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.
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.
5 Comments
@2manyW - I used to frequent this subreddit called PatientGamers and one of the games I'd always see pop up there was the DKC games, with the posts always commenting on how difficult it was. I saw SNESDrunk do the same thing when he was reviewing the games, citing certain levels as really difficult even though he had played games like Contra and Super Star Wars.
It was bewildering at first, until I realized that maybe the reason I didn't find the DKC games difficult was because I had played them a bunch as a kid, so stages/obstacles that would appear hard to a first-time player were easy by my standards.
Perhaps that's the same thing you're experiencing here my friend? You love the series and have clearly played it a bunch, that maybe the game is just naturally easy for you?
I will admit that I was playing relatively fast-paced, but I still think there are a number BS moments (i.e. the instadeath mines and lasers) and the save/checkpoint system is unfortunately the same outdated version typical of NES era games.
The problem wasn't the boss itself, it was the game not replenishing ammo upon death. I had no problem redoing the level, but I don't understand what the purpose was in forcing players to complete restart progress from that point on.
And look on the bright side- at least I didn't hate it as much as @drawingtoptarp xD
It was bewildering at first, until I realized that maybe the reason I didn't find the DKC games difficult was because I had played them a bunch as a kid, so stages/obstacles that would appear hard to a first-time player were easy by my standards.
Perhaps that's the same thing you're experiencing here my friend? You love the series and have clearly played it a bunch, that maybe the game is just naturally easy for you?
I will admit that I was playing relatively fast-paced, but I still think there are a number BS moments (i.e. the instadeath mines and lasers) and the save/checkpoint system is unfortunately the same outdated version typical of NES era games.
The problem wasn't the boss itself, it was the game not replenishing ammo upon death. I had no problem redoing the level, but I don't understand what the purpose was in forcing players to complete restart progress from that point on.
And look on the bright side- at least I didn't hate it as much as @drawingtoptarp xD
That's funny, i've played the first DKC, but shelved it because of how bad it was kicking my ass lmao. The stretch of levels featuring Snow Barrel Blast are BRUTAL
@2manyW haha, and I can pick up the game and do those levels in my sleep now. But it just goes to show experience has a big impact.
Removed by a moderator
@OmegatheRobit - aww, you mean it?
2manyW
14 days ago