Mega Man X4 No Damage (Zero): Cyber Peacock

Twitter:   / magnus_blade  

Other Mega Man runs:

MattTheNoMoreHero's Maverick Hunter X, Vile No Damage Run (Hard Mode):    • Mega Man MHX - Vile Run (No Damage)  

Challenges:
-No Damage (Even in Ride Armors)
-No Heart/Energy/Weapon Tanks
-No Black Armor

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Here's a weird, but interestingly designed stage. The goal of Area 1 is purely to speed run to the portals to advance further. The whole point of getting there as fast as you can (S-Rank) is to get the power ups (and in X's case, an Armor Capsule as a bonus) in the rooms between. But since this is a no damage run, I have no need for that stuff...but that doesn't mean I had to lollygag either. I sped through just because. But anything to look out for? Not really. The video speaks for itself on how easy these segments are. All you really need here is Kuuenbuu to destroy the golden orb things.

Area 2: Change in design here, as it's now a normal stage again...sorta. The only REAL problem here is being impatient and not allowing the rolling spheres to stop before flipping the switch...otherwise you're either ram into them if you're going too fast, or they'll fall on you when the room flips. But if that happens, that just called a derp. As long as you're patient here, no problems whatsoever.

Boss Analysis: On the plus side, he's actually more challenging than his stage....but that's still not saying much. Until you get him at either half or critical HP, Peacock will just...do what you see he's doing here, repeatedly in a boring and predictable pattern. All you have to do is keep him from appearing in a corner when he teleports on the ground. I say this because his omni-directional spike attack has a much better chance of hitting you if he traps you in the corner (but having quick reflexes and wall jumping skills can still avoid it lol). His next attack though, is actually somewhat tricky to dodge. I let him do it once so you could see what it looks like. He'll fire several exploding homing feathers(?) one at a time, and the trick is to allow the feather(s) to get near ground level, gain a bit of distance, then hit a wall jump in quick succession upon touching it. That way, Zero would arc right over it with no issue. After that, rinse and repeat until he stops. It's not as simple as I put it, but with a little practice, it's not too much of a difficult maneuver to grasp. I only had one failed recording attempt on this stage, due to mistiming the jump.

Overall Stage Difficulty: 1/10, even with Peacock's little tricky attack, this place broke no sweat.

...But the skill (Giga Attack) we get here, Rakuhouha, is fantastic. Going in five different directions, the energy blasts can help you in tight situations where you're surrounded (which doesn't happen too often to me), but my personal favorite use for it is the invincibility frames you get during the attack. From the beginning to the end of the animation, Zero is impervious to damage (though non-lethal things like Final Sigma's vacuum attack can still pull him in, but that's a topic for another day...). You'll see me making quite some use of this in the coming stages.