TL;DR: Controls - 8/10
Weapons - 3/10
Levels - 4/10
Bosses - 2/10
Overall - 4/10
Mega Man 2 is commonly referred to as not only one of the best Mega Man games but one of the best games of all time. As you can see by my evaluation above, I don't share this same sentiment. Before we dive right in, this will be a more charged review compared to my Mega Man review (because this game inspires so much vitriol in me) so if that makes you uncomfortable, I understand if you want to skip. If not, sit tight as I tell you why your favorite game is bad.
Let's briefly touch on the controls. They are more or less identical to the original game's controls, except for the slippery factor. Still has some pretty steep jumps, though. Overall, the control is improved but still not refined to the standard that we hold for Mega Man.
As for the weapons, they are absolute dogshit in this game. Everyone already knows how broken the Metal Blade is. If you wanted to, you could practically beat the entire game this way. How no one on the dev team thought it was severely unbalanced to have an 8 directional weapon with such high ammo is beyond me. Quick Boomerang comes the closest to matching the Metal Blade, and it's not even a question. It has much more ammo, but is shorter and a bit weaker as a consequence. Still, it tears some enemies that the Metal Blade cannot. Air Shooter is almost a good weapon, but the tornadoes don't deal enough damage unless you have a big target or your buster is lodged inside their nose. Metal Blade covers diagonal trajectory anyway so don't even humor me with that. Time Stopper is ok here and there but is generally bad otherwise. Not being able to shoot and outright preventing certain flags while draining all of your ammo are such huge design flaws that this had to have been made as a joke.
Crash Bomb is just Hyper Bomb but slightly better since it can deal contact damage this time. Let it stick on a wall, however, and you have to wait for it to detonate just to switch to something more practical. Leaf Shield seems like a decent weapon at first glance, until you start moving around with it. Oh wait, you can't because it fires when you move. What the fuck is that nonsense? It's a shield! I guess it's useful for Crash Man's stage and Wily 3/4 but that's really about it. Atomic Fire has to be hands down the worst charging weapon in the Classic series. It will straight up not do anything until you hold down the B button for at least 20 seconds. Sure, it's powerful but in all that time you were charging, you could've been using something much better. LIKE THE METAL BLADE, FOR FUCK'S SA-! And last and definitely least, Bubble Lead. This weapon is worthless and is basically only useful against the bosses it's weak to (which is the bare minimum) and even that is questionable. By the time you kill one target that isnt a Met with this thing, you'll likely have run out of energy despite its generous ammo.
Before we move on, let's talk about the Item system in this game. Item 1 is a floating platform that rises up slowly. Doesn't sound great on paper but there are still a good few spots where this weapon is useful and you can have up to 3 at a time. Item 2 is the first jet of the series. Of course, you can't control it like you could with Rush in the later games but it's still a great tool nonetheless for just maneuvering around the game. Lastly, there's Item 3. All this does is cling on to walls and let you scale them if you're trying to conserve Item 1. Not bad but certainly seldom used outside of Wily 1. This is also the first game to feature E-Tanks. You can only carry 4 and unfortunately, you will lose them if you die.
One might think that with making the jump from 1 to 2 and having 8 Robot Masters as opposed to 6, the quality of the level design would drastically improve. Unfortunately, this isn't the case, as the levels are less inspired than in the original. Sure, there are the occasional gimmicks like the Quick Man lasers and the first truly underwater level in Bubble Man's stage but nothing truly profound. Flash Man's stage has ice physics for some reason. I guess it's because his weapon freezes enemies but that's a stretch. It's just more of a time waster for an otherwise fodder level. Quick Man, aside from the aforementioned lasers, has nothing interesting going on his stage whatsoever aside from some darkness mechanic that's haphazardly introduced in one screen and then absent for the rest of the level. Metal Man's is ok but the conveyor belts aren't much to write home about. It's neat that you can freeze them with Time Stopper but they're not as impactful to the stage as you might think. Wood Man's stage has very distinctive enemies, but none that offer anything all that interesting. P.S. you can skip at least two of the dogs completely.
Air Man's stage might actually be the best in the whole game. It at least has a little bit more challenge and complexity than the other Robot Master stages. It's still not hard but requires some precise platforming, which is absent in most stages. Crash Man's stage loves to waste your time by spamming Pipis and Tellies which I am definitely not a fan of. Also, with stupid wired platforms that have no challenge. Bubble Man's stage is fine. At least there are some spikes on the ceiling to check your jumping as most good underwater Mega Man stages should have, but the outdoor sections aren't all that intriguing. Heat Man's stage is also fine until the Yuko Blocks section. It is terrible design to have disappearing blocks to leap across over a long, bottomless pit. Not even Mega Man 1 would think of something like this.
Now to be frank, the Wily Castle stages don't get much better than this. Wily 1 is pretty mediocre and has a really annoying ladder section where you have to perfectly time your Item 1s just to reach the next one. The most challenging obstacle in Wily 2 is the drill section... which you can just use Time Stopper in. Even if this game were great, these damn drills are terrible to put in an endgame stage. Otherwise, you're dropping down a bunch of spike rooms with spikes you'll probably never touch even if you're bad. There is almost nothing interesting to talk about for Wily 3, except for jumping over sharks(?) in a pool of piss. How ironic. The last notable stage is Wily 4, which is probably the worst stage of the game. It once again introduces a mechanic in an uninteresting way and it simultaneously disappears just as quick. Ooh but this time, it's invisible platforms! They also recycle the stupid fucking Crash Man platform 3 or 4 times in a row. To cap it all off, a problematic room with Sniper Joes. This will be more evident in the bosses section. Wily 5 is not worth evaluating, because it's a graveyard stage (a trend that should've never occurred) and Wily 6 will be discussed along with the bosses.
So I've shit-talked this game plenty, but the bosses are the worst part of it at least to me. Flash Man is a joke until he randomly freezes time and sometimes catches you in an unfavorable spot. Quick Man is just really annoying to deal with because he zooms all over the room and makes him hard to hit in the process. Thankfully, you only need to hit him 7 times with your buster before freezing him. Fighting him under other circumstances is atrocious. Metal Man's patterns aren't tough to avoid but at least the conveyor belt gives the fight some personality. Wood Man's difficulty is quite oversaturated. Once you've figured out how to time your jumps, you've pretty much figured out the whole fight. Don't even bother with the Atomic Fire, just use Metal Blade as it deals 2 damage a shot anyway. Oh yeah, Metal Blade nukes pretty much half of the bosses in the game. Geez, you think it's powerful enough or what?
Air Man can actually be fun, but sometimes he'll just give you horribly stupid patterns to screw you over. If you're playing the original ROM, you can try persevering through his tornadoes and shoot until he reaches the left side, at which point, you can hug said side turning your back on him and spam Leaf Shield. Crash Man is kind of like Fire Man except he jumps like he's on crack once you make your move. Easy boss otherwise. Bubble Man's bubbles can hardly hurt you if you just stay close to him, and they are the hardest part of the entire fight. Heat Man is so tedious because every time you hit him with anything, he dashes at you. He will sprinkle some fire which is tough to avoid, but he'll only do it once if you catch him in a loop. Welp, the Robot Masters are subpar but surely, the Wily bosses have got to be better. Well...
Oh boy, the Mechadragon. Where do I even begin with this thing? To give it credit, it has a pretty cool setup with a semi-escape sequence. This all goes to shit when you realize just how little room you have to fight it. You get three little platforms and you have to juggle between the upper two. Fun. You touch it, you explode and if you get hit by its fire anywhere but the top, you fall. Spam Quick Boomerang in its face and it'll go down in a few cycles. I should mention that none of the Wily bosses have i-frames, even the dragon so go ham. Another side note: cover your eyes for when you take down ALL these Wily bosses. Game tries to give you a goddamn seizure. The next boss, Picopico is refreshingly simple. The room dismantles itself to make... whatever this thing is. The further you get, the faster it'll go. Just remember to keep calm and spam Metal Blades. You also get 2 E-Tanks before this fight, so don't worry if you have to use any. Guts Tank is the easiest castle boss by far, as Quick Boomerang once again makes quick work of him. He can shoot out Mets but good luck getting hit by them or his standard pellet. Now it's time to bring up the Sniper Joe room again. The Wily 4 boss, Boobeam Trap, requires pretty much a full set of Crash Bombs. So if you don't have enough of them, you need to kill the Joes. This is a problem for 2 reasons. 1: while the standard Joes are easy to kill, some are in tight corners which can make it hard to farm off of them in addition to 2: the Joes on the mechs will maul your ass if you're not careful. This is a problem because the Boobeam Trap does a lot of damage and you can't pause while the Crash Bomb is out. Brilliant. You pretty much have to have full ammo and some life insurance to guarantee your success. Even then, you need to know where you should aim. So yea, horrible design all across the border with this one.
As for Wily, phase 1 of Wily Machine 2 is actually pretty smooth. He shoots a pellet in a u-shaped direction and all you have to do is dodge it. I don't even wanna know what it actually is. Phase 2 takes the piss, though. He'll start off normally with just one shot, but then he'll suddenly fire three in a row. These three shots cannot be dodged which means this fight is not viable Buster only and you have to use the Crash Bomb. Oh yeah, you already used up most if not all of your uses on the last boss so time to die again. After that bullshit barrage, it's time for the real final boss. You're taken into this cavern where blood is dropping from the ceiling. Looks tough, right? Well if you use this frame perfect trick, you can pass this more easily. Here it is: hold right and jump when you face a wall. I have to ask, why the hell are there no energy capsules here? Seriously, how are you expected to beat this boss if you run out of weapon energy? Never mind. The ultimate final battle is... an alien? Ok weird but cool, I guess. This is actually a solid fight but you can only damage it with Bubble Lead. Everything else deals negative damage. His patterns are easy, just keep calm and attack when there's an opening. Ah so Wily was controlling it this whole time with VR. Could we have gotten this instead of the Virtual Boy?
And that's the game. I hope you'll at least understand my reasoning as to why I think this game is so bad. In the last review, I said if you do not like hard games, then don't blame the game. And I'm not necessarily trying to blame the game for being too easy especially for a follow up. There's just more to be desired in this entry. I can't entirely blame the devs, as this was more of a side gig. And I see the effort they put into this one. Unfortunately, effort doesn't always equal quality. And no matter how much effort you put into something, there will always be critics who can't derive the same enjoyment as the fans can. That is to say, if you love this game, more power to you. But don't go around saying it's the best Mega Man game ever. It's not a competition and it doesn't matter. Whether or not you hate this game or that game, no one can deny the massive impact Mega Man has on its audience, including me. Despite me hating the shit out of this game, I'm also glad that it happened because it allowed the series to grow and be better over time... and worse in some cases. But the next entry definitely isn't the latter!
Weapons - 3/10
Levels - 4/10
Bosses - 2/10
Overall - 4/10
Mega Man 2 is commonly referred to as not only one of the best Mega Man games but one of the best games of all time. As you can see by my evaluation above, I don't share this same sentiment. Before we dive right in, this will be a more charged review compared to my Mega Man review (because this game inspires so much vitriol in me) so if that makes you uncomfortable, I understand if you want to skip. If not, sit tight as I tell you why your favorite game is bad.
Let's briefly touch on the controls. They are more or less identical to the original game's controls, except for the slippery factor. Still has some pretty steep jumps, though. Overall, the control is improved but still not refined to the standard that we hold for Mega Man.
As for the weapons, they are absolute dogshit in this game. Everyone already knows how broken the Metal Blade is. If you wanted to, you could practically beat the entire game this way. How no one on the dev team thought it was severely unbalanced to have an 8 directional weapon with such high ammo is beyond me. Quick Boomerang comes the closest to matching the Metal Blade, and it's not even a question. It has much more ammo, but is shorter and a bit weaker as a consequence. Still, it tears some enemies that the Metal Blade cannot. Air Shooter is almost a good weapon, but the tornadoes don't deal enough damage unless you have a big target or your buster is lodged inside their nose. Metal Blade covers diagonal trajectory anyway so don't even humor me with that. Time Stopper is ok here and there but is generally bad otherwise. Not being able to shoot and outright preventing certain flags while draining all of your ammo are such huge design flaws that this had to have been made as a joke.
Crash Bomb is just Hyper Bomb but slightly better since it can deal contact damage this time. Let it stick on a wall, however, and you have to wait for it to detonate just to switch to something more practical. Leaf Shield seems like a decent weapon at first glance, until you start moving around with it. Oh wait, you can't because it fires when you move. What the fuck is that nonsense? It's a shield! I guess it's useful for Crash Man's stage and Wily 3/4 but that's really about it. Atomic Fire has to be hands down the worst charging weapon in the Classic series. It will straight up not do anything until you hold down the B button for at least 20 seconds. Sure, it's powerful but in all that time you were charging, you could've been using something much better. LIKE THE METAL BLADE, FOR FUCK'S SA-! And last and definitely least, Bubble Lead. This weapon is worthless and is basically only useful against the bosses it's weak to (which is the bare minimum) and even that is questionable. By the time you kill one target that isnt a Met with this thing, you'll likely have run out of energy despite its generous ammo.
Before we move on, let's talk about the Item system in this game. Item 1 is a floating platform that rises up slowly. Doesn't sound great on paper but there are still a good few spots where this weapon is useful and you can have up to 3 at a time. Item 2 is the first jet of the series. Of course, you can't control it like you could with Rush in the later games but it's still a great tool nonetheless for just maneuvering around the game. Lastly, there's Item 3. All this does is cling on to walls and let you scale them if you're trying to conserve Item 1. Not bad but certainly seldom used outside of Wily 1. This is also the first game to feature E-Tanks. You can only carry 4 and unfortunately, you will lose them if you die.
One might think that with making the jump from 1 to 2 and having 8 Robot Masters as opposed to 6, the quality of the level design would drastically improve. Unfortunately, this isn't the case, as the levels are less inspired than in the original. Sure, there are the occasional gimmicks like the Quick Man lasers and the first truly underwater level in Bubble Man's stage but nothing truly profound. Flash Man's stage has ice physics for some reason. I guess it's because his weapon freezes enemies but that's a stretch. It's just more of a time waster for an otherwise fodder level. Quick Man, aside from the aforementioned lasers, has nothing interesting going on his stage whatsoever aside from some darkness mechanic that's haphazardly introduced in one screen and then absent for the rest of the level. Metal Man's is ok but the conveyor belts aren't much to write home about. It's neat that you can freeze them with Time Stopper but they're not as impactful to the stage as you might think. Wood Man's stage has very distinctive enemies, but none that offer anything all that interesting. P.S. you can skip at least two of the dogs completely.
Air Man's stage might actually be the best in the whole game. It at least has a little bit more challenge and complexity than the other Robot Master stages. It's still not hard but requires some precise platforming, which is absent in most stages. Crash Man's stage loves to waste your time by spamming Pipis and Tellies which I am definitely not a fan of. Also, with stupid wired platforms that have no challenge. Bubble Man's stage is fine. At least there are some spikes on the ceiling to check your jumping as most good underwater Mega Man stages should have, but the outdoor sections aren't all that intriguing. Heat Man's stage is also fine until the Yuko Blocks section. It is terrible design to have disappearing blocks to leap across over a long, bottomless pit. Not even Mega Man 1 would think of something like this.
Now to be frank, the Wily Castle stages don't get much better than this. Wily 1 is pretty mediocre and has a really annoying ladder section where you have to perfectly time your Item 1s just to reach the next one. The most challenging obstacle in Wily 2 is the drill section... which you can just use Time Stopper in. Even if this game were great, these damn drills are terrible to put in an endgame stage. Otherwise, you're dropping down a bunch of spike rooms with spikes you'll probably never touch even if you're bad. There is almost nothing interesting to talk about for Wily 3, except for jumping over sharks(?) in a pool of piss. How ironic. The last notable stage is Wily 4, which is probably the worst stage of the game. It once again introduces a mechanic in an uninteresting way and it simultaneously disappears just as quick. Ooh but this time, it's invisible platforms! They also recycle the stupid fucking Crash Man platform 3 or 4 times in a row. To cap it all off, a problematic room with Sniper Joes. This will be more evident in the bosses section. Wily 5 is not worth evaluating, because it's a graveyard stage (a trend that should've never occurred) and Wily 6 will be discussed along with the bosses.
So I've shit-talked this game plenty, but the bosses are the worst part of it at least to me. Flash Man is a joke until he randomly freezes time and sometimes catches you in an unfavorable spot. Quick Man is just really annoying to deal with because he zooms all over the room and makes him hard to hit in the process. Thankfully, you only need to hit him 7 times with your buster before freezing him. Fighting him under other circumstances is atrocious. Metal Man's patterns aren't tough to avoid but at least the conveyor belt gives the fight some personality. Wood Man's difficulty is quite oversaturated. Once you've figured out how to time your jumps, you've pretty much figured out the whole fight. Don't even bother with the Atomic Fire, just use Metal Blade as it deals 2 damage a shot anyway. Oh yeah, Metal Blade nukes pretty much half of the bosses in the game. Geez, you think it's powerful enough or what?
Air Man can actually be fun, but sometimes he'll just give you horribly stupid patterns to screw you over. If you're playing the original ROM, you can try persevering through his tornadoes and shoot until he reaches the left side, at which point, you can hug said side turning your back on him and spam Leaf Shield. Crash Man is kind of like Fire Man except he jumps like he's on crack once you make your move. Easy boss otherwise. Bubble Man's bubbles can hardly hurt you if you just stay close to him, and they are the hardest part of the entire fight. Heat Man is so tedious because every time you hit him with anything, he dashes at you. He will sprinkle some fire which is tough to avoid, but he'll only do it once if you catch him in a loop. Welp, the Robot Masters are subpar but surely, the Wily bosses have got to be better. Well...
Oh boy, the Mechadragon. Where do I even begin with this thing? To give it credit, it has a pretty cool setup with a semi-escape sequence. This all goes to shit when you realize just how little room you have to fight it. You get three little platforms and you have to juggle between the upper two. Fun. You touch it, you explode and if you get hit by its fire anywhere but the top, you fall. Spam Quick Boomerang in its face and it'll go down in a few cycles. I should mention that none of the Wily bosses have i-frames, even the dragon so go ham. Another side note: cover your eyes for when you take down ALL these Wily bosses. Game tries to give you a goddamn seizure. The next boss, Picopico is refreshingly simple. The room dismantles itself to make... whatever this thing is. The further you get, the faster it'll go. Just remember to keep calm and spam Metal Blades. You also get 2 E-Tanks before this fight, so don't worry if you have to use any. Guts Tank is the easiest castle boss by far, as Quick Boomerang once again makes quick work of him. He can shoot out Mets but good luck getting hit by them or his standard pellet. Now it's time to bring up the Sniper Joe room again. The Wily 4 boss, Boobeam Trap, requires pretty much a full set of Crash Bombs. So if you don't have enough of them, you need to kill the Joes. This is a problem for 2 reasons. 1: while the standard Joes are easy to kill, some are in tight corners which can make it hard to farm off of them in addition to 2: the Joes on the mechs will maul your ass if you're not careful. This is a problem because the Boobeam Trap does a lot of damage and you can't pause while the Crash Bomb is out. Brilliant. You pretty much have to have full ammo and some life insurance to guarantee your success. Even then, you need to know where you should aim. So yea, horrible design all across the border with this one.
As for Wily, phase 1 of Wily Machine 2 is actually pretty smooth. He shoots a pellet in a u-shaped direction and all you have to do is dodge it. I don't even wanna know what it actually is. Phase 2 takes the piss, though. He'll start off normally with just one shot, but then he'll suddenly fire three in a row. These three shots cannot be dodged which means this fight is not viable Buster only and you have to use the Crash Bomb. Oh yeah, you already used up most if not all of your uses on the last boss so time to die again. After that bullshit barrage, it's time for the real final boss. You're taken into this cavern where blood is dropping from the ceiling. Looks tough, right? Well if you use this frame perfect trick, you can pass this more easily. Here it is: hold right and jump when you face a wall. I have to ask, why the hell are there no energy capsules here? Seriously, how are you expected to beat this boss if you run out of weapon energy? Never mind. The ultimate final battle is... an alien? Ok weird but cool, I guess. This is actually a solid fight but you can only damage it with Bubble Lead. Everything else deals negative damage. His patterns are easy, just keep calm and attack when there's an opening. Ah so Wily was controlling it this whole time with VR. Could we have gotten this instead of the Virtual Boy?
And that's the game. I hope you'll at least understand my reasoning as to why I think this game is so bad. In the last review, I said if you do not like hard games, then don't blame the game. And I'm not necessarily trying to blame the game for being too easy especially for a follow up. There's just more to be desired in this entry. I can't entirely blame the devs, as this was more of a side gig. And I see the effort they put into this one. Unfortunately, effort doesn't always equal quality. And no matter how much effort you put into something, there will always be critics who can't derive the same enjoyment as the fans can. That is to say, if you love this game, more power to you. But don't go around saying it's the best Mega Man game ever. It's not a competition and it doesn't matter. Whether or not you hate this game or that game, no one can deny the massive impact Mega Man has on its audience, including me. Despite me hating the shit out of this game, I'm also glad that it happened because it allowed the series to grow and be better over time... and worse in some cases. But the next entry definitely isn't the latter!
NOWITSREYNTIME17
8 months ago