Dancing with Leviathan

While working on my 100 point run of MMZ the fight against Leviathan ended up being my favorite one in the game. When I first got to her I was unsure how to approach the battle, unlike the other Guardians which I figured out relatively quickly. What ensued what several hours of practice to come up with a result which I think ended up being pretty interesting. She’s very different from every other boss in the game so I wanted to go into greater detail as to what my strategy was.

-To start, nothing Leviathan does appears to be random or influenced by the game’s internal RNG value. Her attack pattern is the same every time: Homing Spears-Ice Ring-Falling Snow. At half health she will add her Ice Dragon EX Skill after the snow. More importantly though, her movement as she swims across the arena is determined by your position on the X and Y axis, down to the very pixel. This means that you can choreograph this fight as you can with MMZ3 bosses, however this is far more precise than anything in Z3. The moment she stops a particular attack pattern is when she decides her swimming direction and will move in accordance to your position. This is why I liken this battle to a dance.

-My first movement is to dash jump over her. You can dash under her on the small incline she’s hovering over but this method was safer for me. Staying on this platform is crucial for the rest of the fight, you never want to leave it and dash jump anywhere else. I attack by chaining Z-Saber and Triple Rod hits, making sure to angle the Triple Rod correctly to hit as she swims away. Depending on how close you are to her during this initial attack string, she’ll swim a certain distance towards the right edge of the screen, you want her to be fairly close to the large slope.

-Next she initiates the Ice Ring which thankfully is too far to hit Zero in this position. I go for exactly 5 Triple Rod hits and then dash away and initiate a Rolling Slash. I want to be clear, this is not optimal at all for the purpose of damage, it’s much better to cancel Z-Saber slashes, I did this purely since I wanted to use Rolling Slash in a boss fight. She will continue to swim down-right for a short time, crucially she’s unable to deal contact damage as she can’t reach the very edge of the screen. This allows for lots of Rolling Slash hits to connect as she prepares her snow attack.

-I stop my Rolling Slash 11 hits in so I can get some more powerful Triple Rod hits in, if I don’t do this I won’t deal enough damage to setup the finishing section of this fight. You can either do a standing strike or air strike depending on how many Rolling Slash hits you got, 12-13 is possible if your opening section is even more precise than shown here. As she swims up, clear the snow and get another air strike with the Triple Rod. At this point her health is good enough to setup the end so I stop and focus on my position. I go to the edge of the screen and face right, waiting for her voice line to play and send the snow down. It’s crucial to wait for this otherwise she can end up swimming to the left. As soon as I hear the cue I dash to the left and go to that small slope next to the spikes so I can set up her vertical position. I need her to be at a certain spot so that she’ll swim upwards after summoning the Ice Dragon and being near that small slope seems to be a consistent method.

-As she summons the Ice Dragon I use the vertical space I created to initiate another Rolling Slash and deal the last bits of damage, leaving her with 3 HP which is the exact value I need. As she swims upwards the Ice Dragon curls back towards Zero. To end the fight I decide to bounce off the Ice Dragon with the Triple Rod and use it to climb up to Leviathan’s position. Of critical importance is the damage the Triple Rod deals when doing bounces. The first downward strike will deal 4 damage, all subsequent bounces deal 3. This means I have a total of 4 bounces to use before the Ice Dragon is destroyed. For the first 3 bounces I use short hops, not holding the jump button down. On the last one however I hold the jump button to gain extra height, dodge Leviathan’s spear and end the fight with a bounce.

Hope you enjoyed this battle, it took a lot of practice to figure out. It ended up being like a rather tough puzzle to solve so it was very satisfying to successfully execute this method during a run.