Part 10: Video 8

No stop why are there Pokemon in my Megaman aaaaa

Also CHAIN ROD WEAPON LEVEL GET! We can now charge our attack!
And with that, all the attack types are available to us. The chain rod’s charge is the same as the triple rod’s was, and involves spinning it around at an angle capable of hitting things both a bit in front of and above you, or if you’re jumping just the area directly in front of you. It’s okay and does multiple hits, but doesn’t have nearly as much horizontal coverage as the saber’s charged attack, often only lands a few of the potential multi-hits, and still only does as much potential damage as the saber, making it overall less effective. Leave the chain rod for situations requiring it, and stick to your blade in general.

Stage notes!

100 pt requirements:
-Clear time: 4:10
-Enemies killed: 41
-Mission: N/A

Due to the fact that the Boss here has no elemental weaknesses, and much of the environment is recycled, hard mode doesn’t play in too much. Most of the stage’s challenge comes from well-hidden goodies.

Before getting into specifics about this stage in particular, a note about the second mission set. All four of them are revisitations to the concepts (and sometimes even locations) of their elemental counterparts from the initial set, and while the extent to which they pull material from their inspirations varies, they all share certain similarities. Moreover, from this point onwards, there are no more mission-specific objectives. It’s for these reasons that they don’t interest me as much as the first few missions, although it’s still better than the 4 (!!!) times they made you go to that blasted desert in Zero 1.
The Forest of Notus (South forest) is probably the worst offender when it comes to siphoning from its predecessor. Everything, from the music (Sand triangle), to the background elements, to the chainrod dependence, to the ruins, and even the pickups (another sub-tank in here) are refurbished ideas. I mean, here, look at the two starting points side-by-side and tell me which is which without checking the vid:



Literally the only difference between the two environments is the Tang ocean’s conversion to a lake of Big Blue. It’s an unattractive concept, to be sure, and its only saving graces are the additions of a couple enemies, some admittedly interesting platforming challenges, and a boss I’ve grown to greatly enjoy. Also personally memorable: failing repeatedly at that one jump onto a grapple target. I swear each of the Zero games has one of THOSE kinds of jumps.
It makes a good first stage though, seeing as Elpizo makes an immediate appearance and you get a bit more info on the dark elf, much as we did in the previous forest stage. Also the commander took Crea and Prea, dang. Didn’t even get to know them.
Oh, and in my defense, I did my damndest to try to squeeze everything into the mission’s timer. It just was not happening, the place is packed with goodies and Burble’s a butt when it comes to using the moves I want him to.

Forms!
…oh, wait, there isn’t any new form. We actually only have one left to get in the main run, and it’s always been the odd one out for me. Gonna have to try to shoehorn it in to one of the upcoming missions. Until then, bid this section adieu.

EX Skills!

=Energy Chain=


The energy chain is a rather nondescript EX skill. It doesn’t have a unique animation beyond the standard chain attack, and its description (stab enemy then hold attack button down) doesn’t even tell you what it does.
‘Course, it doesn’t really matter, because its effect is completely underwhelming. After attaching, the ability takes 3 seconds to activate. Once it does, you will begin to refill your health at a rate of 1hp/2sec, so long as you’ve taken damage and the enemy remains alive. It’ll also do 1hp of damage to your enemy for every point you regain.
This is kinda crap for a couple reasons. Firstly, in order to attach, you have to hit an enemy with the rod in the first place. It’s ineffectual against bosses, and most mooks populating the stages will die to the initial hit, leaving only the occasional pantheon variant to be your source of sustenance.

Secondly, the regen rate takes an inordinate amount of time. In order to restore yourself from half health, for instance, it’d take roughly 20 seconds of sitting on your tuchas and waiting for the little health ticks to finish. And seeing as you’re ALREADY being punished for getting damaged in the first place, getting a hit to your mission time is just adding insult to injury.

Thirdly, health drops ain’t exactly uncommon in this game. In the time it takes to drain an enemy, you could have likely respawned him a couple times and gotten your health back WITHOUT having to stand still.
All in all, there’s only one situation in which this is useful. Should you be at full health, yet have room left in your subtanks, you can ever-so-slowly drain your foe’s life force into your canteen for later consumption. If you’re marginally distracted by the latest episode of MLP or whatever goons watch these days, you can just stick your chain into the nearest enemy and wait for the pump. I’ll pretty much never use this, though.

Character bios!

Burble Hekelot


Moveset:

• The hop: Hops around the room, aiming for your general vicinity. Froggies aren’t known for walking, you know.
  
• Shakedown: Hops high onto one hall, and shakes the entire room, causing three Caterpulls (two green and one gold) to fall from the ceiling, foreshadowed by falling leaves. Can be hit off the wall, but the Caterpulls will fall anyway.
  
• Frog punch: Burble jumps into the upper branches, and launches a couple two-handed punches at Zero’s current location with his extendable hind legs. Alt name: battletoad.
  
• Tongue wag: Used when Zero fires bullets at Burble while he’s not in the middle of an attack. Wags his tongue a bit in front of his face, and deflects whatever’s coming his way. Just wait for him to do something, or hit him with a different weapon.
  
• Snack time: Burble snags one of the meandering Caterpulls and eats it. If you destroy it before it gets to his mouth, you can prevent his…
  
• Growth spurt: Grows a size larger after eating. Should he eat a shin-I mean, gold Caterpull, he’ll grow to size 3 instantly. 3 sizes max, invincible while growing. Hitting him once sends him down a size, but doesn’t do damage. The bigger sizes also get deeper voices
  
• Frog-6: Only used at size 2. Deploys 6 non-guided missiles from his back, which then rise a bit and deploy forwards. Stay high on a wall to avoid.
  
• Bubbler: Only used at size 3. Produces a bubble wand from his mouth and spurts out multiple bubbles in front of him, which rapidly rise. Jump over if you can, otherwise get hit by as few as possible. Non-damaging, but severely hamper mobility and jumping height. At 2 or more, it’s basically impossible to dodge the next move; mash “A” to make them fall off faster.
  
• Wrecking ball: Only used at size 3. Rapidly inflates into a perfect sphere, becoming completely invincible. Slowly rolls towards you, then up the wall and into the trees. Comes down either in the middle at Zero’s location, ending the attack, or at one of the edges, coming down the wall and up the opposite one at high-speeds. Will never roll more than once, however. Read the falling leaves, run for your life. It can just *barely* be jumped over, but safer to quickly do a walljump.
  
• EX Skill: Energy tongue: Does a small hop in place, then sticks out his tongue the length of the room. Should it attach, you’ll be stuck in place, and Burble will drain one HP from Zero at a time, restoring his own health. Mash buttons to free yourself, though Burble WILL automatically release you once half your health bar has been siphoned :V:. Jump onto a wall to avoid, though should it hit you, Burble will grow one size once you struggle out…and then laugh at you. Whilst invincible. KEROKEROKEROKEROKERO

Burble Hekelot is fun. All of his attacks are telegraphed and perfectly dodgeable, and he has no elemental weakness, meaning that you can’t cheese him superfast. However, the foliage at the top of his arena CAN be burnt with the fire chip should you so choose. You should not so choose, because it means you can’t tell where Caterpulls (or a Burbleball) are going to fall and just makes your life harder.
His name comes from a play on “Bubble” and the frog-headed Egyptian Goddess Heqet, and like Hyleg Ourobockle, he’s a refugee from Phantom’s troupe, currently under Harpuia. In fact, tertiary materials state that the Burble don’t care for Hyleg, most likely due to their predator-prey relationship.
He’s fun to play around with, and has a plethora of moves. The size-changing gimmick especially is rather unique for the series, and something I enjoy playing around with. It’s not unfair, either; you get plenty of opportunities to stop him from eating, and he’s fairly easy to knock across the whole room.
Should you allow him to gorge himself, though, watch out. He’ll usually launch Wrecking ball the INSTANT he gets to level 3, going straight from his expansion invincibility frames, meaning if you let him gobble up a gold bug you may be in for a world of hurt. That move unironically terrifies my and stretches my nerves thin; Admittedly, it DOES give you a heads-up as to where he’s coming from with the rustling leaves, but he comes down so fast and loud that you get about a second to process the information and reflexively respond. Gets quite intense.
His EX skill is SIGNIFICANTLY easier to dodge then the last one, and doesn’t pose that much of a threat to be honest. The fight doesn’t quite feel complete without it though; I mean, what kinda frog robot DOESN’T attack with its tongue?
All in all I really do like the guy. His constant Kero-ing (Japanese onomatopoeia for a croaking frog) is also a nice touch~.

There’s no music or anything new to talk about, so that’s gonna be the end. The other stages do get their own tunes, thank god.

Music!

E; wait up I lied, there are a couple of new things. One's Elpizo's main theme, titled "Combustion". It's far more determined and dark than spreading darkness was, and does kinda fit the way he's self-destructing right now. It's also one of those themes that goes on for a good bit but you'll usually only hear 10 seconds or so of. Decent enough, but not my favorite.
The other's the theme of the Dark/baby elves, titled "Darkelf", no spaces. This one I prefer because the Dark elf is SUPPOSED to be a shadowy ominous enigma, whereas Elpizo just spent all that time not being evil only to decide actually yes being evil might be fun let's practice my evil laugh.

Combustion
Darkelf