Dr. Doppler 3
In this stage, the obligatory boss rematches happen. As with every game in the Mega Man series, the eight standard bosses are all fought again in the fortress stages. And as with most games, here you're locked in a room with eight teleporters, each leading to one boss. After every fight there's an opportunity to get some healing items to help you out. And usually after all fights, there's another boss waiting for you. This is also true in this case.
There's a small bit of stage before the boss refights, with some minor enemies around. I tried out something that would defeat them all, but I deemed Triad Thunder too boring and overused, so I used Spinning Blade instead. Because of Spinning Blade's shrapnel that disallows switching weapons, though, I had to continue on with Spinning Blade for all enemies. Well, it's still better than Triad Thunder again.
Now, about the order I do the boss refights in: The first boss has to be Blast Hornet, because his teleporter is closed to the starting door and also furthest away from the start point after finishing a boss. Every time a boss is defeated, X will be teleported to the same location in the middle of the room, on top of a weird container of sorts which drops powerups when attacked. Since Blast Hornet's teleporter is on the far left of the teleporter room, and when first entering the room X goes through a door on the far left side, it's fastest to go for Blast Hornet first. The rest of the bosses can be done in any order. I had several ideas, including going by alphabetic order, or by boss weakness order, but in the end I decided to go with reverse boss weakness order. The usual boss weakness order is Blast Hornet > Blizzard Buffalo > Toxic Seahorse > Tunnel Rhino > Volt Catfish > Crush Crawfish > Neon Tiger > Gravity Beetle > Blast Hornet. Doing it in this order shows a boss first, and then the weapon he gets will be used in the next fight. However, I instead went with the reverse order, Blast Hornet > Gravity Beetle > Neon Tiger > Crush Crawfish > Volt Catfish > Tunnel Rhino > Toxic Seahorse > Blizzard Buffalo, because this way you see a weapon first, and then the boss that uses it. I do this to foreshadow the boss that gets fought next. Also for more foreshadowing, I used the boss weapon of the boss fought next right before going into his teleporter. I thought it looked nice, especially when some weapons cause some fun effects such as Triad Thunder when going through the teleporter.
Now, as for the bosses themselves, I'll start with the first one: Blast Hornet. In the first time, I used the X-Buster and various special weapons against him. But now, I have a better weapon against him: Spinning Blade. Spinning Blade does two damage for an uncharged hit, making it faster to use against him than the charged X-Buster. Using just Spinning Blade, Blast Hornet gets defeated, quicker than the first time. Not much else is of not about this fight, other than the fact that I again made sure that when Blast Hornet dies, he's as low as possible, so he falls the least amount of distance before exploding.
The next boss on the line is Gravity Beetle. Ironically, while I went with reverse boss weakness order, the most effective weapon against Gravity Beetle initially is Parasitic Bomb, Blast Hornet's weapon. Like Spinning Blade to Blast Hornet, it does two damage to him for every hit, which makes it faster than alternating Ray Splasher and X-Buster. However, this changes halfway through the fight. I manipulated him to jump and fire a single Gravity Well twice, so that he does his giant Gravity Well as quickly as possible, like before. When I do this, I can do the Ray Splasher invincibility trick on him again, which ''is'' faster than Parasitic Bomb. Thus, again, the second half of the fight is done faster than the first half.
Then there's Neon Tiger on next. Spinning Blade, his weakness weapon, does only 2 damage in him and puts him into a long invincibility period, and he does not have any other weapon that does two damage to him uncharged, so I have to get back to using the X-Buster, like in the previous fight. Unlike back then, though, I now have several other weapons to help me out, such as Acid Burst, Frost Shield and Parasitic Bomb. Otherwise, the fight is mostly identical to the first fight, with lots of abuse of his invincibility glitch that removes his invincibility every time he does a move from the ground. The only difference is that Neon Tiger doesn't block Spinning Blade, which means I can land the final hit as soon as possible.
Next up, Crush Crawfish. The battle now is completely identical to the last time I fought him. I hit him with Triad Thunder, take damage, jump up to stop him from doing his grab that would hit me during invincibility anyway, and get behind him to so I don't get hit by the shooting blade anyway. Then I rapid-fire him to death again. This time, I tried for some variety to go inside him and turn him around (and I go back to where I was), rather than me going all the way through him, but it cost me one frame so I decided not to use it.
The next boss is Volt Catfish. There are no real tactics changes here, because Tornado Fang is still not worth using on him except for the last hit. There is one difference, though, which is that there's now no red charge to start the bossfight with. This means that I have to hit him on different times of his otherwise identical pattern, which combined with luck manipulation and pattern manipulation by being on a certain side of him, required me to take a hit because I had to be between him and the wall, and he was already next to the wall. However, the initial time loss from not having red charge doesn't matter in the end, since the time loss is just taken off the extra invincibility time Volt Catfish has between the second to last hit and the final hit with Tornado Fang. You'll notice the Tornado Fang hitting much earlier now, which is because Volt Catfish loses invincibility to Tornado Fang at that point, which is actually at the same time as in the first fight.
Then there's Tunnel Rhino. For some reason, it appears like his pattern is tweaked from the first fight because he tends to do things that don't just involve charges much more often. You can actually see him use his own Tornado Fangs now. As for how to defeat him, this has changed radically since last time. Charged Acid Burst does 5 damage to him, which is enough to just go use exclusively on him, aside from an opening uncharged Acid Burst. Not having to deal with invincibility time, which, while more than usual because Acid Burst stuns him, is still quite a bit less than the charging time, made this fight a little more convenient to me. I did have to make sure that his pattern didn't hinder me from firing the Acid Burst at him a couple of times, though.
Toxic Seahorse, like Crush Crawfish, is fought more or less completely identically to last time, aside from me making a couple of different moves which doesn't really change anything. I just stun him with Frost Shield in the air, pump him full with Frost Shields, and repeat once until he's defeated. There isn't much else to say about him, though.
The final boss in the boss refight cycle is Blizzard Buffalo. Parasitic Bomb is his weakness, but charged Parasitic Bomb, besides being completely useless otherwise, does the same damage as uncharged Parasitic Bomb, so I can't do the same thing on him I did with Tunnel Rhino. Instead, I alternate Parasitic Bomb and charged X-Buster. When he's stunned from Parasitic Bomb, it's not possible to trick him like in the first fight to charge into the wall continuously. However, I still tried to look this fight like he's completely dominated as much as in the first fight, even if the fight is completely different. You may see me make some unusual movements during the fight, especially during the second half: this is for luck manipulation. Blizzard Buffalo relies mostly on your movements to decide his next move. When I do this luck manipulation, it's usually to avoid him from using his ultimate ice beam, which turns him invincible for a long time. Instead, he's just stuck with the same two basic moves of charging forward and throwing ice spikes, which I also destroy for extra effect.
After all eight bossfights, there is a small bit of stage remaining, including some lasers from Volt Catfish's stage and one enemy, right before the boss door. I use Triad Thunder here, to allow me some charging time for the next boss: Dr. Doppler. Unlike all other bosses with invincibility, Dr. Doppler doesn't have 60 frames of invincibility, but he has 96 instead. This means that even when I can hit him as fast as possible, there's still more time inbetween the hits. However, Dr. Doppler tends to be invincible a lot. He likes to throw out a shield which absorbs damage and heals him. Since this is obviously detrimental to fighting him (unless it's the last hit, when it just destroys him anyway), I can't hit him until he takes his shield off. I could also wait until he doesn't decide to use the shield, since he only does that when you attack, but that would take even longer and I can't surprise-hit him, he'll be healed by the shield anyway. So, the first thing I do at the start of the fight is to turn around and shoot charged Acid Burst (his weakness weapon, which does 5 damage charged) into the wall, leaving it to bounce off the floor until it hits him by the time he already takes his shield down. After that, he throws some energy balls. I just avoid these and hit with an uncharged shot, then charge while he puts his healing shield up again. Then he does his third attack, where he engulfs himself in an invincible flame shield and dashes forward, jumping at X's height if he's higher than he is - sort of similar to Bit. However, I just stand in front of him and hit him through the shield, as he barely turns vulnerable when Acid Burst reaches full charge. Then just some more Acid Bursts ensue, aside from when he puts up the shield, during which I charge. You may notice I miss some shots here: this is to make sure he puts up his shield. After eating enough acid, he's defeated and tells X that he built another body for Sigma. Let's destroy him as well while we're at it.