For that reason, I put emphasis on which can follow which. As it's very methodical and each attack just requires a pretty specific, yet generously doable approach, I never have problems fighting him. You shouldn't either, once you understand each of those approaches! Though I do think a major part of me not having any trouble is that I do really get better with much practice, and as he's right at the start of the mission, you get a pretty unbroken chain of attempts, compared to any other both which you can only try and get better on after an entire stage, and then only for how many lifes you have. They should have gone all the way and gotten rid of those, too...


Ranking High

Doing Phantom well is 90%. With "well", I mean "as quickly as possible". Not that big of a deal in Normal, but Hard Mode requires that you don't miss shots and it's also luck-based. If he EX Skill-s too often, you're fucked, time-wise. Not cool. Major offender is also the enemy score, don't know what they were thinking with that, you have to farm, no questions asked, under a strict timer, and I don't mean the one displayed. Still, as the mission is short as hell, this is really not that big of a deal. Just, can't stress this enough, get good at Phantom.

• Infiltration: _{Perfect for the first part of the level...yes, those three seconds before the boss fight. Ominous. Creepy. Subdued. Mysterious. They could easily have played this during Phantom's bossfight, too. I really like it, the limited melody Zero 1 allows its tunes for once really works out.
  Sadly enough, the mission part of the mission is under a time limit, and high-adrenaline anyway because you just beat a difficult and lengthy boss and don't want to die to this ass of a level again. In other words, the music is seriously unfitting. This could well have played in the last mission, too - it's called Infiltration, and we infiltrated a base, for heaven's sake!}