ROCKMANX5 Stage Order
Mar. 14th, 2024 10:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marchionessofmustacheBefore going on, I want to make a a little note. To be short, Dens likely has cancer and is getting part of his lung removed next week. This has been a thing I've known about for a little while and is why I haven't been working on any of my projects or doing much of ANYTHING but playing mobile games.
But I started to break out of that by playing some more comfy things (things I'm very familiar with that are easy to play, like Story of Seasons and Digimon and stuff), and I'll hope to get back into the Pokemon Watchthrough Blog soon, as well as my playthrough of Sea of Stars. But for now I'm having trouble concentrating on something where I just sit and watch, especially since I have to 'actively' listen to understand Japanese (if my mind wanders, I miss what is being said), and feeling very intimidated by things I haven't experienced before.
Watched a friend speedrunning Duke Nukem tonight got me into watching Mega Man speedruns, which made me kinda wanna casually play some ol' ROCKMAN. Particularly in the mood for an X game, and I've created "perfect" stage orders for the first four games, but I've been kinda "stuck" at 5.
Also, random note: I use a mix of Japanese and English terms here because I'm playing the JP version but using EN guides as a reference, so... I don't care to clean it up or be consistent ^_^
I've created orders for Solo X and Solo Zero, and both use death scumming to increase the levels of bosses to make sure you obtain 8 parts from development.
But I've always wanted to create a run that accomplishes these things:
Now, this isn't TERRIBLY hard to come up with a general order, and once you get the first few out of the way, it's pretty easy to place the rest. But deciding those first few is going to be KILLER.
The main "problem" with routing this game for a 'funsies' playthrough is that you must give things up. Even if you death-scum, you're still only have to get 8 of the extra parts out of 16, as you must choose one from each development period after fighting each boss.
And without death-scumming, we're going to have to sacrifice EVEN MORE. I'm not going to detail everything about exactly why and how these systems work, even though I'd love to, because I kinda want to get on to playing the game some time tonight lol :P
I've compiled a list of which development I'd like to do after each boss, roughly listed in a 'priority' order. Basically, the higher up this list, the more I want to have the part:
Pegacion (Life) - Jumper
Grizzly (Energy) - Hyper Dash
Makoeen (Energy) - Energy Saver
Rosered (Energy) - Z-Saber Plus
Kraken (Life) - Quick Charge
Hotarunicus (Energy) - Shot Eraser
Necrobat (Energy) - Virus Buster
Dinorex (Life) - Speed Shot OR (Energy) - Buster Plus
MISSION 1: MAGMA DIVE
With Dinorex's potential parts being the lowest priority, as well as the Magma Dive mission requiring no other items to obtain 100% collection of its hidden items (a Life Up and Arm Parts G), we'll go ahead and start there. Ground Fire and Danchien are not particularly amazing weapons AFAIR, but we'll move time up an hour and potentially rank up X while we're here, making future bosses a higher level.
With 16 hours left, we get a base 1 to boss level, and then +0 for X's hunter rank (we can get +2 for Zero's hunter rank, but that will still only give us a level 3 boss), and a 0 bonus for having cleared other missions. So the highest boss level we can get here is a 3, which means we'll take X along and try to rank him up from B to A.
In practice, this took me several tries to get X to A rank. I'm not entirely sure HOW it worked on my last play -- I took MORE damage than usual (61) with the same amount of time (~4:30) and similar amount of enemies killed (you have to kill several in the lava tunnel ride armor part, but it was still few enough for the biggest bonus). I guess the "max damage to boss" bonus must have hit higher on that run...? Instead of charge shots, I was using lemons to defeat Dinorex. Maybe that has something to do with it...?
MISSION 2: ELECTRIC TRAP
This was a really tough choice. We can't get a part here (15 hours left means base level of 3, +1 for having cleared the Magma Dive mission, so the best we can get is 6 with Zero's SA rank).
This means we'll get a development opportunity at our boss level of 4 or 6 Since no part comes with it, we'll choose Weapons development, since more energy is always good, and Life Energy doesn't matter if you're not getting hit, right? And we're not going for a pacifist run or speedrun or anything, so we're not concentrating on tanking damage.
But the worst part about this is that by choosing Electric Trap stage 2nd, we're going to be giving up Quick Charge that we can get by defeating a level 8 Kraken. But in return, we'll have the Tri-Thunder early, which is one of the most powerful weapons in the game, and we'll have moved time forward another hour.
We'll also pick up our first part of the Falcon armor (Head Parts F), as well as an item for the cannon (I don't remember who has what items and I'm too lazy to look up what they are called -- it doesn't really actually matter hahaha).
I tried this stage as both Zero and X, and it's WAY harder with Zero. So I went with X. It wasn't too hard to maintain his A rank here. Plus, we get to use the Ground Fire a little bit, which works good against the Spark Gunners, which are one of two enemies in the entire stage. So it seems like a nice progression for weapon usage, too!
SUB-MISSION 1: VS DYNAMO
Dynamo challenges the hunters after 2 missions have been cleared. This is another opportunity to rank up X, so we'll take it here. With this, we should be able to get X to SA rank, which gets us an additional +2 to boss levels! Our boss base level is 5 now, and with two missions down, that gives us a minimum boss level of 7. At only A rank, we wouldn't get any bonus to boss level, so now no matter which hunter we choose, we'll always get to develop extra parts.
MISSION 3: MILITARY TRUCK
OK, Dynamo is taken care of and we now have a few more missions we can do. If we're wanting to minimize revisits, this is pretty much our next stop. We want to collect the Falcon Armor and get the rest of the parts of the cannon for now, so we have three stages to choose from. I'd like to save Oceanic Cave's mission for last of the three, so we can have access to more weapons to deal with the onslaught at the beginning of the stage (I think the weapon we get from Military Truck is quite good against it? IDR, I'm doing this on the fly and haven't played through in a couple years...) so that leaves Military Truck and Fortress Lab. Fortress Lab requires us to have the Crescent Shot and Ground Fire, so we're going to need to ge tthe Crescent Shot from the Truck first... so here we go!
I tried with Zero first, and while it was really fun to be able to take out the entire Dumps with a single Danchien, neither the Danchien nor the Denjin were helpful against the Mad Taxis. In the end, X ended up being the more fun and useful hunter in this mission. Ground Fire took out Dumps in two little shots (which you could fire rapidly) and then pretty much decimated everything else in the stage, too. In a couple areas where things were in weird positioning, Tri-Thunder was very helpful.
We choose Energy+ here in development so we'll (eventually!) get the Hyper Dash.
MISSION 4: FORTRESS LABORATORY
Now that we have acquired the weapons we need to get the items in this mission, we can head off to fight our lovely mustachioed bug friend. It is sad to see him taken down, but we do what we must in times of war...
Zero can't burn down the path to the EX Tank, so we have to use X yet again if we want to collect all the items...
Tri-Thunder is quite useful for a lot of the stage. Not much to say about this one. I think this is our first time having to dodge Sigma Virus heads.
We choose Life+ here to obtain the Burst Shot. We could get Shot Eraser, but I'm not sure how helpful it would be (though I like the idea of MORE weapon energy!) ... I guess I'll pay attention when (if????) we play as Zero and see if there are any places it would come in handy.
MISSION 5: OCEANIC CAVE
Time to get the final part of the Falcon Armor! ... Kinda. You need to get the item from this mission then come back with it -_- We'll try out Zero the first time through and see how he fares...
Well, he actually did pretty well! Mikazukizan is pretty powerful and keeps Zero safe through most of the mission. It's also the weakness to the boss... which I don't really like to use boss weaknesses until the refights, with Zero it's a little different... as long as you're in the air when you attack it will automatically become Mikazukizan... XD
We picked Energy+ here to obtain Energy Saver.
Our first bonus part came in, the Hyper Dash! Don't forget to equip :O
Also the Enigma Cannon is complete. It didn't destroy the Colony :)
REVISIT: OCEANIC CAVE
To complete the Falcon Armor, we must go back into the ocean with X and use our newly-acquired Gel Shaver.
This is pretty much just... waiting through the submarine attack again... I forget what the thing is called lol. I've been skipping the text.
It's really easy to walk off the edge of the screen while trying to 'aim' the Gel Shaver.
Now that that's out of the way, the rest of the game can really be completed in any order. So I'm going to have to play around with the weapons and decide how I want to clear the last few stages.
But that's all for messing around for now. I gotta sleep. I have an appointment at 930AM T_T and I need to call and change it to a phone appointment because I won't be able to get into the office.
But I started to break out of that by playing some more comfy things (things I'm very familiar with that are easy to play, like Story of Seasons and Digimon and stuff), and I'll hope to get back into the Pokemon Watchthrough Blog soon, as well as my playthrough of Sea of Stars. But for now I'm having trouble concentrating on something where I just sit and watch, especially since I have to 'actively' listen to understand Japanese (if my mind wanders, I miss what is being said), and feeling very intimidated by things I haven't experienced before.
Watched a friend speedrunning Duke Nukem tonight got me into watching Mega Man speedruns, which made me kinda wanna casually play some ol' ROCKMAN. Particularly in the mood for an X game, and I've created "perfect" stage orders for the first four games, but I've been kinda "stuck" at 5.
Also, random note: I use a mix of Japanese and English terms here because I'm playing the JP version but using EN guides as a reference, so... I don't care to clean it up or be consistent ^_^
I've created orders for Solo X and Solo Zero, and both use death scumming to increase the levels of bosses to make sure you obtain 8 parts from development.
But I've always wanted to create a run that accomplishes these things:
- Utilizes both hunters
- Minimizes revisits while collecting all items and upgrades
- Doesn't death scum, obtaining only parts as available through development normally
- Assumes no failed missiosn
- Collects all canon parts before firing the canon
- Collects all shuttle parts before launching the shuttle
- Makes fun use of all the weapons and items in the game, as much as possible
Now, this isn't TERRIBLY hard to come up with a general order, and once you get the first few out of the way, it's pretty easy to place the rest. But deciding those first few is going to be KILLER.
The main "problem" with routing this game for a 'funsies' playthrough is that you must give things up. Even if you death-scum, you're still only have to get 8 of the extra parts out of 16, as you must choose one from each development period after fighting each boss.
And without death-scumming, we're going to have to sacrifice EVEN MORE. I'm not going to detail everything about exactly why and how these systems work, even though I'd love to, because I kinda want to get on to playing the game some time tonight lol :P
I've compiled a list of which development I'd like to do after each boss, roughly listed in a 'priority' order. Basically, the higher up this list, the more I want to have the part:
Pegacion (Life) - Jumper
Grizzly (Energy) - Hyper Dash
Makoeen (Energy) - Energy Saver
Rosered (Energy) - Z-Saber Plus
Kraken (Life) - Quick Charge
Hotarunicus (Energy) - Shot Eraser
Necrobat (Energy) - Virus Buster
Dinorex (Life) - Speed Shot OR (Energy) - Buster Plus
MISSION 1: MAGMA DIVE
With Dinorex's potential parts being the lowest priority, as well as the Magma Dive mission requiring no other items to obtain 100% collection of its hidden items (a Life Up and Arm Parts G), we'll go ahead and start there. Ground Fire and Danchien are not particularly amazing weapons AFAIR, but we'll move time up an hour and potentially rank up X while we're here, making future bosses a higher level.
With 16 hours left, we get a base 1 to boss level, and then +0 for X's hunter rank (we can get +2 for Zero's hunter rank, but that will still only give us a level 3 boss), and a 0 bonus for having cleared other missions. So the highest boss level we can get here is a 3, which means we'll take X along and try to rank him up from B to A.
In practice, this took me several tries to get X to A rank. I'm not entirely sure HOW it worked on my last play -- I took MORE damage than usual (61) with the same amount of time (~4:30) and similar amount of enemies killed (you have to kill several in the lava tunnel ride armor part, but it was still few enough for the biggest bonus). I guess the "max damage to boss" bonus must have hit higher on that run...? Instead of charge shots, I was using lemons to defeat Dinorex. Maybe that has something to do with it...?
MISSION 2: ELECTRIC TRAP
This was a really tough choice. We can't get a part here (15 hours left means base level of 3, +1 for having cleared the Magma Dive mission, so the best we can get is 6 with Zero's SA rank).
This means we'll get a development opportunity at our boss level of 4 or 6 Since no part comes with it, we'll choose Weapons development, since more energy is always good, and Life Energy doesn't matter if you're not getting hit, right? And we're not going for a pacifist run or speedrun or anything, so we're not concentrating on tanking damage.
But the worst part about this is that by choosing Electric Trap stage 2nd, we're going to be giving up Quick Charge that we can get by defeating a level 8 Kraken. But in return, we'll have the Tri-Thunder early, which is one of the most powerful weapons in the game, and we'll have moved time forward another hour.
We'll also pick up our first part of the Falcon armor (Head Parts F), as well as an item for the cannon (I don't remember who has what items and I'm too lazy to look up what they are called -- it doesn't really actually matter hahaha).
I tried this stage as both Zero and X, and it's WAY harder with Zero. So I went with X. It wasn't too hard to maintain his A rank here. Plus, we get to use the Ground Fire a little bit, which works good against the Spark Gunners, which are one of two enemies in the entire stage. So it seems like a nice progression for weapon usage, too!
SUB-MISSION 1: VS DYNAMO
Dynamo challenges the hunters after 2 missions have been cleared. This is another opportunity to rank up X, so we'll take it here. With this, we should be able to get X to SA rank, which gets us an additional +2 to boss levels! Our boss base level is 5 now, and with two missions down, that gives us a minimum boss level of 7. At only A rank, we wouldn't get any bonus to boss level, so now no matter which hunter we choose, we'll always get to develop extra parts.
MISSION 3: MILITARY TRUCK
OK, Dynamo is taken care of and we now have a few more missions we can do. If we're wanting to minimize revisits, this is pretty much our next stop. We want to collect the Falcon Armor and get the rest of the parts of the cannon for now, so we have three stages to choose from. I'd like to save Oceanic Cave's mission for last of the three, so we can have access to more weapons to deal with the onslaught at the beginning of the stage (I think the weapon we get from Military Truck is quite good against it? IDR, I'm doing this on the fly and haven't played through in a couple years...) so that leaves Military Truck and Fortress Lab. Fortress Lab requires us to have the Crescent Shot and Ground Fire, so we're going to need to ge tthe Crescent Shot from the Truck first... so here we go!
I tried with Zero first, and while it was really fun to be able to take out the entire Dumps with a single Danchien, neither the Danchien nor the Denjin were helpful against the Mad Taxis. In the end, X ended up being the more fun and useful hunter in this mission. Ground Fire took out Dumps in two little shots (which you could fire rapidly) and then pretty much decimated everything else in the stage, too. In a couple areas where things were in weird positioning, Tri-Thunder was very helpful.
We choose Energy+ here in development so we'll (eventually!) get the Hyper Dash.
MISSION 4: FORTRESS LABORATORY
Now that we have acquired the weapons we need to get the items in this mission, we can head off to fight our lovely mustachioed bug friend. It is sad to see him taken down, but we do what we must in times of war...
Zero can't burn down the path to the EX Tank, so we have to use X yet again if we want to collect all the items...
Tri-Thunder is quite useful for a lot of the stage. Not much to say about this one. I think this is our first time having to dodge Sigma Virus heads.
We choose Life+ here to obtain the Burst Shot. We could get Shot Eraser, but I'm not sure how helpful it would be (though I like the idea of MORE weapon energy!) ... I guess I'll pay attention when (if????) we play as Zero and see if there are any places it would come in handy.
MISSION 5: OCEANIC CAVE
Time to get the final part of the Falcon Armor! ... Kinda. You need to get the item from this mission then come back with it -_- We'll try out Zero the first time through and see how he fares...
Well, he actually did pretty well! Mikazukizan is pretty powerful and keeps Zero safe through most of the mission. It's also the weakness to the boss... which I don't really like to use boss weaknesses until the refights, with Zero it's a little different... as long as you're in the air when you attack it will automatically become Mikazukizan... XD
We picked Energy+ here to obtain Energy Saver.
Our first bonus part came in, the Hyper Dash! Don't forget to equip :O
Also the Enigma Cannon is complete. It didn't destroy the Colony :)
REVISIT: OCEANIC CAVE
To complete the Falcon Armor, we must go back into the ocean with X and use our newly-acquired Gel Shaver.
This is pretty much just... waiting through the submarine attack again... I forget what the thing is called lol. I've been skipping the text.
It's really easy to walk off the edge of the screen while trying to 'aim' the Gel Shaver.
Now that that's out of the way, the rest of the game can really be completed in any order. So I'm going to have to play around with the weapons and decide how I want to clear the last few stages.
But that's all for messing around for now. I gotta sleep. I have an appointment at 930AM T_T and I need to call and change it to a phone appointment because I won't be able to get into the office.
