Stage Thoughts Mega Manatee

This stage isn't really classic Mega Man until the boss fight starts, so it's kind of an odd choice to begin with. However, I just assume most of you are familiar with classic Mega Man anyway, so it's a good opportunity to demonstrate right away how this game isn't afraid to break away from the mould, and in very effective ways.

The stage itself is pretty easy, especially for a game as hard as this. The fights against the boss at the very beginning and second time around too aren't too hard, really intuitive except for that one red fish...as I've only ever seen it once because you can kill him before it loops, I still have no idea how to dodge it, that might be an issue. Also, if you kill him on the waterspout phase, the continuing screen scroll might force you into a persisting one causing you unavoidable damage, that might warrant looking into. Everything in-between is completely fine, you get fair warning on to how both enemy types work, jumping on land is unexpected, but it's so smoothly done and works perfectly (no forced movement on land vs. forced movement on water, suck it X4) that it doesn't matter at all. Best level design is completely intuitive one, where challenge only comes from what you have to do and not from having too little time to figure shit out.

The spike part is...problematic, to say the least. First of all the obvious fuck you moments where you can't really see spikes coming from below - even with the floaters, as sometimes the spikes are broader, sometimes not, though the marking of them does help a lot. Secondly, though, as everything is instant-kill, death is cheap. And such a death forces you back quite a lot of time, as the autoscroll isn't particularily fast and the gameplay isn't particularily exciting. Less spikes, more dolphins to dodge is the way to go here, I feel.

Boss fight, on the other hand, is just fantastic all-around, with autoscroll used to create tension and action and not to stagger threats so you'll get funneled into them with waiting periods in-between. Manatee's movement and when it shoots mines is very cleverly thought-out, the entire route it takes has had lot of time and effort and care put into it, that shows all the way and I love it for that. Minor issues are the really, really hard jumps as it first speeds up and that if you take the right side up when it proceeds vertically, you'll have a much harder time as Manatee's bulk traps you. It randomly being more difficult with no way for you to know isn't too nice. Then there's even more minor issues like the out-jut of platform before the first speedup which looks tempting but is a death sentence. Overall though, one of the best bossfights in recent memory, and after this, there's more exciting stages and even bosses to come!