The Let's Play Archive

Mega Man Zero 1

by Simply Simon

Part 5: Disposal Center: Aztec Falcon







Extra Stage Thoughts

My biggest problem with this stage is how early it is. It's not an unsurmountable challenge, and there are harder ones later, but it sure as hell feels like the most difficult thing in the world when you first encounter it. The worst offender really are the spikeballs; they come seemingly from out of nowhere, sometimes insanely fast, and have way too much health. Not even a dash-slash will take them out, which should be the metal option to deal with them, but nope. Then they get dropped from fliers which also come from out of nowhere, and if you take the top path in the later option like a Sonic player, you're right fucked.
Wind, instant-kill spikes this early on, boring and shitty spike pillars...it's not something you want to encounter after the intro stage, which already did a bad job presenting the game.
They deliberately wanted to make the Zero series harder than anything before, and they kind of succeeded, but this is excessive. I've heard of multiple people who got exactly this far and then quit out of frustration, if not from the stage, but then from the boss.
A big offender is also that in most cases, you can alleviate difficulty by grinding weapon levels or Elves. Now, you don't really have many options, though. The only place to grind is the Lab, which is decent enough for all those spiders, but...I think this gives off an even worse impression. Grinding in a Mega Man game? And your Elf selection is...limited. So fuck this mission. It's a giant dick in your face keeping far too many people from getting into a series that's fantastic...it just doesn't start out like that.

Boss Comments



Attacks

Holy shit is this guy an asshole. Even coming off the X games, the speed with which he moves and the sheer number of attacks he pulls made my head spin and game overed me faster than I could muster a "meep". This is a very rough introduction to how the Zero series handles bosses, and you will have to practice your first time doing this...hard. You have to learn that the wall is your best friend, that the dash-jump is more than mandatory, that stinging like a bee and fleeing like a frightened rabbit is the way to go, and you will learn it with blood, sweat and tears. Once you know what you're doing, once you can dodge what he throws at you, you can run circles around his sorry ass and it's awesome. Before that...it's frustrating. To the max. I hate this fucker. And even now, that I am far better than when I started out, he's a horrible design. Wastes your time while a completely pointless timelimit ticks down? At least two of his attacks are nothing but that. Slicing him in twine is very satisfying each time around.

Ranking High

Actually not that hard. Of course, you have to know what you're doing. Once you do, though...you're set. As the enemy and time limit are nothing to write home about, just dodge those asshole spike balls with your preferred tactic (you can watch mine, but there surely are better ones), then shut off the wind, take the lower route and tell Falcon that he can go fuck himself.