2018-05-18

Well, I've been trying to clear all the achievements on MMLC2 on Steam, which means playing through Mega Man 8 again. I'm actually playing ROCKMAN8, since I haven't played it before. It's just as funny as MM8. I do like how the speech styles are able to give a bit more personality to the characters.

Anyway, that means I'm rekindling my love/hate relationship with this game. This game is full of long, poorly-designed stages, obnoxious minibosses, weird and useless items, sluggish movement, and mostly annoying music. But on the other hand, the graphics and little voice clips are super cute, the character designs are pretty neat, and most of all, there's BOLT COLLECTION!

If you haven't played the game before, basically there are these Bolt items hidden throughout stages which can be exchanged for parts that power up Rock as you play, enhancing your abilities. There's a limited number of Bolts, and the cost of all the upgrades is more than there are total Bolts in the game, plus you can only have eight total upgrade items built from Bolts, so you need to think wisely about what to spend your Bolts on. Furthermore, you obviously will collect Bolts as you go, so you can't just buy all the upgrades right away.

Probably my favorite aspect of this game is planning out a route through the stages and planning when and on what to spend my Bolts.

There are 40 Bolts to spend, with 17 different items you can build with them.

Some items are fairly useless or don't help much if you're skilled at the game. For example, if you're planning a no-damage run, there's no reason to buy the Power Shield which decreases knockback when you take damage, since, well, you're not going to be taking damage to begin with.

The useless items include Power Shield, Spare Extra, and Spare Charger.

There are also items that suit other players' style of gameplay, that are largely unnecessary for me personally, like the Shooting Part, Auto Shoot, Boost Part, and Rapid Part.

That leaves these items as the ones worth buying:

• Energy Balancer (5) - When collecting Weapon Energy Capsules when the current weapon is full of energy or no weapon is equipped, the weapon with the least amount of energy is refilled (rather than just wasting the energy like normal). Not necessary, but very convenient.
• Exit (4) - Allows you to leave a stage you've cleared before at any time, without having to get all the way to the boss room. Very convenient considering the amount of revisits required and the slow, long stages.
• Laser Shot (5) - Changes Rock's Charge Shot to the Laser Shot. I still am not sure which I like the best out of the regular, Laser, and Arrow Shot.
• Arrow Shot (5) - Changes Rock's Charge Shot to the Arrow Shot.
• Step Booster (5)- Makes Rock climb ladders faster. Totally unnecessary, but nice to have.
• Energy Saver (6) - Makes weapons use less Weapon Energy. Probably the best item you can make!
• Super Recover (5) - Makes Rock recover more Energy and Weapon Energy when picking up Capsules. Very nice for recovering Weapon Energy!
• Hyper Slider (5) - Speeds up Rock's slide dash. Pretty nice.
• High Speed Charge (7) - Lessens the time it takes to charge the Charge Shot. Very nice for what it does, but I also hardly use Charge Shots.
• Exchanger (4) - If you pick up Life Energy Capsules while Life Energy is full, they will be converted to Weapon Energy instead! Extremely powerful when combined with Energy Saver and Super Recover!

Of course, that's more than 8 items, and the total cost of all of those is well above 40, so we can't have them all.

The Energy Saver, Super Recover, and Exchanger combined make it difficult to run out of Weapon Energy, which is extremely powerful. Those combined cost 15 Bolts, however, and everything after Step Booster in that list can only be purchased after clearing the first six stages (including the intro stage and the Duo stage). Energy Balancer makes the whole setup a lot more convenient, and with that we've already spent half our Bolts and filled up half our space.

If we're collecting all the bolts possible, Exit is a must, which leaves us with 16 Bolts to spend on other things, and only three things left we can buy. Hyper Slider and Step Booster maximize our speed, but we're missing out on the two unique Charge Shots since we'll only be able to hold one more item. If we forego the two unique Charge Shots, we can barely afford High Speed Charge as our last item, though, powering up the regular Charge Shot by making it faster to charge.

If we go for both special Charge Shots and both mobility boosters, we could still get by with sacrificing one of our convenience items, either the Exit or Energy Balancer.

Though if we're not concerned with collecting all the items in the game, we can skip Exit altogether and just not revisit stages. It will give us fewer Bolts to work with, but we'll at least be saving 4 Bolts by not buying the Exit. And of course, we don't have to fill up all 8 slots, either. We could sacrifice even more to minimize our time spent running around stages.

All of these factors make the Bolt collection aspect of Mega Man 8 interesting for me. I think I actually enjoy thinking about Bolts more than I actually enjoy playing the game, but then it's kind of pointless to think about them if you don't actually put all this thought into action.

So, it's been a long time since I planned a route through this game and I don't feel like digging up my old notes on LiVEJOURNAL (or rather, DreamWidth now) so I'm going to just plan a new route. Though I've always prioritized Energy Balancer and sacrificed one of the special Charge Shots. I think this time, I'm going to try to create a route that collects all the Bolts, minimizes time spent revisiting stages, and collects the most useful items early in the game. I also want the collection to feel very "complete" so anything that adds unique functionality into the game will be bought. This means we're getting both special Charge Shots and both mobility items.

Exit is far more convenient and necessary for this type of playthrough compared to Energy Balancer, and I'd like to have the Holy Trinity of Weapon Energy with Energy Saver, Super Recover, and Exchanger.

So our eight items to build will be Exit (4), Energy Saver (6), Super Recover (5), Exchanger (4), Arrow Shot (5), Laser Shot (5), Step Booster (5), and Hyper Slider (5).

In all, that's 39 Bolts, so we're within our budget.

The question now arises, when do we buy each thing? Exit is only necessary once we start revisiting stages, which will be after clearing the initial ten stages, so we can hold off on it for a while. Everything else, though, seems like it could be useful early on. Laser Shot is particularly good at damaging bosses, and I like to face the bosses the first time around without using the special weapons that they're weak to. So having Laser Shot for those would be nice. Most bosses have a time they're invulnerable so you can spend that time charging, using regular shots otherwise. Arrow Shot, on the other hand, is very useful during stages, as it creates a splash of shots upon impact, letting it destroy many enemies at once. Step Booster would be nice to have in Sword Man and Aqua Man's stages, as they both have parts where you evade death traps while climbing ladders.

There's also the fact that Exit, Laser Shot, Arrow Shot, and Step Booster are the only items that can be bought in the first "half" of the route. This can mean buying them early, or not buying anything to save up for the Energy-based items once they become available in the second half.

In the first half of the game, we can collect bolts from these locations:

• 3 Bolts in the intro stage
• 4 Bolts in Clown Man's stage
• 4 Bolts in Grenade Man's stage
• 5 Bolts in Frost Man's stage
• 3 Bolts in Tengu Man's stage

One of the Bolts in Frost Man's sage requires the Flash Bomb to acquire, so we have to make sure to defeat Grenade Man first. Similarly, one of the Bolts in Clown Man's stage requires the Rush Bike to get, which is also obtained from Grenade Man's stage. This isn't the total of all the bolts in each stage; all of them have another Bolt that requires revisiting after acquiring weapons from the second half of the game. So in all, the first half of the game allows us to procure 19 Bolts before we unlock the second half of the items.

Once we get to the second half, we'll gain an additional 2 Bolts from the Duo mid-stage thing, and then we'll have access to these bolts:

• 4 Bolts in Search Man's stage
• 4 Bolts in Astro Man's stage
• 4 Bolts in Aqua Man's stage
• 3 Bolts in Sword Man's stage

A Bolt in Search Man's stage requires us to have the Flame Sword from Sword Man first, while a Bolt in Aqua Man's stage requires us to have the Astro Crush from Astro Man first.

We don't need to buy Exit until we've completed all eight stages once, so we don't need to worry about prioritizing it early. Both of the special Charge Shots are available from the beginning and would be nice to get early. Step Booster is also available right away, but we only really need it for Sword Man and Aqua Man's stages the most.

If we buy all three of the items available right away other than Exit, we'll spend a total of 15 Bolts. This leaves us only with 4, plus the 2 from the Duo stage, going into the second half. With this six we can afford only one of the Energy items.

If we hold off on buying the Step Booster right away, though, we'll be able to afford two of them at the midpoint, but buying two of them will lock us into playing Astro Man's stage first, as we can't visit Aqua Man until we have defeated Astro Man, we can't visit Search Man until we've defeated Sword Man, and we can't visit Sword Man until we've bought the Step Booster. I mean, we could easily go through Sword Man's stage without the Step Booster, but part of the fun of creating these "paths" is to get optimal usage out of all of the different items.

Buying the Step Booster early and saving one of the Energy items for later allows us to at least choose to visit Sword Man's stage first in the second round of stages, which also allows us to choose the next stage as either Search Man or Astro Man. So we get a bit more variety to the stage order. The Flame Sword isn't a particularly useful weapon overall, so there's no reason to want to get it early. Though the Homing Sniper is pretty nice, but so is the Astro Crush.

It's also possible to visit Frost Man's stage before visiting Grenade Man's stage if we want, since we'll have to come back to Frost Man's stage later anyway. We'll just have to save that one Bolt there for later, giving us fewer Bolts in the first half. The same can be said for visiting Clown Man's stage before Grenade Man's.

There are also the four Rush Adaptors that we can find which we have to account for. They're freely dropped by the minibosses in Grenade Man, Clown Man, Sword Man, and Aqua Man's stages.

Grenade Man's stage houses the Rush Bike, which is really awesome and allows us to ride quickly on rush like a motorcycle. This allows for extra-long jumps, too, like the one required for one of Clown Man's Bolts.

Clown Man's stage houses Rush Item, which just summons Rush to drop an item and can be used once per stage. There's a chance of him giving even a Yashichi, though!

Sword Man's miniboss drops Rush Bomber, which lets Rush fly around above the stage and drop bombs. Cool in theory, but hardly ever that necessary.

And Aqua Man's stage has the Rush Health adaptor, which is like the Rush Bomber, but Rush drops Energy Capsules (both Life and Weapon types!)

Giving us Rush Bike and the Flash Bomb which gives us a powerful weapon, cool adaptor, and the ability to get two extra Bolts in the first half without having to revisit, Grenade Man's stage seems like a great place to start.

Having at least the Flash Bomb and Ice Wave help a lot in Tengu Man's stage. Tornado Hold can be useful against Clown Man's miniboss, and Thunder Claw isn't particularly useful anywhere in the first half any more than other items are.

So a decent order for the first have sounds like Grenade - Frost - Tengu - Clown.

There aren't too many places where the Arrow Shot becomes useful in Frost Man's stage, but the Laser Shot can help defeat Frost Man more quickly. So buying the Laser Shot first after Grenade Man's stage seems like a good way to go. Then after Frost Man's stage, we can get the Arrow Shot, which comes in handy in Tengu Man's stage (and most stages at some point).

In the second half, we need to visit either Sword or Astro first, as explained before. If we go to Astro first, we can save our Bolts from the first half and get both Energy Saver and Exchanger right away. Or we could save Super Recover and Exchanger for much later and prioritize Hyper Slider earlier.

Or if we want to visit Sword first, we'd have to pick up the Step Booster ahead of time and save the Exchanger for later.

I guess it depends on whether I'd rather have Astro Crush for Sword Man's stage or Rush Bomber for Astro Man's stage. The former seems like it would be more useful, so I'll go with that for now, but I'll have to pay attention for places to make use of Rush Bomber next time I play Astro Man's stage.

After that, we could go to Sword Man or Aqua Man's stage next. We'll get 4 bolts in Aqua Man's stage, and 3 in Sword Man's stage. I don't think we'll make much use of Rush Bomber in Aqua Man's stage (nor the Flame Sword), so it might be better to go there first. And Water Balloon is a decent spam-shot weapon. Either way, we need to make sure we buy Step Booster first.

Search Man's stage can really go anywhere after Sword Man, so if we're saving Sword Man for third, that means Search Man ends up being last.

So here's an example path through the game:

• Intro Stage (3/3 Bolts)
• Grenade Man (7/7 Bolts)
• Laser Shot (2/7 Bolts)
• Frost Man (7/12 Bolts)
• Arrow Shot (2/12 Bolts)
• Tengu Man (5/15 Bolts)
• Clown Man (9/19 Bolts)
• Duo (11/21 Bolts
• Energy Saver (5/21 Bolts)
• Astro Man (9/25 Bolts)
• Step Booster (4/25 Bolts)
• Aqua Man (8/29 Bolts)
• Hyper Slider (3/29 Bolts)
• Sword Man (6/32 Bolts)
• Super Recover (1/32 Bolts)
• Search Man (5/36 Bolts)
• Exit (1/36 Bolts)
• Revisits (5/40 Bolts)
• Exchanger (1/40 Bolts)

It sounds pretty good overall, minimizes revisits, gets Step Booster before the two areas where it would be most needed, and even gets Hyper Slider before Sword Man where it can be helpful.

With so much opportunity to replenish energy in the game, though, it might be better to hold off on something like the Exchanger or Super Recover in favor of something like High-Speed Charge. And if we didn't care about collecting all possible bolts, we could even avoid the Exit, since it basically just pays for itself anyway (since there are four Bolts you get by revisiting four stages, and Exit costs four Bolts itself).

Replacing Super Recover and Exchanger with High-Speed Charge will save an extra 2 Bolts. So we'd have 3 left over at the end, and nothing to spend them on. It's a bit of a shame since it means we won't be filling up all eight slots of items. But that's part of the price of buying expensive items like Energy Saver and High-Speed Charge.

The biggest con against getting High-Speed Charge is that it's acquired so late in the game it isn't able to be put to much use. It would be nicer if we could have had it earlier in the game before we got lots of nice weapons and used more Charge Shots.

And sort of like not filling up all eight slots, there are also four slots for "Shot" in the second submenu. The regular Charge Shot is one of them, and then the Arrow Shot and Laser Shot take up the next two spaces. I have no idea what even fills up the last spot. But it will be left empty with the above path.

But yeah, this is just the example of one thought process I go through thinking about playing Mega Man 8. And honestly this is probably the most fun part of the game. The planning part, I mean.

#mega man #rockman #mega man 8 #rockman8