Sunday, February 23, 2020

PrinceWatercress plays Mega Man X2 - Part 8 of 9


Sigma's back, and he is more dangerous than before...but he is beaten once again.

X-Hunter Fortress - Stage 5


Okay, this is really bizarre.

The stage is exactly the same as Magna Centipede's, right down to the spotlights and the traps. The only difference is that the music is from the intro stage.

When you make your way to the mini-boss room where you fought the sword, you meet Sigma...and Zero? Why is Zero here standing next to Sigma? More importantly, why is he gray? (A precursor to Black Zero from Mega Man X4?)

Sigma is about to send this gray Zero at you, but before that can happen, a few powered-up buster shots ring out from behind X and destroy him before anything can even happen. It's the real Zero, and he's back and better than ever! Sigma then mentions that Zero was born to follow him. (This is barely hinted at in this game, but is fleshed out a lot more in subsequent games.) Zero then goes after the main computer and asks you to go after Sigma.

Afterwards, go down the hole Zero makes to meet Sigma again. Claws will come out of knuckles, making it look like Sigma is going through some sort of Wolverine phase. Or something. I dunno.

The Sonic Slicer is his weakness...and you'll want to use it as wisely as possible as you stay on the move. You cannot afford to stay in one spot during this fight as you will get hit.

Anyway, Sigma will leap off the walls before disappearing after the second one. He'll re-converge and drop down where you're at. You'll want to stay away from him at all times as you hit him with the Sonic Slicer. This is especially during his reappearance, because his standing claw swipe will knock you into the wall and then into the ceiling, which can be more aggravating than not.

The five projectiles that Sigma will send at you will track your current positions. They're tough to dodge. Hope you have four full Sub-Tanks.

If Sigma glows yellow once while he stands still, wall jump out of the way immediately, as Sigma is about to shoot out some Hadouken-like projectile of his hands.

When you beat Sigma, he explodes just like the rest of the Mavericks...only for some disembodied, see-through, wire-frame Sigma head to come out of nowhere and immediately aim for X as it twitches around.

Sigma's floating head flies from left to right while frying the ground with eye lasers when it's not flying at you trying to go for a direct hit. It can also spawn blue cubes that can transform into either the birds from the bird-spawning pads, the fish from the Bubble Crab stage or the screwdriver robots. The small enemies may drop power-ups, which makes this a tad easier...but not by much!

The only weapons that will do any damage are the Strike Chain and the fully-charged shots from the X-Buster upgrade. That is it.

Despite having no visible health bar, you can still damage Sigma's disembodied noggin. As a matter of fact, you're supposed to. The head changes from green to blue to purple to orange to red. When he turns red, he starts teleporting around the room. If he gets on top of you, he'll slowly drain your life. When that happens, hit him repeatedly with the Strike Chain.

When you beat Sigma's head, you'll destroy the computer that it came from along with it. Sigma will tell you that Zero is the last of "the doctor's" creations. (This also gets fleshed out somewhat as the series progresses.)

X and Zero (if you saved him) watch the sun rise and X questions his destiny yet again, then X rides away on a jet bike as the enemy roll call runs. Then, Zero shows up on the "Thank you for playing!" screen and does his triple shot before standing there. If you saved Zero, the real Zero shows up. If you didn't, it's the black Zero. (Why it works that way, I'll never know.)

No comments:

Post a Comment