Mega Man X 2 Deep Dive - Miscellaneous

This post contains any lingering observations on parts of Mega Man X 2 that struck me as notable. Here are links to the rest of the deep dives:

• Story
• Environmental Storytelling
• Bosses

Powerup Placement

As I mentioned in the main review, X2 places powerups in some stupid places. For example, there is a Heart Container in the beginning of Wire Sponge’s stage:

Would you have thought to go looking there?

Here’s another headscratcher. In Morph Moth’s stage, there is a patch of ground which Wheel Gator’s weapon can drill down through:

There are no visual cues that this location is in any way special. The only way you would know is via accident, or by using the Helmet Armor radar and playing around with your weapons until you chose the right one to break through.

Staying in Morph Moth’s stage, another powerup can be found near the start, up on this roof:

But how to reach the roof? First you have to keep a particular enemy alive. Then you have to use Crystal Snail’s weapon to encase him in crystal and use him as a platform. It’s debateable as to whether this is clever or unintuitive, but I can tell you it is the only time you ever have to use this weapon in this fashion.

When I analyzed Mega Man X1, I mentioned how one secret in Sting Chameleon’s stage was similarly unintuitive. But that was just one powerup. X2 does it multiple times, and it suffers for trying to push its luck.

Shoryuken

Whereas X1 allowed you to unlock the super-secret Hadoken special move, X2 lets you unlock the Shoryuken (AKA Dragon Punch). Aside from being different moves, the methods of unlocking them are incredibly different.

Unlocking the Hadoken requires you to jump to your death multiple times. Weird as this may sound, you can earn the move early enough that you can at least use it throughout all of the Sigma stages, making it arguably worth trying to obtain.

This is not the case for the Shoryuken. It is located in the second to last of the Sigma Stages, and near the end of it at that. There simply isn’t enough game in which to make use of it. In fact, there is really only one place where it is useful, namely a boss fight.

Furthermore, finding it requires you to go through one of the more brutal platforming gauntlets in the entire Mega Man franchise:

If it were challenging but fun, I could excuse it, but it mainly feels like an exercise in frustration. To make matters that much worse, the upgrade capsule is hidden behind a secret wall, so even after going through that all, you may end up going right past it.

Ripoff Watch

In Crystal Snail’s stage, there is a scene in which you have to follow a giant fish robot as it slowly swims along:

It’s main purpose is to open up a gate a bit further into the level, and it is quite difficult to take down. It reminds me as a mix between the fish midboss from Launch Octopus’ stage:

And the mining robot from Armor Armadillo’s:

It just gives me too strong a sense of Deja Vu. Perhaps if it looked cooler I might give it a pass. But no, it just looks like a freaking fish. Not exactly a menacing sight.

Weapons

As I said in the review, the weapons in this game are pretty lame. Here are a few examples.

Wheel Gator’s weapon (pictured above) launches a buzzsaw that rolls along the ground. That makes it worthless against flying enemies. Furthermore, once it makes contact with an enemy it slows down, so that it can deal miniscule amounts of damage with every hit. In some cases the only way to kill something with it is to sit around and wait for it to do the job (in which case why not just use the X-Buster, or even just move on and ignore it?)

Bubble Crab’s gun fires three bubbles that slowly rise to the sky. It feels about as useful as defeating someone with an actual bubble wand:

Wire Sponge gives us a claw on a string. It doesn’t have very good range, and it doesn’t to all that much damage. It can help you grapple onto the wall, but it’s too finicky to bother with:

This is just a sampling, but you get the idea. Most of the weapons have too many limitations - range, speed, damage, etc - to be worth using.

Cleverness

There are a few instances where a clever player can save themselves from some trouble. I can remember in particular¹ during Sigma Stage 1:

This guy here pulls on the walls in order to crush you. Your only hope is to wall climb up as fast as possible.

Or is there another way? A fully charged blast of Overdrive Ostritch’s gun will take out the bot so you can climb safely.

It’s nice to be able to actually use your weapons to gain an advantage, and especially nice when it can save you from this kind of tedious platforming.

Enemy Design

This right here is a pretty great summation of the differences between X1 and X2.

One of the best enemies in X1 is this guy called Hoganmer:

Hoganmer’s weapon - the ball and chain - has great range and virtually no windup. It can launch at multiple angles, and the ball itself is so large it is almost impossible to jump over. For defense, it has a shield that blocks all head-on attacks. The game also has a tendency to place Hoganmers at choke points so that you cannot simply go around them. He is one of my favorite enemies, as he requires you to really think, move, attack and counter attack.

Unfortunately, Hoganmer doesn’t show up in X2. Instead he is replaced with this f*cking guy:

Meet Disc Boy. Disc Boy also has a shield, but you can knock it out of his hands with a charged X-Buster shot:

He attacks with - you guessed it - a disc:

It flies forward and comes back. It is small and fairly slow, and thus easy to dodge. Nothing about Disc Boy is challenging. You can usually knock his shield away and shoot him down before you even get close enough for him to reach you. Otherwise, you can simply knock away the shield and jump over him before he can wind up an attack.

This is generally the way enemies work in X2. You can either ignore them, or you can take them out from far enough away that they cannot pose much of a threat. It makes traversing the stages far too mindless, which is part of the reason why the game becomes so forgettable.

Weird Secrets

Here is an example of a kind of secret room that shows up in a few different stages. Here we are in Bubble Crab’s place, using the radar to find secrets. Looks like we got something:

Now we just have to go through this hidden passageway:

And now we are in …. an empty room. What the heck?

So what do we do here? In these rooms, the secret is to use a fully charged Silk Shot blast. At least, that’s what they tell me. Except … it doesn’t fire underwater:

Even still, once it is fully charged, this happens:

A shower of energy capsules.

This is another characteristic feature of X2. On what planet is this intuitive or sensible? If you found another one of these rooms, in another stage, then you would know what to do. But if this was your first, what would make you believe you should equip a gun that doesn’t fire?