Speedrun Man Stage Thoughts

Speedrun Man's stage is very, very cleverly made through and through. As it is built with speed in mind, every little block and every enemy has to be placed extremely meticulously, and the effort to make it flow well shows. As I'm also a huge fan of gameplay flow in general, stage design that panders to never stopping just pushes all the right buttons.
To achieve this goal, enemy selection is also very important, and the game does a very good job with using just a few types to make it interesting. Mets require shooting at just the right time to make them not fire at all, and you can eliminate them without ever stopping. This needs to be skillfully done, however, so they are the entire concept in a microcosm: Failure to do stuff perfectly just costs you time, as in most cases avoiding the bullets should be trivial, at least compared to the rest of the game's difficulty. The strange dropping guys from MM2 are a different case; they still can be dealt with without ever stopping, but you need to fire a fully charged shot into them, then a regular one. Upping their health from originally 3 to 4 was a very well-made decision; having them die in just one charged should would make the challenge trivial. As it is, the charge-into-single-shot tactic is moderately hard to pull off, requires a little thought to even come up with and is very rewarding to do. The AT-STs are a huge roadblock (or force you to take a lot of damage) if you don't realize that they best way to deal with them is to not deal with them at all, as was the case in MM2...unless you used special weapons, which is again just fine here. As such, it kind of rewards you for knowing the reference, which is perfectly fine in a fangame.
Lastly, the cannons from MM5 expand on that, as they require you to know the trick of shooting through the shields in order for them to go by efficiently.

The multiple paths to victory, with different speeds and varying levels of challenge, are also a stroke of genius and an adaptation of a classic Sonic design paradigm to a more focused Mega Man level; the top path isn't always correct, and each has its merit. Far better, in my opinion, you can choose your poison without two of three choices (lower paths) being objectively wrong. I think it could even be more expanded upon, especially in the two segments I find kind of questionable. These are both one-path-only affairs, one with the moving platforms that try and knock you off, and the block puzzle.

Both have two problems for me. The first is a general one, as neither is very fun on its own; that's very subjective, of course...but I always hated block puzzles, and the Crash Man-platforms always felt tedious. Getting knocked down means redoing sometimes two screens, and with the puzzle it's pretty similar, as this one doesn't kill you (mercifully). My other problem with their existance is their placement in this particular stage. Both require a great deal of deliberation, judging the best time to jump, figuring out the optimal solution, and that is just completely at odds in a stage focused on going as fast as possible. Yes, it can be fun figuring out the fastest way, but you're already doing that all the time anyway! Adding it on top of the normal figuring out just how to get through drags it down a lot, in my opinion.

I think that one of the two could easily be fixed, though, and that is surprisingly enough the block puzzle. How? Simple - take out the "puzzle" element. There are a few good vanishing block parts in the series, and all of those don't require you to read a pattern, or surprise you with a block spawning in over your head. Just a path popping up in front of you one by one. All you need to do it are quick reflexes. Examples for that are in X5's...I think second...virus stage (having dash and walljump also helps) and MM7 (that one is just piss-easy though, by virtue of it being really slow. It needn't be like that here!). Basically just take out the dick move part and it's fine, already it doesn't require you to read a pattern like those atrocious ones in Ice or Elec Man's stages.
One could even keep the dick move if it's really necessary as a callback or something, under one of two conditions: Either it doesn't set you back completely but just drops you on a lower, slower path, just costing you time but not your ability to move forward at all (no breaking of flow allowed in my world!), or making it happen at the start of a segment rather than at the end so you can easily learn it right away and you'll probably die anyway later on the first try. Not as ideal, but better, imho.

The moving platform part per se isn't really too bad, I like the idea of how they work in general. I think they would have a great place in another stage that's slower (maybe make the laser sticks into boxing gloves and extend Punch Donkey a little?), and if they would translate you horizontally rather than vertically, it would eliminate the tedium of falling down making you redo screens you already finished...if it weren't lethal, of course.

Minor nitpicks overall as this is a really fun stage, I just wanted to talk more about how I'd change it because constructive criticism is a great thing :).

Oh, and one final word on the difficulty aspect: For me personally, this is the perfect difficulty, as it has a lot of leeway. Punishment isn't death, it's losing a little time, which means that only too many mistakes cost you a run (and not even a life!), and not a single one. And! Already, there's a hidden par time that so far does nothing, but it's planned that later on, if you beat a segment quickly enough, you'll get prizes. This adds replayability, more of an incentive to hurry even more and make less mistakes, and reminds me favourably of the time trials in Rayman Origins. Completely optional but oh-so-cool to pull of. I love it, implement it, you two!