Mega Man X: Sigma's 1st Castle and Chill - Chill Penguin's Stage and Sigma's 1st Castle Stage No Damage

Chill Penguin being the last boss of the Reverse Boss Order Run, I decided to go ahead and use the dash boots. The rest of the game will simply be a No Damage run, using the bare minimum upgrades. Those being the dash boots, as well as the arm cannon upgrade given to you at Sigma's first castle.

And boy. Do I have stuff to say about these two levels.

You'd never expect Chill Penguin's stage to be one of the harder ones when going for no damage - but it was.

Right at the start, you have the annoying woodsman, accompanied with the flying asshole just above it, so you need to be absolutely precise with your jump, time it so you don't hit the projectile by the woodsman, while having enough time to shoot the flying jerk before it hits you.

It's so trivial, yet took multiple tries for some reason. And then you have to repeat a second later. The bunny rabbits are annoying, too, but not a huge threat.

Then you get bat spam, while trying to dodge the spinning spike wheels, which gets on your nerves real quick.

But what infuriated me like nothing else on this stage was the segment after you get the dash boots.

I made it a point to do it with the dash for the added challenge, and this proved to be a bad idea. Just like with the beginning, I never expected it to be that hard since it's so trivial on paper. But the way you have to time both your jumps, as well as your shots to clear the path in front of you, is nothing short of rage inducing.

You see, Mega Man X1 really loves crowds of enemies.

It's never a game about threatening individual enemies; when the game decides it's time to give you a hard time, it simply sends out a bunch of enemies on the screen at once.

More on this when I get to the Sigma stage.

The snowball jerks can also end your run real easily if you're not careful. They're pretty telegraphed, and you have a sufficient amount of time to react to them, but carelessness will cost you.

Not much to say about Chill Penguin, though, since most of us never take damage from him in the first place. He's the easiest boss int he game, and was clearly designed to be the first boss you face. I even did a test run of facing him without using the dash ability, and it wasn't harder by any stretch, so there's hardly anything special about it. I may do a dashless Chill Penguin in the rematch at the second Sigma stage.

The first Sigma stage, though.

Holy shit.

It's just an unforgiving and neverending stream of bullshit, designed to make people like me, who are stupid enough to attempt something like a no damage run, to lose their will to live.

What you're seeing in the video is just about my one millionth attempt, so the reason some segments aren't as clean as you might expect, is simply because I was both hurting physically in my fingers, hands and wrists, as well as emotionally drained at this point. I just wanted to get it done.

The bullshit starts with the turtles and it never ever ends. The first Sigma stage is so disgustingly hard compared to any other stage in the game, it's not even funny.

I was determined to do the whole stage, save for the spider boss, with only the X Buster, making things harder for myself. Why you ask. Maybe because, deep down, I enjoy the pain. Fuck, I don't know.

The turtles tank multiple hits, and you need to jump to hit several of them, and you need to do this while dodging their missiles. Some of which you need to take out while dodging their missiles and the purple, depressed looking helicopters that keep respawning every time you take a wrong step.

After that, it's maintenance for a while until you reach Vile. But even before you get to Vile, there are opportunities to make a small mistake and end up getting hit.

The thing about the first Sigma stage is that there are lots of enemies. Everywhere, all the time. In the eight main stages, it's easy to dodge the enemies by memorizing their patterns, but in the first Sigma stage, it's a lot easier to forget some minor thing and, boom, run over.

Anyway, back to Vile.

Vile is a jerk.

He'd be annoying by himself, but he's doubly annoying in the middle of an already annoying stage when you're trying to avoid getting hit once.

Vile has the same AI as Launch Octopus and Spark Mandrill, meaning he can initiate any attack in any order from any position. To make things even more fun, he sometimes stays off screen, meaning you can only make a guess at what he's going to do next. There are also no walls, so you can't do the cheap thing and dodge him by jumping from wall to wall.

In some of my other attempts, I had better Vile segments than the one you're seeing here, but this is the attempt that got me through the entire level, so this is what you're getting.

The Vile fight is easily the most physically demanding boss in the game since you need to keep constantly moving, constantly dashing, constantly jumping and constantly dodging. It's a short fight, but fighting him a bunch of times did take a toll on my hands and fingers.

After Vile, we get the most relaxing part of the stage that I actually don't have anything to bitch about.

You need to avoid triggering the lasers and take out a few shield guys with the balls and chains. It looks a lot harder than it actually is. The timing is actually pretty lax, which is surprising for this level, but appreciated.

And then there's the fucking climb from hell.

Done successfully, it takes about fifteen seconds, but holy Jesus that climb was the death of me so many times. So many times.

It leaves absolutely no room for error, no room for bad timing, no room for bad placement. It's excruciatingly unforgiving. And don't be fooled by the fact that I make it look easy and painless on the video; what you're seeing is the result of meticulous planning, a few million attempts, and lots of anger and frustration and hopelessness.

And remember: the stage has to be done in one sitting, meaning no damage at any point. Every time I did one wrong move during that climb, it was back to the goddamn turtles at the beginning of the stage for me.

The difficulty of the climb stems from the third sequence. The last jump that requires you to dodge the ball and chain has to be perfect; too late and you hit the ball and chain, too fast and you hit the wall climbing enemy above you. You get one chance to get it right, and it is hard.

Easily the hardest jump of the entire game.

Obviously, you could time your fully charged X Buster shot to take out the shield guy and the wall climber, but you're going to have a difficult time taking out three enemies guarding the ladder without being fully charged.

So, I felt the strategy you're seeing was the most efficient one.

Imagine the sheer bliss I experienced after managing that climb for the first time, and then going on to face Boomer Kuwanger with my fingers too tired to dodge a lucky boomerang shot from him.

And back to the start I went.

I could go on and on about everything that's wrong with the climbing segment, but let's move on. Kuwanger is Kuwanger. The reason I'm struggling with him a little bit here is because I made it through the climb a second time and was not going to take any risks. On top of that, like I said, I was getting really tired, both physically and mentally. It's not pretty, but I didn't get hit, so it's good enough.

You'd think we'd be done with the bullshit at this point, but you'd be wrong.

The next segment after Kuwanger is arguably the second hardest part of the stage after the climbing part.

What makes it tricky is, once again, a hoard of enemies.

You have to do the turn around trick in order to get a shot in on the small hat guys who hide under their hats when you're facing them.

Usually it's not a big deal, but here you're also bombarded with the spinning wheels, as well as the purple helicopters, both of which keep respwaning every time you turn around.

And since turning around is necessary in order to hit the hat guys, this segment becomes a pain.

For the spider boss, I was going to just use the X Buster at first, but then decided to say fuck it and just use the shotgun ice, which he is weak to.

The spider is my least favorite boss in the game. But not because it's challenging in any way, but because it's slow and tedious. A big departure from every other boss in the game.

Not much to say about that, honestly. It's a boss. It's funny, actually, how the boss is by far the easiest part of the entire stage.

So, yeah. Made it. Eventually.

Hope you enjoy, and all that. Good night.