Angel_Arle Rockman reviews
Part 1: Rockman for Famicom
Part 2: Rockman 2: Dr. Wily no Nazo for Famicom
Part 3: Rockman 3: Dr. Wily no Saigo!? for Famicom
Part 4: Rockman World for GB
Part 5: Rockman 4: Aratanaru Yabou!! for Famicom
Part 6: Rockman World 2 for GB
Part 7: Rockman 5: Blues no Wana!? for Famicom
Part 9: Wily & Right no RockBoard: That's Paradise for Famicom
Part 10: Rockman World 4 for GB
Part 11: Rockman 6: Shijō Saidai no Tatakai!! for Famicom
Part 12: Rockman's Soccer for Super Famicom
Part 13: Rockman World 5 for GB
It feels weird doing another Game Boy game. How does Capcom just keep pumping these out? I get these are outsourced but I’m starting to think the releases on these games are getting a bit ridiculous. The previous World game was not good at all. In fact, it’s the only one I’ve been pretty negative on overall. Capcom must have noticed the poor quality because Minakuchi Engineering is back to develop the Rockman World games. I have only played Rockman World 3 once so it was pretty interesting to replay this one.
What kind of outlandish plot do we have this time? Well did you know the world of Rockman has a super computer that handles the everyday lives of humans? Wily must have not known because now he finally realized it’s a good idea to sabotage it and having his army cause a big heap of trouble for the city. Now it’s up to Rockman to stop the robots. Once again you’ll have to read the manual for this, no intro cutscene.
In this game we are back to the New Rock Buster from Rockman 4. Sadly the controls have come back from the first World game meaning your movement in the air still feels odd like Rockman packs a bit of momentum when moving in the air. They did at least fix the slide issue from World 2 where now you can actually jump out of it which is nice. Still though it’s a shame no fix was done with his air movement.
Thankfully the stage design is back to being fully original despite the reused Robot Masters in this game. I’m just gonna spoil it now, the game is split up with four different Robot Masters from 3 and 4. So you’ll be doing Rockman 3 robots first and then have Rockman 4 robots afterwards. Now let me tell you this game gave me an awful first impression. Snake and Gemini Man’s stages were terrible. Not only did they feel like they took way too long but they had some annoying bits in them that were kind of pissing me off. Then I did Shadow Man’s stage and was like “Why was that so short?” Though once the fiasco left, the game can be pretty fun but I do still feel mixed on it. Sometimes it can be enjoyable like Spark Man’s stage or Drill Man’s stage. Though I didn’t like Dive Man’s stage that much because the controls in the water are kind of annoying. Also can we please stuff with the Dust Man trash press section? It’s been three games in a row! Despite the new levels, it does sort of feel like a been there done that but with mixed results. I can’t stand the enemy placement in this game. Some of it works but then you get the bitches like those stupid Shield Attackers where you’ll be strolling along and he’ll be like “Ayo Rockman what’s up!?” bam you get hit with no chance to dodge and this happens like over five times. You know it was bad when I actively had to hate on that specific enemy. Also idk if it’s just me but I swear this game has an obsession with Metalls. At least the game isn’t stingy with E-Tanks but be warned the max is still only four you can carry. Another thing I noticed too was that the game really likes to eat your inputs when fighting the Snake miniboss and those bomb platforms, really annoying. For the order this time I went Snake -> Gemini -> Shadow -> Spark -> Drill -> Dust -> Skull-> Dive. Overall it’s hard to really put it all together in my mind, the stage design is a mish mash of good and bad ideas despite reusing old ideas. It somehow feels old and new but maybe not for the best of reasons.
When it comes to Robot Master fights, I’ll just list what I felt was different that I noticed which wasn’t too much. Spark Man seems to have I-frames now on his big attack which is a rather odd change. The cramped feeling of rooms made Snake Man harder to beat and threw me off a bit. I swear Shadow Man is easy in this game, he rarely did his Shadow Blade attack. Drill Man lacks I-frames now when he’s doing the digging attack. Dive Man seems to be slower and easier this time around but I don’t know if that’s just me. Otherwise most of the fights are pretty similar to each other which isn’t a bad thing. I was surprised there were as many differences as there were.
Now we have the weapons to discuss for this game. Spark Shot from Spark Man has been buffed in this game. It’s now the best weapon in the game since you can now pause when an enemy is paralyzed making it just a slightly inferior Ice Slasher but that just goes to show how good Ice Slasher is. Gemini Laser from Gemini Man is still not good in fact I feel like it’s even worse in this game since I couldn’t figure out a single enemy it was good against and it doesn’t have the best ammo to begin with. Search Snake from Snake Man is decent but it’s been nerfed since the lob distance on startup isn’t as good anymore. It also just doesn’t seem to have as many uses as it did in 3. Shadow Blade from Shadow Man is good but I think it’s a little overshadowed by some of the other special weapons. It still can be pretty handy at times though. Dive Missile from Dive Man is still a good weapon but sadly I wasn’t able to use it much this time since there’s only one fortress stage. It does seem to have better homing capabilities at least. Skull Barrier from Skull Man is bad for me personally, I just think there’s better weapons in this game to bother using it. Drill Bomb from Drill Man is pretty good in this game. It seems to be stronger in this one and it feels like it has even more moments of being useful which says a lot when it was already good in 4. Dust Crusher from Dust Man is alright, I just wish I had more reason to use this thing. Overall it’s all kind of just mixed in there in quality. Some very good, some good, some eh, and some bad.
Time to talk about Rush once again and for some reason you still have to unlock Rush Coil like in World 2 and it works as you expect. Rush Jet is also here and it once again acts like how it did in 4. Maybe you can fall off of it when getting hit but I never got hit when on Rush. There isn’t even Rush Marine or some other special item presented here. Eddie is at least still here though and he works as you expect.
I didn’t mention it but halfway through the game you’ll go to Wily’s Fortress to fight a Giant Suzy which is a pretty easy fight and even easier if you use Spark Shot. At least it’s a pretty creative take on a big enemy and I love the animation on him. Once you go back to fight Wily you’ll have a new Fortress and you now will be fighting Rockman Killer #2! His name is Punk and if his entrance isn’t enough to show you he’s not screwing around, his damage output will! He can kill you in 2-3 hits, it’s insane! Though after my third try I somehow managed to do a no damage run on him. My tip for him is to focus on dodging his Screw Crusher and dodge his easily telegraphed roll and hit him as he gets out of the roll and you’ll win. You get Screw Crusher from him which is a projectile you lob in a not so great distance and while it has a ton of ammo, it’s best to keep it for Wily since he’s weak to it. The one and only Fortress stage is actually not too bad in this game. I actually thought it was fun mostly because you get to use all of your good weapons and not even worry about saving ammo for anything. There’s not even a Robot Master rematch stage like the previous games so it’s all just smooth sailing. You’ll also fight another Giant Suzy and it’s even nice to refill some of your energy. You meet with Dr Wily in his Wily Machine! Yep it’s just called that which is rather odd since before we were adding the World and number for the name of these. The first form is really easy as he can rarely ever hit you if you hurry to the other side as fast as you can. Use the Rock Buster for it! Then it’s on with phase 2 where he doesn’t even move and you just time your Screw Crushers and you’ll eventually win and you don’t have to try to dodge his stuff if you have spare E-Tanks though he’s not too difficult regardless. You defeat Wily and then he just gets away easily like goddamn Rockman really needs to just stun him or something. Though unlucky for Wily is that his saucer somehow fails and he crashes in the water and I’m guessing Rockman didn’t bother to check up on him? The game just ends after that with no mention of this computer from the manual. This feels very anticlimactic now that I’m writing this down.
Now the presentation is one of the better aspects of the game, especially the graphics. Now a lot of it is very similar to the Famicom games they’re based off of but it looks really good for the Game Boy. This does come at the cost of some screen size shenanigans but it really does look nice. I especially love the new weapon get screen, the weapon get screen, the shot with the two Fortresses and the screen before the thank you for playing screen, it’s so beautiful! Sadly the game does have a bad case of slowdown fever as it’s very easy for it to happen. I even noticed it can happen when I just charge the Rock Buster. Regardless I do love how they did try to fix up the game graphically even fixing many of the issues World 2 had like Rockman’s sliding sprite looking odd. The music however is disappointing. Don’t get me wrong, it is good but now it’s mostly just like the Famicom OSTs of 3 and 4. The new stuff is great especially the final level but I wish they tried to make the OST sound more like the first World game. It’s still leaps and bounds ahead of World 2 anyway. It makes me wonder if that game is why they went a safer route with the OST. Once again the game has an unused song and this time it’s…the title screen theme from Rockman 2? What’s with their obsession with that song?
Rockman World 3 leaves me in a bit of a weird situation. I can’t tell if I like the game or not because while it can be fun, it can also be annoying. I think the game really needed some changes on the level design as I don’t find it all that great. I think there’s good elements here but the negatives hold down on what could have been the best of the Game Boy games so far. I can’t even recommend this to anyone besides people wanting to play every Rockman game out there. There just isn’t much here I think will keep you wanting to play. Part of me thinks I’m being too harsh but I think it’s something I have to accept that the game is a decent game that really needed to be cooked in the oven more. Though with the devs being back for the series, I’m sure soon they’ll be improving what they have and they can overcome their mistakes. Now we will be heading into this series of reviews with that being a spinoff game! This might be one most of you haven’t played and it’s back to the Famicom once more! See you then!
Part 1: Rockman for Famicom
Part 2: Rockman 2: Dr. Wily no Nazo for Famicom
Part 3: Rockman 3: Dr. Wily no Saigo!? for Famicom
Part 4: Rockman World for GB
Part 5: Rockman 4: Aratanaru Yabou!! for Famicom
Part 6: Rockman World 2 for GB
Part 7: Rockman 5: Blues no Wana!? for Famicom
Part 9: Wily & Right no RockBoard: That's Paradise for Famicom
Part 10: Rockman World 4 for GB
Part 11: Rockman 6: Shijō Saidai no Tatakai!! for Famicom
Part 12: Rockman's Soccer for Super Famicom
Part 13: Rockman World 5 for GB
It feels weird doing another Game Boy game. How does Capcom just keep pumping these out? I get these are outsourced but I’m starting to think the releases on these games are getting a bit ridiculous. The previous World game was not good at all. In fact, it’s the only one I’ve been pretty negative on overall. Capcom must have noticed the poor quality because Minakuchi Engineering is back to develop the Rockman World games. I have only played Rockman World 3 once so it was pretty interesting to replay this one.
What kind of outlandish plot do we have this time? Well did you know the world of Rockman has a super computer that handles the everyday lives of humans? Wily must have not known because now he finally realized it’s a good idea to sabotage it and having his army cause a big heap of trouble for the city. Now it’s up to Rockman to stop the robots. Once again you’ll have to read the manual for this, no intro cutscene.
In this game we are back to the New Rock Buster from Rockman 4. Sadly the controls have come back from the first World game meaning your movement in the air still feels odd like Rockman packs a bit of momentum when moving in the air. They did at least fix the slide issue from World 2 where now you can actually jump out of it which is nice. Still though it’s a shame no fix was done with his air movement.
Thankfully the stage design is back to being fully original despite the reused Robot Masters in this game. I’m just gonna spoil it now, the game is split up with four different Robot Masters from 3 and 4. So you’ll be doing Rockman 3 robots first and then have Rockman 4 robots afterwards. Now let me tell you this game gave me an awful first impression. Snake and Gemini Man’s stages were terrible. Not only did they feel like they took way too long but they had some annoying bits in them that were kind of pissing me off. Then I did Shadow Man’s stage and was like “Why was that so short?” Though once the fiasco left, the game can be pretty fun but I do still feel mixed on it. Sometimes it can be enjoyable like Spark Man’s stage or Drill Man’s stage. Though I didn’t like Dive Man’s stage that much because the controls in the water are kind of annoying. Also can we please stuff with the Dust Man trash press section? It’s been three games in a row! Despite the new levels, it does sort of feel like a been there done that but with mixed results. I can’t stand the enemy placement in this game. Some of it works but then you get the bitches like those stupid Shield Attackers where you’ll be strolling along and he’ll be like “Ayo Rockman what’s up!?” bam you get hit with no chance to dodge and this happens like over five times. You know it was bad when I actively had to hate on that specific enemy. Also idk if it’s just me but I swear this game has an obsession with Metalls. At least the game isn’t stingy with E-Tanks but be warned the max is still only four you can carry. Another thing I noticed too was that the game really likes to eat your inputs when fighting the Snake miniboss and those bomb platforms, really annoying. For the order this time I went Snake -> Gemini -> Shadow -> Spark -> Drill -> Dust -> Skull-> Dive. Overall it’s hard to really put it all together in my mind, the stage design is a mish mash of good and bad ideas despite reusing old ideas. It somehow feels old and new but maybe not for the best of reasons.
When it comes to Robot Master fights, I’ll just list what I felt was different that I noticed which wasn’t too much. Spark Man seems to have I-frames now on his big attack which is a rather odd change. The cramped feeling of rooms made Snake Man harder to beat and threw me off a bit. I swear Shadow Man is easy in this game, he rarely did his Shadow Blade attack. Drill Man lacks I-frames now when he’s doing the digging attack. Dive Man seems to be slower and easier this time around but I don’t know if that’s just me. Otherwise most of the fights are pretty similar to each other which isn’t a bad thing. I was surprised there were as many differences as there were.
Now we have the weapons to discuss for this game. Spark Shot from Spark Man has been buffed in this game. It’s now the best weapon in the game since you can now pause when an enemy is paralyzed making it just a slightly inferior Ice Slasher but that just goes to show how good Ice Slasher is. Gemini Laser from Gemini Man is still not good in fact I feel like it’s even worse in this game since I couldn’t figure out a single enemy it was good against and it doesn’t have the best ammo to begin with. Search Snake from Snake Man is decent but it’s been nerfed since the lob distance on startup isn’t as good anymore. It also just doesn’t seem to have as many uses as it did in 3. Shadow Blade from Shadow Man is good but I think it’s a little overshadowed by some of the other special weapons. It still can be pretty handy at times though. Dive Missile from Dive Man is still a good weapon but sadly I wasn’t able to use it much this time since there’s only one fortress stage. It does seem to have better homing capabilities at least. Skull Barrier from Skull Man is bad for me personally, I just think there’s better weapons in this game to bother using it. Drill Bomb from Drill Man is pretty good in this game. It seems to be stronger in this one and it feels like it has even more moments of being useful which says a lot when it was already good in 4. Dust Crusher from Dust Man is alright, I just wish I had more reason to use this thing. Overall it’s all kind of just mixed in there in quality. Some very good, some good, some eh, and some bad.
Time to talk about Rush once again and for some reason you still have to unlock Rush Coil like in World 2 and it works as you expect. Rush Jet is also here and it once again acts like how it did in 4. Maybe you can fall off of it when getting hit but I never got hit when on Rush. There isn’t even Rush Marine or some other special item presented here. Eddie is at least still here though and he works as you expect.
I didn’t mention it but halfway through the game you’ll go to Wily’s Fortress to fight a Giant Suzy which is a pretty easy fight and even easier if you use Spark Shot. At least it’s a pretty creative take on a big enemy and I love the animation on him. Once you go back to fight Wily you’ll have a new Fortress and you now will be fighting Rockman Killer #2! His name is Punk and if his entrance isn’t enough to show you he’s not screwing around, his damage output will! He can kill you in 2-3 hits, it’s insane! Though after my third try I somehow managed to do a no damage run on him. My tip for him is to focus on dodging his Screw Crusher and dodge his easily telegraphed roll and hit him as he gets out of the roll and you’ll win. You get Screw Crusher from him which is a projectile you lob in a not so great distance and while it has a ton of ammo, it’s best to keep it for Wily since he’s weak to it. The one and only Fortress stage is actually not too bad in this game. I actually thought it was fun mostly because you get to use all of your good weapons and not even worry about saving ammo for anything. There’s not even a Robot Master rematch stage like the previous games so it’s all just smooth sailing. You’ll also fight another Giant Suzy and it’s even nice to refill some of your energy. You meet with Dr Wily in his Wily Machine! Yep it’s just called that which is rather odd since before we were adding the World and number for the name of these. The first form is really easy as he can rarely ever hit you if you hurry to the other side as fast as you can. Use the Rock Buster for it! Then it’s on with phase 2 where he doesn’t even move and you just time your Screw Crushers and you’ll eventually win and you don’t have to try to dodge his stuff if you have spare E-Tanks though he’s not too difficult regardless. You defeat Wily and then he just gets away easily like goddamn Rockman really needs to just stun him or something. Though unlucky for Wily is that his saucer somehow fails and he crashes in the water and I’m guessing Rockman didn’t bother to check up on him? The game just ends after that with no mention of this computer from the manual. This feels very anticlimactic now that I’m writing this down.
Now the presentation is one of the better aspects of the game, especially the graphics. Now a lot of it is very similar to the Famicom games they’re based off of but it looks really good for the Game Boy. This does come at the cost of some screen size shenanigans but it really does look nice. I especially love the new weapon get screen, the weapon get screen, the shot with the two Fortresses and the screen before the thank you for playing screen, it’s so beautiful! Sadly the game does have a bad case of slowdown fever as it’s very easy for it to happen. I even noticed it can happen when I just charge the Rock Buster. Regardless I do love how they did try to fix up the game graphically even fixing many of the issues World 2 had like Rockman’s sliding sprite looking odd. The music however is disappointing. Don’t get me wrong, it is good but now it’s mostly just like the Famicom OSTs of 3 and 4. The new stuff is great especially the final level but I wish they tried to make the OST sound more like the first World game. It’s still leaps and bounds ahead of World 2 anyway. It makes me wonder if that game is why they went a safer route with the OST. Once again the game has an unused song and this time it’s…the title screen theme from Rockman 2? What’s with their obsession with that song?
Rockman World 3 leaves me in a bit of a weird situation. I can’t tell if I like the game or not because while it can be fun, it can also be annoying. I think the game really needed some changes on the level design as I don’t find it all that great. I think there’s good elements here but the negatives hold down on what could have been the best of the Game Boy games so far. I can’t even recommend this to anyone besides people wanting to play every Rockman game out there. There just isn’t much here I think will keep you wanting to play. Part of me thinks I’m being too harsh but I think it’s something I have to accept that the game is a decent game that really needed to be cooked in the oven more. Though with the devs being back for the series, I’m sure soon they’ll be improving what they have and they can overcome their mistakes. Now we will be heading into this series of reviews with that being a spinoff game! This might be one most of you haven’t played and it’s back to the Famicom once more! See you then!