Mega Man 8 (1996)

Beat. This was decidedly less enjoyable than the earlier games due to the lack of save states and slow motion. I began with clown man. Got my ass kicked on the mini boss until I tried the Mega ball weapon. The Simon says blocks were annoying and I got wrecked by the boss. Way too much moving around to fight without the counter weapon. So I bailed and did Tengu man. The wind got me killed a lot and I found how the lives and continues worked. Lives brought you back to the current screen while continues were infinite and had 2 or 3 fixed checkpoints per stage. So there was not too much setback from game over, and the upgrade collectibles were kept regardless, so you could just suicide to get them. This stage had a shoot em sequence, which was the most fun part of the game. The boss took a few attempts to learn how to dodge his moves and when to blast him with charged shots. The wind shot did vertical damage and allowed me to ride it up to higher platforms, so very useful. The wind countered clown but he was still a bit of a challenge. The boss weaknesses had to be used during specific attacks to debilitate them. The thunder weapon did a beam at mid range, was used like a grappling hook in later stages, and countered grenade man. But I did frost man next and this stage had god damn battletoads style sledding that killed me so. Many. Times. Hate. And I had to do it 3 times while going back for collectibles. Frost man was easy though. He was countered by grenade and ice shot was one of the best because it traveled along the ground and up walls, killing enemy types that were immune to everything else. Then I did grenade man, which was probably the least annoying stage. Tornado worked well on the mini boss. The grenade did an explosion that repeated damage for a few seconds. After this I went back through the stages to get some missed items and purchased the ability to exit completed stages at will, then extra lives.

Moving to the 2nd half of the game, I struggled a bit on fight vs the good alien robot. Then I went for sword man. This stage pissed me off due to the sheer amount of instant deaths. Stupid lava and lava boats. The water weapon countered him but I did not have it so it took several attempts to beat this guy. I forget if I used more charged shots or ice. The flame sword was a melee range weapon but had a decent hitbox above and below Mega man. Next was Aqua man even though I doubted fire would counter water. This stage was not too bad but the swimming mechanics were not great. The mini boss was tough and the man himself was the most difficult robot boss overall because there was not enough ammo for the astro weapon that countered him to actually win the fight. But that was for the end game boss gauntlet. This time I killed him mostly with ice. The water weapon was just a boring straight shot. Next was Astro man, who was the only robot in the game to actually sound like one. I had some game overs here due to vanishing platforms and had to use the dog bomber to clear the screen so I could get past the difficult platforming. I only used the dog bike once to get a collectible so I wonder how much it could have helped during some difficult parts. The boss was flying and thus difficult to hit, so I used tornado since I did not have homing missiles. His weapon cleared the entire screen and made me immune to damage for a few seconds, so I used it to Iframe difficult to avoid attacks. Last I did search man and killed him easily with flame sword. I then went back through the stages to get as many collectibles as I could, ending with 33 out of 40. I spent them on no knock back on taking damage, rapid shot, extra recovery from pickups, and arrow shot. I was hoping the arrow would have some vertical aspect but I never noticed. Apparently it split upon hitting enemies. The options were not all that great since all the regular shot ones were not helpful for bosses. Maybe it would have been better to get the less ammo cost, faster charge up, or shoot normal while charging.

Finally there were 3 castle stages that were very challenging. I did best on the shoot em up stage and worst on the sled stage. I made sure to look up how to kill the boss after that sledding because no way was I risking game over to do that crap again. The 2 bosses here were nothing special. Then was the boss gauntlet and final boss. I followed a guide to use flash bomb on phase 1, which was tougher than phase 2 because of the difficulty in avoiding attacks. Each attempt I had to use dog item rain to heal up before even getting to phase 2. The only weapons which worked on phase 2 were flash, flame sword and charged shot. I ran out of bombs and had to finish him with the sword. It took 1 continue to finally win, and it was mostly about not taking contact damage and using astro crush to iframe the homing shots. The final boss was probably better than in the earlier games but still very disappointing. His attacks were too difficult to avoid and every weapon should have been effective. Ideally, the final boss should have had an attack or movement pattern for each of the weapons, so winning would be more about using the right one at the right time. Overall this game felt far too much like the older games, with a lack of innovation. 2 of the face buttons were not even used. 1 should have been for the mega ball and the other for a boss weapon so you could fire 3 different weapons without fumbling around with swapping. L and R cycled weapons but I soon stopped using that in favor of going into the menu to swap more precisely. Would have been way more fun weaving regular, charged and special shots fluidly without stopping the game flow. Lastly I want to rip into the bad voice acting. Why did Mega Man sound like a girl? Why did Dr Light have a speech impediment? Why did only 1 robot actually sound like a robot? And why were 2 or 3 of them gay?

Was still a fun game but one of the weaker entries in the series.

7.5/10