The main Mega Man series is one that's never been particularly interested in reinventing itself or taking particularly massive strides from game to game. Instead of this, it looks to the option of adding safer, less intrusive changes from game to game hoping to gradually improve the formula in a way that never alienates the player. With this said, Mega Man 2 is the game that feels as if it made some of the more dramatic changes in the series for a little while, which makes sense given how simplistic and in many ways, flawed the first game could be. That said, despite some changes, advancements and improvements, I'd hesitate to call this a outright better or even more enjoyable game compared to the first in my eyes, as for the amount of polish more areas had, it still often could suffer from the same design issues as the first game, sometimes to an even greater extent.
I'll start this off with a couple of positive points however, as there are definitely some extremely cool things the game does that I love. The change in formula from 6 to 8 robot masters you need to fight really makes the game feel more rounded and interesting, especially when combined with the more complex, varied stages and diverse weapons that you get given. It really feels like they took the ideas from Mega Man 1, but instead of the stages centring around a single gimmick, things feel as if they progress far more here, with multiple different mechanics often unique to that particular stage working in tandem to make for a collection of highly distinct, engaging stages. This makes for some great gameplay variety, constantly throwing the player into new scenarios they have to come to grips with, one moment standing on moving platforms while dodging enemies, the next climbing ladders and having to figure out how to avoid falling down as swarm after swarm of birds fly at you.
It also feels like some serious improvements were made to the boss designs in general most of them having multiple attacks rather than being based around only needing to learn how to deal with a single thing, making them generally more engaging and challenging. The weapons are largely more interesting as well, giving the player a variety of options, each one being capable in certain niche scenarios, making experimentation during more difficult sections often greatly rewarding once the player is able to figure out the optimal way to approach a situation. This is also where greater emphasis on mobility items was implemented, with each type allowing the player to get to additional pickups or even skip certain tricky sections if utilised correctly, and gives an additional layer of complexity to the platforming aspect of the game.
Unfortunately, most of the positives for the game some with something negative to balance them out. With stages, while the greater variety and amount of levels to the game largely contributes to a more diverse, engaging gameplay experience, the bad stages feel considerably worse conceived here. The trial and error unfair difficulty of the NES comes in full force in a couple of stages, one being Quick Man's which while undoubtedly a fast paced, fun and exhilarating level from my perspective, is impossible to ignore for the fact that giving the player such little time to dodge through all the obstacles lest they're instantly killed is quite unfair. With this said, Heat Man's stage full of disappearing platforms over death chasms feels even worse when combined with timing and positioning of these disappearing blocks that feels as if it intentionally is attempting to throw the player off and just require a lot of death's until they've memorised everything. The issue with these is the fact that rather than testing the finer aspects of a player's skill and execution to create a satisfying, fulfilling experience to play through, it instead relies entirely on rote learning, making the point in which a player finally get through feel less exciting, and more just having them thinking that thank god it's over.
Similarly, while the boss design has been made more complex and often engaging, it's balanced by some more fights that feel as if they were entirely not suited to be fought without their weakness in mind. Of the robot masters, the main 3 are Crash Man, designed to respond to attacks in such a way that it's frustrating to even hit him, Quick Man, for his erratic movement and almost complete lack of pattern, instead going for the approach of hopping around wildly and throwing projectiles whenever he feels, and Air Man, who often throws out attacks that are genuinely impossible to dodge. While I appreciate further encouraging the player to utilise their entire arsenal, it simultaneously feels counterintuitive to allowing the player to choose stages in whatever order they desire when some are borderline impossible to complete without having beaten other stages first. While having an optimal route is cool and contributes to replayability and is conducive to experimentation, going as far as to make large portions of it to be almost required makes this idea feel closer to artificial lengthening of play time, an approach that makes sense given that NES games often did this to get the most from limited hardware, but nonetheless works to the detriment of the majority of them.
While the majority of weapons have their own niche uses to allow the player to handle most situations, a lot of this admittedly feels a bit pointless with the metal blade that's so powerful that it makes most options obsolete by being powerful, extremely versatile, and cheap to use, essentially having 0 downsides other than trivialising a lot of the game. With this said, there is one glaring issue in relation to weapon costs, that being that weapon energy doesn't refill between deaths, making grinding sometimes necessary if you don't have enough to use one that's required for a particular section. This is particularly problematic in the infamous boss fight that requires the player to use literally all of a particular weapon to defeat it, with nothing else working, and death meaning that it's impossible to beat them without grinding back up to full weapon power, poorly designed and tedious in a number of ways.
Despite all the negativity I've had, it's still near-impossible to deny how much fun and charming this game is, and how well put-together it is for the console it was on. Mega Man truly is one of the leading examples of early game philosophies being overcome in certain respects, with more emphasis being put on naturally guiding the player through a lot of it without requiring them to tirelessly exhaust all possible combinations to potentially come across the answer, with even some of the more difficult situations in the game being intuitively designed to teach the player long before they're taken to the deep end. Despite the fact that this sometimes falls through and gives way to all the annoying tropes of the system, this is still a very good game in a lot of respects that I enjoy about as much as the first entry in the series, and can see why it's often regarded as one of the cornerstones of the NES.
I'll start this off with a couple of positive points however, as there are definitely some extremely cool things the game does that I love. The change in formula from 6 to 8 robot masters you need to fight really makes the game feel more rounded and interesting, especially when combined with the more complex, varied stages and diverse weapons that you get given. It really feels like they took the ideas from Mega Man 1, but instead of the stages centring around a single gimmick, things feel as if they progress far more here, with multiple different mechanics often unique to that particular stage working in tandem to make for a collection of highly distinct, engaging stages. This makes for some great gameplay variety, constantly throwing the player into new scenarios they have to come to grips with, one moment standing on moving platforms while dodging enemies, the next climbing ladders and having to figure out how to avoid falling down as swarm after swarm of birds fly at you.
It also feels like some serious improvements were made to the boss designs in general most of them having multiple attacks rather than being based around only needing to learn how to deal with a single thing, making them generally more engaging and challenging. The weapons are largely more interesting as well, giving the player a variety of options, each one being capable in certain niche scenarios, making experimentation during more difficult sections often greatly rewarding once the player is able to figure out the optimal way to approach a situation. This is also where greater emphasis on mobility items was implemented, with each type allowing the player to get to additional pickups or even skip certain tricky sections if utilised correctly, and gives an additional layer of complexity to the platforming aspect of the game.
Unfortunately, most of the positives for the game some with something negative to balance them out. With stages, while the greater variety and amount of levels to the game largely contributes to a more diverse, engaging gameplay experience, the bad stages feel considerably worse conceived here. The trial and error unfair difficulty of the NES comes in full force in a couple of stages, one being Quick Man's which while undoubtedly a fast paced, fun and exhilarating level from my perspective, is impossible to ignore for the fact that giving the player such little time to dodge through all the obstacles lest they're instantly killed is quite unfair. With this said, Heat Man's stage full of disappearing platforms over death chasms feels even worse when combined with timing and positioning of these disappearing blocks that feels as if it intentionally is attempting to throw the player off and just require a lot of death's until they've memorised everything. The issue with these is the fact that rather than testing the finer aspects of a player's skill and execution to create a satisfying, fulfilling experience to play through, it instead relies entirely on rote learning, making the point in which a player finally get through feel less exciting, and more just having them thinking that thank god it's over.
Similarly, while the boss design has been made more complex and often engaging, it's balanced by some more fights that feel as if they were entirely not suited to be fought without their weakness in mind. Of the robot masters, the main 3 are Crash Man, designed to respond to attacks in such a way that it's frustrating to even hit him, Quick Man, for his erratic movement and almost complete lack of pattern, instead going for the approach of hopping around wildly and throwing projectiles whenever he feels, and Air Man, who often throws out attacks that are genuinely impossible to dodge. While I appreciate further encouraging the player to utilise their entire arsenal, it simultaneously feels counterintuitive to allowing the player to choose stages in whatever order they desire when some are borderline impossible to complete without having beaten other stages first. While having an optimal route is cool and contributes to replayability and is conducive to experimentation, going as far as to make large portions of it to be almost required makes this idea feel closer to artificial lengthening of play time, an approach that makes sense given that NES games often did this to get the most from limited hardware, but nonetheless works to the detriment of the majority of them.
While the majority of weapons have their own niche uses to allow the player to handle most situations, a lot of this admittedly feels a bit pointless with the metal blade that's so powerful that it makes most options obsolete by being powerful, extremely versatile, and cheap to use, essentially having 0 downsides other than trivialising a lot of the game. With this said, there is one glaring issue in relation to weapon costs, that being that weapon energy doesn't refill between deaths, making grinding sometimes necessary if you don't have enough to use one that's required for a particular section. This is particularly problematic in the infamous boss fight that requires the player to use literally all of a particular weapon to defeat it, with nothing else working, and death meaning that it's impossible to beat them without grinding back up to full weapon power, poorly designed and tedious in a number of ways.
Despite all the negativity I've had, it's still near-impossible to deny how much fun and charming this game is, and how well put-together it is for the console it was on. Mega Man truly is one of the leading examples of early game philosophies being overcome in certain respects, with more emphasis being put on naturally guiding the player through a lot of it without requiring them to tirelessly exhaust all possible combinations to potentially come across the answer, with even some of the more difficult situations in the game being intuitively designed to teach the player long before they're taken to the deep end. Despite the fact that this sometimes falls through and gives way to all the annoying tropes of the system, this is still a very good game in a lot of respects that I enjoy about as much as the first entry in the series, and can see why it's often regarded as one of the cornerstones of the NES.