2018-12-30

So, I've been playing a lot of ROCKMANX3 recently. I tried to do a ROCKMANX 25th Anniversary marathon playing all eight games in a row, but petered out in the middle of X5. A bit reason for this was because it took me five hours to complete X3. So I wanted to get my revenge on the game by playing it more thoroughly -- it's probably the RX game I've played the least of out of the entire series. Or, at least, it was. I've been playing a lot the past couple weeks, heh.

Anyway, I've been playing around with the special weapons, which are always one of my favorite parts of ROCKMAN games. So I want to do a little bit of analysis of the arsenal as a whole. I'll be splitting them into tiers that start with E tier being the worst -- weapons that are absolute garbage that the devs should be ashamed about -- through D-C-B-A and then finally S tier. The ranking will be mostly based on usefulness, with the most universally useful weapons going into A tier. S tier is reserved for weapons that are not only very powerful, but also perfectly balanced or incredibly fun to use in my opinion. Weapons that are simply overpoewred while being unbalanced are still getting lumped into A-tier.

Small adjustments to tiers will be made based on my own personal preference. Even if two weapons are equally powerful (or useless), if one of them really appeals to me for whatever reason, it may land itself in a higher tier.

So, let's just get right to it. I'm gonna go in the order that I acquired the weapons in my last playthrough.

Tornado Fang

Tornado Fang is an interesting weapon. It's the thing you use to bust down breakable walls, giving it at least that uniqueness. Otherwise, you fire a tiny flying drill that will get "stuck" in whatever it hits and slowly damage whatever it's stuck to. While that sounds great, the damage output is pretty minimal, and after doing enough damage, it will eventually pierce through and fly off the edge of the screen, so you'll probably have to fire another one to defeat anything other than the weakest of enemies.

For a while, I thought that was all it could do. Then after a playthrough or two, I accidentally fired it rapidly twice in a row. If you do this, you get a spreadshot of three drills, rather than the normal one, and all three of them can get stuck and cause damage in unison. The biggest problem with this is that the spread doesn't tend to work very well; with smaller enemies, only one drill will get stuck anyway, and with larger ones, you're lucky to have two of them get stuck. The damage is still small enough that it takes a while to defeat the enemy, so there's no real advantage to using it over your standard buster shots, especially since it's deflected by the same things those are.

The charged version seems powerful, but it's nearly impossible to use. Once you charge it up, X's arm turns into a drill that you can use to damage enemies. It's much more powerful than the little drills, but it has two huge weaknesses. The lesser of these two is that the weapon energy drains fast. Normally, I'm all for that kind of thing, since it's well-balanced if the weapon is pretty powerful. But this is like SUPER fast. And it starts draining as soon as the charge finishes and keeps draining as long as you're holding the drill, whether or not you're actually damaging any enemies or anything.

The second flaw, the major one, of the charged version of Tornado Fang is that it breaks when it touches anything that would deflect a normal buster shot. Which means trying to get close to most enemies to even use it is ridiculously difficult, since you'll probably lose the drill and have to charge all the way back up again just to use it again. And during that fruitless endeavor, you probably lost like 8 weapon energy or something, too. There are plenty of other weapons that can dish out similar damage from afar, so it's really hard to find a good use for it.

If you don't have any decent weapons but you do have the arm upgrade for some reason, I guess this could be situationally useful. Plus you do need to use it to break down walls. In all, it was a decent idea but the execution was quite lacking.

TORNADO FANG RANK: D

Frost Shield

This was one that took me a while to warm up to. Which is funny because it's cold. (Get it?)

Using it, you fire a weird ice dagger thing that moves very slowly across the screen, though it does accelerate a little as it goes. When it collides with something, it does massive damage to the target. And what's even more interesting is that if it defeats the enemy it hits or if it collides with a wall instead of an enemy, it will attach to the wall or floor and create a fan of ice spears that will cause the same massive damage to the next thing to touch it. Of course, it shatters after being touched, so it's not like some infinite trap you can place. But it's still quite powerful and interesting.

This can take out a lot of different enemies in a single hit, and even destroys bulkier enemies in a few hits. It can take out the centipede miniboss in only five attacks! The biggest problem is that there are always lots of projectiles and stuff flying around, and enemies are largely stationary. So you have to get right up on top of an enemy and fire the thing in their face to ensure you hit them, as it's unlikely to reach it from afar with its slow speed, and very few enemies will actually move around enough to hit the fallen ice fan.

The charged version is weird, as it causes X to get a mass of ice spikes on his arm. I guess this is where the "shield" name comes from. It's basically the same idea as the charged Tornado Fang, except this time, it doesn't constantly drain energy while it's being held (making the charged Tornado Fang even more useless by comparison). Instead, you have a limited number of times it can damage enemies before shattering. But there's one fatal flaw: like the Tornado Fang, it completely shatters upon hitting anything that can deflect a normal buster shot. Add to that the fact that almost all enemies in this game fire projectiles at you, causing the charged Frost Shield to waste several of its attack counts on those projectiles, it's nearly impossible to use this effectively.

It's sheer force alone makes up somewhat for its poor speed, and unlike the Tornado Fang, the blade of ice is fairly large so you don't have to worry about completely missing. But there's one huge boon that really ranks up Frost Shield: when it defeats most enemies, it guarantees the enemy will drop an energy capsule. So not only is it powerful, but it basically works as a healing mechanism. Since it's so strong, you can easily make use of it throughout the game, filling up your subtanks effortlessly as you go. This one attribute locks in the Frost Shield at a high ranking, and also makes it one of the more unique weapons in the series. If it wasn't for the charged version breaking constantly and the design revolving around moving enemies in a game where almost all enemies stay still, I would have landed the Frost Shield in Rank S.

FROST SHIELD RANK: A

Parasitic Bomb

I was originally quite disappointed with this weapon, as it comes from the sexiest boss in the game, and I didn't understand what the hell it was supposed to do. When used, it fires some weird-looking cross-shaped thing that hits enemies and does some damage to them. And it costs a lot of weapon energy. I later noticed that when it hit certain enemies (like the ones that have around 5 to 6 HP) it would instead latch onto them, and then just kind of... get stuck there. You can only have one on the screen at a time, so all you would do is incapacitate an enemy and then have to go on without being able to use your weapons. It reminded me of the Spark Shock from Mega Man 3, which is one of the worst weapons in the entire franchise. At least with this, though, you could move through the 'captured' enemy without taking damage.

For some reason, I never used the Parasitic Bomb on a weakling enemy until way later. And this is where it really shines. When it latches onto a smaller enemy, it not only immobilizes them, but it starts carrying them around. If there's another enemy nearby, it will smash the smaller enemy into the larger enemy, dealing massive damage. It's often enough to take out the larger enemy, too. And since there are lots of little enemies placed everywhere, this is extremely useful throughout the game.

Latching onto the medium-level enemies without carrying them ends up being quite useful in a lot of places, too. There are several places where you just need to get past that one enemy which is guarding some energy capsules or other items, and you can just toss a Parasitic Bomb onto them and safely grab the items. Doing this in some elevator shaft sections, I realized that after a while of being paralyzed, the enemy will eventually explode, allowing you to shoot another Bomb (which is nice as you continue up the elevator shaft, but hardly useful anywhere else).

So not only is this thing incredibly useful, its method of attack is super unique and fun. Capturing one enemy to watch it ram into another enemy, destroying both, is extremely satisfying.

The charged shot pales in comparison, but it's hard to top such an interesting design. When charged up, four homing cursors appear around X, and if there are enemies on the screen, they'll quickly target them and then send out tiny hornet bots to attack them. They seek pretty quickly despite their minimal damage, and work pretty well when there are lots of enemies on the screen as long as you're able to stand in a safe place and give the hornets time to destroy them. It's very cute and fun, and you know I love the bug theme.

After discovering its true usefulness, the Parasitic Bomb ended up becoming one of my favorite weapons of the entire ROCKMANX series.

PARASITIC BOMB RANK: S

Ray Splasher

When I did my marathon run of this game, I went in not remembering much about the game and being pretty ignorant about how most of the weapons worked. I actually thought the Ray Splasher was the only useful thing in the entire arsenal. Amusingly enough, it's now one of my least-used weapons.

Ray Splasher is kind of cool in concept. It fires a rapid spray of little energy pellet things, but they don't go straight. They go like 30 degrees up and down from where your bullets would normally go. This sounds like it could be really useful, but most enemies in this game are stationary and on the same vertical plane as you so there's often no benefit to this at all. They are pretty strong, so if you stand right in front of an enemy to where the trajectory makes no difference, you can usually take out medium and smaller enemies pretty quickly. But you can also use something like Frost Shield and get free health pickups, or send a much-safer Parasitic Bomb from afar and take out multiple enemies at once.

The entire game isn't just one big straight line, so there are a few places that the Ray Splasher comes in useful, and it's the weakness to a few bosses where its trajectory actually does help quite a bit. So, I guess, at least it has that going for it.

The charged version of the Ray Splasher puts a ball at the top of the screen that sprays out random Ray Splasher shots around the screen. Chances are none of these are going to hit the enemies you want them to, and you could much more easily hit them with another weapon that you can actually aim, instead of taking up all the time to charge this one with the hopes that it might actually hit something a couple times.

It's strong and has an interesting trajectory, but there's just not much way to make good use of it in the game, and almost anywhere where it's helpful, there's something else that's even more helpful. Decent design, but the rest of the game's design just doesn't allow for it to be particularly useful.

RAY SPLASHER RANK: C

Bug Hole

The most amusingly-named weapon in the game, the BUG HOLE! This was changed to "Gravity Well" in the English version of the game. I guess they thought "B.Hole" sounded pretty weird to English-speakers, hehehe.

Anyway, you get this weapon from a bug, it has bug in its name... it has to be super cool, right?

Wow, is this a let-down! It took me forever to figure out what the hell this thing even did, and when I did figure it out, it was... really underwhelming.

The Bug Hole fires a little mechanism that opens up into what I assume is supposed to be some kind of black-hole-like thing. It sits on the screen and makes a little animation, and then it goes away. Most of the time, that is all it does.

If the enemy is weak enough -- and by this I mean like, maybe two or three enemies in the entire game are even weak enough to be susceptible -- then it will wait a while, immobilize the enemy for a bit, and then destroy it. But it takes a while for it to "get going," so even though this works on some (some meaning not all, or not even most) projectiles, it takes way too long to 'charge up' to actually be of any use.

The charged version of the Bug Hole is even more of a disappointment. X throws some kind of gravity black hole ball thing into the air, and all these lines move across the screen as if the entire game is being engulfed into the abyss. Looks like it might be a fun screen-cleaner like the Gravity Hold from ROCKMAN5. But guess what? It still only affects the same two or three weak enemies that are even susceptible to it. Anything else, and it does absolutely nothing.

I can't think of a time at which you would want to wait a long time and perform risky maneuvers just to take out some minor enemies that could easily be taken out in a more efficient way by any other weapon in the game, including the standard buster. I tried to find places where this could be useful -- maybe there's an enemy somewhere that's very hard to reach, and since the Bug Hole reaches the entire screen at once, this would be really useful! Well, I couldn't find any places like that, or if I could, the Bug Hole wasn't capable of damaging that enemy.

The only time the Bug Hole ever is useful in any way is in Electro Namazuros's stage where it's required to charge up the Bug Hole to power a lift that takes you to an upgrade capsule. That's it. And they easily could have just made any other weapon do that, so that's not particularly redeeming.

BUG HOLE RANK: E

Triad Thunder

This is the first one on the list that I think I'm really going to struggle coming up with a fitting rating.

The Triad Thunder is a pretty cool concept. When used, X shoots out three orb thingies: one above him, and two below him to the left and right. The orbs send bolts of electricity between each other, forming a protective barrier in a triangle around X. Now, if you know me, you know I love triangles. So that part of the concept is already pretty cool. And I love barrier and shield weapons, too.

There's a bit of delay from firing it, so you can't use it as a reaction to projectiles or something and expect to be saved. And then it dissipates after a little bit, shooting thunder beams in three directions (perhaps a nod to the Thunder Beam from the original ROCKMAN?) This makes it kind of hard to use as a shield, so you're mainly going to be using it to, well, destroy enemies.

It's pretty powerful, but like the Ray Splasher, you have to stand right up on top of an enemy to use it. And because of the triangle shape, you have to be even more dangerously close, or the enemy has to be at your feet. And it doesn't dispel all types of projectiles, just the kinds that can be destroyed, so you have to be careful about that kind of thing, too. It's great if you've memorized the stages and know exactly where you want to use it, but otherwise, you're probably better off using another weapon.

I guess if you got the Triad Thunder early enough in the game, it would be your only decent-damaging weapon, but Namazuros is a difficult boss, and if you're trying to be efficient, you'll want to have at least the arm upgrade and the Bug Hole by the time you go there, meaning you'll already have the Frost Shield. Either way, it's still good for creeping up on certain projectile-shooting enemies. But if you're like me, you'd rather dash up to them quickly and blast them in the fast with Frost Shield or capture them with Parasitic Bomb or something.

A few bosses and minibosses let the weapon shine, though, which is nice.

The charged Triad Thunder is another story, though. X punches the ground and sends two massive electricity balls across the screen. I don't think the balls actually do anything but add to the effect, because as soon as he punches the ground, everything gets destroyed. And I mean everything. I've yet to find something that doesn't instantly die after using a charged Triad Thunder (well, at least normal enemies; I'm sure the bosses don't die instantly lol). It's a little annoying because you basically have to sit and wait out the animation, but that's not too big of a deal considering you have an all-powerful weapon capable of destroying anything in your path. You also are required to use it to open a few hidden passageways to collect all the items in the game.

I initially wanted to give Triad Thunder a B because I feel like it's overshadowed by other weapons that I like better, but I feel like the ranking should be more based on how well the weapon can hold on its own. And it's pretty good on its own. The powerful charged version definitely increases its ranking, too, so I think it should get a solid A rank. I guess it not being in my favor as well as some other weapons will just bar it from getting that elusive S rank.

TRIAD THUNDER RANK: A

Spinning Blade

Here's another great one. I'm actually assigning these ranks as I type up these little analyses, so I don't actually know what exactly the rank will be until I'm done, because I might change my mind by the end. I usually have a pretty good idea, though, and I think this might be the second S rank for this game.

When the Spinning Blade is used, X fires two blade disc things in front of him. They move forward for a bit, but then swoop back around like boomerangs, one heading upward and the other downward. It's a really unique trajectory I don't think I've seen anywhere else in the series. It can be a little counter-intuitive at first when you're wanting to utilize this trajectory to hit something in front of you that's a little out of reach, as you actually have to turn backward. But in a way, I think that makes it more fun.

These little blade boomerangs are quite powerful, too. And if you stand up close to an enemy and hit them with both as they first disperse, you'll do damage with both, which is super strong. And you can spam this, too, to dish out tons of damage at once. Even large enemies don't stand too much of a chance against these things. Though with the bigger guys, you do take a little bit of risk since you'll have to stand there for a bit during the spam and they might attack you.

The biggest flaw in the Spinning Blade is that the blades immediately despawn when they're off the edge of the screen. This is great for when they're already moving backward, as you're "done" using them then and want them to be gone so you can fire more. But this is terrible when you're standing near the edge of the screen and need to hit something behind you, because they're just going to disappear as soon as you fire them. And there are several places in the game where you would definitely want to use them this way, which makes it quite frustrating.

That fatal flaw alone makes me want to knock the rank down an entire letter. But...

That's made up for by how amazing the charged version is! When charged, X fires out a HUGE spinning blade attached to some kind of cord like a yo-yo. And this thing is big, I tell you! It's also ridiculously powerful and doesn't break upon hitting things like almost everything else in this game. What's even better about it is once the thing is spinning in front of you, you can rotate the directional pad to rotate the blade in a large radius around X! You can hit almost anything with this, and with the massive damage you can deal, it will destroy pretty much anything. It's a ton of fun, and useful pretty much anywhere since it has amazing range and power.

Even if the uncharged version of this was as worthless as the Bug Hole, I think the charged version may be enough to give this thing a B or A rank on its own! But the uncharged version is quite good, too, so that's why I'm going to elevate the Spinning Blade to the top rank.

SPINNING BLADE RANK: S

Acid Rush

Ah, the tragedy that is the Acid Rush. This weapon has a really great concept that I like a lot. I tried really, really hard to make good use of it.

The Acid Rush fires a little blob of acid that moves upward for a little bit, then plops onto the ground in front of X. When it hits the surface, it splashes into four little beads of acid, all of which can cause individual damage to enemies. And it doesn't have to splash on the ground -- if you jump and shoot it into the ceiling, it will rain down its splash. Of course, you can shoot it into a wall, too, to splash it off of there. It should have been called the Acid Splash.

Now, this concept is my kind of weapon in design. But there's a huge problem... It's weak as hell! You can hit enemies with the initial blob, and it seems to do around 3 damage, which is... not much at all. You can take out the weakest of enemies with this, but it's very slow, and you're better off using anything else. And other enemies require multiple shots, which is not helpful at all, as you can't spam this weapon. So maybe you're supposed to hit with the splashes, right? Do more damage by hitting more times? Wrong! The splashes are even weaker that the main blob! I think they could have saved this weapon by allowing it to hit an enemy and then disperse into splashes, allowing the splashes to rain down and cause additional damage. Maybe that was the original intent but it wasn't programmed properly? I don't know.

The charged version fires out multiple larger blobs that kinda bounce around... but again, they're stupid weak. It's a huge shame. There's not really any reason to charge this up unless you really don't have anything else to use.

I guess if you went to Seaforce's stage first and this was all you had, it wouldn't be terrible. And there's a few places where you can utilize its upward trajectory. But outside of that, this is a weapon with great concept but greatly flawed execution.

ACID RUSH RANK: C

Overall

And that's all of 'em. In the end, we had Sx2, Ax2, Cx2, D, and E. Seems like the distribution actually favors the upper tiers! Which is somewhat surprising to me, considering how adverse I've always felt about this game. I'm really starting to like it more and more. If I were to assign point values to each tier rank and average them out, the ranking of the entire arsenal overall would be something like a B-.

I'm really surprised how much fun there is to be had with a lot of these weapons. It's a shame that the game's overall design is a bit lackluster and the enemy variety is so small. If this game had the design and variety of the first X game, I think these weapons could have gotten even higher rankings, as part of what hurts them is the lack of ability to be used very creatively thanks to the lack of creativity in the stage designs.

I had a lot of fun writing this even though it took several days (I blame being sick) so I want to write them for the other two SFC games, maybe even for the whole series. It'll be interesting to average out the scores for all of them and see which games overall get the highest average arsenal scores.

#mega man x3 #rockmanx3 #rockman #rockmanx

2018-07-22

Hey friends. So, Mega Man X Legacy Collection is coming out in like a day, and I want to whine about some stuff. You know, because the best way to celebrate something you're super excited for is to complain about it. Well, only one of the complaints is about the collection, the other is just about the fanbase lol.

SO BIG COMPLAINT TIME. It's been officially disclosed that they're going to alter the English version of Mega Man X5 and change the names of the characters to their Japanese versions.

This is kind of old news now but I've been whining about it on GameFAQs for a while, so why not here, too? Well, I don't want to rant TOO much there so I can put more detail here where no one will even read it.

If you're unfamiliar with what I'm talking about, the person in charge of the localization for X5 back when it was released on the PlayStation decided to take some creative liberties with the names of the eight boss characters. Instead of the Japanese names like "Tidal Makoeen" and "Shining Hotarunicus" we got names like "Duff McWhalen" and "Izzy Glow." Personally, I loved this change because it gave the characters more personality, and in X5 in particular, they tried to start putting a lot of backstory to the characters, 'humanizing' them more than just 'animal-shaped things you fight.' You actually talk to them before fighting them and there are a variety of possible dialogues depending on what's happened in the story so far, and you can learn about them as characters. So I've always loved being able to refer to Dr. Glow as, well, Dr. Glow

Since the release of the English version of the game, fans have complained about the names and created their own fan-dubbed names for the characters. That's right -- they didn't use the Japanese names! Because as much as people hate that it was changed, they don't even like the Japanese names either. Instead of Hotarunicus, people would say things like "Shine Firefly."

This is because it put them more in line with the localized names of the first four games -- all of which were changed for the English releases, too. The names of the characters have always been creative or strange alterations of English words, like "Icy Penguigo" or "Electro Nazamuros," but they were changed for the English versions to tame things that followed this ugly Noun + Animal Name formula like "Chill Penguin" and "Volt Catfish." So all this time people are complaining that we didn't use the Japanese names (yes, the complaints were specifically worded like that) when fans didn't even like the Japanese names anyway. For the longest time I never had played X2 or X3 in English and only knew the Japanese names of the characters and would get crap for it from other fans when I used them because I was using the "stupid" names and the English names were "better." But I'm not going to go look up the English names just to talk about the game lol.

So fans hate all the names except for the weird early-English ones. And now people are cheering that the names are changed... but they're changed to the other names that those exact same fans hated as well...? The fans that were complaining about the new names refused to use the original names, too, so... lol.

Anyway, this actually wasn't meant to be my complaint about the fanbase. This is my complaint about Capcom's decision. The reason that Capcom gave for changing the names back to the original version was that it was to create a ~cohesive experience~ now that all eight games are available together to be played at once. Of course, they didn't bother changing it back when the Mega Man X Collection was released for PS2 that contained the first six games all together.

But my main problem with this excuse is that changing only one game's name doesn't create that same experience...? The first four games still have their localized names unchanged, so we're going to go from games with characters named stuff like "Armadillo" and "Ostrich" to suddenly having names like "Pegacion," "Scaravich," and "Stonekong." That's... not a cohesive experience at all?

And I would put money on saying they probably won't even change various other localization errors that cause even worse breaks to the cohesive experience like saying Magma Dragoon "left the Irregular Hunters" and crap like that.

So what does this decision even do? Fans are not getting the names they like, just another set of names they hate. And Capcom isn't getting the cohesive experience they're claiming to create. So this change does literally nothing other than ruin the nostalgic experience for fans who liked the original names. Oh, and to add insult to injury, the Japanese versions of the games will also be playable in the collection so you could easily just play those if you wanted to see the other names.

OK, first rant done.

Now my second rant is against the fanbase itself. And that's in the constant hatred toward Mega Man X7.

Now, Mega Man X7 is by no means a great game. Personally, I love the game, but I will quickly admit there are a lot of flaws. Unlike Unlimited Saga, though, which I would hesitate to recommend to someone unless I knew their tastes very well because it's a flawed game that I would anticipate many people disliking, Mega Man X7 is decent enough that I think most people could easily have fun with it, especially if they like Mega Man X games. In fact, the game pays homage to the rest of the series in a lot of ways that it should be even more enjoyable to long-time fans.

Recently, I've been playing a lot of Sonic Adventure 2: Battle on Steam, trying to 100% the game (which also includes breeding three perfect Chaos Chao and filling the rest of the Chao Garden with Chao based on my friends and Twitch regulars, so I'm nearing 300 hours with the game now...). This is my third time replaying Sonic Adventure 2 from beginning to end. Having lots of experience with both SA2 and MMX7, I'm pretty confident to say they have very similar quality.

Both of them have messed up cameras (though Sonic's can be worse at times where you can get stuck with the camera behind a wall or something so you see literally nothing at all and have no choice but to die, where as X7's camera is more just frustrating in that sometimes you want to be able to turn it but you can't, but you can still see your character and see what's around you enough to keep playing the game; not any worse than Super Mario 64's camera issues.)

Both of them have clunky controls. Here, both of them are pretty equal where they both have times you'll try to use a certain skill only to use another and end up getting yourself hurt -- or worse -- plummeting to your death. But both of them had predecessors like this with Sonic Adventure and Mega Man X6 also having these problems.

Both of them have hilariously bad voice acting, with a couple of characters having good voices while everyone else is terribly that you hardly notice the good ones anymore. Both have noisy, talkative bosses that repeat the same lines ovr and over and annoying support characters who constantly interrupt you to say stuff like, "Did you know you can JUMP in this game?!"

The only things that Sonic really has over X7 is the Chao Garden and the graphics are a little nicer. Though the PC version of X7 has great graphics, as they were able to do a lot of aesthetic stuff they had to cut or redo for the PS2 version. So hopefully we'll be getting a port of the PC version and not an emulation of the PS2 version. Then the only thing we're missing is the Chao Garden.

X7 also was the first Mega Man X game to offer a New Game+ mode, allowing you to start the game with powered up Hunters and unlocked characters and abilities, as well as allowing you to fully upgrade your characters with all of their Chips, something that fans complained about not being able to do in previous titles. The game also is more cinematic and has more story than previous games, trying to create a more cohesive story experience with (skippable!) cutscenes between every stage and a lot of character and lore development. Again, another thing people complained about in previous titles.

Now, I understand the initial backlash to X7 pretty well. It does a few things that infuriated a lot of fans. The main thing being that the game's title character, X, has now retired and turned into a background support character, with a completely new made-up character named Axl with an "annoying teenager" personality taking his place. I think that's reason enough to immediately have a sour taste about the game, and I understand how that can affect your impression of the game from the start. Then there's the fact that they tried out the 3D stuff. In a franchise that already had about 20 major titles and plenty of spinoff titles that were all build around the same 2D platforming formula, suddenly changing that around is off-putting.

And this is the place that X7 suffers the most. Fans wanted something the same, but they got something different. And the reaction to that is always "this game is terrible and bad and everything about it is bad." But X7 is actuall a really fun game in its own right, marred by a few unfortunate flaws. But it's not any worse than something like Sonic Adventure 2 or Banjo-Tooie which are decent-but-flawed games succeeding previously better games. The difference is that Sonic still starred sonic and was built around the Sonic Adventure engine, while Banjo-Tooie starred Banjo and Kazooie yet again while being built from the Banjo-Kazooie engine.

Overall, I'd say I enjoy Mega Man X7 more than either Sonic or Banjo. Actually, I kind of hate Banjo-Tooie and think it's objectively a poorly-designed game overall. Sonic and X7 are around the same level, like I mentioned before, I'm just more attached to Mega Man as a franchise and like the shoter, replayable aspect of Mega Man compared to the long do-it-once campaign style of Sonic Adventure.

OK, so with all of that context, here's the problem we're having now: This is going to be many fans' first experience with Mega Man X7. This is a perfect opportunity for them to add another fun new Mega Man game to their library. An entire experience they can enjoy. But so many aren't going to. I've seen so many fans who haven't played X7 before already saying they're going to refuse to even try the game despite owning it on the collection, or already saying the hate the game before even playing it. And it's all because of the overreaction of previous fans.

Like, I get being upset that the game is about some new rando and does all this weird new stuff and didn't deliver the experience you were expecting it to. I definitely undrstand that. That's happened with me many times with many franchises. But instead of, you know, objectively criticising the decisions and direction of the company, people loudly and publicly hate on the game so bad that they ruin others' experience of the game by marring their opinion of the game before they even have a chance to try the game for themselves.

I played X7 not knowing the fan reaction of the game at the time and found it to be a very enjoyable experience. Yeah, I had my own complains about it and think some of the design choices were pretty questionable. But there's a lot to the game beyond that and a lot to love there. And I remember when I told my brother and some friends that it was a pretty much universally-hated game and they were shocked to learn that, because they also viewed the game for what it was and not for what it was made out to be by obnoxious fans. And I've met plenty of other X7 fans online, and we all share the same experiences -- whenever we try to express any kind of fondness for the game, we're heckled and belittled, usually by comments with very little substance.

In fact, I've seen entire professional reviews of the game that can't even manage to explain why the game is bad, and just constantly say "Oh man, this is so terrible! Don't even play it!" the whole time. It's so ridiculous. X7's reputation is one of the most overblown and unrealistic things I've ever seen in the history of gaming. And I have a lot of complaints about general reactions to various things throughout gaming history...

So, lots of crying about why I'm mad about this game.

But don't get me wrong, I am so stoked about Mega Man X Legacy Collection, and yeah, one of those reasons is finally having a PC version of X7 to play. In fact, I've been losing sleep because I can't contain my excitement for pretty much the entire weekend and I won't even be able to play the game until Tuesday. To be honest I can't even tell you why I'm so excited considering I already own all of the games in the collection anyway...

So let's talk about something I really like about the collection, so we're not all negative here. (Geez I've been using a lot of italics in this post...)

And that awesome thing is the achievements! I know some people don't care about stuff like that, but I love achievements in games, because I like to replay games anyway, and it's fun trying to explore the game and see what kind of stuff I missed. Achievements usually encourage you to try things you wouldn't normally try or to pay attention to aspects of the game you didn't pay much attention to otherwise. Well, when they're good achievements.

Sadly, the achievements for Mega Man Legacy Collection were not very good. Pretty much there were just achievements for clearing each title in the collection and for clearing arbitrary numbers of the challenges. So I was expecting this collection to be the same. I'm trying to avoid learning too much about the collection so I can have some surprises (though I'm way too excited and involved with talking to other fans so I don't think much will be a surprise at this point) so I was considering not looking at the achievements beforehand. But I figured I may as well sneak a peek and get the disappointment out of the way early.

But instead, I was very pleasantly surprised!

There are achievements related to each individual title, which encourage you not only to play through each game and collect all the optional items and stuff, but also encourage you to play around with the games in various ways! For example, there's an achievement for cutting off Flame Mammoth's trunk in Mega Man X or for defusing seven bombs in a row in The Skiver ~~Spiral Pegacion~~'s stage in Mega Man X5. Sadly, the X7 ones seem to be the least creative, but they at least encourage you to try out all the different weapons and techniques and play the game on New Game+ a little.

Actually X8's look even worse and less creative but will force you to play the game way too much because the requirement to upgrade everyone to 100% is pretty much a ton of tedious grinding.

There are also a slew of hidden achievements, which will probably be awarded for reaching certain story points in each game. But that's interesting because X5 and X6 both have a lot of varying story paths and endings so hopefully there will be hidden achievements for doing things in those different ways.

#mega man x legacy collection #mega man x5 #rockmanx5 #mega man x7 #rockmanx7 #rockman

2018-06-15

Hello, friends~

I've mostly been working on The Strelitzia Inn so I haven't been updating Play Diaries too much (oops!)

But I have been playing quite a bit of UNLIMITED:Saga for data collection, so I'm moving forward with Ventus. I'm kinda at a crossroads now where I'm wondering if I should finish up the Play Diary and just load an old save to work on the site, or if I should keep on chugging now and write about the experience in the Play Diary...

I've also played a lot of Romancing SaGa 2, but I just haven't been writing entries lol;;

I've been streaming regularly on Twitch, too, mostly playing Mega Man games. I've been doing this 'death tolls' thing to see how few deaths I can accumulate while playing through games while on stream.

I've also pre-registered for the Four Job Fiesta again this year, and I'm gonna be doing #BERSERKERRISK. I'm not gonna be trying to write about it again, but I hope to be streaming the whole thing, so make sure to come check me out on Twitch next week if you wanna see it~~

#play diaries #unlimited:saga #mega man #rockman #final fantasy v #four job fiesta

2018-05-18

Well, I've been trying to clear all the achievements on MMLC2 on Steam, which means playing through Mega Man 8 again. I'm actually playing ROCKMAN8, since I haven't played it before. It's just as funny as MM8. I do like how the speech styles are able to give a bit more personality to the characters.

Anyway, that means I'm rekindling my love/hate relationship with this game. This game is full of long, poorly-designed stages, obnoxious minibosses, weird and useless items, sluggish movement, and mostly annoying music. But on the other hand, the graphics and little voice clips are super cute, the character designs are pretty neat, and most of all, there's BOLT COLLECTION!

If you haven't played the game before, basically there are these Bolt items hidden throughout stages which can be exchanged for parts that power up Rock as you play, enhancing your abilities. There's a limited number of Bolts, and the cost of all the upgrades is more than there are total Bolts in the game, plus you can only have eight total upgrade items built from Bolts, so you need to think wisely about what to spend your Bolts on. Furthermore, you obviously will collect Bolts as you go, so you can't just buy all the upgrades right away.

Probably my favorite aspect of this game is planning out a route through the stages and planning when and on what to spend my Bolts.

There are 40 Bolts to spend, with 17 different items you can build with them.

Some items are fairly useless or don't help much if you're skilled at the game. For example, if you're planning a no-damage run, there's no reason to buy the Power Shield which decreases knockback when you take damage, since, well, you're not going to be taking damage to begin with.

The useless items include Power Shield, Spare Extra, and Spare Charger.

There are also items that suit other players' style of gameplay, that are largely unnecessary for me personally, like the Shooting Part, Auto Shoot, Boost Part, and Rapid Part.

That leaves these items as the ones worth buying:

• Energy Balancer (5) - When collecting Weapon Energy Capsules when the current weapon is full of energy or no weapon is equipped, the weapon with the least amount of energy is refilled (rather than just wasting the energy like normal). Not necessary, but very convenient.
• Exit (4) - Allows you to leave a stage you've cleared before at any time, without having to get all the way to the boss room. Very convenient considering the amount of revisits required and the slow, long stages.
• Laser Shot (5) - Changes Rock's Charge Shot to the Laser Shot. I still am not sure which I like the best out of the regular, Laser, and Arrow Shot.
• Arrow Shot (5) - Changes Rock's Charge Shot to the Arrow Shot.
• Step Booster (5)- Makes Rock climb ladders faster. Totally unnecessary, but nice to have.
• Energy Saver (6) - Makes weapons use less Weapon Energy. Probably the best item you can make!
• Super Recover (5) - Makes Rock recover more Energy and Weapon Energy when picking up Capsules. Very nice for recovering Weapon Energy!
• Hyper Slider (5) - Speeds up Rock's slide dash. Pretty nice.
• High Speed Charge (7) - Lessens the time it takes to charge the Charge Shot. Very nice for what it does, but I also hardly use Charge Shots.
• Exchanger (4) - If you pick up Life Energy Capsules while Life Energy is full, they will be converted to Weapon Energy instead! Extremely powerful when combined with Energy Saver and Super Recover!

Of course, that's more than 8 items, and the total cost of all of those is well above 40, so we can't have them all.

The Energy Saver, Super Recover, and Exchanger combined make it difficult to run out of Weapon Energy, which is extremely powerful. Those combined cost 15 Bolts, however, and everything after Step Booster in that list can only be purchased after clearing the first six stages (including the intro stage and the Duo stage). Energy Balancer makes the whole setup a lot more convenient, and with that we've already spent half our Bolts and filled up half our space.

If we're collecting all the bolts possible, Exit is a must, which leaves us with 16 Bolts to spend on other things, and only three things left we can buy. Hyper Slider and Step Booster maximize our speed, but we're missing out on the two unique Charge Shots since we'll only be able to hold one more item. If we forego the two unique Charge Shots, we can barely afford High Speed Charge as our last item, though, powering up the regular Charge Shot by making it faster to charge.

If we go for both special Charge Shots and both mobility boosters, we could still get by with sacrificing one of our convenience items, either the Exit or Energy Balancer.

Though if we're not concerned with collecting all the items in the game, we can skip Exit altogether and just not revisit stages. It will give us fewer Bolts to work with, but we'll at least be saving 4 Bolts by not buying the Exit. And of course, we don't have to fill up all 8 slots, either. We could sacrifice even more to minimize our time spent running around stages.

All of these factors make the Bolt collection aspect of Mega Man 8 interesting for me. I think I actually enjoy thinking about Bolts more than I actually enjoy playing the game, but then it's kind of pointless to think about them if you don't actually put all this thought into action.

So, it's been a long time since I planned a route through this game and I don't feel like digging up my old notes on LiVEJOURNAL (or rather, DreamWidth now) so I'm going to just plan a new route. Though I've always prioritized Energy Balancer and sacrificed one of the special Charge Shots. I think this time, I'm going to try to create a route that collects all the Bolts, minimizes time spent revisiting stages, and collects the most useful items early in the game. I also want the collection to feel very "complete" so anything that adds unique functionality into the game will be bought. This means we're getting both special Charge Shots and both mobility items.

Exit is far more convenient and necessary for this type of playthrough compared to Energy Balancer, and I'd like to have the Holy Trinity of Weapon Energy with Energy Saver, Super Recover, and Exchanger.

So our eight items to build will be Exit (4), Energy Saver (6), Super Recover (5), Exchanger (4), Arrow Shot (5), Laser Shot (5), Step Booster (5), and Hyper Slider (5).

In all, that's 39 Bolts, so we're within our budget.

The question now arises, when do we buy each thing? Exit is only necessary once we start revisiting stages, which will be after clearing the initial ten stages, so we can hold off on it for a while. Everything else, though, seems like it could be useful early on. Laser Shot is particularly good at damaging bosses, and I like to face the bosses the first time around without using the special weapons that they're weak to. So having Laser Shot for those would be nice. Most bosses have a time they're invulnerable so you can spend that time charging, using regular shots otherwise. Arrow Shot, on the other hand, is very useful during stages, as it creates a splash of shots upon impact, letting it destroy many enemies at once. Step Booster would be nice to have in Sword Man and Aqua Man's stages, as they both have parts where you evade death traps while climbing ladders.

There's also the fact that Exit, Laser Shot, Arrow Shot, and Step Booster are the only items that can be bought in the first "half" of the route. This can mean buying them early, or not buying anything to save up for the Energy-based items once they become available in the second half.

In the first half of the game, we can collect bolts from these locations:

• 3 Bolts in the intro stage
• 4 Bolts in Clown Man's stage
• 4 Bolts in Grenade Man's stage
• 5 Bolts in Frost Man's stage
• 3 Bolts in Tengu Man's stage

One of the Bolts in Frost Man's sage requires the Flash Bomb to acquire, so we have to make sure to defeat Grenade Man first. Similarly, one of the Bolts in Clown Man's stage requires the Rush Bike to get, which is also obtained from Grenade Man's stage. This isn't the total of all the bolts in each stage; all of them have another Bolt that requires revisiting after acquiring weapons from the second half of the game. So in all, the first half of the game allows us to procure 19 Bolts before we unlock the second half of the items.

Once we get to the second half, we'll gain an additional 2 Bolts from the Duo mid-stage thing, and then we'll have access to these bolts:

• 4 Bolts in Search Man's stage
• 4 Bolts in Astro Man's stage
• 4 Bolts in Aqua Man's stage
• 3 Bolts in Sword Man's stage

A Bolt in Search Man's stage requires us to have the Flame Sword from Sword Man first, while a Bolt in Aqua Man's stage requires us to have the Astro Crush from Astro Man first.

We don't need to buy Exit until we've completed all eight stages once, so we don't need to worry about prioritizing it early. Both of the special Charge Shots are available from the beginning and would be nice to get early. Step Booster is also available right away, but we only really need it for Sword Man and Aqua Man's stages the most.

If we buy all three of the items available right away other than Exit, we'll spend a total of 15 Bolts. This leaves us only with 4, plus the 2 from the Duo stage, going into the second half. With this six we can afford only one of the Energy items.

If we hold off on buying the Step Booster right away, though, we'll be able to afford two of them at the midpoint, but buying two of them will lock us into playing Astro Man's stage first, as we can't visit Aqua Man until we have defeated Astro Man, we can't visit Search Man until we've defeated Sword Man, and we can't visit Sword Man until we've bought the Step Booster. I mean, we could easily go through Sword Man's stage without the Step Booster, but part of the fun of creating these "paths" is to get optimal usage out of all of the different items.

Buying the Step Booster early and saving one of the Energy items for later allows us to at least choose to visit Sword Man's stage first in the second round of stages, which also allows us to choose the next stage as either Search Man or Astro Man. So we get a bit more variety to the stage order. The Flame Sword isn't a particularly useful weapon overall, so there's no reason to want to get it early. Though the Homing Sniper is pretty nice, but so is the Astro Crush.

It's also possible to visit Frost Man's stage before visiting Grenade Man's stage if we want, since we'll have to come back to Frost Man's stage later anyway. We'll just have to save that one Bolt there for later, giving us fewer Bolts in the first half. The same can be said for visiting Clown Man's stage before Grenade Man's.

There are also the four Rush Adaptors that we can find which we have to account for. They're freely dropped by the minibosses in Grenade Man, Clown Man, Sword Man, and Aqua Man's stages.

Grenade Man's stage houses the Rush Bike, which is really awesome and allows us to ride quickly on rush like a motorcycle. This allows for extra-long jumps, too, like the one required for one of Clown Man's Bolts.

Clown Man's stage houses Rush Item, which just summons Rush to drop an item and can be used once per stage. There's a chance of him giving even a Yashichi, though!

Sword Man's miniboss drops Rush Bomber, which lets Rush fly around above the stage and drop bombs. Cool in theory, but hardly ever that necessary.

And Aqua Man's stage has the Rush Health adaptor, which is like the Rush Bomber, but Rush drops Energy Capsules (both Life and Weapon types!)

Giving us Rush Bike and the Flash Bomb which gives us a powerful weapon, cool adaptor, and the ability to get two extra Bolts in the first half without having to revisit, Grenade Man's stage seems like a great place to start.

Having at least the Flash Bomb and Ice Wave help a lot in Tengu Man's stage. Tornado Hold can be useful against Clown Man's miniboss, and Thunder Claw isn't particularly useful anywhere in the first half any more than other items are.

So a decent order for the first have sounds like Grenade - Frost - Tengu - Clown.

There aren't too many places where the Arrow Shot becomes useful in Frost Man's stage, but the Laser Shot can help defeat Frost Man more quickly. So buying the Laser Shot first after Grenade Man's stage seems like a good way to go. Then after Frost Man's stage, we can get the Arrow Shot, which comes in handy in Tengu Man's stage (and most stages at some point).

In the second half, we need to visit either Sword or Astro first, as explained before. If we go to Astro first, we can save our Bolts from the first half and get both Energy Saver and Exchanger right away. Or we could save Super Recover and Exchanger for much later and prioritize Hyper Slider earlier.

Or if we want to visit Sword first, we'd have to pick up the Step Booster ahead of time and save the Exchanger for later.

I guess it depends on whether I'd rather have Astro Crush for Sword Man's stage or Rush Bomber for Astro Man's stage. The former seems like it would be more useful, so I'll go with that for now, but I'll have to pay attention for places to make use of Rush Bomber next time I play Astro Man's stage.

After that, we could go to Sword Man or Aqua Man's stage next. We'll get 4 bolts in Aqua Man's stage, and 3 in Sword Man's stage. I don't think we'll make much use of Rush Bomber in Aqua Man's stage (nor the Flame Sword), so it might be better to go there first. And Water Balloon is a decent spam-shot weapon. Either way, we need to make sure we buy Step Booster first.

Search Man's stage can really go anywhere after Sword Man, so if we're saving Sword Man for third, that means Search Man ends up being last.

So here's an example path through the game:

• Intro Stage (3/3 Bolts)
• Grenade Man (7/7 Bolts)
• Laser Shot (2/7 Bolts)
• Frost Man (7/12 Bolts)
• Arrow Shot (2/12 Bolts)
• Tengu Man (5/15 Bolts)
• Clown Man (9/19 Bolts)
• Duo (11/21 Bolts
• Energy Saver (5/21 Bolts)
• Astro Man (9/25 Bolts)
• Step Booster (4/25 Bolts)
• Aqua Man (8/29 Bolts)
• Hyper Slider (3/29 Bolts)
• Sword Man (6/32 Bolts)
• Super Recover (1/32 Bolts)
• Search Man (5/36 Bolts)
• Exit (1/36 Bolts)
• Revisits (5/40 Bolts)
• Exchanger (1/40 Bolts)

It sounds pretty good overall, minimizes revisits, gets Step Booster before the two areas where it would be most needed, and even gets Hyper Slider before Sword Man where it can be helpful.

With so much opportunity to replenish energy in the game, though, it might be better to hold off on something like the Exchanger or Super Recover in favor of something like High-Speed Charge. And if we didn't care about collecting all possible bolts, we could even avoid the Exit, since it basically just pays for itself anyway (since there are four Bolts you get by revisiting four stages, and Exit costs four Bolts itself).

Replacing Super Recover and Exchanger with High-Speed Charge will save an extra 2 Bolts. So we'd have 3 left over at the end, and nothing to spend them on. It's a bit of a shame since it means we won't be filling up all eight slots of items. But that's part of the price of buying expensive items like Energy Saver and High-Speed Charge.

The biggest con against getting High-Speed Charge is that it's acquired so late in the game it isn't able to be put to much use. It would be nicer if we could have had it earlier in the game before we got lots of nice weapons and used more Charge Shots.

And sort of like not filling up all eight slots, there are also four slots for "Shot" in the second submenu. The regular Charge Shot is one of them, and then the Arrow Shot and Laser Shot take up the next two spaces. I have no idea what even fills up the last spot. But it will be left empty with the above path.

But yeah, this is just the example of one thought process I go through thinking about playing Mega Man 8. And honestly this is probably the most fun part of the game. The planning part, I mean.

#mega man #rockman #mega man 8 #rockman8

2018-05-16

Hello, friends. It's been a little while since an update, I know. I have a couple things ready to write, like a new entry for SaGa 2 and ROCKMAN2, and then just need to do a little bit more playing in other things to keep writing on those. I recently became a Twitch Affiliate, so I've been doing a lot of streaming when I can because I'm kinda hyped about it. Not that much will come from that, but... it's still fun. The Stardew Valley mutiplayer beta has been released, too, and I've been playing that with my friends. And then I've of course had the general Health Issues™ and I've been dealing with more Life Things than I'm really capable of handling well recently.

But among all that, a very cool thing happened! And that's what we're here to talk about today. A group of ten fans, myself include, got together on GameFAQs to do this Mega Man Weapons Draft thing. Basically, we took turns and picked weapons from the entire series to create a 'dream arsenal' of sorts to be used in a hypothetical new world for Rock to explore that had obstacles and enemeis both old and new.

I've talked about before how one of the most interesting thing about Mega Man as a series is that despite its simplicity it lends itself to a wide range of play styles that differ from player to player allowing for many unique ways to experience the game even though you're essentially going through the same stages and accomplishing the same goals every time.

This draft worked to highlight and explore those difference in play style and preference between ten different players of the series. We could see what kinds of things different players prioritized and things like that, and see how it felt to get something you wanted taken away from you before you could grab it.

It was a ton of fun. The rules are pretty simple to explain, too. The game was organized by GFAQs user EnigmaZero, and we used a randomized order to select our picks from a list of pretty much all of the weapons and utilities in the classic series. Each round the order reversed, so the two on the ends got to pick twice in a row. I was the second person in the order, so I got two picks close together. There were 127 items to choose from and ten of us playing, so each participant chose 12 items each, leaving only seven unpicked.

So, I'm going to talk a bit about my "strategy" and resulting arsenal.

There weren't really any concrete goals to what we were trying to create, so everyone had different values. Some people wanted to have the most powerful set, some people wanted to be prepared for any type of hazard they may encounter, etc. Personally, I wanted to have a well-rounded set that was fun to play with. The "fun factor" was my most important quality, so I was mainly hoping to grab up weapons I simply enjoyed using from the series, even if they weren't necessarily the most powerful of their type.

As far as variety, I made a list of the types of usefulness that were most important to me:

• Shield Weapon
• Ground Weapon
• Anti-air Weapon
• Mobility Item
• Wall-Breaking Item
• Seeking Weapon
• Directional/Aimable Weapon
• Freezing Weapon
• Anti-Gabyoall Weapon

Since we got a total of twelve picks, and I only had nine important qualities (some of which could even overlap), I figured I'd spend the rest of my efforts into filling in holes and balancing out the set, grabbing some high-power weapons in there.

Before I go into the individual picks, I want to note that EnigmaZero made some cool graphics and a poll for the results of the draft over at GameFAQs. You can see the topic and images with everyone's picks and vote on whose arsenal you like best over at This link!

Also, everyone started with of course Rock's standard Mega Buster and the Rush Coil, as that's pretty common starting equipment in the games. We had the choice of the normal Rush Coil or the Mega Man 5 version of Rush Coil. I was the only person who picked the MM5 Coil. I've never understood why people seem to vastly prefer the other coil. They both have the same functional result (give you a higher jump), but you have more versatility and control with the MM5 Coil. I guess it does require a slight bit more technical skill to use, but I feel like that wouldn't deter most players. But you can control the height of your jump with the MM5 coil, whereas with the standard coil, you're forced into one height and one momentum. And since my goal here was versatility, the MM5 Coil felt like a much better fit.

Round 1

I was super curious how the first round was going to start off. Surprisingly, the very first pick was for Search Snake. That's definitely something that I thought would be available for most of the draft. I wasn't interested in it anyway, because there are better ground-rovers out there like the Ice Wave or Plug Ball.

My general strategy going in was to look at the 'needs' I had and see which would be the most dire to pick up quickly. I made a little list of all the items and weapons that could fulfill each property, and then looked it over to see which categories didn't have a lot of options and which of them contained only popular options... basically, stuff I would feel like I needed to pick earlier.

The most obvious first round pick for me was definitely a shield weapon, as there are few good shield weapons in the game. I either wanted to nab the Jewel Sattelite or the Junk Shield, and since I got to pick second, I got to grab the best shield in the entire series, Jewel Satellite!

It's a solid start, too. A shield is one of the most vital parts of an arsenal to me, and the Jewel Satellite functions not only as an amazing shield, but a pretty powerful weapon if you're willing to get close to enemies.

The rest of Round 1 saw a lot of "powerhouse" weapons being taken, like Metal Blade, Pharaoh Shot, and Thunder Beam. I was pretty happy to see this, and kind of expected it, because raw power was not one of my priorities and that meant that more of the utility/fun weapons were left open for me.

Round 2

Round 2 started with another strange pick -- Super Arm. At this point I started to get worried that the picks were going to be super random and things I really wanted were going to get gobbled up fast solely by chance. But then the rest of the round continued and a bunch of raw-power weapons like Drill Bomb, Flash Bomb, Rain Flush, and Flash Stopper got picked up. I really am not fond of screen-clear weapons so I was glad to see a lot of these going early. And Drill Bomb is a great weapon with the utility to break open barriers as well, but my first choice for a barrier-breaker was actually the Hard Knuckle, which I figured wouldn't be popular enough to get taken very early anyway.

Round 2 was reverse order of Round 1, so I only had to wait for Lil_Bit83 to make her two picks before I got to pick again for Round 3. The second pick of Round 2 after Super Arm was actually the MM3 Rush Jet, so I got kinda paranoid about picking a utility. I wasn't planning on taking a utility this early, but Huey's Rush Jet pick scared me into it. I ended up going with the MM4+ Rush Jet. I figured I may as well grab it as early as I could, and I'd be getting another pick soon enough.

Round 3

I wasn't particularly worried about picking Rush Jet as my second pick since I only had to go through Lil_Bit83's two picks before I could pick again. But sadly, I was in for a shock when she chose Air Shooter as one of her picks. It was my primary choice for an anti-air weapon (especially since I'm in the middle of my ROCKMAN2 Play Diary where Air Shooter is a valuable tool I'm attached to) so I was really sad to see it go.

And now I was starting to get even more paranoid. I originally thought that since I was mostly focusing on weapons with various utilities that weren't necessarily all-powerful nor popular, I'd have an easy time snatching them all up and getting a dream arsenal. But after having my Round 2 pick "forced" on me and then something I thought I wouldn't see go before I got to it gobbled up before I even got my third pick, I was really freaking out.

I was very close to grabbing the Hard Knuckle as my third pick simply because I was so worried all my unpopular picks were going to be taken before I could get to them. Fortunately I gave myself some time to think about it and realized that I had actual popular things on my list that I should get out of the way beforehand, and ended up going with the Hornet Chaser. With its seeking ability and ability to pick up items and return them to Rock, it was a solid addition to any arsenal, and from the responses to it, one that many other players wanted, so I'm glad I picked it up when I did.

And at this point, all three of my choices were items from Mega Man 9. I mean, it's not too surprising since that game has great weapons and stage design. A lot of MM9 weapons were going fast.

Round 4

The end of Round 3 and the return trip through Round 4 saw a lot of good weapons being taken, as well as a lot more variety. The Super Arrow was picked up, which is a fun choice, and someone even grabbed the Wheel Cutter, something I was hoping to nab when I didn't have anything else I knew to grab at the time.

My turn started to approach again, and I was getting pretty excited that I was going to get the opportunity to grab the Plug Ball when it was my turn. I didn't realize at the time I was going to still have an all-MM9 arsenal through the fourth round.

But everything was ruined when Redmage1987 chose the Plug Ball in his pick, which was the pick just before mine. I was pretty set on choosing it that I didn't even have a backup plan. And the Ice Wave had been taken earlier in the round, so my backup for the Plug Ball was also gone.

I had no idea what to do and hastily chose the Hard Knuckle out of paranoia. I thought about grabbing up a backup-backup ground rover like the Water Wave, but I figured that stuff like that wouldn't be popular enough to get taken up, and at this point none of the remaining ground-rovers were all that great anyway, so my arsenal would be equally well-off with pretty much any of them.

Round 5

The round started off with Lil_Bit83 choosing the Rolling Cutter, which was a bit of a disappointment, since it was one of my best options for an anti-Gabyoall weapon that fit with the rest of my arsenal since the Ring Boomerang was taken earlier. As much as I love the Danger Wrap, I already had the Hornet Chaser and planned to take the Gyro Attack so I had plenty of "slow moving things that go up" already.

I did indeed take the Gyro Attack as my fifth pick. Being probably the most well-regarded item in Mega Man 5, I figured I should get it while I could. It satisfied my need for an aimable weapon, and its aiming mechanism actually functions a bit better than competitors like Shadow Blade (which I'm really surprised hadn't been taken yet) or Knight Crush albeit with a little decrease in power. But I prefer utility to power, so Gyro Attack was the better choice for me. And with Gyro Attack and Hornet Chaser, I felt like losing out on the Air Shooter wasn't too bad.

It seems I wasn't the only one eyeing Knight Crush, as it got taken by Redmage1987 on the very next pick. The rest of the round went 'safely' with a lot of things being picked that I wasn't interested in like the mighty Tornado Blow or that I already had covered with better items like Star Crash and Dive Missile. Probably people were wanting to get their shields and homing items in now and not be stuck without any.

Round 6

Coming back on Round 6, the Magma Bazooka got taken, which was something I would have liked to have grabbed as a 'powerful' item later. At this point I was starting to realize that saving the idea of a strong damage-dealing item for late was probably a bad idea, since the late-game options will probably include little if any weapons like that.

Despite that, when my turn came around, I noticed I was severely running out of options for an Anti-Gabyoall weapon, so I ended up going with the Chill Spike, which could also work as a freezer weapon. I was hoping to actually pick up the Ice Slasher or GameBoy-enhanced Spark Shock later in the draft, figuring that at least one of them would last for a long time, but now their usefulness in my arsenal seemed to drop due to picking up the Chill Spike. It's a great weapon, though, so I was happy to have it along.

The draft was now halfway over, and my arsenal was completely weak utility items. That's kind of how I expected it to go anyway, and I was still hoping to grab something powerful by the end. But I still wanted to sort out all my priorities.

Round 7

Lil_Bit83 picked up the Water Wave, which I was hoping to grab myself, and the Danger Wrap, two solid choices for the halfway point. Now that it was around to me, I realized my options for ground weapons were pretty much gone, and I realized the last half of the draft was going to be making concessions and settling for stuff I really didn't even originally want. So I decided to go ahead and grab one of my favorite weapons in the entire series, the Charge Kick, to make sure I had it in my arsenal.

Not only do I love the Charge Kick, but it's pretty powerful -- probably the most powerful weapon I'd chosen so far, and it grants a bit of mobility and invincibility, and can at least take care of ground enemies that are directly in front of me. I still wanted to pick up a ground-roving weapon, but in the chance that I would not be able to at all, the Charge Kick at least satisfied part of that need.

Round 8

At some point through the end of Round 7 and beginning of Round 8, someone mentioned a quality that I totally forgot to consider in my original priorities list -- shield-piercing ability. A lot of the best shield-piercers like Solar Blaze and Laser Trident had already been taken. I also still didn't really have a powerhouse weapon yet, so when my turn came around, I ended up going with Yamato Spear. Lots of power, good speed, and can pierce shields. Its biggest downside is its terrible energy consumption. But since I like playing with utility more than power, I only really pull out power weapons now and then in a stage, meaning its energy-greedy nature isn't too harmful to me. And if I need a lot of power with a lot of energy, I can at least stand back and toss Gyro Attacks around everywhere.

Round 9

At this point, I was feeling like most of my priorities had been accounted for. I had a way to break barriers, fend of Gabyoall, aim attacks and ward against things in the air, attack in pretty much any direction, pick up items, and seek out enemies. I could even pierce shields and dash through things with invincibility or freeze enemies as needed, so it was time to just start picking fun stuff and add a little raw power to the arsenal.

So I went with Napalm Bomb. I really like the "drop in front of you but very strong" weapons like this, Concrete Shot, and Flame Blast. The other two had been taken, and MM5 is my favorite game, so I was happy to take my beloved Peanuts.

I got a little criticism after the draft for having too many MM5 weapons in my final arsenal, but honestly Gyro Attack, Charge Kick, and Napalm Bomb are all really amazing weapons. Napalm Bomb easily takes out almost anything in the game with a single shot or a few rapid drops, and it even bounces around on the ground which gives it a bit more range and versatility compared to Flame Blast or Concrete Shot. Gyro Attack is one of the most maneuverable weapons in the entire series, allowing crane-game-like functionality that allows you to pretty much aim it at anything on the entire screen. And Charge Kick grants completely invulnerability while it's in use and destroys a LOT of enemies. What other weapon allows you to simply pass through enemies without even bothering to fight them? Take that, Sumatrans!

Anyway, my love for MM5 aside, I was pretty happy with my arsenal at this point, and I realized my last few picks were just going to be "whatever" at this point, so I didn't have much fear about the rest of the draft.

Rounds 10-12

The final rounds were mostly just everyone picking stuff that complemented what they already had from the remaining choices. I picked up Wind Storm to finally have SOME kind of ground-roving weapon, and at least it also is cute with how it picks enemies up after defeating them. Plus I've been playing MM6 a lot recently and have come to appreciate it a little more. I'm still bitter about the Plug Ball thing, though.

In Round 11, I grabbed the Top Spin, another of my favorite underrated weapons. Let's one-shot most of the enemies in the game simply by jumping into them, and have a fun and unique spinny animation, too!

For my last pick, since I was the second to last to pick, there were only nine options left. None of them were particularly fantastic, and none of them really fit with my arsenal, so I just grabbed the Power Stone to continue my devotion to MM5. It's a terrible weapon but it can be fun in some contexts, at least. Twelve weapons is kind of a lot, so I didn't really have much need at this point anyway. I guess I could have gotten Rush Question or something.

Conclusion

I only talked about my personal experience here, so if you want to see my final arsenal alongside everyone else's, hear what others have to say, and discuss the draft and vote on your favorite picks, head over to the GameFAQs topic by EnigmaZero that I mentioned before.

I had a ton of fun participating in the draft, as did everyone else. It was so fun not only to be able to make the picks and see what everyone else picked, but we talked about our choices and Mega Man games in general throughout the whole thing, so it was a really fun social experience as well.

We all liked it well enough that we're doing another draft, this time choosing stages throughout the series to make a sort of 'dream game' that would be fun to play through.

And now hopefully I'll get back to actually updating some play diaries ;D

#play diaries #rockman #mega man