Mega Man X: Command Mission Part #40 - Post Game 4

Part 40: Post Game 4 - Outfoxed

Post-Game 4 - Outfoxed

What could be after five bosses in a row?

A sixth boss, who could have known!

I challenge you to a fight.

Music: Sure Win! Ninetails

Sixtails here is a unique gimmick fight, giving us a hard time limit before Very Bad Things happen.

Now, you may think 10 turns is an incredibly generous time limit, what with how every fight in the game has gone.

The catch is that Sixtails has an absolutely titanic 200K LE, even more than Fourtails! While he has no regen to drag things out, you still need a stellar offense to blitz him down.

And that assumes that he'll let you have time to kill him, as he'll still attack like normal. In a show of mercy from the devs, he only has Ultra Giga and Tera Fire to go with Puncture Arrows and Hadoken.

To make it worth the trouble, he also drops the final set of Tank Parts in the game.

But first, I want to stall to show off what happens if you run out the clock.

While waiting, I had a thought.

Why not use a Boost item on him instead?

There is no possible way this could go wrong.

Once he hits turn 10...

He fully heals his 200K LE, as well as buffs his stats into the stratosphere.

This stacks with those Boost Speeds I gave him, so now he's able to get three turns for every one I get.

But wait, there's more!

I swap in Axl for a special reason.

Speed doesn't matter if he can't hurt you, after all.

Remember that Ultimate Armor cuts all incoming damage in half.

Sixtails is dealing 4K damage.

Per hit.

Ah, so this is what it feels like to be on the other side of this.

Zero doesn't last much longer.

Now, there's a second time limit if you hit the first one. Stealth Mode Axl is pretty much the only way to hit it, even if you didn't boost Sixtails' Speed.

If you can last 10 turns after his boost...

He throws in one last dirty trick.

Normally, that would hit the damage cap at 99999 damage, but Axl is still invincible.

Now, you might think that this is a super clever cheese strat and that'll be that.

Except enemies that use Self-Destruct don't give any rewards, screwing you out of a full Sub Tank and will leave you one Figure Token short of a complete collection!

So let's do this properly, shall we?

Video: Battle with Sixtails

I just need to kill him as fast as possible.

Which still isn't hard, X can take out 10% of his health in one shot.

While Zero can do a bit more.

Cinnamon can also wear him down by 10K.

But she also needs to keep the party healthy, which is a turn spent not attacking him.

A few more ATs get him low, but the timer is still a threat. Even with me breaking the game over my knee as much as I have, he still hits 7 turns.

Annihilator Hadoken's damage scaling is kinda sad, by the way. If you get any Tails to low health it just becomes a free turn for you.

But in the end, he falls like all the others.

Music: Victory Jingle + Trajectory of Battle I

Which nets us a full 1000% Sub Tank capacity.

At no point will I ever need 1000% capacity.

Music: Recapture Hope

Now that Cinnamon is level 40, I can finally make these.

But I need some materials first, plus I'm low on Hyper turns, so I grab the next set of items and head back to get what I need and heal up.

So I have to run all the way back.

This room, and the bed it holds, is still blocked off, which means the nearest heal spot is all the way back at Hunter Base.

I buy all the mats I need.

And make as many Gain WE +25s as I can.

Note how much my FME has dropped just from three LE +1000s and one Gain WE +25. Another two Gain WEs will completely burn through the rest of my FME, and that took the entire game to build up.

Zero is the main person that can use it, as he can't fit any SFM anyways, and X has the α to cover his WE Gain.

This also lets him go from 0% to 100% every round, so long as Cinnamon is supporting him.

I give Cinnamon the other two, in case I need her to heal every round.

With that done, I take the Air Bus.

Heal at the bed.

Take the Air Bus back.

And head aaaaaaaaalllllllll the way back.

To lucky number 7.

Video: Battle with Seventails

Once more unto the breach.

I challenge you to a fight.

Seventails uses Stungun, Deep Impact, and Ultra Giga/Tera Thunder on top of the usual kit.

Each one has 60K LE, plus 25% regen.

X starts us off.

A good hit, but note the scratch damage on the other.

This fight is a repeat of the Belladonna's buff-on-hit trick, meaning that bit of damage buffs both of them at once.

It doesn't help much.

The Belladonnas were only a threat because they were backing the much more dangerous Rafflesian, and Seventails doesn't bring anything similar to the table.

It doesn't help that they have the lowest Power of all the Tails to balance out their gimmick, leaving them helpless if you don't let them power up.

The second falls shortly after.

Another batch of loot.

But this batch has a typo on one of the items.

Boss?

Fight!

I challenge you to a fight.

Eighttails has a special AI, which always targets whoever has the lowest LE.

Which means that Cinnamon, with her pitiful LE, will always die on the first round.

So I swap her loadout to give her some more health.

Video: Battle with Eighttails

This gives her just enough LE for them to go after X instead. X, with his higher stats, can easily tank two hits from them.

And with Ultimate Armor's barrier, they're now entirely harmless, barring a sudden Hadoken.

X gets some payback.

This commentary might be repetitive, yes, but there are only so many ways I can say 'and then X/Zero used an AT and took out a large chunk of the enemy's LE'.

Eighttails has 58K LE, plus a much larger move list, with all three flavors of Ultra Giga and Tera skills, plus Coercion to try and cancel your moves. They also have SOS, so make sure you kill them together.

Don't be fooled by those drops, by the way, they don't have a 100% drop rate. While you could exploit SOS and grind out a bunch of kills, you could very easily overextend yourself and get killed after blowing through your offense.

Unfortunately, Ultimate Armor and Absolute Zero combined with the Final Strike indicator makes it very easy to know when to hold back, compared to everyone else hitting in one burst.

Command Mission: A game where even potentially interesting boss gimmicks get kneecapped by their own mechanics.

Zero sets up one.

X kills the other.

And Cinnamon kills the survivor.

Simple.

Music: Recapture Hope

Our last boss is in another segment of the Sealed Area. This one is rather dark.

The loot here is still Chapter 9/10 stuff.

But this time you get a bunch without having to fight the boss.

Seriously, you get a lot.

Down here, in a bizarro-world version of that blocked off room, is the final fight of the game.

But down the other path...

Is the final vending machine in the game, holding the Chapter 9 and 10 figures.

Burning through my stockpile leaves me one token short of a full collection.

Video: Battle with Ninetails

Let's fix that, shall we?

My strength is unparalleled.

Music: Sure Win! Ninetails

Ninetails has one, incredibly simple, goal.

Tear you into scrap metal. If I hadn't left those LE +500s on Cinnamon after Eighttails, or if his damage rolled even slightly higher, I would have lost before I could take a single turn.

92K LE backed by 25% regen, the highest Power and Speed in the game at 400 and 140, he comes in with Puncture Arrows, Annihilator Hadoken, as well as every Tera skill. In a small bit of mercy, he also has a chance of using Regeneration to revive the party if one person is alive, but he could just as easily punch the survivor to death and end you.

The Ancient Gun is Axl's ultimate weapon, and he also holds the final Build Hyper and Figure Token in the game.

Marino gets everyone back up.

Then whiffs a steal. :negative:

She manages to grabs the Build WE on her next attempt.

And then the Build Hyper.

Of course, the only thing left after beating Ninetails is refighting Redips, so that Build Hyper is kinda useless.

Ninetails is a fight of pure momentum. If you can keep up the pressure and wear down his regen, you'll eventually win. If you get caught in a cycle of healing and reviving, he'll get back to full health and put you back at square one.

For the first time ever, Cinnamon is a liability here. Everyone is near 100% WE Gain on their own anyways, and Cinnamon herself can't justify using her AT when I need every turn I can get, and popping a Sub Tank doesn't delay a turn. Hell, she'll probably get killed next round anyways.

I'm proven right, as Ninetails shows off his ultimate attack, Nine Fragments.

Much like Rafflesian's Sunburst back in the day, Nine Fragments is a fixed damage attack. Specifically, it deals 9 hits of 999 damage for a total of 8991 damage! At this stage, that's a one shot kill on anyone except maybe Massimo, but using Massimo would leave him open to a Tera skill breaking him in half.

So far, the only things I've done is burn three Backups, two Life Gain 100s, and picked his pockets. This isn't working.

I need to get clever. I need to think outside the box.

I need...

Axl.

If the entire party is alive, Ninetails will only use his normal attack, Hadoken, or Nine Fragments. Stealth Mode Axl using Bait will negate 2/3 of all his actions.

This also puts me on the clock. I can't restock Axl's Hyper Mode turns while he's in Hyper, thanks to him dodging everything, so I have until Axl runs out of Hyper before Ninetails can kill him and my plan falls apart.

Several turns in, Zero is finally able to take a good chunk out of Ninetails.

But he regens most of that back. At least the regen will drop the more damage he takes.

Using Axl pays off.

To buy more time, Axl uses his AT to delay his turn.

In hindsight, I should have given him some Gain WEs to help with that. He won't be able to AT next round with his base WE Gain, even with a Generator backing him up.

His damage is also trash, even this far into the game. That's with a 100% boost from Stealth Mode!

His speed is a major problem, as it lets him get a turn of regen, then use that for an even bigger heal next turn.

Even if he decides to Hadoken, he's taken enough damage that it goes from a major threat to a much more managable risk.

Zero drops him below half.

His regen is now down to 4 digits.

But without an AT to delay his turn, I only have two more actions before Steath Mode runs out and Ninetails can run wild.

I only need one.

And with that, the last fight comes to a close.

It took the entire game, but Axl finally got a chance to shine in a serious fight.

Music: Victory Jingle + Trajectory of Battle I

Beating Ninetails gives Axl access to Nine Fragments, finally letting use something other than Wild Jango on single targets.

Except Nine Fragments still does just shy of 9000 damage, and Jango was already doing 6000, so he's still incredibly far behind everyone else's damage output.

Cinnamon also gets one last upgrade for the road.

Music: Recapture Hope

The Ancient Gun has the highest stats, but now that the Tails are dead, the only bosses left are in Chapter 10.

And the bonus effect doesn't matter when using Nine Fragments, as it does fixed damage!

Hell, just for kicks, let's run some numbers just to see where the kid ended up.

A quick trip to Chapter 10 should suit our needs.

Jango without Hyper Mode.

Jango with Hyper Mode.

Jango without Hyper Mode, using SFM β.

Jango with Hyper Mode, with SFM β.

Congratulations kid, your final reward let you deal anywhere from double to a few hundred points more compared to the stuff you get for no effort.

Poor Axl, he was :effort:

from start to finish.

Back on topic, there are six things behind Ninetails.

Ninetails' artwork, naturally, as well as weapon art for everyone but Marino and Axl. Marino I can understand, as all her weapons are small glowy bits, but poor Axl is really getting the short end on everything, isn't he?