In this video, I present to you a tactic that straddles the line between a circus act and a genuine strategy. The order of the day is Shield Sweep, an EX Skill that I ignored entirely in my Z3 run. This skill modifies the regular Shield Boomerang toss into something resembling rolling a tire across the ground, or perhaps a wheel of cheese depending on the color your selected elemental chip imbues. It’s a tad more sluggish than the standard throw; in exchange, the hitbox is considerably larger. With the Electric Chip equipped, the Shield will leave lingering sparks in its wake, shocking anything that stumbles into the trail.
None of those properties are relevant to this fight against Inarabitta. Here, I’ll be making use of a curious quirk innate to Shield Sweep: when throwing the shield while Zero is near or pressed directly against a wall, the Shield will automatically begin revolving around Zero. This poor man’s Orbit Shield revolves in a leisurely, sweeping, almost drunken manner, striking down projectiles and enemies alike. Its duration is exponentially longer than that of Orbit Shield proper: without moving Zero to reset the Shield’s position, you’re looking at roughly 50 seconds of coverage. Of course, given that the Shield ever so slowly magnetizes to Zero, the duration of the orbit can be extended by shuffling around a bit. It’s worth mentioning that Shield Sweep’s combo value is 1, not 0, so using it in this way over the genuine article-which I should note can also be detached from Zero to produce the same perpetual orbit-doesn’t bestow that particular advantage.
So, the question is, how does Great Value Orbit Shield find use against Inarabitta? Unfortunately for the exuberant little rabbit, he bears the unfortunate quality of flinching upon being struck with any flame-based attack, interrupting his current attack pattern. Thus, the Shield acts as a consistent source of pattern-breaking damage; when used in tandem with other EX Skills, you can precisely manage his health and attack selection process.
I begin by jumping directly into the gap between Inarabitta and the right wall. Oddly enough, this is an incredibly reliable spot to initiate your offense from as you can instantly begin revolving the Shield instead of waiting for it to grind along the ground first. Aside from speed, a major benefit to skipping the initial attack animation of Shield Sweep is that you don’t have to contend with the little bits of debris that arise from the ground; these influence RNG, much like the ground particles that emanate from the charged Saber. Attacking from the front means you need incredibly precise spacing to get your desired results. Astute observers will notice that I briefly shuffle Zero toward the wall after landing behind Inarabitta; this difference of mere pixels completely alters the cadence of Shield Sweep's intersections. In order to get the earlier possible hit on each revolution, moving Zero as close to the wall as possible is mandatory, otherwise, the pattern desynchronizes courtesy of Inarabitta’s I-frames, so you'll inevitably have to wait for extra orbits before a hit will register.
Once the Shield is in play, the next step is to manage Inarabitta’s pattern by periodically using EX Skills to alter his health value and interrupt undesirable patterns. The two Skills I use are Throw Blade and Split Heavens. Both are incredibly well suited to this task as they can strike behind Zero, meaning that you can continue to face the right wall throughout the fight, alleviating the worry of taking contact damage due to the slight forward momentum imparted on Zero by Split Heavens. With Throw Blade, it’s quite obvious that it covers a wide range in front of and behind Zero, but Split Heavens’ hitbox trickery is a bit more difficult to see, it only persists behind and below Zero for a few frames before he rockets upward. Nevertheless, these attacks give players full control over Inarabitta’s behavior. The path I choose is one that allows Shield Sweep to do the bulk of the heavy lifting, which means I end up having to make a nifty jump over an opposing Throw Blade while avoiding picking up the Shield, which adds a dash of extra flavor to the fight.
As is always the case in Z3, there are undoubtedly tons of paths you can take through this fight and others when using Shield Sweep. If you’ve never given it a shot, I’d encourage you to do so and see what kinds of attack and dodging sequences you can come up with. I only tested this exact set of movements in this specific fight, but given the sheer number of options Zero has at his disposal, the possibilities are assuredly endless. Such is the beauty of Z3 and the Zero series as a whole.
Thanks for watching! Any comments or questions you may have are welcome as always.