Gravity Circuit v1.1.0 - Boss Rush with Stained Purple

Who needs Air Jumper anyway?

run 2 with Last Resort: 9:47
extras: 20:06 (can't believe I left Overflow Converter on lol)

Played on Hard difficulty in Circuit mode.
A little rusty since I haven't played since the last time I uploaded a proper gameplay video of GC - especially the Last Resort run, which was actually recorded first. I'm happy enough with these, though! Tried to keep things entertaining and not just combo everything from full health to zero, and there were only a small number of truly bad mistakes and unintentional hits - some of them ended up being pretty funny anyway!
(There were so many runs lost from accidentally picking up health...)

Stained Purple is an armor color that's only available postgame, and for good reason - you can pull 3HP-damage blocks out of the ground that have incredible coverage that hooks don't while being perfect for catching bosses as they wake up from invulnerability, buff your next burst to do more damage, and fly through the air with repeated grabs. Smart use of the blocks and purging for stronger bursts means you can take out boss healthbars very quickly and efficiently. It's the armor color that brings out the most of the game's finer mechanics and is easily my favorite as a result.
Not just that, but the first non-hazard hit that would normally KO you is nullified, leaving you with 1HP in the Last Resort state where you get the effects of Reach Extender and a massive damage boost without influencing iframe thresholds at all - so long as you don't heal from most sources (no pickups, checkpoint repairs, Emergency Heal, nor Overflow Converter). Doing so deactivates the effect and it won't trigger again until you restart. Hardware Barrier to stop further damage is OK. Needless to say, doing 1.5HP per hit instead of 1HP adds up very fast, especially with the armor's normal mechanics.

The second run was played on v1.1.0a which had a bug/exploit where holding something could protect you from certain projectiles. I show it off against Trace's DM at 10:28 (and to give myself a second to scratch an itch on my nose).
Similarly, the purge/powerup animation for Stained Purple used to disable contact damage temporarily, which is how I inadvertently avoided Bit's dash slash at 20:16.
Both bugs have since been fixed as of v1.1.0b.

The rules for getting a perfect were changed with v1.1.0 - now it's just making sure your Damage Taken stat is 0. This means Hardware Barrier is legal, and Last Resort also doesn't count as damage taken as long as it activates while you've burnt yourself down to 1HP by spamming bursts in Circuit Mode!
It's absolutely possible to get a 0-damage clear without using Barrier as long as you're patient and use the strongest bursts liberally. Because you can do 16hp combos sustainably right at the start of each fight with a stunnable boss, I strongly believe that anyone can do it as long as you can fight Circuit Crystal and Commander patiently.

Gravity Freeze was used to dunk on Wrecker Tank since v1.1.0 boosted its damage and it can hit Wrecker Tank (and certain other bosses in rare situations) multiple times for silly output.
Otherwise, it has insane gamebreaking combo potential, even against Blade and Hash if you position well. Not only does it have a massive range, it resets bosses' invulnerability thresholds and allows you to start a combo by launching them with an upwards attack; this means you get the 2HP of activation damage and at least 3HP from normals (sometimes 4HP if they're high enough up so you can let them bounce a couple times), and it's trivial to combo with other bursts afterward. I didn't do that here, but I'll show off a standalone example of it in the next video!

I don't think it would be realistic to go for a true burstless no-hit due to certain bosses having some mean mixup potential that require either luck or bursts to escape - phase 2 Cable can box you in, sometimes Crash's ceiling blocks don't play nice - but it IS theoretically possible. There's a safe and consistent way to whittle down every other boss in the game, even Nega as long as you keep your distance and bait out his safely punishable moves.

loadouts for the normal gauntlet:
C1: Energy Absorber, Chain Dasher, Chain Booster
B1: Catch Interrupt / Rising Upper / Flying Strike / Heavenly Piledrive
C2: Energy Absorber, Repair Enhancer, Energy Multiplier
B2: Hardware Barrier / Gravity Freeze / Clone Array / Function Overload

loadouts for Last Resort shuffled gauntlet:
C1: Energy Absorber, Chain Dasher, Chain Booster
B1: Catch Interrupt / Rising Upper / Flying Strike / Heavenly Piledrive
C2: Energy Absorber, Chain Dasher, Energy Multiplier
B2: Hardware Barrier / Hologram Trap / Clone Array / Function Overload