Just got done doing some more testing on the Robot Master stages. Safe to say, I'm not exactly in a good mood after going through some of these, and I have the urge to vent some of it out. I may as well list the general and stage-specific things I discovered/found to be downright annoying.
[General Gameplay]
- As mentioned before, Mega Man's charging seems a bit messed up. Aside from reusing Mega Man Rocks' weird palette shifting and sound effects while charging up, the other sound effects for partially charged and fully charged shots seem very out of place. The time it takes to fully charge your buster also seems a bit too long.
- Most of the gimmicks in the stages I've played so far seem to be introduced in outright hazardous and obnoxious ways. I get that the stages are supposed to get tougher as they go on - that's just the nature of Mega Man in general. However, even from the beginning in most of these levels, their unique/recycled gimmicks are first shown to you in overly lethal situations. For some examples of these: The first few conveyor belts in Yamato Man's stage are introduced over pits and spikes, one of which is also coupled with a large spear-tossing enemy that's positioned just off-screen. The first moving platform you see in Tornado Man's stage is not only positioned over a pit, but part of it also gets obscured by the clouds in the background, making it difficult to judge your jump at first. Magma Man's stage tries to introduce the sideways magma lasers in a safe manner by putting a platform off to the left of the room where they're introduced, in the sense that you could land on it if you happen to be holding left at the time you're dropping down into said room. If you're not however, you pretty much have to rely on quick reflexes once you realize what's going to happen.
- Once you have the ability to use him, Rush is summoned with the C button. I have no idea why this is, but it's very disorienting given the obvious. When I have Rush selected, I'm pretty much always inclined to just hit the fire button to summon him - basically how it's functioned in nearly every classic Mega Man game where he's available. Then again, that's not the only problem Rush has...
- Rush can't be summoned on spikes. I learned this the hard way during Yamato Man's stage, where I wanted to use him to bypass a rather nasty block puzzle. Imagine my surprise however when I jump on him as he's landing...only for him to suddenly teleport away, leaving me to fall in the spikes. This wasn't some kind of glitch where I just happened to jump too soon, either. After testing it out on another spike pit without jumping directly on him, Rush immediately flies off after landing. Rush has always been a support for this kind of stuff in nearly every Mega Man game - so for a seasoned veteran of the series, pulling this is just downright cruel. It's as if to say: "You're going to do our poorly constructed block puzzle, and you're going to like it."
[Toad Man's Stage]
- Not too much to say about this stage, other than that I found the waterfall and underground sections to be rather annoying. The waterfalls themselves don't inhibit your jumping like they did in the original MM4, which is nice I suppose, but a bit strange to get used to at first.
- The first Snail mid-boss is stationed in a room similar to the one where you encounter it a second time in MM4, where a waterfall is constantly threatening to push you off the edge of the platform on either side. Again, this is an awful way to introduce something - especially a mini-boss. Not everyone has played MM4, so chances are there are going to be people who won't know how the Snail functions at first, making the addition of the waterfall a complete nuisance. This is the kind of stuff that should be saved for the second encounter with a mid-boss, once you've gotten the feel for how their pattern works. Ironically however, the second and third Snails in this game are even easier than the first, mostly because you can stand in one spot to take them out without much trouble.
- There are bottomless pits in Toad Man's boss room. At least there's some platforms over them at the start, but once you touch them, they fall and never respawn for the rest of the fight.
- Toad Man himself. It's not to say his pattern is difficult or anything, but his fight does pull a gigantic dick move if you're not expecting this (and trust me, you won't the first time you're playing). Toad Man now has a desperation attack where he hops into a waterfall in the background, then periodically appears to fire shots at you. It's an easy enough pattern to deal with at first...however, should you be anywhere in the actual sprite of the waterfall, Toad Man can suddenly appear where you're standing, grab you, then pull you inside. Not only does this deal an absurd amount of damage, but it also HEALS him in the process. This is, bar none, the most unnecessary thing I've seen in this game so far. I mean, this is Toad Man we're dealing with here. I can commend the effort to make him a more difficult boss, but throwing cheap gimmicks like this one at the player isn't the way to do so.
[Magma Man's stage]
- The gimmicks are all over the place in this stage, and they seem almost custom designed to make the player angry. Hey, have you ever wanted to continually jump on top of those platforms from Shadow Man's stage that detach themselves while avoiding magma lasers? No? Well, too bad, because there's a few sections in this level that can outright force you to do so.
- Magma Man's fight has two magma laser generators at the top of the room. Though the telegraph for when he activates these is pretty clear and somewhat long, I'm still not a fan of having instant-death in a standard boss fight.
[Yamato Man's stage]
- As said before, the gimmicks in this stage are introduced in rather annoying manners. The conveyor belts are almost always stationed over pits or spikes, along with the crickets from Bright Man's stage in MM4 also making an appearance in conjunction with them.
- The crickets themselves seem to have some sloppy collision detection. There was one instance where - after painstakingly getting past a series of annoying block puzzles - I managed to get to a small section with one of these crickets. As I tried to edge very carefully to his head in order to get the best distance for an upcoming jump, I somehow fell right through him and died on the spikes.
- Truth be told, I haven't beaten this stage yet. The reason why is a combination of an annoying series of block puzzle rooms coupled with a few other annoyances at the end of it. The block puzzles themselves require extremely precise timing, with all of them involving pits of spikes. You have to do three of them in a row, and there's no checkpoint after you get past them; Meaning if you die after that - specifically to the mini-boss if he's there - you get to do all of these block puzzles again.
- Speaking of the mini-boss, the Mega Man Killers are in this game. After you beat two of the Robot Masters, they start appearing in some of the regular stages to fight you - somewhat similar to Bit and Byte from Mega Man X3. While it's a neat idea, I honestly can't even begin to comprehend what was going on when they designed Enker in this game. First off, hitting him while he's preparing to use his Barrier Spear doesn't do any damage to him. I don't know why they buffed him with this somewhat unnecessary trait, but it proves to be very annoying in the fact that he can absorb your bullets half-way across the screen, even if you didn't fire in his general direction. I'm not even certain if it contributes to his attacks, either. Sometimes he fires out one shot after powering up, and other times he shoots out four in different patterns. Aside from the seemingly random nature on his spear attacks, he's downright annoying with his movements as well. He seems to move and jump around way too quickly, making it difficult judge whether or not he's going to run straight at you, or just randomly pause in the middle of the room and then jump at you to completely throw off your timing.
...So yeah, I'm not exactly having fun with this game so far.
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