GuestLog in

This hack of Mega Man 2 does nearly all of the the things you might expect a great hack to do, altering levels, enemy AI, and even offering a choice between two playable characters who function differently in their default forms. Even more astoundingly, the hack offers the player a choice between 16 weapons instead of the usual 8, and you're free to mix and match as you please-just pick up the D-Tank placed in a Robot Master's stage, beat that Robot Master, and the new weapon is yours. Some of the new weapons are amazing (I'll take its homing Air Shooter and screen clearing Leaf Shield over the originals any day), while others are awful (a piercing Metal Blade with one bar per shot? No thanks.) Items are now optional, although they still come in handy and retain their original powers. This helps keep the game feeling like you can make whatever choices you like and still come out ahead.

Unfortunately, this is where the game deceives you. If you get the D-Tank to pick up the new weapons, the stage boss will also receive new powers, ranging from extra speed and power to teleportation (Flash Man) and health regeneration (Bubble Man). This, combined with the fact that the 8 bosses have 2 (for Mega Man) or 3 (for Quick Man) health bars, means that you have to conserve your E-Tanks for the end game or risk hitting a literal wall of bosses in Wily 5 when you're low on some of your best weapons from the previous battle. Additionally, some bosses, such as Air Man and Crash Nan, simply can't be defeated without using weapons, and even then, not without having nearly full health to survive their un-dodgeable attacks. I've run the game three times, but only succeeded in reaching Wily 6 once, thanks to the nearly unplayable slug fest that Wily 5 turns out to be. It's this kind of punishing difficulty spike, combined with other strange decisions (why do so many enemies cycle between 3 random attacks, one of which is far more damaging than the others?) and vicious AI (upgraded Heat Man is a death machine), and outright cruel decisions (the Mecha Dragon forces you to jump constantly after you defeat it until a new set of platforms appears) that drag the game down to the bottom tier of hacks.

It's got some fantastic ideas, but the implementation is so sadistic that it shouldn't be recommended to anyone other than the most masochistic Rockman fan.

I didn't think I would stumble upon this, because I see a lot of minuses in the hack, and so few pluses. And, we'll have to start with the cons.

• 1. Еnemies and a lot of different AI in it. In theory, the idea is interesting, like "The enemy attacks in different ways" and it would be unusual... if it worked after the loss of life, and not like here. An example is the robo rabbits: First, the carrot attack (blows down a lot of HP), then the usual enemy shot, and after the "Leaf Shield" (And he, for a minute, does not break through and has a large radius of defeat of our hero). Why did I give them as an example? Most of all, they beat me dishonestly.
• 2. Level Design. I didn't think I'd say this - but it's really poorly thought out. It's difficult even for me. I managed to go through almost all the stages (it really hurt), but the Quick man stage turned out to be beyond my strength ... (Later, though I was able to pass by accident. I'll tell you later why it turned out to be a problem in one line) Wily Castle is for some reason more loyal to the player. But there will still be problems there.
• 3.Bosses. Created by 2 (3) phases of them. Sounds interesting, only - it's not balanced. Each phase on the Robomaster is its different AI (it turns out these AI were taken from other hacks). Honestly, it could be interesting if one fact: "You came to the wrong boss or you don't have enough skills against his AI, there will be loss, loss and loss of lives in the game." This fact, on the contrary, repels about the passage.
• 4.Characters to choose from. How are they different? Just a graphical shell. Both characters are indistinguishable from each other, although they have different names. Pure Megamens (Okay, slightly different. One of them has eternal Metal Blades)
• 5.Speaking of Level Design and many other things, we can say such a fact as "unsuccessful copying of other ideas". If you don't look closely, then I will say the obvious ones: Yoku Spike (Taken from Rockman 2 Basic Master v1.0), Enemies - rising pillars like from MM5 (Taken from Rockman 2 Basic Master v1.2), Raising the wind up (taken from Megaman Forever)... it was I who met more familiar elements in the hack, but I think it's more.

If this hack has pros? Honestly, there are, but they overlap with minuses. Well, here they are:

• 1. Mini E-tank. This is a good idea, especially with bosses. Having accumulated four, there is an additional health-restoring item at once.
• 2. To my surprise, there are two good bosses here. Really good ones. They are in Wily Castle 2 and in Wily Castle 4. One is an honest double block that is hunting for you. The second is the random appearance of a shooting lamp. Here is the question open to me: "Successful copying or your own idea?" BUT, alas, there will be no answer.
• 3.Convenient collection of energy for abilities and HP. That's where, but I didn't expect this at all. I met a similar system of collecting and sorting energy in very late parts of a series of games about Mega Man (Like starting with part 5, but I could be wrong). To recreate such a trifle is small, but nice.

Yeah. The review came out hard for me, because I saw other good hacks that showed the potential to promote Rom Hacking. Honestly, this hack gave a reason "To draw attention to it." As a result - I see a hack, after playing and managing to defeat it - I got disappointed. A lot of potential good ideas have been taken. Honestly, I gave him a 148% chance. I was sure of him. And I was wrong. The potential in the hack is missed.

Honestly, I don't recommend the hack because of a lot of reasons. Main: this is taking other people's ideas (piracy), but not making good out of it.

And yes, for me this hack sounds like "Megaman 2 YES" (if you look in Russian). Change it to "Megaman 2 HET" (In Russian it sounds "Megaman 2 NO") (P.S. A little humor here, looking at the diversity of languages)

P.S. It turns out I missed one moment when I played hack for the first time. It turns out that in this hack, the SELECT button is responsible for changing abilities. And then I had a question: "What were they thinking!?" Because I really didn't really understand how to go through the Quick man stage - until I watched the passage in Video Hosting. Packed with one stage of "99 lost lives"

For reference, Rockman 2 DA 1.0 is one of the worst mm2 hacks I've ever played. This is the opposite. This hack was incredible. Timaeus compared it to yendor code, and I think that is a fair comparison in terms of the regular enemies in the game and the design over all, it's all changed and all done really well. Yes, there's some stupid and jank parts, I magically teleported in air mans stage and fell to my death (couldn't replicate it), the crabs are homing missiles faster than you can walk (but still easy to deal with if you're an experienced player), the last room of wood mans stage is hot garbage and Quick Mans stage is nothing but lasers and not fun at all. The rest of the game is wonderful and very well done other than what I said above about the weird and/or unmarked teleporter. Flash Man's stage is so super cool. You may notice that I didn't mention the bosses, well, some of them are much better than others, flash is a weird fight, and there's some interesting properties to others to make them different, but all the 8 robots have 2 health bars (3 if you play as quick I've been told), which is fine since the game gives you etanks at every corner AND infinite lives. The bosses are all pretty easy if you're an experienced player. This was an absolute surprise and a joy to play. Not very difficult, the 1.0 DA took like 8 hours over 2 days (I did beat it single segment), this game took me only like 100 minutes playing 95% buster only, it's not that hard, and does not deserve the hate it is getting here. This is a top 10 mega man 2 hack and you would be silly to dismiss it. The only reason to dismiss it is a lot of uncredited assets from other hacks and stuff, but that does not bother me in the slightest.

Playthrough: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1154022656 (NSFW warning)

This is my first review, I planned on beating "every" mega man rom hack before I went about reviewing them all, I've beaten over 220 mega man 1-6 hacks on my stream single segment no cheats mostly buster only (and even more if you include unfinished hacks). The only 3 I have left are Return of Wily, Kaizo Man 1 (unlisted on rhdn) and AgainS. I decided that this onslaught of NO's here is just not acceptable to me personally because this hack deserves better. Thank you Adong for all of your work, I appreciate you!

All I say is, IT's BAD! Some levels are impossible to beat no matter what character you use but I do like the ASM ideas but the gameplay is terrible. I recommend NOT to play this unless you want play for yourself to see how awful the gameplay is.

• Now what about 1.1? Better than 1.0 but still boring and VERY MIXED from most of hacks. For example, Heatman AI's used from Rockman 2 ONN. Some of enemy used from Yendor Code. Alien used from Rockman deus ex Machina and more. Although you can collect E-character enough to convert E-tank, but man, you don't know most of bosses fighting must be E-tanks enough. I know it's a new gimmick, but most of gimmicks are VERY BAD. Also, some of design is messing around like enemy with awful color and exit current level must be death on menu and not clean it fully. I don't recommend it.