Reviews from

in the past


I often try to talk up the strengths of the other NES Mega Man titles, and talk down the supposedly vast superiority of this game, but I ultimately have to admit that it's the definitive one. The game is straight fire.

an enormous improvement over its predecessor. some of the wily stages are kind of a slog and leave a bit of a sour taste in the mouth, but the rest of the game is great. all the issues i had with mega man 1 have been addressed. enemies are fair and predictable, platforming is more lenient, and recovering health and ammo is much easier at certain grind spots. despite all this, mega man 2 is still a challenging game but without all the frustrations of the first one.

The whole game improves a lot from what Mega Man 1 laid out, but the Wily Stages put me through incredible anguish and despair.

Quem diria que mega man teria uma evolução tão boa logo no segundo jogo não e mesmo? o primeiro jogo não chega a ser a pior coisa do mundo mas ele tambem não me agradou tanto quanto as suas continuações, e o segundo jogo e estupidamente bom sem sombras de duvidas e ele ja chegou com tudo, uma trilha sonora insana, graficos lindos (pode não parecer mas tem uma leve mudança nos graficos mas e algo muito sutil), chefes e fases incriveis e bom algumas novas adições.

Para começar ja vou falar das adições que vão aparecer bastante nos proximos jogos e dependendo do mega man ela sempre varia mas com quase sempre tento as mesmas funções, bem essas novas adições são 3 acessorios, o primeiro e um flutuador aonde você cria uma plataforma voadora e pode pular caminhos ou pegar atalhos, o segundo e uma prancha que quando você pula em cima ela começa a ir apenas em linha reta e o ultimo acessorio e uma plataforma que gruda nas paredes e que fica descendo e subindo, os 3 itens são muito bons e dão uma ajuda gigantescas em certas fases fazendo você finalizalas sem muita dificuldade, e temos mais uma adição que eu quase esqueci de mencionar que são os E-tanks e eles servem para encher a sua barra de vida por completo então use com moderação ou tente quardar tudo pro ultimo chefe como eu geralmente costumo fazer.

As fases do primeiro jogo não eram muito chamativas e nenhum pouco bonitas mas nesse segundo eles acertaram no ponto certo com cenarios incriveis e excelente inimigos para o ambiente, a dificuldade do jogo tambem foi melhorada pois você pode jogar no normal e no dificil e eu joguei nas 2 dificuldades para ver se tem muita diferença mas não e tão gritante assim, acho que você só leva mais dano mesmo mas o resto e tudo igual, falando em dificuldade parece ate meio besta ja que a franquia sempre foi conhecida por ser bem dificil mas o primeiro jogo era um absurdo de dificil sendo que tinha inimigos que tiravam tanto a sua vida que nem fazia sentido e graças a deus isso ja não ocorre tanto nos proximos jogos.

A luta contra os chefes tambem foi muito melhorada e ate mesmo sendo muito bem equilibrada na grande maioria mas por algum motivo eu ainda acho estranho isso pois se não me engano as pessoas consideram as lutas do mega man 2 mais dificeis de todos, talvez eu só tenha interpretado mal quem sabe, mas eu diria que as lutas devem ser sim muito dificeis se você jogar apenas usando a buster, algo que eu curti muito foi a adição de mais 2 chefes assim sendo esse o primeiro jogo de mega man a colocar 8 chefes para você lutar e isso foi tão bom que ficou em todos os jogos futuros da franquia.

Como eu tinha falado mais cedo as musicas desse jogo são I-N-C-R-I-V-E-I-S eu simplismente fiquei em duvida em qual musica escolher como favorita pois todas são muito boas de se ouvir mas infelizmente tem uma que se destaca tanto mas tanto que sempre que você a escutar vai saber que ela e de mega man pois eu diria que essa e uma das musicas que ficaram marcadas na franquia e ela é "wily fortress 1", ela e uma musica marcante demais e ela traz uma sensação de fim de jogo muito boa como se você estivesse pronto para terminar dr.Willy e por um ponto final nisso tudo.

Um otimo jogo e recomendo para todos jogarem pelo menos uma vez na vida pois a franquia mega man tem muitos jogos bons e este concerteza e um deles.

Nota: 8

The first Mega Man game had a great concept but didn't execute it well. This game takes everything the first game did and improves it dramatically. There are more Robot Masters, the music is spectacular, the graphics are some of the best on the NES, and the gameplay is perfect. This is the pivotal Mega Man game from the NES era and many believe that it's the best Mega Man game ever made.

Note - as I did not beat this game, this write-up should be taken more as a set of observations than a genuine review.

Note - this game contains a couple scenes that may be triggering to epileptics

Played as part of the Mega Man Legacy Collection on Steam


Mega Man 2 is a slight improvement over its predecessor, though part of me questions how much of that came down to luck. If you read my review of the first one, you’ll know that the biggest issue I had with it was its hidden linearity - how you actually had to beat all the bosses in a specific order courtesy of certain weapons being mandatory against certain titans.

Well, given that the premise remains the same here of tackling multiple bots, the good news is I didn’t run into that problem and was able to complete most of the game. However, I just don’t know if I happened to get lucky in my selection -- see, once again, I noticed that certain robots were heavily vulnerable to certain weapons acquired from certain automatons, and considering I went left to right, top to bottom in my selection order, I wonder if that was, unintentionally, the predetermined pathway.

Regardless, even if that qualm was resolved, Mega Man 2 didn’t exactly fix the plethora of other cracks present in its forebear. For starters, the game is still very difficult and uses a password system, meaning no progress is saved and permadeath is very much a thing. Now playing on the Legacy Collection does grant you access to manual saving, as well as a rewind function enabling you to undo immediate mistakes - however, these come with their own setbacks: with the former, saving is only accessible within levels and is singular in-scope, potentially putting you up schitt’s creek if you’re doing it before every stage without the appropriate weapon; and regarding the latter, there’s a timer on how far back you can go, which would be fair were it not for the fact that it includes pause screen delays in said timer - if you’re called away from the computer for any reason, expect to unintentionally lose out on a chunk of your past (and yes, this happened to me).

With less than a year of development time, graphics and SFX have largely stayed the same from Mega Man 1. What has improved, though, are the enemy designs, most of whom are so good, they went on to become staples of the franchise in general. There are eight main worlds, each with their own theme, and I’m not lying when I tell you guys how blown away I was by the amount of new foes, from collapsible pillars and kamikaze birds to metal anglers and lightning-throwing Goros. While Super Mario Bros. holds the NES torch for enemy creativity, I definitely feel Mega Man 2 should be as much in contention for that title as it was a delight to witness.

Music has definitely seen a slight improvement as, while it’s still held back by the inherent-wonkiness of the Famicom sound chip, Takashi Tateishi’s beats managed to be infectiously catchy, riding that line between arcade action & synthetic harmony.

Gameplay continues the Mega Man trend of combining run-and-gun mechanics with platforming sections, and though different ammo types offer some variety, it’s fundamentally indifferent from its predecessor. That said, one noticeable thing about Mega Man 2 is how precise its jumping is -- it’s not used as much as it could or should have been (this is very much a shooter first), however, I was genuinely surprised by how precise the blue cyborg’s leaping and landing animations were(+) as you hop from base-to-base.

That aside, the big question you may be wondering is why did I quit when I clearly had a decent enough grasp of the game to beat its initial eight Masters? Well, in one of the six sections of the final world, you’ll come across a miniboss consisting of 5 blue orbs you must destroy with explosive grenades. That’s all well-and-fine, but the problem is I didn’t have enough ammunition for all five and consequently was forced to die. Okay, no big deal, I thought I’d just restart the level post-death and give it another go….except, the geniuses at Capcom decided to not have ammo replenish upon rebirth(++), meaning I was essentially softlocked into restarting from my last save point, which was too far back for me to consider doing.

In the end, there’s nothing else to say. Mega Man 2 might’ve been recommendable had it toned down its difficulty(+++), but when you’re forced to rely on an artificial reverse mechanic that still doesn’t rectify its core issues, you’ve got another classic that’s best left on the backburner indefinitely.



NOTES
+Ladders are the one thing you’re handicapped from doing extensive jumps off of.

++I’m not sure if this fetter was only for the final world or a universal feature. I will say you do regain all munitions between levels.

+++One part, in particular, literally has you falling down an everlooming shaft whilst one-hit-KO lasers fly from all sides, and I honestly have no idea how players back-in-the-day completed this without constantly restarting their progress.

-I will say the water physics and air bubbles Mega Man emits whilst submerged are nice additions. I don’t recall any underwater portions in the first game.

-It was sometimes hard to tell apart the firearms due to them only being identified by a single letter on the pull-up menu.

-You’ll have to contend with some slow text boxes after completing every level.