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Man, where do I even begin? MagnetFirstBro and his team have released a new Rockman 2 hack, Hardcore, that manages to be 10x worse than YJ, or even Kekki's Firework Master. I have a bad feeling that the next projects will get worse from here. That said, time to cover the pros and cons.

PROS: The Mind Roar OST still sounds gorgeous; the graphics are, once again, pleasing to the eyes; the Force Beam sections of Flash Man's stage were not too bad; the Robot Masters' color palettes were mostly pretty; most of the weapons were excellent aside from Time Stopper, which drains rapidly; the Quick Boomerangs that appear throughout the hack are slow enough for the player to easily dodge them; the player's i-frames are unchanged, thank God! Unfortunately, this was all the good I could find in this hack. Now time for the bad and the ugly...

CONS: Nearly all of the enemies and their placements are just god-awful in nature. The worst offenders are the sentient Bubble Leads, Mets, Kerogs, Pipis, Blockies, and Fly Boys. When you encounter them, you can just tell that they were designed with absolutely no thought put into them, and you're more than likely to die before you reach the checkpoint because of the ferocious AI. Some enemies, especially Mets and Kerogs, will cause massive slowdown because of frequent shooting; for players who enjoy doing no-damage runs, taking damage here is inevitable because of the relentless antics, and it happens constantly too; the level design is as evil as the enemies, and like in Firework Master there are spikes everywhere and the level geometry is often cramped; the Items are unreliable aside from Item 1, as Item 2 drains faster than in the vanilla game and Item 3 doesn't climb walls when you jump on it; the evilness and unavoidable damage extends to the Robot Masters, and aside from Wood Man, they manage to be more chaotic than Peercast 1's Robot Masters; Metal Man is absurdly broken and showers the player with Metal Blades. When he reaches half health, his shots cripple the player's Atomic Fire, his weakness, and they also cut through i-frames, effectively making the fight unbeatable. A "no boss health" cheat is required for this maniac; all the fortress bosses except Boobeam Trap are invisible; the Wily stages were not any better than the Robot Master stages, and the Wily Machine 2's shots are completely unavoidable; the final boss is like ONN's, but worse, and his sprite was kinda meh.

As it turns out, we have the winner for Worst Rockman 2 Hack of 2022, or quite possibly of all time. I honestly can't think of any other hack worse than Hardcore, and I don't see anyone enjoying this either. JupiHornet, if you're reading this, please don't go near this hack, not even with a 10-ft pole. Dobu_GM, if you're reading this, you're gonna have a blast covering this. As for MagnetFirstBro and Kekki, the most notorious members of the team, no hate towards you guys, but if you want to make a decent hard mode for Rockman 2, you should work on your enemy AIs, boss AIs, and level designs, as the current circumstances make your games seem more like a bully simulator. God bless you all, and much love to all of you!