Part 7: Video 5
I’d honestly expect Antarctica to be colder. I mean hell it’s been colder than that ‘round here more often than not this last winter.
Stage notes!
100 pt requirements:
-Clear time: 4:30
-Enemies killed: 37
-Mission: Destroy 4 cooling systems. Worth 5 points each.
Hard mode is a little relevant here, given there’s a decent number of high-damaging enemies and mobility is hampered. The ice-pushing enemies in particular will take half your health on a hit, meaning you’ve got to watch your step even more than usual. On the flip side, your increased damage output means you can kill the flipping cannon enemies with your buster before they do a thing. And Poler’s still piss easy, even if you don’t cheese her with a charged shield boomerang.
This place is the requisite stock Ice-themed level. It even follows the official Megaman® Ice stage building guide!
- Sweet-ass chill music
- Momentum-based Ice physics
- Stupidly easy boss
It’s set in a Neo Arcadian Antarctic computer facility that controls various defense systems keeping us dirty Resistance members out. So we gotta heat the place up by destroying the cooling apparatuses that keep the computer core nice and chilly. They’re not really well hidden and the stage is pretty straightforward, but I still like it just because the music for this stage is one of my favs.
Ice physics are here in force, and make your life slightly difficult by preventing you from reaching goodies without doing full-speed timed jumps from ice floes and the like, but it only takes a single dash to get up to full momentum, at which point you won’t lose it unless you stop completely, so it’s really not that bad. And If we come back after completing the mission, all of the icy surfaces within the facility itself will have thawed (not below freezing anymore~) and you can pick up whatever you may have missed with relative ease.
Other than that there’s nothing especially unique or interesting here to be honest, at least in comparison to the last stage. There is a little extra backround element in the boss room, where the computer changes displayed temperature depending on how many cooling systems you did or didn’t destroy (including -20, -10, -5, 0, and 5)
I’m proven wrong right before posting! Turns out that if you destroy all 4 computer terminals, Ice won’t be present on the floor during the boss fight, but it will be there if you missed even one! WELL PLAYED INTICREATES.
I did, however, manage to cock up and miss a cyber-elf (Atti) that required the killing of one more of the Rollin’ 22s, which I’m now realizing is literally a rolling 22mm. It’s easy to come back for though, and I’ll be doing that along with another little bit of cleanup in just a bit. Sue me.
Also, here’s a little clip of the pantheons that would’ve NORMALLY littered the latter half of this stage had we not halted their production with the destruction of Phoenix Magnion and his power plant:
Just in case you thought I was lying for some reason.
Forms!
=Erase Form=
You get the erase form for reflecting 30 energy pellets in a single stage with the shield boomerang. Given that they’re pretty much always shot in volleys of 3, this means you’ve got to fully block 10 attacks. It’s not that bad compared to a lot of the other requirements, and since there’s a decent amount of enemies that use energy pellets here it’s a good choice of form to acquire.
…However, it is NOT a good choice to use. I’ma put it plainly: the Erase Form is objectively bad.
Power-**
Defense-***
Speed-**
Now, at first glance, it’s hard to tell just how sucky this form is. It’s got the same attack and speed rating as your default duds, and even gives a slight bonus to defense. But it’s the unique effects of this form that make it so massively useless.
Now, see, the description tells you “Erase enemy bullets”…and nothing else. What you’re meant to figure out is that this means that, if you slash at an energy shot, you’ll make it go *poof* and remove it from existence. While this is good in theory, there’s two things that make this a massive failure: Firstly, using the form defaults your saber swing to the second step in its combo, much like the X form does. This means that your combo damage capabilities get extremely nerfed, WITHOUT the bonus to buster damage that the X form provides.
Secondly, the energy shots it’s capable of destroying come in volleys of 3. These 3, when put together, extend almost *exactly* as far as your saber reaches. If you haven’t yet put two and two together, this means that to successfully erase bullets, you have to land a pixel-perfect slash that covers all 3 of the bullets, or else you’ll erase 2 then get hit by the third. All this when you could easily just dash over or under them means that you’re taking a big hit on your damage output for next to no gain.
Oh, and also, this form makes it so that your shield boomerang erases shots instead of reflecting them. This is worse than useless, as it completely takes away your ability to use the boomerang as simultaneous defense and offense, and it’s next to impossible to get hit by reflected bullets anyway unless you purposefully dash madly toward them and throw your body in harm’s way.
It’s really a shame, Zero looks absolutely FABulous in that pink and I wish I didn’t have to hate it so much.
Elemental Chips!
=Ice chip=
The ice chip freezes things and is strong against electricity. That’s basically it
I honestly thought these chips had slightly different effects versus basic mooks but my testing is NOT SUPPORTING MY HYPOTHESIS.
How will I ever justify giving these things their own section now???
Anyway, for now it just freezes things in place for a second or two, just like the other ones. If I ever find something to add I’ll mention it.
EX Skills!
=Triple Shot=
Aaaaaand we’re back to the uncool EX skills. It couldn’t last.
The triple shot’s the Ice-elemental buster skill, and much like the spark shot it requires the ice chip to be equipped and the skill activated.
When a charged ice shot connects with an enemy, the shot splits into 3 separate parts, one of which goes straight, one of which goes at roughly a 30 degree angle upward and the last of which goes thirty degrees down. Now, unlike the spark shot this one’s gonna stay activated because it doesn’t rob you of your piercing horizontal damage, but the situations are rare where the narrow ice bolt produced by this skill will actually connect with anything. You might see a random minor flying mook get skewered by this on occasion, but for the most part it won’t do you much good, especially seeing as you need to keep the ice chip on 24/7 to make use of it. And the third bolt likes to beeline straight for the floor so you might as well forget it even exists.
There’s probably a spot somewhere in the game set up to make use of this and I’ll keep my eyes peeled, but this skill’s mainly a gimmick.
Character Bios!
Golem Type-I
Moveset:
- Snow boulder: The golem sticks its head up and uses its icy breath to conjure an enormous snowball almost as big as it is, which then ignores all principles of momentum as it drops and rolls both down and uphill towards Zero. Can be destroyed, especially easy with a fire-elemental attack, or just jumped over.
- Ice javelin: Uses the supercooled vents on its hands to freeze the water in the air and create MASSIVE Spears of icy death. Can be destroyed with a single slash, but get launched at many different heights making approaching the Golem very risky. Better to just wait it out.
- Cold front: Lumbers towards Zero in an attempt to mash him against his giant blue codpiece. Dash under the thing at the lowest point to avoid.
This golem likes to either create its spears or snowball, followed by a personal space invasion, followed by one of the other two attacks. It will do this until killed dead.
The fight with it takes place in a bowl-shaped arena which actually makes it a bit more interesting, as the snow boulder can only be reliably jumped over when you have the high ground, yet you can only dash under Cold front at the lowest point in the arena. It means you at least have to keep mobile if you want to avoid this thing grinding on you.
…Alternatively, you could use a couple fire-elemental attacks and kill it dead before it even gets its second attack off. Either or.
Poler Kamrous
Moveset:
- Granny shot: Creates a (relatively) small ice ball, then hurls it old-lady style towards your general location, where it splits into four little ice pieces that spread a tiny bit. Not all that hard to avoid, and I have a lot of trouble getting Poler to use this consistently so it wasn’t showcased in the main vid. It is there in the hard mode though!
- Ice punch: Another one that wasn’t showcased, because I honestly didn’t know it existed. Poler makes a little grunt and punches in front of her. The *only* time I’ve seen this is when hanging out on the wall directly above her, which means it’s completely useless as it doesn’t cause you to fall off the wall or anything. Super-weird, I only found it when trying to get Poler to use Granny shot.
- Absolutely clueless: If Zero’s on the opposite side of the room, Poler will stare at him for a second, then lumber across the stage at a nice relaxing pace. STUPIDLY vulnerable during this, and once she nears the other side Zero can just walljump up and over her stupid head.
- Ice pillar: Creates an ice pillar about 1.5x as tall as Zero, tipped with a spiked top, and launches it along the ground towards Zero. Destructible, and the head has half as much health as the lower half so if you so wish you can destroy that and jump onto the top of the pillar for a nice makeshift platform to shoot Poler’s face off. If Poler lumbers into it, she’ll destroy it herself.
- EX skill: Wall Crash: Creates an *Enormous* ice pillar nearly as tall as the room, then takes a couple swipes at it. The first one destroys the top and sends 8 tightly-packed ice chunks towards the floor, while the second destroys the bottom half and angles the ice towards the ceiling. Walljump up to avoid the first volley, then quickly drop down before the second strikes. There’s a good few seconds between them, so it’s not too bad
…Man, Poler. Have you ever fought Blizzard Buffalo? Maybe Frost Walrus? ANY HUGE, SLOW, STUPID ICE-BASED BOSS?
Well, Then you’ve fought Poler Kamrous.
See, I’d *really* like to like her. I love her stage music, and she’s one of the rare instances of a female Megaman boss (although you wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell from the supplied dialogue, it’s confirmed by the devs). But the boss battle with her, it’s just…disappointing. She leaves herself open all over the place, her attacks are infrequent and don’t cover much ground, and if you have the Fire chip you can stunlock her and literally prevent her from doing a *single thing*, as I showed at the end of the part. The only remotely challenging thing about the fight with her is the ice present on the floor of her arena, and if you’ve done your job right even THAT won’t be there, as the temperature will be above freezing. As such, she is doomed to walk the same tragic path as many of those previous Megaman bosses: She’s the ideal first target for new players.
…’course, I don’t roll that way so we’re killing her sorry butt last.
Also, she’s part of Leviathan’s corps, if you wanted to know.
Music!
The music track name makes sense this time! It’s called “Ice brain”, for a computer core in a cold climate. JOB WELL DONE NAMING PERSON.
Anyway this is probably my favorite of the 4 stage themes we’ve had presented so far, although Gravity is a close contender. I’m a fan of driving beats, what can I say. And that beeping computerzone theme contrasted with the calm Arctic immediately following it, hnnnng. (Also I love the Resonant Vie version of this because piano, gonna drop this here again because LISTEN TO IT.)
Ice Brain