Part 3: Intro Stage: Golem

Extra Stage Thoughts

When I first played Zero 1, I was pretty disappointed in how it started. This stage makes sense from a story perspective, as you're starting with nothing but a gun and the determination to save the girl, but gameplay-wise, it's not really what you'll expect going into a Mega Man game. Escort mission, danger from everywhere and you can't really defend yourself, if you don't know the layout and enemy spawnpoints by heart you and Ciel will get hit all the time, the high-health melee Pantheons are a pain in the butt and everything is pretty horrible. Then the intro boss might even murder you (it happened to me). And all that after an introduction that might be cool enough the first time you see it...I guess. Oh, and words aplenty during the stage, too.

Boss Comments



Attacks

• Laser, fired downwards: Golem tilts his head downwards and fires a continuous green laser. It'll travel along the ground and up the wall until it's parallel to the ground; dodge it by staying in the top left corner.
  
• Laser, fired upwards: The laser starts level and then goes along the ceiling. Shortly after, telegraphed by crumbling, five rocks will fall in random succession. Finally, Golem will dash forward, crushing the rocks and returning to his original position. Dodge by staying near Golem while the rocks fall, then climbing the wall.

Golem is not really hard once you figure out how to dodge the two attacks, but especially the second one is very involved and not really obvious. Staying near him is the only really viable solution, but his appearance belies the actually pretty small hitbox. It might also take a little time to react correctly to his different tells; I recommend staying on the floor in the left corner, if he angles his head down, you got plenty of time to climb, if he shoots straight, dash towards him and search for the sweet spot.
After four of his attacks, the battle will stop and you get the Z-Saber. Hope you adjusted the buttons to something sensible (hint: I didn't the first time and was like waaa?). One hit will kill him, but it's surprisingly hard, especially without hitting Ciel, who's a viable target.

Ranking High

This stage is a nightmare to get right. You've got two targets to keep out of harm's way, and Ciel is not exactly easy to steer. Numerous threats to both your health come from everyway, and you'll learn to hate the ceiling spiders. They activate their movement even if not directly on-screen, and it's random, so good luck, I guess. Can't even that well memorize the spawnpoints. Best option is pretty much to plan a general route through the stationary spiderwebs, and adjust depending on the yellow spiders' position.
You need to get the bomb kill on the second bunch of Pantheons, because it'll take too long otherwise. Hurry hurry hurry. The boss can still randomly dick you over on time so that's a load of fun. Not at all recommended to try on your first go through, on NG+ you can mercifully skip the intro.
Oh, and you need to respawn a few enemies because there aren't enough to fulfill the quota. As if they planned for you to leave a spiderweb alive long enough for it to spawn twice. Very funny.

• Crash -Short Loop-: _{It's tense and somewhat creepy. Sets the mood well, I think, especially with the drums at the start.}
  
• The Ruins of Lab: _{Mysterious and slightly hopeful. A breather. Takes a while to get going with its melody, becomes really nice and soothing then.}
  
• Captive Legend: _{Reminds me of a lullaby from the instruments used. Fits, as Zero is sleeping, after all. Love the slight dissonance, not everything is well.}
  
• Cyberelf: _{This doesn't have much going for it, definitely just atmospheric. Not meant to be played for long, anyway. Cool background, though, very different, almost organic, to the foreground chimes.}
  
• Theme of Zero (MMX Version): _{This is very iconic, as it played when Zero first entered the scene in Mega Man X. The sting is pretty awesome, and it wasn't ever meant for more than a short scene; making it into a level theme doesn't really do it justice, in my opinion. Especially as it shares a problem with many of Zero 1's tunes by having a very short melody repeated for a while with no deviation.}

Wallpapers


Shows during the Intro, pretty much the splashscreen for the game


The bottom screen while Zero has the Buster as main weapon