u/Flashy_Ad_9829

This clip is very much inspired by RedtheRider's Speeding through Ouroboros' Opening Hall with Model A and ZX on Reddit and Youtube.

Commentary on both forms:
Model A is very cool when you can homing shot. The very beginning of most runs actually failed due to the "arccannon" that fires lasers from above. It's somewhat inconsistent to rush past it even with homing shot wall kick cancels. Also using the wrong firebutton killed me.

Argoyle is pretty much built for this stage: no wall kicks and a bunch of weak enemies. He can pretty easily fly through Ouroboros 1 compared to the biometal forms because he can destroy the set of blocks midway through in a instant (if you get there in time).

this only happened because of finishing most of a ZXA pseudoroid only playthrough, which was remarkably easier than I would expect

basic formatting is

you good tier: guy 0 > guy 1

you suck tier: guy 2 (suck less) > guy 3 > guy 4 (suck most)

first tierlist is based on how well they perform individually, and second tierlist is how useful they are to me

and to summarize:

ZX strong, HX strong, LX mid, FX mid, PX mid, better than ZXA variants but are still mid, OX is useless, Model Ancient is useless but at least he has New Game+ properties, X is nearly useless, A is the goat, chronoforce is the worst or best depending on how you use him, and all of the pesudoroids struggle with movement and so are worse than the biometals

interestingly, rakuhouha is his weakness for Zero

I still don’t know why MMZ Zero sometimes considered a replacement when that zero got none of the freeform saber combat of MMX zero and their “cancels”

oh and X4 quick kills fun when you abuse weird I-frames

ZXA combat is surprisingly fun when you get into it, for both "style" and speed. I think the statement of it gutting the combo system is somewhat unfair, where the reductions of ZXA are at the same level as Zero 4's reduction from Zero 3. ZXA and ZX games still share the general structure of the prior games hit priority system. H still has 5 slashes, F nothing changed, L still has basic slashes + ice, P is kinda doomed to shuriken loops or mandela shield, ZX is the same, and A's strategy is the same as X. It is the same with Zero 3 and 4 having the same saber routes, but Zero 4 feels different from Zero 3 by forced elements which forces combos to change for each boss unlike Zero 3.

It's also nice that ZXA's combat also allows for a further emphasis on form changes, which leads to clips like the one above: the quick swap transformation table allows ZXA form swap combos to flow much faster than ZX's equivalent. It's also nice that ZXA's combos can't stun enemies as much because of the lack of overdrive, so you have to think about the length of the combo to safely land damage without getting hurt by a bosses counterattack.

The only thing is that ZXA's forms are really unbalanced, where even any form swap combo is just slower than ZX alone because ZX is that strong, which is a knock against ZXA's combat. But ultimately, ZXA's combat has a good amount of potential that is fairly overlooked because there are no shooters for that games combat unlike Zero 3 or ZX1.

Notes:

you can't backtrack in MM2/3 or the first two GB games. disturbing

X7, and Zero 1-4 since there are no weapon/mobility locks that Zero's base movement can't solve you CAN get everything within a single playthrough... you just have to do more than that for actually getting everything with New Game+, Ultimate/Proto Form, or all Minigames.

X1, X4, and X3 all have one backtrack with Chill Penguin, Web/Dragoon dilemma, and Tunnel Rhino.

X5, if you want to count parts and obscure techniques like wing spiral flight only needs 11 or so back tracks.

In X playthrough
1-7. killing pegasus when lv8 (so 7 gameovers and backtracks since X starts lv1)
8. comeback for the and wing spiral cheese to pegasus and axel red capsule
9. firefly stage for heart and armor before getting gaea
10. come back to axel red for his gaea locked heart
11. have zero eat the heart tank in whale and come back for the last time with X for falcon.

X8 seemingly has 15 for even the most random guides i found

X6 already has 8 from alternate routes, and forced backtracking (3) like Blaze Heatnix, Ground Scaravich, and Commander Yammark with multiple routes.

ZX1, BN, SF, and Legends have you frequently revisiting locations to even progress the game, so don't even think about "no backtracking". ZXA is also there from side quests.