Part 37: Post-Game 1 - Odds and Ends

Post-Game 1 - Odds and Ends

Music: Hunter Base


Loading our clear save puts us back at Hunter Base.



As the save prompt said, we're back before Chapter 10 ever happened, which means everyone in town has nothing new to say.

So, what all gets added in the post-game?



Well, uh, we finally got the Central Key, and that leads to the bonus bosses!

...that's it, really. The only other thing to keep in mind is that entering the Helipad kicks off Chapter 10 again, locking you in until you kill Great Redips another time.



But before that, there's something else I need to do.



There's a handful of loot I still need to get for full completion, plus a few Treasure Tokens left to find.



I also swap back to the red scarf.



Can't go wrong with red.



Let's get started with Gaudile's Laboratory.

Music: Jungle Treasure


But first, we haven't taken a look at that SFM we got from Great Redips, have we?



The SFM fragments are, hands down, the best bits of Force Metal in the game. SFM fragment α gives +50% WE Gain, and adds in 10% LE regen on top, while SFM fragment β gives +100 Power, Armor, Shield as well as +20 Speed.

Both of them are absolute powerhouses. You can't even rerun Chapter 10 to get more, grabbing them permanently removes them from Great Redips' steal list.

Edit: The Fragments are stealable each time, I misremembered that.

Of course, such power always comes with a drawback. The catch?



Each Fragment has 99 Erosion, the highest in the game!



Neutralizer -30s are downright mandatory to try and use these. One will bring it down to 70 Erosion, with two bringing it to a much more comfortable 40. They're well worth the space, with X now able to hit 100% WE Gain while in Hyper Mode without any help from Cinnamon.

I make an offscreen pit stop to grab more Neutralizers.



Even Cinnamon, with her sky high Immunity, needs two to use them.

Of the rest of our party right now, Zero has 26 Immunity, Axl has 30, Marino has 39, and Massimo has 45, but only has two slots so he can't fit enough Neutralizers. Axl can use one, but that requires giving him three Neutralizers, and, far more importantly, actually using Axl.



So, Mega Man X: Command Mission. A game with the explict goal of being a more story focused title. How did that pan out?

Rather poorly, actually. Between segments with obviously cut scenes fused together with all the skill of a drunken welder (looking at you, Vanallia Desert and Far East HQ), major characters only getting a handful of scenes (did you notice that Scarface, a major Rebellion commander, only got lines in three scenes?), and party members getting completely forgotten by the plot as soon as the three established characters showed up (seriously, did Marino get any voiced lines after Chapter 4), the writers clearly bit off far more than they could chew.

It has good moments, mind you, like Massimo's whole deal in Chapter 2, and Botos playing every (known) side for fools, but it clearly falls apart the moment it tries to do a consistent, game-spanning plot line instead of a handful of disconnected stages like a regular Mega Man game.

It's also one of the few times where I think random NPC dialogue makes the whole thing worse compared to just beelining the plot. Sure, you miss out on some cute details like the two soldiers on the Helipad or the computer girl spending the entire game helping to find the Rebellion HQ, but there's just so much bloody foreshadowing that it kills any sense of surprise when something happens. Looking back, I think the only things with absolutely zero hints from NPC chatter consists of just Axl's reruitment, Shadow showing up in Chapter 6, Botos playing the fool for Supra Metal, and Ferham's last minute save. Every other thing in the entire game gets mentioned at least once.



Back on topic, to give an idea of how powerful SFM β is, Cinnamon is doing 10K damage on these guys.



Zero, for comparison is doing 4.5K.

The SFM fragments are ridiculous.



All the way at the end, past where we recruited Marino, is a Reboot.

The annoying thing about the game not letting you grab items with a full stock is making you backtrack to get it later.



Dr. Psyche's arena has a token.



As well as a Dober Man that takes the Bone Key I got from the Eternal Forest.



One down.



Up next is Gimialla.

Music: A Comrade's Predicament


There's an Ultra Fire in the first room.



Now, Command Mission's story couldn't meet the mark, but what about gameplay?

Honestly, even after everything I still enjoyed it, but it has a lot of superfluous stuff bogging it down. You have all these fancy Sub Weapons! But they all use WE that would be better used to fuel an AT. So many varieties of Force Metal! But a lot of the stuff is incredibly niche, so you'd be better off with more Gain WEs. A crafting system that keeps getting new options for the entire game! Except most of what you can craft you can also just buy for money, and while there's a good amount of FMG-exclusive options (which I'll get into next update), most of it ranges from 'decent' to 'gimmicky trash', and what few bits are good have such a high level requirement that I still can't make them, even after beating the final boss.

It feels kinda feast or famine, really. If you don't figure out the Best Loadout (read: as many Generators and Gain WEs as you can cram on to people), fights suddenly drag out a lot longer as you waste WE on offensive Sub Weapons and use FM slots to cover elemental damage and you burn through your resources in a battle of attrition. If you do figure it out, suddenly everything becomes a joke as you launch 100% ATs every round and tear through bosses before they can deal enough damage to pose a threat. I honestly would have enjoyed some form of Hard Mode just to keep things somewhat interesting after I got all my tools.



The first major thing in the Mines is something I forgot in the secret area.



Namely, this Gold Blader, which has been sitting here for ages.

The Gold Blader actually shows up as an enemy in Vanallia, but I could never actually find one. It spawns in Gold/Silver Mettaurs, has a chance to run away every turn, and has a 2% chance of dropping an Item Capture. This is one of the only two renewable sources of Item Captures, the other being a counterpart to the Zennydropper called the Gift Box that shows up in the Ore Plant and is another no-show. If you kill a Gift Box on turns 4 or 5 it has a 100% chance to drop an Item Capture.

This does mean you can make as many Good Lucks as you want, capping out at +33% drop chance if you give a full set to X, Axl, and Cinnamon, but the sheer amount of grinding you'd have to do to get another 8 Item Captures would make the whole thing counterproductive.



Behind it is some loot.



But the loot has a guardian.



Namely, this absolute unit.



The Mettaur Gigant can only be fought in this area. The Jet Guillotine it holds is a weapon for Massimo that hits every enemy on attack.

Normally, the Gigant will always run at the start of his second turn, and with 10K LE and a permanent barrier, you'd be hard pressed to kill it in one turn if you fought it as early as possible.

However, the out of place Tank Energy 10 holds a hint.



Steal the Tank Energy...



And it gets mad! This boosts the Gigant's stats and stops it from fleeing.

To make it even more obvious, the Tank Energy has a 100% steal chance with an Item Capture, if you didn't fuse all of them into Good Lucks.

Once enraged, the Gigant breaks out a bunch of powerful moves, including Ultra Giga Fire, Tera Fire, and Hell Gravity.



But even all that doesn't help when I've beaten the game.



The main reason to kill a Gigant is that doing so unlocks a recipe in the FMG.



With that out of the way, I can grab another set of Tank Parts and a token.



The fourth floor has a Fire Guard I couldn't grab last time.



Also Incentas' boss room is completely intact, the lying prick.

They could have easily locked the door and said the door is too damaged to open after the explosion. They already did it with Aile's room, after all.



There's an Anti-Lock on B2F.



Plus this Mega Mantor in a side room.



With a Build LE right behind it.



That's two.



The second last stop for today is the Ore Plant.

Music: Secret Glacial Activity


What we need is at the very end.



The Warhead room has a Gatling Buster II for X.



While a room on the other side holds a Treasure Token and a Generator.



With this, we have every Treasure Token in the game!



To celebrate, I used Freecam to get a better look at the missile. You can even see where we fought Ferham!



Done.



Beating the game makes the final two sets in the GC vending machine show up.

I'm not showing them all just yet, as the final bonus boss shows up in one, and I want to hold off until I have everything left in the Sky Room to show.

I will show one, however.




Because I called it.



Our last stop today is, ugh, the Vanallia Desert.

Music: Desert of Confusion


Let's get this over with.



While we're here, I might as well get something done.



Axl gets End to All.

And yes, this is the first time I touched his FM loadout since he first joined up in Ulfat, how could you tell?



First, I get in a fight with four Wild Dogs.



Everyone gets into Hyper, then Axl uses Incentas. End to All keeps them alive.



This gives me a full Final Strike timer.



Suffice to say, it hurts.



Wait, Cinnamon didn't gain a level from that fight, nor did she participate at all, so why did she gain an AT level?

Unless...

...son of a bitch, I think I got it.

Cinnamon's AT keys off of how many FMG recipes you have unlocked. That fight alone just unlocked three of them.



Now I do it again.



This time, I use X Fire instead, as that has a higher Final Strike hit count compared to Ultimate Armor.



I try out Depth Dragoon to see how he fares.

For reference, Wild Dogs have 2.4K LE, and Incentas dealt lethal damage on the first hit, meaning it dealt at least 5K damage to everyone. Depth Dragoon is obtained four Chapters later and deals 3K.

Christ, what a disappointment.



Anyways, dealing 150 hits in a Final Strike is a Sky Room challenge, so that's that out of the way.



Back to why we're here.



There's a Tank Energy 100 by the elevator exit.



A Tank Energy 50 in a laser room.



A Cure All in the lower hallways.



As well as a Cooler...



Tank Energy 50...



And a Vaccine Program.

With that, I never have to return here ever again.



All that's left is past the Central Key door. But before that...



I haven't gone over the Force Metal Generator all that much, have I?

Next time: