Mega Man boss battles are terrible

[AnansiThePersona]

So I'm playing through Mega Man 2 on PS4 through the Legacy Collection, and I'm surprised how long it took me to realize this....but Megan robot master battles suck so much.

All they are are DPS races. You find out which one is the easiest to beat, get his weapon, and find out whatever boss is weakest to his weapon so you kill them in 4-5 hits. Just did this to Bubble Man and Flash Man. Wheeeeeeee.

The bosses look cool in concept and I enjoy their stages, but the boss battle portions of these games has never been good.

What does ERA think?

EDIT: Let me clarify a bit more. Even when you aren't using the boss' weakness, it still feels like all your doing is taking advantage of your invincibility frames after getting hit, and doing more damage than you are taking. And in a game where if you make it to the boss with the lives you are given, you have 3 tries, than must do the level over again. Like....fuck Heat Man's stage because you have to do that dumb disappearing block thing just to get back to the boss who is hard as balls without the bubble gun.

 

[mopinks]

that's what Buster-only runs are for

 

[Het_Nkik]

You can always... not kill them with the weapon they're weak to, if you want them to be more challenging.

 

[npclivesmatter]

they are a relic. they were good back in the day. now they are outdated because they are pattern based fights. just like almost everything back then for platformers

a lot of the critically acclaimed games back then are crap compared to even indie games nowdays. you build uponn what you've already seen.

 

[Timewarp]

You wut mate.

But yeah, the fights are fairly straight forward. You learn the pattern and/or grab the weapon that bosses are weak against.

 

[FiXalaS]

NO.

well there are many megaman games, some do have shit bosses.

but no. (try the Zero series)

 

[Xaszatm]

I mean, I find the later Megaman games to have more fun bosses than the first two. And yeah, there's always the buster run, only time where that's not that viable is in the fist game where so many Robot Master will kill you in 3 hits.

 

[Deleted member 5621]

I think this is the hottest of the takes - even more since "there is this thing that destroys the enemy with high resistance that should be hard" is how most games operate anyway. Also the boss battles (in the whole franchise, not only in Classic) only get better.

 

[AnansiThePersona]

So I'm playing through Mega Man 2 on PS4 through the Legacy Collection, and I'm surprised how long it took me to realize this....but Megan robot master battles suck so much.

All they are are DPS races. You find out which one is the easiest to beat, get his weapon, and find out whatever boss is weakest to his weapon so you kill them in 4-5 hits. Just did this to Bubble Man and Flash Man. Wheeeeeeee.

The bosses look cool in concept and I enjoy their stages, but the boss battle portions of these games has never been good.

What does ERA think?

Click to shrink...

EDIT: Let me clarify a bit more. Even when you aren't using the boss' weakness, it still feels like all your doing is taking advantage of your invincibility frames after getting hit, and doing more damage than you are taking. And in a game where if you make it to the boss with the lives you are given, you have 3 tries, than must do the level over again. Like....fuck Heat Man's stage because you have to do that dumb disappearing block thing just to get back to the boss who is hard as balls without the bubble gun.

 

[Deleted member 5621]

double post!

 

[Doukou]

They were designed to be cheap to prolong the game. You either a) keep doing the same boss making you constantly repeat until you understand it's high damage pattern. Or b) find out it's often inane weakness. Requiring trial and error of constantly going back to previous levels. So that the boss fight becomes trivial

 

[Deleted member 5621]

EDIT: Let me clarify a bit more. Even when you aren't using the boss' weakness, it still feels like all your doing is taking advantage of your invincibility frames after getting hit, and doing more damage than you are taking. And in a game where if you make it to the boss with the lives you are given, you have 3 tries, than must do the level over again. Like....fuck Heat Man's stage because you have to do that dumb disappearing block thing just to get back to the boss who is hard as balls without the bubble gun.

Click to shrink...

Stop getting hit? Specially if you are using the weakness, jump over dat enemy fire. And again, this is no different from games that allow you to soak 3-4x the damage that should kill you through healing items so you overpower enemies.

 

[Zen Hero]

EDIT: Let me clarify a bit more. Even when you aren't using the boss' weakness, it still feels like all your doing is taking advantage of your invincibility frames after getting hit, and doing more damage than you are taking. And in a game where if you make it to the boss with the lives you are given, you have 3 tries, than must do the level over again. Like....fuck Heat Man's stage because you have to do that dumb disappearing block thing just to get back to the boss who is hard as balls without the bubble gun.

Click to shrink...

You're saying the boss is hard, but you're also saying that all you do is try to take advantage of your invincibility frames... It sounds like you aren't dodging attacks. You should learn the attack patterns and dodge, then I think you'll find the fights easier, and also more satisfying and fun. My tip is that it's not about having good reaction times or spamming buttons. It's about learning the patterns, and being methodical.

 

[low-G]

They aren't DPS races, OP.

But compared to what's possible today, they don't hold up. But they were really great when they were new.

 

[Deleted member 5621]

They were designed to be cheap to prolong the game. You either a) keep doing the same boss making you constantly repeat until you understand it's high damage pattern. Or b) find out it's often inane weakness. Requiring trial and error of constantly going back to previous levels. So that the boss fight becomes trivial

Click to shrink...

That may be true for like, 3 or 4 MM games.

 

[Brakke]

OP is a buster.

 

[Doukou]

That may be true for like, 3 or 4 MM games.

Click to shrink...

I'm taking about classic ones, which I think defines the original 8 pretty well.
Some of earlier ones were better about the weaknesses though

 

[allenpergallon]

they are a relic. they were good back in the day. now they are outdated because they are pattern based fights. just like almost everything back then for platformers

a lot of the critically acclaimed games back then are crap compared to even indie games nowdays. you build uponn what you've already seen.

Click to shrink...

Being fundamental doesn't make them outdated or crap. They're still good, and boss fights in present times still use patterns. The classic series boss fights fit the control scheme and character abilities just as the bosses in the later Zero and ZX series (mostly) work around their own systems.

EDIT: Let me clarify a bit more. Even when you aren't using the boss' weakness, it still feels like all your doing is taking advantage of your invincibility frames after getting hit, and doing more damage than you are taking. And in a game where if you make it to the boss with the lives you are given, you have 3 tries, than must do the level over again. Like....fuck Heat Man's stage because you have to do that dumb disappearing block thing just to get back to the boss who is hard as balls without the bubble gun.

Click to shrink...

Tanking damage and racing to the finish line with the boss's health bar is an option sometimes but it's not how you're expected to play. You wouldn't be frustrated with having to game over and redo levels if you learned how to deal with the boss patterns. That's where the difficulty and replayability comes from.

And for the love of capcpom get Item 2 from Air Man before doing Heat Man's stage.

 

[Deleted member 2793]

Congratulations on making the worst thread ever, OP.

(jk, but no way I agree)

 

[DDayton]

they are a relic. they were good back in the day. now they are outdated because they are pattern based fights. just like almost everything back then for platformers

Click to shrink...

... what's wrong with pattern based fights, again? What is the new, superior form of 2D gun-based boss battles?

 

[Rickenslacker]

I like the X games more for this reason. There's just a lot more finesse in the fights than the robot masters jumping around and doing their attack.

 

[Deleted member 11413]

I mean, it's all about pattern recognition and reflexes to avoid getting hit. There isn't a lot of depth because they are NES games.

 

[Eriol]

ehhhh Nope.

I think youre trying to face roll the bosses OP

 

[Deleted member 5621]

You guys know that pattern memorization and repetition because the boss has a lot of HP, with some reflexes checks here and there, is how some of the most well praised modern games work, right?

 

[Deleted member 2793]

... what's wrong with pattern based fights, again? What is the new, superior form of 2D gun-based boss battles?

Click to shrink...

There's nothing wrong with them. Almost everything "outdated" here is just people not wanting to say something isn't cinematic enough.

 

[Arthoneceron]

Mega Man games with Dark Souls style of bosses. I approve!

 

[Cybersai]

Git gud. That's what they are.

 

[Firima]

Let me clarify a bit more. Even when you aren't using the boss' weakness, it still feels like all your doing is taking advantage of your invincibility frames after getting hit, and doing more damage than you are taking.

Click to shrink...

???

You're getting hit?

All they are are DPS races. You find out which one is the easiest to beat, get his weapon, and find out whatever boss is weakest to his weapon so you kill them in 4-5 hits. Just did this to Bubble Man and Flash Man.

Click to shrink...

Ah, herein lies the issue. You acknowledge that Mega Man is DPS yet play him like a Tank. Sure, you can get away with that to some degree (especially in earlier games where weakness weapons would wreck a boss), but that's not an issue with the game's design, maybe just with the design of certain bosses (Quick Man and every MM2 rehash boss from the embarrassment that is the second half of MM3).

 

[THIJJ]

Not Battle Networks they don't

 

[Flame Lord]

I've been playing through the legacy collection too, and yeah they blow. They wouldn't be too bad if you didn't get knocked back to the beginning of the fucking level when you ran out of lives. I got through one, two, and a good chunk of three with minimal save states, but honestly I don't think it's worth it.

 

[Gospel]

I love Megaman and I have nothing to contribute to this but to say that I understand completely and do not disagree.

 

[Psxphile]

I'm imagining what a Mega Man boss would be like w/ some kind of random AI script instead of pattern-based one that you have to solve like a puzzle and I just figure you'd be getting trapped up against a wall for most of the fight.

 

[1upsuper]

EDIT: Let me clarify a bit more. Even when you aren't using the boss' weakness, it still feels like all your doing is taking advantage of your invincibility frames after getting hit, and doing more damage than you are taking. And in a game where if you make it to the boss with the lives you are given, you have 3 tries, than must do the level over again. Like....fuck Heat Man's stage because you have to do that dumb disappearing block thing just to get back to the boss who is hard as balls without the bubble gun.

Click to shrink...

Are you not playing on hard? You shouldn't be able to just eat lots of hits and spam during your i-frames. Most RMs should be doing too much damage.

 

[Deleted member 5621]

I've been playing through the legacy collection too, and yeah they blow. They wouldn't be too bad if you didn't get knocked back to the beginning of the fucking level when you ran out of lives. I got through one, two, and a good chunk of three with minimal save states, but honestly I don't think it's worth it.

Click to shrink...

Megaman levels are a couple minutes long. If they are giving you so much headache you can't rush through it to get to the boss again pretty much unscathed, you should practice more anyway or the rest of the game will be an exercise in frustration.

 

[OmegaDL50]

... what's wrong with pattern based fights, again? What is the new, superior form of 2D gun-based boss battles?

Click to shrink...

I don't know, Metal Slug bosses have patterns, and Contra, and modern platform equivalents such as Shovel Knight use the mechanic well.

Mega Man games with Dark Souls style of bosses. I approve!

Click to shrink...

Even Souls bosses have patterns. I don't even understand what point the OP was trying to make with the "patterns are outdated" remark.

 

[Revolsin]

???????? The boss fights are some of the best parts of those games by far. Just because you're brute-forcing them doesn't mean they're not great.

The patterns for the bosses in Mega Man were kind of incredible at the time. All of them had so many different attacks that had completely different methods to avoid them, it was one of the first instances in gaming where bosses weren't just a straight-forward affair of reacting to the enemy, you actually had to learn them, pay attention to how they moved, and figure out what to do. Every boss fight was like a mix of skill and solving a puzzle.

The best boss fights even today take from Mega Man as inspiration. Dark Souls as a whole is entirely about memorizing patterns and learning how the bosses move and how specifically you should react to each movement, and that series has some of the best and most engaging boss fights in gaming as a whole.

OP, I'd advise you abandon the special weapons and do a buster-only run and actually try to learn each boss. Maybe you'll come to appreciate them more, because they're absolutely well-made without a doubt.

 

[Vadara]

The most annoying thing about the bosses are how ridiculously tight the timings are and the fact that jumping over them requires pixel perfect jumps 90% of the time. Otherwise, they're like Souls bosses: learn the pattern, feel awesome when you can perfectly dodge everything and kill them.

 

[KnightimeX]

Given the fact that those games ran on a cpu that's less than 2mhz one should not expect modern day combat on 30 year old software.
It was perfectly fine for it's time.

Sure it's simple by today's standards but simple doesn't always mean bad.
It means it's not for you.

I highly recommend playing Mega Man 9.
Nowhere near as easy as Mega Man 2.

 

[Deleted member 6056]

My wife live ran Quickman first on Megaman 2 with buster and no other stages beat at a convention just to show you can do it in a single life. Laughter at what was thought to be a comedic run into unsuspecting death quickly turned to appreciative jaw dropped awe from the typical convention crowds that are generally just loud shouting folks looking to be wacky. She left the game on the select screen amidst a crowd of silent gawkers with JUST Quickman beaten. No one changed games on the station but many took pictures of the screen. Thats how many folks always just took the easy road and beat them in order generally taking Metalman first. The idea someone could beat Quickman's stage and Quickman with just a buster and no cheap time stop skill to slow down the beams or Quickman was completely foreign to how they had experienced the game.

If you want to feel like you earned something instead of feeling like Megaman is easy and a let down then stop taking the easy road. The game's difficulty is literally up to the player. Do yourself a favor and stop CHOOSING to play it using the easiest exploitable tools so you can stop feeling let down by your own choice to avoid challenge.

 

[Trode]

If you have to take advantage of invincibility frames, then maybe that's your problem. You're choosing to exploit the battles when they're perfectly doable through pattern memorisation, just like the best soulsborne bosses. The weapon weaknesses are a reward and a means to easily defeat them if you're having problems. That's the thing about Mega Man though, its difficulty is entirely flexible, its entirely up to what you decide to use and don't use. Try a buster only run so you can better appreciate the bosses.

 

[skeezx]

well i think the point always was either you or the robot master gets smashed to smithereens in what's more or less a DPS check. i grew up with mega man so i'm biased against saying it's 'bad design' but the rock paper scissors aspect was always "mega man"

and like the above stated you can create your own challenge i.e. taking out quickman with a mega buster. great thing about classic mega man is all the metas that can come of it

 

[Stuart Gipp]

They're flat-out awesome from about Mega Man 3 onward. I enjoy how breezy the bosses in 2 are, though.

 

[hydrophilic attack]

hot take: the disappearing platform bits are the most fun parts of these games

 

[Dreamboum]

Nah I disagree

The robot master gauntlet at the end of each Megaman can walk away though

 

[Dogui]

You don't whine about bosses being easy after exploiting them lol

MM2 are more on the easy side btw.

 

[Kain-Nosgoth]

Yeah no, the boss are one of the best part of the serie! Just don't use their weakness to get a great challenge!

MM2 are definitely not the best though that's for sure

 

[Redcrayon]

EDIT: Let me clarify a bit more. Even when you aren't using the boss' weakness, it still feels like all your doing is taking advantage of your invincibility frames after getting hit, and doing more damage than you are taking. And in a game where if you make it to the boss with the lives you are given, you have 3 tries, than must do the level over again. Like....fuck Heat Man's stage because you have to do that dumb disappearing block thing just to get back to the boss who is hard as balls without the bubble gun.

Click to shrink...

You can get the air sled first to just skip the disappearing block section, that's why I always leave Heat Man until last.

Most attacks are dodgable. If you are getting hit and just using that to trade hits, then sure, that's one way to do it. it only works in MM2 as the standard difficulty on MM2 in it's western releases is 'easy' compared to the original JP release and the other games, that allows the standard arm cannon to do more damage and trade hits with bosses.

Personally the worst MM boss for me is Elecman in MM1, he's really hard to dodge as his elec-beam attack is both tall and wide, and he moves to crash into you too. In MM2, it's sometimes hard to avoid taking damage in the Airman fight due to the random position of the tornados not giving you room to evade, so I just use leaf shield to take him out in a couple of hits.

By the time you get to MM3 and have the slide, it's far easier to dodge bosses and their attacks with the increased speed and lower profile, so really it's just some of the bosses in the first two games this applies to. There are well over a hundred MM bosses over dozens of games, some are better than others. In particular, I think the MMX bosses, where the weapons do stuff like limit enemy attacks, incapacitate them or remove their armour are at least more visually effective than just making the energy bar go down faster.

Of all the MM games weapons and robot master balance issues, Metal Blade combined with the easy boss difficulty and some tough stage sections makes MM2 a bit unbalanced for me, that's why I prefer MM3 for the more even curve. Even then, the arm cannon does so much damage to robot masters in MM2 that I don't really see how they can be the biggest issue with it.

 

[Mr_Blue_Sky]

My wife live ran Quickman first on Megaman 2 with buster and no other stages beat at a convention just to show you can do it in a single life. Laughter at what was thought to be a comedic run into unsuspecting death quickly turned to appreciative jaw dropped awe from the typical convention crowds that are generally just loud shouting folks looking to be wacky. She left the game on the select screen amidst a crowd of silent gawkers with JUST Quickman beaten. No one changed games on the station but many took pictures of the screen. Thats how many folks always just took the easy road and beat them in order generally taking Metalman first. The idea someone could beat Quickman's stage and Quickman with just a buster and no cheap time stop skill to slow down the beams or Quickman was completely foreign to how they had experienced the game.

If you want to feel like you earned something instead of feeling like Megaman is easy and a let down then stop taking the easy road. The game's difficulty is literally up to the player. Do yourself a favor and stop CHOOSING to play it using the easiest exploitable tools so you can stop feeling let down by your own choice to avoid challenge.

Click to shrink...

MM2, outside of the turret boss, is the perfect entry in the series to me personally and I feel like a lot of people cheat themselves out of a great experience for the exact reasons you provide. The fact that there's pretty much a defined boss order for these games and deviating from that order is seen as a joke is really an utter betrayal of this games design especially in regards to what you said about most people just beating Metalman first for 8-way attack easy mode. MM2 is such a short game as well that to deny it even the smallest courtesy in learning it's systems and mechanics outside of an "optimal" playthrough is pretty sad. In regards to the OP, I know that Heat Man's stage with no powerups is probably the most difficult section for new players, but it's also the most god-like area to blitz through without stopping once you get it down and it's super easy to manipulate heat man for a no-damage boss fight if you learn his patterns. Give yourself time to get good at the game, it's designed to be played over and over again.

 

[SolVanderlyn]

They aren't DPS races, OP.

But compared to what's possible today, they don't hold up. But they were really great when they were new.

Click to shrink...

Basically this.

They didn't age well. But you can always refuse to use their weaknesses for a challenge.

I find that the boss fights get better with each series, from Classic -> X -> Zero -> ZX. Compare a fight with Shadow Man to, say, Boomer Kuwanger or Magma Dragoon. Those can be legit skill checks and Dragoon even has a cool secret with being able to bring ride armor into his fight.

 

[Robin64]

Just remember, Mega Man 2 had a nerfed mode as default for the west, which every other Mega Man game didn't do. So by default, you can indeed beat every MM2 boss with the buster as a "dps race". Play on the "Hard" mode (which is just the original proper difficulty) to see how it really should be.

Also, stop getting hit by Heat Man. He's very easy to manipulate.