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Cossack 3

Nov 6th, 2011
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  1. Cossack 3 is an absolutely brutal gauntlet without any one overpowering gimmick, but several serviceable ones that don't hog for attention and augment their respective platforming. These mostly concern water and as with Drill Man's stage before it, Cossack 3 serves as a nice summary of the main mechanics that theme has meant over the course of the classics. It's a very well-crafted stage, but brother is it hard to see yourself through. It doesn't help that it's so long.
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  3. Things start off ominous with the usual underwater affair of precise jumps and tricky spikes, to a stricter degree than the normal games usually see. Getting any Wily 3 vibes from Mega Man 2? If avoiding death on these jumps is bad, avoiding damage is a nightmare. The enemies are placed as carefully as possible to require crackerjack maneuvering, firing, or a damn good plan going into your jump. The very first met and jump combo out of the gate is tight enough to have killed a couple attempts by eating an errant shot. The fish approaching from the left are in sharp contrast to the floating buoys you need careful positioning to avoid. It's a cruel contrast and we'll be seeing plenty like it in the sections to come.
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  5. Next is a simple transitory area to get out of the water but still manages to keep you on your toes with some jetski joes you aren't used to seeing outside of automated sections. Crafty little inclusion there. As in their original use in Mega Man 4, the best way to deal with mine clutter is usually just to slide, although you might be caught off guard by the surprisingly aggressive squid while doing so. Following this we get some proper lighting and another nondescript but dangerous enemy duo. See, that's a big part of what I like so much in this stage. It's just pure and unobtrusive solid level design with clever enemy placement and unassuming gimmicks. Nothing outright steals the stage's spotlight like has been the case in earlier stages. There's nothing wrong with those stages or moments, mind you, because a good deal of their gimmicks were awesome, but to get a more traditional feeling romhack level stands as an appreciated contrast.
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  7. Leaving the water for now after goading a stubborn clam out of its shell, we move onto to a tank who really does not need to be in every bloody level, and a split path, what's definitely the most significant in the game. Whichever option you choose, you're going to be committing to it for a while, because these divergences last for quite the stretch of level, each even being bookended by their own unique minibosses. I take the lower one which is substantially deadlier but has an easier to manage miniboss. I'll showcase the upper one at the end of this segment.
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  9. Now here's a very cool water gimmick I don't think I've ever seen in a Mega Man game, though someone feel free to refresh my spotty memory. This stuff is viscous enough to catch Mega Man in place once his momentum's been slowed enough. Simply tap the jump button from the ground and release it wherever you want to stop, and Mega Man will become completely freeform, allowing you to direct him across the screen as if he were on Rush Jet from Mega Man 3. This stuff is also thick enough to stop Mega Man's fall momentum given enough space, which is used for an absolutely evil trap midway through the section. The first part is nothing to slouch at either, with some tight confines between spikes and uncomfortably close enemies sharing your space. The rising and falling nature of the liquid complicates things considerably, especially as far as the squid and stingrays are concerned.
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  11. That trap, oh man, that trap. It's a purely logical obstacle and you feel like an idiot when you fall for it, but you will always fall for it. From Mega Man's initial drop into this stuff it's obvious that too much momentum will overtake its viscosity, so if your immediate instinct is to just jump in head first, even at highest tide, you'll find yourself flat on the spikes. What you need to do is simply walking or slide off the upper platform when the liquid's at its highest, which will send you in with a gentle enough momentum to reach buoyancy before the spikes hit. It's mean, but damn if it isn't creative.
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  13. After this is a more traditional water-based gimmick right out of Burst Man's stage, namely water that acts like actual water. You'll casually float to the surface of this rising and falling pool and there's nothing you can do to fight your way down other than get a good jump from the above surface. As always, the momentum dictates how far you'll sink, which is put to its own devious effect during this section's spike traps, though nothing quite as cruel as that last one. Mostly what becomes a concern with this mechanic, at least to the constraints of this challenge, is avoiding damage, because you're basically restricted to one constantly fluctuating plane. Giving anything fair time to run its course through the water is going to get you hurt, so you need to be very deliberate in your enemy management: don't miss a shot. The buoys here, curiously, show that they operate the same way regardless of whether or not they're actually in water. Also, that stretch approaching the spikes before the second one is nervewracking as hell even if it's harmless. The real race comes in the area immediately after this, where the spikes are in fact layered high enough to kill you if the water sinks too low with you in it.
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  15. Like the last section's showstopping trap, this one is all about proper momentum and a bit of proper timing. You want to jump down at just the right speed, but also just the right moment, to combine your fall momentum and the lowering tide such that you'll clear the column blocking your way but have enough time to make it to safe ground before the water runs out. This is compounded by the fact that you're also trying to time your way around that rising and falling buoy. It's a nasty assortment of components and another example of this level's creative deviousness. The fish ambush is just kicking you while you're down.
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  17. At the end of this we're introduced to a familiar face from Mega Man 4, who's been given a bit of a boost. His mines now aggressively arc toward Mega Man, and he can fire a volley of them from above. His missiles are the same and are dealt with by a simple well-placed slide, but the randomness with which he chooses his next action can really work against keeping that dodge easy. Add that to the fact that he himself is constantly rising up and down, modifying the release points of each of his projectiles, and you have a fight that demands your attention. Luckily, that's about all it demands because reflex-wise, it's nothing especially cruel in the face of what this hack has offered. Besides that, he goes down relatively quickly.
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  19. The final main stretch of level is my favorite just because of the way it plays out. Here we see the interesting but boringly-implemented bubbles from Wave Man's stage put to threatening effect after Splash Woman failed with them a second time. This is a precarious excursion across wide swaths of pit and it's even stricter when spikes come into play. These bubbles don't rise randomly, coming at set intervals with set spacing and type, but that doesn't mean you don't need a considered plan when you cross a set, especially given the unstable footing you'll be dealing with on the small ones. If this guy really wanted to pull hairs, he'd have eliminated water physics from this, but he's not that much of a dick.
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  21. Once you reach the end, you trigger a switch that opens both the massive doors sealing either end of this chamber, and then you ride the currents, baby. This is a fun but nonetheless threatening sequence that you need to really measure your speed with. Those bubbles are still very much present and will knock you straight into a pit if you cross one during a jump, so you really need to thread the needle on your way to the other side. Combine this with unevenly spaced jumps requiring a careful balance of momentum and this level really doesn't give you many breaks.
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  23. The final miniboss room is a very involved, and exceedingly lengthy, but interesting and viscerally satisfying excursion. I don't know what it is, but there's something therapeutic about popping shitloads of bubbles. However, this is still a very tricky section to do damageless, and not in the traditional sense of immediate danger. These bubbles move exceedingly slowly, to the point where reaction time is completely unnecessary. You're never going to get hit by one of these no matter how crowded things get unless you happen to get trapped by them, and therein lies the rub. This quickly becomes an involved puzzle more than an action sequence, as you carefully prune at the increasingly congested clutter floating about the room and bouncing off of itself. The first bubble is ironically the one that requires the most care in management, simply because its splits number in the perfect amount to impede and trap you in bad combinations, whereas with two or more the crowding becomes so severe that their bouncing services you more often than not. They have a hard time moving around the room, much less crossing where you are. The hardest part of the sequence by far is at the very beginning of the third phase, because those three bubbles have huge hitboxes and bizarre initial paths. As soon as you blow enough of them up, though, you're afforded plenty of breathing room. This is the main reason behind this segment's excessive length, outside of the level being long in general and the boss giving a bit of a fuss. It's probably not exhilarating to watch, but it's fun to do. It just stands that I can't go too trigger crazy to speed up the experience or I'll guarantee myself a hit.
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  25. Also, whatever magic he worked to have every single bubble bounce realistically off of whichever one it happens to encounter no matter how many are present or how often they collide, it's really, really impressive. As is the coming boss.
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  27. This is, for lack of a better title, the Crystal Devil, and he's a highly unique, fun fight that takes place in an endless vertical water shaft. That sounds like a small miracle coming from a Devil of all things, but he's so removed for them in the traditional sense I don't think it counts. Borrowing at least passing inspiration from Agile's refight in X2, the Crystal Devil is quite literally his own arena. Every section he spawns and launches will create new terrain on the floor, and would you just look at the animation on those things? Each individual section rotates a full 180 degrees laying on one of two sides, making this fight really easy on the eyes. I love the visuals here.
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  29. The devil starts out harmlessly enough with a simple repeated pattern; he'll lob his outermost column or row at Mega Man depending on which is most useful to hit him with. He'll then drop the rest of his sections directly below himself. This is complicated by the fact that he can reform himself in one of several positions around the room, but the nature of the attack keeps the terrain relatively simple to navigate and thus, the attack is relatively static to dodge. After he's been taken down a third of his health the devil unleashes. Alternating between two very distinct attacks, the devil will continue to form at various places around the room and begin to cause chaos in the terrain.
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  31. His first attack involves sending five clusters of himself skyward, which will then fall in sequence as randomly chosen Tetris blocks. Yeah, seriously. This is foreseeable because he telegraphs where and when these blocks are going to fall by how they're shot up, but the variations between block shape and terrain that gets less and less orthodox as the battle continues serve to complicate things nicely. It's easy to find yourself trapped between two steep columns as a block is set to fall over your head if you move thoughtlessly.
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  33. His second attack is much harder to avoid depending on the terrain you're given to work with and it's why you always want to be below him before he selects an attack. He'll take four rows to spread evenly below him, and you need to be especially attentive to the beginning of this assault, because his bottommost one contains four sections whereas the others contain five. The remaining middle row will then extend to either side of the room opposite the devil himself, just like Agile's signature attack, and fall down shortly after, affording no safe spot other than directly below where the devil was. Trust me, it's where you want to station yourself.
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  35. After an increasingly convoluted dance between constantly shifting terrain, the devil enters his final and most annoying phase, though not his most threatening. Channeling Kracko, the devil will surround himself with a very effective shield of four rotating sections that are replaced incredibly quickly after being knocked aside. Each one that is knocked aside will, as usual, form ground wherever it lands. Besides this, he will lob out single sections your way in a constant rhythm, which have a set distance they can be thrown. During all this he floats somewhat erratically and slowly around the room. Even though this pattern makes the terrain even more cumbersome with more opportunity to fall straight into the pit, the water physics combined with his smaller size and his sections' limited range make this significantly easier to dodge and handle than the second phase. Dodging him's not the problem. Hitting him is.
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  37. Getting a charged shot through this guy's shield is flatly out of the question. It'd be like threading a needle with an industrial cable. Your only dependable course of action with the buster is to pellet him as often and as steadily as you can until a shot slips through the shield regeneration. As you can tell by the length with which this carries on, it's a lot easier said than done. This serves to make the fight a bit long in the tooth considering this isn't exactly dangerous work, so I guess he had a little Devil in him afterall. He's still a well-developed fight. Also, dig that death animation.
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  39. Damn, that's a lot of detail to discuss. And there's more. This appended footage concerns the secondary path at the split near the beginning of the stage. It comes with its own unique gimmicks and makes for quite a sophisticated creation. It's also very fun to play with. As you can see, our good friends the frogs are back, but this time, you only serve to complicate things for yourself, because this area is all about water currents. So much as touch a crack in a pipe with your weaponry, and it'll start leaking a moderately strong current of water to trip up your actions nicely. Or, occasionally, to augment them, in a very strong display of gimmick application. Notice halfway through the second part of the trek a drainage pipe that triggers itself. That's not cool.
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  41. The miniboss here is easily the more annoying of two options. His attacks can come in any order, but more damningly, in any combination. While none are particularly difficult to manage on their own, having to react to three at once is a different matter entirely, and they won't necessarily be launched with consistent timing, either. There's also the fact that this miniboss is just flatly longer than the other by virtue of his tricky vulnerability. Kindly, at the midpoint of the fight the boss will lose his eyes, and thus his shield. Blast away.
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