Chapter 00 - Abandoned Factory

Upon starting a new game, you will be greeted with a cheeky little message of how the game doesn't support auto-save. Neither does it waste any time tossing you into an action-packed prologue chapter without any opportunity to save whatsoever. That's right, you will not be able to save your progress at all for the duration of this opening chapter, which in turn can make it rather unforgiving.

That being said, the game starts with your squadron en route to infiltrate an enemy facility. Things start to go wrong pretty quickly however, and your companions are destroyed one after the other until 2B is the only one left. Those massive lasers can do some serious damage on you by the way so dodge. As for the rest of the projectiles, your guns can take care the pink orbs while the purple ones can be destroyed using heavy attacks.

Once you fly into the base, enemy ships will also start coming in from behind; heavy attacks can protect you from these too. Smash everything until a new ship appears. I've noticed that there are two possible variations to this. The ship can either fire pink and purple orbs in four directions, or shoot thin lasers in a similar manner. Either way, shoot its parts until you can hit the one in the middle to destroy it. The next bit involves 2B abandoning the flight unit in favor of ground combat. You will face an army of small robots. Use your gun or sword to destroy the ones on the ground, while shoot the ones in the air after locking on. Take out the bigger robot last and 2B gets her first of several encounters with one very persistent machine.

For this round you only get to deal with one buzz saw arm. Shoot it with your gun or pod program when it's too far away for melee, and use swords when the arm comes within range. Lock on to it so you can keep track of its location to evade as necessary before starting a melee combo.

After 9S leaves to scout ahead, move forward after shooting the slab of metal down to form a bridge. Beyond here are some flying robots and passed them is a shiny item. Go right to the next section where a rather large group of red orb bots are waiting. Clear them out then climb the stairs where 9S soon unlocks the mini-map for you. Keep moving up until you reach the room atop the circular tower. Defeat the robot horde in here to unlock the door and proceed. Follow the long path while grabbing the shinies as you go. Climb further up via the stairs at the end.

At the top are more flying enemies; lock on so you can easily shoot them. Halfway along this path is a ladder you can climb up of and go right to reach an item box with a Small Recovery in it. Defeat the enemies first to get to it. Also jumping down from here lets you reach another item box that 2B can't open yet. Anyway, return to the main path now and enter the room at the end. There's only one path you can go from here so just follow it until you get to an open area downstairs. Don't forget to grab 1000G from the item box along the way as well.

Once you reach the open area below, go right first, destroy the enemy and collect a Medium Recovery from one of the item boxes. The other one is inaccessible at the moment. If you go further to the right, you'll find a panel that lowers a bridge back to a previous section.

Go on back to the left to defeat more enemies so you keep moving to the next big "monster closet". This one has robots pouring out of several shipping containers. They're easier to deal with in the container so go in there and shoot them to pieces before they can disperse. Jump onto the container on the right to reach the stairs. Move along until you reach the next big room. In here you will be fighting shielded robots; melee them until the shields break then defeat them as normal. The two bigger enemies that come after getting rid of smaller ones are dangerous so you'll want to be careful while fighting them. Guns are your safest bet since you can hit them from afar.

With the enemies gone, proceed up the tower to collect a Small and Medium Recovery from the item boxes, then head down to the other side. Here, turn around for another Medium Recovery behind you, collect all the shinies as well before heading down to the bridge.

You will encounter the same machine again but this time it will be using two buzz saw arms instead of just one. Although you can try to use melee attacks when opportunity permits, it's best to stick to your long range weapons as getting up close to it is risky. Cut the arms' HP to half and the the next phase of the encounter will begin.The machine finally shows its entire self and there's really not much you can do besides shoot its face. Dodge the orbs and missiles while you work to damage the target. A scene eventually plays and 9S will show up to help. Continue what you have previously been doing, only this time the target will also extend his arms towards you. Move out of the way and attack it with melee weapons. Soon it will duck under your platform and start attacking from below. Keep moving to avoid getting hit.

Continue fighting until another scene plays then rush over to where 9S is. Defeat the small robot squad when you get there, and after 9S gives you his flight unit, the final phase of the fight against the seemingly indestructible machine will begin. Now you can start doing some real damage. Start shooting and keep at it; evade when the thing takes swipes at you. Cut its health to half and fly towards it while evading the barrage of projectiles. A scene will play which officially concludes the encounter as well as the chapter.