never quite got the appeal of the NES megamans. i know that so many people hold specifically the second one in bizarrely high regard so it feels strange actually picking it up and playing it and it being just sort of serviceable and weirdly designed. dunno if it's nostalgia, or a genuine appreciation for the NES with it being one of the better looking games on it (admittedly, that's pretty cool), or if i truly am missing something with this one. it has always felt like just a game to me.

i never even felt the intensity of the jump from 1 to 2, or the superiority of 2 over every later one. my foggy memories are telling me that 1 was mostly frustrating with rancid level design and that the later entries felt more fun to play with the expanded movesets but then broke my enjoyment with some more unfun level design. design is the main element that doesn't click with me with this series - it just doesn't make sense to me (obviously easily explainable by just saying "it was the NES! they were still figuring things out!", but still). the bosses are incomprehensible unless you just use their weakness weapon in which case they're laughable, so to have an enjoyable playthrough you kinda need a level order guide. the levels themselves are just sorta filled with a bunch of gotchas, also characteristic for the NES and similarly unenjoyable for me.

there's a ton of charm to the character designs and pretty neat music, but other than that i kinda felt myself just rushing through these games to get to the end. i wanted to replay these games to reassess my opinions, but upon getting really bored not that far into the supposedly best one, i think i'd rather just do something else with my time. this review serves for every NES mega man game, since i have a hard time differentiating between them anyways - i suppose i'll leave this series behind me for the time being. i do intend to go through the later entries though. i feel like there could be at least something from this series that'll click with me.

got exactly to the halfway point with 110 sausages to my name before getting really demoralized by the difficulty and decided that maybe i'll sit this one out.

i love this game the way a man might love his wife after like 30 years of marriage, which is to say, i love you but oh my GOD woman leave me ALONE. can't lay down to sleep without all these visions of sausages being grilled haunting me. it's super cool when a game's unconventional movement system gets so ingrained into my head that it starts constantly being in the back of my mind even when i'm not playing the game (it's basically just the tetris effect but for this) and there were definitely moments where i'd just be having lunch until suddenly the last puzzle i was struggling with just clicks and i hurry with my meal just to rush to the computer and solve it and it turns out i was right. so much of this game just works and if i had a few more ganglia in my brain i'd probably be writing this review after actually seeing the ending of the game, but there were too many moving parts that i didn't know what to do with in the end.

genius game but I'M supposed to be the one beating it not the other way around!!!!!!

this game has some pretty neat setpieces, a really neat interplay of stylish sci-fi and silly absurdism, and it's hard not to be at least a little charmed by the story and characters, but as far as gameplay goes i can't say i had a whole lot of fun. felt my characters took up too big of a portion of the screen, and with stuff coming at me from all sides, too often did it feel like stuff was just hitting me without me being able to register what's going on. it's also a little bit tough on the eyes at some points with how intense and hard to parse certain backgrounds are. i'd still recommend it, though, partially because others seem to like this a whole lot than me, and because the plot is pretty endearing to follow. if you like 80's anime OVAs and the sega genesis, you are pretty much the target audience.

i adore absolutely EVERYTHING about this game's aesthetics and surreal world with weird fishes that'd be fucking terrifying without the jolly music AND the whole fishing rod mechanic is sick as hell and an incredibly interesting way to move and platform. this could have very well been my favorite snes game ever but dear scott is it demanding. the further you go, the things the game expects you to manouver through get more and more absurd and the fact all this is under a time and lives limit makes it so much crazier. give me the will to train speedrunning this daily and it'd be an easy 9/10.

the whole randomly appearing enemies thing is not as big of a deal to me as it is to others. it's pretty easy to tell where they'll show up and the game prevents them from spawning right where you are, so i've had few moments of running into them right as they spawn. the one big issue i have with it is that the game will spawn like 3 or 4 enemies at the same spot while you're trying to get past them and they're spitting stun-fish at you and it is Not Very Fun. the bosses are kinda lame too. really cool and/or funny looking (i love the idea of a giant tadpole birthing frogs) but too many of them are essentially just "wait 5 cycles until you can proceed".

i'd still recommend trying this one. maybe not beating it, but the core gameplay idea mixed with the sweet and dreamy art is plenty of fun for a little while