Megaman Unlimited

[NemZ]

I DON'T SUCK AT GAMING DAMNIT! I can beat games if I WANT to, dude I am FARTHER in Mega Man Revolution than Unlimited, I'm almost to the point to even COMPLETING Revolution that's how good I am.

...seriously?  I beat both of them weeks ago, before easy mode unlimited existed.  Revolution wasn't that hard, save a few cheap death spots in saw and haste's stages and the badly programed legs of the giant robot boss.  The most difficult part of beating that game was finding the motivation to care.  Unlimited was much more challenging but still definately beatable with a little practice.

I just beat megaman claw today, a mm1 rom hack.  THAT was a hard game, often unfairly so.

The level design is STILL non-existing

I don't think you understand what 'level design' means.  The game consistently builds each stage by introducing new enemies a few at a time in fairly safe conditions, then placing them in combinations and/or in increasingly advantageous (to them) terrain.  It also does the same thing with stage gimmicks and trick platforms, showing you how it works and then challenging you to prove you understand it when it gets more complicated.

Unlimited does definately have issues with pacing however, and I will say it has too much reliance on spikes/pits for challenge (though to be completely fair it also sells items that negate these hazards in the shop).

Bullshit, the weapons are terrible, even the Mega Man 6 weapons are better.

6 doesn't have bad weapons at all though, you just never need them because the buster and rush adaptors are awesome.

Flame - melts walls, hits decently hard, can do some fun things with the directional flames it makes
Blizzard - a little slow but the spread is a welcome addition
Plant - not a great shield weapon, but the fact that it ignores things it can't hurt rather than being canceled by them is a nice touch.
Tomahawk -  a little tricky to aim but deals good damage.
Yamato - needle with less ammo but peirces shields, or a weaker version of splash's laser trident.  not bad.
Knight - great weapon.  aimable, good damage, not too expensive per shot... what's not to like?
Centaur - sure, gravity hold comes in handy now and then.
Wind - it's bubble lead mk2.  does what you'd expect, and the toss off the screen animation is fun.

[Oliver]

I defeated ALL bosses, but now i need the Y O K U words to summon Yokuman.

[Dr. Crasger]

Well, after waiting, I got it weeks ago, and I've noticed his level design is sadistic, it looks like it was made specifically to get you to buy E-Tanks and those Shock Protection shoes. Then again, it might be because I'm not exactly the best platformer player, ever.

The music was good, it made me want to play the game even more.
The story is sort-of original, and the identity of the Final Boss should be kept secret.
It manages to look like an actual Mega Man game.

[Dr. Crasger]

The reason I complain about MMU is because the stages drag out for much longer than your average Mega Man game. (NemZ and I counted averages. MMU is about 10 screens longer than an average stage) and the checkpoints are not changed to reflect this, causing many stages to drag out much longer than they need to, combine that with instant death things everywhere (Every stage has spikes in it. Every Stage. Why would you need this) a really poorly done rush jet segment, and some brutal damage output (I don't care how easy his pattern can be, Glue Man should NOT deal 8 contact damage) and you got a problem on your hands.
Like you can memorize it and that's great, but even MM9 wasn't so heavy on the instant death

Indeed: the Glue Man, the spikes and the checkpoints.
Even Easy mode was done lazily.
It was more of a disappointment with the level design.

But in retrospect, after being defeated 11 times, doesn't Dr. Wily need to fortify his bases? But gameplay-wise, its not a that good of game at all.

Seriously, making us wait that long, and making the levels so hard and kind of unfair that we might finish in the same amount of time MegaPhilX finally released this game is just sadistic. But I guess this answers some requests of Mega Man players out there who want a better challenge, you know after playing 10 official games and maybe other fan games that can be finished in an day or two,
don't you think you'd want a challenge that drags on? Unfortunately, I am not one of those people.

[-FiniteZero-]

...I think people think the difficulty is much higher than it actually is. On easy mode, I beat it, for nyan's sake. I'm not even that good at Mega Man games.

[Hallan Parva]

see that's the thing


I brought this up before in another post but Mega Man Unlimited really doesn't have much difficulty. What most people are perceiving as the game being "hard" is just artificial difficulty, super-imposed with overly extended gauntlets for stages, excruciatingly high damage values, and spike placement up the wazoo. Easy Mode did three major things to the game: add more checkpoints, tone down the damage, and add lazily-placed blockades around nearly every set of spikes in the game. To be honest the checkpoint thing could really get its ass over to every mode of the game, but I digress. With the three "hard" things removed from the game, actual difficulty becomes nearly nonexistent.

In Mega Man Powered Up I absolutely loved Elec Man's redesign because it used the Elec Beams and Yoku Blocks in a clever combination. In Mega Man 2 I hated Wood Man because of the Monkings that hung under the bars that I could never seem to fake out, but they were placed well and even when they hit me, they only dealt about 3 units of damage. In Mega Man 7 I enjoyed Shade Man's stage a lot due to having lots of castle-themed traps like the dark room, ceiling crushers, and a flight of stairs with Kyorowns perched along the rails. In the case of an "Easy Mode" these things were still modified. Elec Man had Helper Blocks placed over pits, and the Elec Beams shot slower to give the player more time. Shooting enemies in Shade Man's dark room would light up the area for a split second when playing 8 Robot Masters Unlocked from the start. Mega Man 2's "Normal" mode had everything deal less damage in general, though the stages retained all of their original designs. In any case, all of these games will still give a novice or "greenhorn" player a run for their money. Some of the difficulty was lowered by making certain obstacles easier to deal with, but the stage layouts were so powerful that they still retained a good portion of their original challenge.

Mega Man Unlimited's "Easy Mode", on the other hand, seems to do things in all the wrong ways. Granted, I beat the game in its original v1 format, but just for laughs I booted up Easy Mode to observe its effects, and it does nothing but shame the player for playing it. I had joked that most of Unlimited's "design" was over-the-top damage values and death everywhere, but after Easy Mode I feel inclined to believe it. Even bruisers like Trinitro Man's "Dr. Eggman birds" only dealt around 2 damage from their previous 8 damage, and the Helper Blocks felt like they were on every other screen. Sure, there was still a legitimately "good" area every now and then (honorable mention to Jet Man, who was still the only good stage in the game, Yoku Man notwithstanding) but for the most part, stages became a long and unmemorable slog. Sure, nerfing the damage to nearly nonexistent might be a bit much, but it then becomes apparent how unholy the original damage values were. Sure, patching up nearly every spike patch and bottomless pit was a bit silly, but it just made it glaringly obvious exactly how many death pits there were to begin with. No game is without its flaws, but in Unlimited's case I had figured that (being an online game) it would have been better to fix the root of the problem itself with adjusted enemy behavior and remixed stage layouts. Unfortunately, what we get instead is a "quick and dirty" hotfix that attempts to simply "patch over" the problem without doing much to correct it. It's disappointing, and further solidifies my opinion that Mega Man Unlimited simply does not care to give the player a proper feeling of risk/reward or completion satisfaction. Even with its superior weapons, awesome music, tighter engine, and cleaner graphics, I still prefer games like Mega Man Rock Force and Mega Man Revolution simply because they know how to step the fuck back and let you enjoy the scenery before plowing your face into it.



also if I see "for nyan's sake" again I will personally punch your head off its shoulders and replace it with a cactus

then they'll have to call you -CactusZero-
or -FiniteCactus- if you swing that way

[Dr. Freeman]

Real talk, one of my biggest problems with Unlimited is the fact that half the people who defend it (not everyone mind you) basically say, "Well, it's a fangame so you really can't say that." Which is wrong on so many levels.

I also totally agree with your entire second paragraph.

And I'd like to add that Unlimited HAS a lot of really cool ideas in concept, it's the execution that's really poorly done. If they just broke up Wily 4 into two stages, the whole mini level before a boss would be really cool, but the stage keeps going and that's what brings it down.
The final boss is a neat idea (even if I would still dislike it, it wouldn't be downright hate) but they decided to make it enjoyable to the player so they feel no accomplishment for beating it.
Wily 3 is a neat idea...actually I don't mind Wily 3 as much for the most part.

Point, there's a lot of cool ideas in this game, just poor execution.

Oh, and it's sorta relevant, but I just woke up and the last thing in my dream was fighting Yoku Man, him summoning spikes and my controller breaking in two. I haven't even touched the game in 2 weeks so I don't even know why that happened.

[NemZ]

I'd agree with most of that rant... the damage tends to be too high, the hitstun is too long, it overuses instakill penalties of all types, the stages are too damn long, the checkpoint placements are brutal and the shop feels kinda pointless.  It's not a perfect game by any means, and the easy mode is laughable.  I suspect a lot of this could have been fixed if they had done playtesting with a wider skill range of players rather than relying on one 'expert'.

That said, I love the gimmicks, the weapons are all both useful and fun, and the graphics/sound are generally top-notch (except the few songs Phil did).  Poor stage design is arguable (wily1 is absolute shit, no question), but saying the game has no stage design however is just ignorant.  Yokuman's stage is my favorite stage in ANY megaman game, official or otherwise.

As to wily 4... the mini stages cold have been a little longer each and then taken everything else out to make a proper stage 5 with bass/wilymachine/wilycapsule fight as the finale.  I'm not wild about the mini stage concept but if you're going to do it make them more relevant.

My problem with revolution is more that it gets a lot of little things wrong.  The music ranges from dull to painful.  The graphics are often lifelessly boring, indistinguishably 'busy', or simply stolen outright from another game.  The stages are a bit too long and feel much longer than they actually are because they're so boring.  It has tons of weapons that are generally pointless crap.  None of the RMs or minibosses are actually fun to fight, and some of the fortress bosses feel unfinished.  The difficulty tends to be nonexistant except for when it's suddenly very tricky.  The submarine stage is stupid and tedious (and why the hell aren't you using rush marine?).  Half of the fortress stages seem to wish they were part of some other series.  The last level is especially retarded and the final boss is a complete joke.

[Emmanuelf06]

I wanted say, the game is not so hard but we need to take CARE a LOT with the traps !!! Some difficult things are boring and not so skilled but the game is really full of original things and ideas !!!

But i wait for the final release of MMR.

For now, i try to finish MMU, who is really good !!! I like how we must play sometimes with "near 1 pixel" xD

[id Man]

Admittedly, I find Mega Man Unlimited too hard for me. I did find some satisfaction in getting farther in easy mode on Nail Man's and Glue Man's stage, even though I still managed to screw up somehow. Maybe it's better to play it with an attached controller than with a keyboard. It's a shame that I might not want to play it, because I've gotten used to playing hard retro-games that try to capture the classic NES feel, like Cave Story and Poacher. Still, I love watching the video playthroughs of the game, including the developer's commentary playthrough of some of the levels. It still is excellent quality in its execution, despite its hardness. It's quite possible that the developers were aiming this game more towards their level of skill then for the player. It may not worked for many here, but there are some who braved it and seem to love it. I'd still study it as a template on what to do and what not to do for a fan game.

At least most of the criticisms here are leveled more at its hardness than about its concept. I still found it weird when I read the review of one player who said that Unlimited's major flaw was its story execution. Considering that the Mega Man games were never known for having a deep and well-developed story, it seems like an odd complaint to me.

[CHAOS_FANTAZY]

At least most of the criticisms here are leveled more at its hardness than about its concept. I still found it weird when I read the review of one player who said that Unlimited's major flaw was its story execution. Considering that the Mega Man games were never known for having a deep and well-developed story, it seems like an odd complaint to me.

I never meant to say it was the one flaw or the one that singlehandedly killed my gaming experience.  However, the way I approach game design says that each aspect of the game is important to some extent, and if one aspect is bad, it can drag the entire thing down.  I might have been able to enjoy MMU a bit more if its storyline was better; because it was not, I did not.
I also figured it would be better to address the story because everyone else was already complaining their heads off about the gameplay.

[LlamaHombre]

I generally didn't have a huge problem with MMU's story other than its unrealistic goals.

The game tried to be a bridge between the Classic and X series, which physically is impossible when only one minuscule thread (which was the worst part of the whole game, might I add) connects the two. Regardless of how predictable it was or how similar it was to MM10 (which I don't blame it for - the story was probably done before MM10's announcement and refined since then), the fact that it tried to be something it's not just kinda shoots the story in the foot. Then again the only great story I've seen in a Mega Man game comes from the Zero series, so I can't ask for much.

I haven't played this game since I ranted about it a few pages back.

This was released about two months ago. No word of anything since then though.

[id Man]

At least most of the criticisms here are leveled more at its hardness than about its concept. I still found it weird when I read the review of one player who said that Unlimited's major flaw was its story execution. Considering that the Mega Man games were never known for having a deep and well-developed story, it seems like an odd complaint to me.

I never meant to say it was the one flaw or the one that singlehandedly killed my gaming experience.  However, the way I approach game design says that each aspect of the game is important to some extent, and if one aspect is bad, it can drag the entire thing down.  I might have been able to enjoy MMU a bit more if its storyline was better; because it was not, I did not.
I also figured it would be better to address the story because everyone else was already complaining their heads off about the gameplay.

D'OH! Sorry, man. I was trying to be discreet by not referring to you by name, and I failed. I feel bad about putting that last part in there. Sorry.  I can understand being unable to enjoy a game when the story has its flaws. I just didn't think MMU's story was really so glaring, and I attributed your criticism to over analytical frenzy. Most, or all, of the Mega Man games do have intentionally bad and predictable stories, but even if MMU's story was predictable or illogical (from your viewpoint, as I recall), I liked how it was crafted. I admit, I got it mainly from watching videos because I can't play the game with ease on my computer (I'm a wimp), but I found MMU's story and look to be on the right track on where Mega Man fan games should go. It just may be about time that Mega Man fans did create a fan game which would be for Mega Man what Link to the Past was for Legend of Zelda. As I wrote before, I'm curious as to how you would write your own Mega Man fan game, CHAOS_FRENZY... I mean! FANTAZY. I think the kind of Mega Man game you'd have in mind is not only one which has original and compelling boss fights, very fun yet challenging levels, and original textures, but would also have a story which defies the traditional simplistic plots of the MM series in favor of a story which blends Japanese-styled hard science-fiction with the twists and turns usually found in Hitchcock and Silver Age Marvel Comics. A MM fan game like that would kick ass.

I generally didn't have a huge problem with MMU's story other than its unrealistic goals.

The game tried to be a bridge between the Classic and X series, which physically is impossible when only one minuscule thread (which was the worst part of the whole game, might I add) connects the two. Regardless of how predictable it was or how similar it was to MM10 (which I don't blame it for - the story was probably done before MM10's announcement and refined since then), the fact that it tried to be something it's not just kinda shoots the story in the foot. Then again the only great story I've seen in a Mega Man game comes from the Zero series, so I can't ask for much.

I haven't played this game since I ranted about it a few pages back.

This was released about two months ago. No word of anything since then though.

I wouldn't say that MMU's goals were unrealistic. I actually liked that Mega Man was facing the prototype of Zero at the end, even though it was intentionally a fight you could never win. I think that one of the reasons why the creators made the game so hard was demonstrate how much more brutal the world would become once the Maverick Virus starts infecting more advanced robot models like the Reploids. It was a nice touch too when Dr. Light analyzes his data at the end and comments that it yield unlimited potential. I don't know of any better way to cleverly bridge the classic and X games the way they did.... Well, I'd want the game to be easier, of course, but I still think that the concept of MMU is still clever.

[Emmanuelf06]

Hey guys, what is your favorites themes?

This game remind me Megaman 9....the 8 stages have good musics, specially Tankman, Glueman and rainbowman, a lot of beautiful and fun themes!

Need to play the wily stages now ^^

EDIT: I finished the game, omg, the ending, the credits, everything is splendid in this game, it could be really an official game....(except maybe for zero cannon but it's not so important)....

[Korby]

I remember when I saw Whirlpool on what'shisface's deviantART and the description said very clearly that he wasn't going to be in MMU.
Those were fun times.

It just occurred to me that I can play this game without it looking ludicrously squished!

Aw!