Mega Man X5 Masochist Challenge Part 07

Last time, I said the name Duff McWhalen is so bad, it's good. Skiver, then, takes us right back to so bad, it's fucking terrible territory.

It's been a while since I've done one of these, so I'll once again recite what the challenge is about:

No damage
X-Buster Only
No armor
Extreme difficulty for X5 and X6

Basically, these runs are the X games gutted to the bone. I also try to find the fastest routes through the stages, while still preserving no damage.

Despite the boss' stupid name, the stage itself was pretty fun to plan and execute.

The first thing to note here is that Extreme mode here makes those bombs way more dangerous than they normally are. Meaning that they'll go off almost immediately upon you entering a screen. There's very little room for error when trying to take them out before they explode.

I have to say, though, that despite the fun segments being indeed fun, this stage does have likely unintentional X3 callbacks in the sense that it has empty stretches with nothing going on - as well as a drawn-out elevator segment.

The one big positive in X4 was that it eliminated the elevator segments almost entirely after X3. I think X4 only has one elevator in the entire game.

If Capcom wanted to have shades of X3 among the many callbacks to the previous games included X5, I would have chosen the difficulty level and variety of X3 - not empty stretches and elevators.

But oh well.

The segments that have enemies on them, on the other hand. Boy, do they really have those fucking enemies.

It actually reminds of X1 now that I think about it. X1 also went with the "Instead of clever and well thought-out enemy placement, let's just have a fuck ton of them" approach for a lot of the game.

I didn't mind it here, though. For the purpose of this challenge, I was forced to sit down and think about my approach, which is the whole intent anyway.

An embarrassing amount of time was used on trying to figure out that last bomb near the end.

I tried everything, a multitude of times.

The only thing I didn't try was the most logical approach, which turned out to also be the correct one: just fucking shooting everything.

It just didn't seem doable, so I only even thought of giving it a try after all other options were exhausted. Felt kinda silly afterwards. It's still not an easy segment, though. Managing to shoot everything down in time before the bomb explodes, while avoiding damage, took its sweet time to get down.

And speaking of X1, Storm Eagle... I mean Skiver here somehow manages to have a less cool battle arena than his X1 inspiration - despite the fact that X1 was on a 16-bit console 7 years prior. How that happens, I don't know.

The guy's hardly a threat if all you're doing is taking no damage because, in a casual run, he never does any damage to you anyway.

All of his attacks can be dodged while cooking and only casually glancing at the general direction of the television every now and again when you happen to feel like it.

The added challenge here was trying to do this quickly. This meant attempting to get charged shots in during his dive attacks, which is a lot more finicky than it looks.

Skiver's hitbox - while forgiving - isn't quite as forgiving as Storm Eagle's in X1. So, instead of being able to evade him with your eyes closed, your eyes do need to be open.

So, he tries. I can appreciate that.

It's a boring fight, still, and that can't be helped. And the boringness is multiplied by 100 in the refight when he's at level 96.

A joyous occasion, I'm sure. Look forward to that. I'm not.