Mega Man X8
General Information
MrCab's Youtube Walkthrough
This is an outdated any% guide from 2015, however much of the information is still useful for beginners.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdcikNZqSXA&list=PLBWX5b2ZflulM-7Buo0gH7K4NG6vJ_XYC
Route Information
This information applies to New Game Runs.
Character Choice
There are two general character concepts to the routes.
Zero Route
The main principle of the Zero route is acquiring the Glaive and Zero Fly as soon as possible. The glaive makes it very easy to score double hits on bosses (4HP each), speeding up the fights dramatically. Zero Fly is just game breaking movement.
X Route
Slower than the Zero route, the X route focuses on acquiring the quick charge and charge-level upgrade armor parts. This makes the buster do full-charge damage with half-charges, which avoids triggering extended boss iframes. It's mostly slower than the Zero route due to a required revisit to the intro stage.
This heading is in loving memory of an Axl route concept.
Vile Locations
Most stages have at least one room with a required challenge. One of those rooms is potentially a Vile fight room.
Since these rooms vary in length for whatever lies within, and most bosses are defeated using base character attacks and not weakness weapons, the routes are designed to place Vile in the longest such rooms.
These rooms are
- Gravity Ant (longest)
- The Ground Shell Bug guy
- Burn Rooster (shortest of these 3)
Vile cannot appear in the city or snowmobile levels.
General Techniques
Zero Fly
This only works on the original 2004(?) PC release, and the original PS2 release. It was patched for Legacy Collection 2, along with the shop's money underflow.
If you are holding Up when you press down (including any left-or-right diagonal), Zero will fly up instead of down.
On the original PC release this can be done with any mappings of up and down.
On the PS2 release, this is possible because the game accepts directional input from both the left control stick and the directional pad. How you achieve pushing all of the required buttons at once is left to the runners.
- some players have a claw grip to flick the stick
- MrCab flicked the control stick against his chin (SGDQ 2015)
Release attack to stop flying. Keep in mind a few scenarios can lead to soft locks when using this.
Boss Invincibility Periods
Mavericks in Mega Man X8 typically follow a few common rules
- They enter invincibility frames every 8 HP of damage.
- After the 2nd and 5th sets (at around 16 and 40 HP of damage), they advance to the next phase.
- Between phases 2 and 3, there is an extended period of invincibility frames for the boss's super attack.
One notable exception to the above is if you have X's Ultimate Armor and Giga Attack. Nova Strike will reduce bosses to 1 HP and immediately trigger their super attack.
Weaknesses and Flinching
Bosses will all have a reaction to their weakness weapons. This makes for easy, if slow, fights.
Making Invincibility Periods Shorter
There are two main methods for making i-frames shorter, depending on your character
- With Zero, only connect with jump slashes (sword or glaive). Each does 2 damage, and after 4 the boss will have a smaller number of i-frames than if you used full combos or a weakness.
- This can use either weapon and probably more, but the glaive is the most effective in New Games for humans, as it often "double hits".
- Sigma Saber is also viable, but is only available in NG+ when you would have X's Ultimate Armor anyway
- With X, only use half charges, rather than full charges or lemons
- This is only a viable technique if you acquire the Buster Upgrade that increases the power of each charge level, turning Mega Man's "half charge" into a full charge for damage purposes.