Part 7: The Rod to Elves
After the last mission, Ciel told us to go visit Cerveau, because he had something for us. So?
called the Triple Rod. You can attack in any of the eight directions. It requires some technique, but I'm sure you'll be able to handle it.
Welcome to the first part of the Zero series' replacement of the special weapon system from previous Mega Man games! We get this secondary weapon, and later another one, and that's it for basic weapons. However, we also got that Thunder chip...that's the second part. Charging a weapon will imbue it with the selected chip's element. We can't charge yet, but I'll make sure to show it off in due course.
When I first got the Triple Rod, I was overjoyed at the possibility of finally being able to attack targets below me. Mostly because I had taken the missions in order and would really have liked to be able to do so a little earlier. The main reason for getting the Rod so early for the LP! Apart from that, and a very cool trick you can pull of with it, the Triple Rod is strictly inferiour to the Saber. You've got less area covered, have to stand still to use it if you're on the ground, the charge is terrible and the damage bad. I'll still give it a good workout, but it's certainly no revelation...
Stab-er-iffic. Now I need to find something to use it on...ah, yes.
Still 90 EC short for you fat fuck!
On my road to get the money and try out my new toy, I take a little detour. We've already seen a glimpse of the desert area to the west of the base; now, we can proceed further. It'll give us 16 EC that are always lounging around here (a pittance), a trans server if we're ever inclined to teleport to here, and...
...and impressive gate...
...with an Elf container on it. Saw it one the previous screenshot? Of course not. The only way to know it's there is to go "hm that is one mighty suspicious structure I reckon". Or use GameFAQs. Zero 1 can be seriously obscure...
Further to the east, there's an Elf I couldn't get in the Disposal Center mission. Please don't hold it against me that I didn't make a fancy title card for 60-odd seconds.
The cool trick I was talking about earlier is the pogo jump. Landing on an enemy with the Triple Rod directly below you will make you bounce off. It's used in a few puzzles, and a few enemy configurations are practially begging for you to use the technique. However, it's really fucking hard to pull off. Stabbing directly downwards is no mean feat when you also have to move sideways to get momentum going beforehand, and the flight path is based on your speed. So if you also have to dash to get far enough, be ready to get a knot in your fingers. The main problem with stabbing correctly is that you also have down-left and down-right, so being just a tad bit diagonal with the D-Pad will make you land ungracefully on a probably laughing foe. It's fun, but clunky, sadly enough.
We also see the first level of the Triple Rod, making it...the double rod. You can probably guess what the next level is going to be. It's not very exciting.
A little further down the road, right before the boss gate of the second intro mission, is my favourite farming spot...unless I missed a far better option, dunno. High concentration of weak enemies.
Looks something like this. It's the least fun you could imagine. Took me about a minute to farm the crystals I still needed to get up to 250. And a little further along the only weapon level I really desire, the next Buster one.
return. Sorry.I just learned that he's apparently called Hibou, meaning "owl". He got the body shape part, but certainly not the wisdom. Move your ass and don't ever bother me again, please.
Behind him, a door...
...with an Elf. Fureff is a completely run-of-the-mill heal Elf, not even to full. There's nine more of her, making her basically worthless. Thanks a bunch, Hibou.
One more thing to collect, from the end of last mission if you remember...
Thank God for the Rod's ability to tunnel through walls or whatever. Not making that fucking jump.
And now that we have a few...
Cyber-Elf Mechanics
Cyber-Elves in Zero 1 are a good idea in principle, but horribly implemented and hampered by even more little details which obviously weren't thought out overly much. First of all, using them is quite tedious. We have to get to a Trans Server which, as you might have seen already, gives us two options: "Download Elf" and "Feed Elf". The latter is the biggest problem with the whole affiar. You see, some of the Elves don't work right away; it's all but the ones having the smallest portrait size in the overview. In order to make them available, you'll have to give them Energy Crystals. Most of the time, those medium or large Elves will have permanent effects. So, suppose we want to have more life energy...
...Nuppie is glad to step up, even knowing that would mean her death. It's ludicrously creepy, but hey, mechanics talk, let's forget about that for a bit. How much would we have to shovel into her to make her work?
...holy shit. Just to remind you: I've played normally through four missions so far, went out of my way to explore hidden nooks and crannies, and had a few looks at the overworld. Also a little farming session. All of that gave me ~300 crystals so far, and I pissed away 250 of those to get another useless Elf for my collection.
The prices for Cyber Elves are insane. There's a very hidden reward for nursing – and using! - all of them up, and I've tried to get it on console, but it's soulcrushing and incredibly stupid. You'd have to literally spend hours upon hours just farming crystals. Even getting a single large Elf – which has two upgrade tiers – is way beyond what I would consider reasonable. The most expensive of the normal Elves costs 3500 crystals to fully upgrade.
So yeah, if you want to have that nice double health bar like the bosses do or just take away half or theirs, be prepared to spend a long, long time slashing robots in twain.
There are two opportunities later on (unless I'm missing something in the way respawning crystals in the overworld works) to get a lot of crystals at once (like half an upgrade for a large Elf haha), and I'll tell you, but that's not really alleviating the problem.
So...how about the Elves that don't need to be upgraded?
We go to "download Elf"...
...and fill up one of our three slots with this happy bee. Now we can use it to fire bullets aimed at the general direction of the air between enemies.
For one mission. After being teleported by a cutscene somewhere, temporary Elf effects vanish. The Elf is also gone forever. Not that this is something I consider a big problem, but more on that in a second. What's also gone, though, is three points off your ranking. Per Elf. Permanent Elves...count, too, for the rest of the game.
As far as selection goes, it's pretty diverse. We've got three categories:
- Nurse: Healing, health increase, and Sub-tanks
- Animal: Movement, defense, supporting offense
- Hacker: Influence the environment and enemies directly
So what are they actually good for? Well...not much, sadly enough. They suffer a whole lot from a few dichotomies. They are meant to help new-time players, but the better ones require a lot of time investment which could as well be spent practicing so you don't need them after all. If you do choose to use them, however, and level up your weapons while grinding, and getting for example a double health bar, the game is suddenly ludicrously easy...so you can get by without getting better. Or it being fun, seeing as you just spent three hours of grinding to go through an action game without a single bit of challenge left. So just use the small Elves at the start! Except that at the very start, you have like three of them, none of which will really aid you much in the incredibly hard Disposal Center mission. And afterwards? They're gone permanently. I don't know about you, but that's a pretty steep barrier to overcome for my hoarder sense. And you only have the effect for one single level. Oh, and they lower your rank, even though in your first playthrough that is bound to be abysmal anyway, psychology doesn't work like that. They game really, really doesn't want you to be using them in droves in the first place...just the way it makes you out as a cruel murderer of innocents when using one speaks droves.
Oh, and most of the large number of them are pretty damn useless anyway.
So, what remains? A resource that's incredibly hard to get by, will make you actively worse at a game that really demands practice to be fun, is mostly useless anyway, and makes you feel bad if you use it.
They didn't think too much about this. Fortunately, Zero 2 will fix a lot of the problems inherent in the system! Until then...I'll see you in the next mission, where we'll play a little with our toys.
Wallpapers:
Zero when using the Triple Rod as main weapon.