Hello again, here's World Seven. Hey, is that robot shooting at me?
It is! Luckily, Lucia has lightning reflexes to dodge the first two shots. And enough HP to survive the next two.
Switching to Ultra-sonic gets me one-hit kills on almost everything in this stage, but doesn't save me from getting stuck on a ladder unable to shoot before the enemy.
I do about as well against these guys as I did on SMS, but the area I encounter them in is less awkward for Lucia to fight in than on that version.
This is quite a long corridor, ending in a path upwards and an HP refill I can't reach.
Upstairs I encounter a hostile astronaut and score a Barrier upgrade before heading back down and to the right.
It leads me back to the first corridor, this time with access to the HP refill. The two vertical lines are a new environmental hazard - Lucia will take damage if she crosses them while lit. They turn on and off (as in the first panel here), and can be eliminated by shooting one of the round things at either end.
Like so.
The door takes me to a vertical corridor with those barriers running right up the middle. I head down the left side and take out two of them, but the third is too low to hit, and I take damage when it turns on as I try to cross it.
Heading through the door on the right takes Lucia to a room where she's surrounded by breakable blocks and faced with a choice: take the door at the left, or explore to the right? There's an Explosion power up on the right, so I go that way.
I collect the power up and take a hit climbing back up the ladder. Might have been a good place to use Explosion. If only there'd been something to remind me of it!
Heading back to the door takes me to another small enclosure and a further choice of which way to go. I take the low road, along some moving platforms towards a door.
It's a shame about the enemy at the top of the screen revealing the seams of this gif, but if you ignore that then you get a pretty good idea of what I was doing for a few seconds here.
Eventually I decide to bite the bullet and take a few hits to activate Barrier. In retrospect, I probably would have taken less damage just running forwards through the second two spikes.
In the next room I Excharge my way back to health and observe the behaviour of these flying enemies.
Climbing either ladder here gets me access to this Hydro-wave power up on the left. It's still only got two shots to it (I think I have three in talk mode), but I haven't actually used it since the Country of Ice so it probably doesn't matter.
Carrying on to the bottom allows me to clear this barrier and continue through the door on the right. Alternatively I could have just used Barrier, swallowed a little damage, or waited for it to turn off. I wind up in a mostly enclosed space in the room with the conveyor belts I was in earlier.
There's a series of levitation background tiles that take me through the next room. I foolishly devoted my efforts to breaking the harmless blocks instead of the barrier, so I wait for it to turn off to proceed.
I thought I'd stood still here for long enough to get a clean cycle of the lights, but it was not so. Spoiler: this is the only chance this update to translate something. I don't know if the characters at the back mean something or not, but if anyone can make anything of it let me know.
Carrying on I get some more power for Psy-cannon and head towards a new power up. What's that do?
It seems to give a shorter lived version of the invincibility from World 6, minus the super attack but plus doing contact damage to enemies.
Carrying on down the left side gets me an upgrade to Burning Bullet and an HP refill, plus the chance to clear the right side of obstructions.
Maybe I should have made a gif of Lucia climbing the ladder and then falling from top to bottom of this area to show how long it is, but the file size would have been too big. It's really long.
Another invincibility pick up. Would have been nice if I'd managed to land right on it instead of taking damage for a while. Oh well.
The next area features these crushing blocks. Luckily each hit doesn't hurt too much.
I briefly think I've hit a dead end before realising that I can climb the chain the block is hanging on. Or is it some kind of rail? That would make more sense for how Lucia climbs it. Perhaps I'm overthinking it.
The next room features two hostile astronauts, though killing either of them renders the other powerless, either through freezing or exploding.
Then some conveyor belts and robots. I noticed my HP was low, so I turned on Barrier to start Excharging, but accidentally switched to Cooling Down. Turns out it doesn't work on these robots.
As is so often the case, as soon as I blow through my ESP Excharging I find an HP refill. I can go through the door on the left or take the passage to the right. I go right.
This gets me more Hydro-wave and Levitation.
The path dead ends with an Ultra-sonic power up and the chance to clear a path beyond this door.
I backtrack to the door I didn't take before, leading me to the newly cleared path. Inside I find:
Another pretty underwhelming "boss". If I'm being generous, it sort of reminds me of the boss of stage seven of R-Type, which is also a garbage compactor type thing. Is that the end of the level?
Yep! I think there's only one to go now.
Next time:
Alien Lair
This is an ESP amplifier. Use it and read this bonus material!!
Good ol' Ganbari Massu.
On my first pass at the stage I took the lower route here and missed out on the Cooling Down upgrade at the top.
It's hard to pick up on in screenshots, but the door at the left of this area just takes you to the middle of the same room. I didn't pick up on that on the first run, even though I went through it.
I also missed the exit on the left of the first screen here, which takes you to the enclosed space at the right side of the area. Behind the HP refill is a door that gets you back out.
Unsurprisingly, the machinery at the end of the stage has nothing to say. Lucia feels lucky on beating it, though.
This is the first stage with no new dialogue or exclamations in talk mode. I'm sure there'll be something for us next time.
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