MMBN2: Finished.
Run Down of the dungeons I did today!
The castle dungeon wasn't too bad...until near the end. Being caught often by a Vampire surrounded by Zombies on two sides is not fun, cause there's no way out of that situation. They needed to limit it to 1 of each Monster type, as Zombies catching you = repeat part of the dungeon, and 2 of them means potential cornering that you can't do anything about. Annoying, but as I said, was mostly just the last stretch, so wasn't TOO bad. What was annoying was the enemies. Shadows being immune to everything but Slash based damage = fail; that's basically saying "You must use swords or Protoman, OR YOU LOSE!" and frankly, getting the swords requires some luck. Good thing I always have some sort of Sword weapon around, and the game has a reliable run feature, cause that's just a stupid fight. Those Domino Men guys weren't much better; hey look! We take 1 damage from everything until we attack you, in which case, you have a second to get out of the way and shoot!
Knight Man was a fairly easy fight. Nothing stand out one way or another about him, albeit, felt a bit too easy, barring his one little "Crack your entire side!" strategy, but that's not used often, and frankly, it screwing you over THAT much is your own damn fault.
The Airplane was silly, but the actual dungeon itself? While I'm not a fan of the whole 1 Way Path type puzzles, the dungeon didn't do it too badly, since you were slowly removing each of those paths and such. The Magnet hazard wasn't such a big deal either once you figure out how it works.
...what was a big deal was Magnet Man though. Ok, fine, keep that hazard, and keep hurling Magnets at me, its annoying, but its fair. What ISN'T fair is that little double sided charge he has with the magnetic field in the middle. Well, ok, it would be fair...IF HE STOPPED HURLING MAGNET MISSILES. Typically, this isn't TOO bad, as if you do well in the first half, you can just muscle out the second but...well, there's a reason its stupid, I'll get to it later.
The whole Undernet nonsense...argh. Retarded. It...really felt like that stupid Lens Fetch Quest that they idiotically hurl at you at the end of ToD. Yes, the "We're ready to assault the final dungeon, but our genius scientist forgot to put in a lens, one that requires you to find the rarest of rare materials in this cave on the other side of the map!" Continually running back and forth across the net is NOT fun, and it takes so god damn long. There was nothing fun about "Ok, you did this...now head to Netopolis! Oh, you got this! Now go back to Undernet! Say, I heard someone has this item, go find him!"
Its freaking ridiculous, ESPECIALLY since half the time, they didn't give you very good directions. When I found Kotobuki extension and such, I was genuinely going to punt the game for adding another dungeon in rather than going straight to the boss...thankfully, it was just a one room tease fest with a few forced encounters.
Freeze Man...COMPLETELY FAIL CONCEPT. No, its *NOT* fair having Ice panels (its one of these "press one direction, slide to the end until you hit resistance" thing...now imagine that in an ARPG Battle setting), COMBINED with a shield phase, wind to blow you back to the back panels, where you only have 2 places to move (there is 1 permanently lost panel on both sides...not that it matters for him at all cause he's a stationary boss), and then a tracking attack which he can use WHILE HE BLOWS YOU BACK. Said tracking attack is spammed too; now, I initially figured out that by alternating up and down, I could avoid it...but then the Wind move kicks in. Once that happens, dodging this doesn't happen. The fact that he's either tossing wind at you OR under a nice shield is just not right.
Didn't help that Ice > Fire in this game, and my form of choice for most fights was FireGuts; was damned lucky I had ThunderGuts recently unleashed, and that managed to rip him in half.
The final dungeon was actually not that bad; looked a lot more intimidating than it really was, but once you figured out how it works, it wasn't too bad. A bit easy to get lost, but the randoms were surprisingly tame, and the dungeon wasn't THAT big, so you'd ultimately find your way somehow.
Boss Rush #1! A complete joke; you're facing 3 early-mid game bosses in a row that aren't scaled up. I was afraid they'd scale them up to at least V2's or something, but luckily, they were V1's, so it was just "Mock them completely!"
Second part of the dungeon was simple and such; a few minor twists and turns, but nothing big.
Boss Rush #2? ARGH STUPID. Knight Man, Magnet Man and Freeze Man ALL IN A ROW? *PUNTS* Ok, Knight Man isn't that bad; could beat him without taking too much damage, and if I took damage, a heal would bring me back. Magnet Man...this is why taking damage against him matters. See, in his original fight, winning was all that mattered. Here? Winning isn't enough; you want to win with minimal damage so you can beat Freeze Man. Unfortunately, that idiotic second phase with the charging and the magnets and everything makes it hard to get out of that situation without much damage. And Freeze Man is just a whore personified.
Final sequence! ...no clue why they bothered to add one minor joke dungeon in. Not that it matters; guess they wanted the whole "NOW FIGHT YOUR FRIENDS! ...wait, just kidding! Your REAL friends kicked the imposters' asses!" Bass...complete joke. Guess that was kind of the point though; he's not the real thing, but a fake clone, easy fight. Also, you're fully healed after him anyway, so you just need to kill him and no harm done.
Gospel...not that hard once I got the hang of him. At first, there's no way to tell what he's like. I attacked him, did 0 damage, went "Crap" then realize it was just a Quick Man situation, except wasn't as stupid cause he's a stationary boss. Once I got the hang of things, I was ready to say it was stupid when he started pulling the boss clones...until I realize that the Boss Clones actually count as targets for himself. Which is to say, smacking the clone he creates does damage to him. Ok! Not retarded anymore, its just adding variety, so he's not predictable, instead of adding more "I can damage you but you can't damage me!" nonsense. The last bit...yeah, that was kind of scary, mostly cause apparently he was hitting a weakness <_<;
Though, found the pattern, just a case of not fucking up on hitting him...which I did anyway, but managed to dodge well (and get lucky on a healing chip here and there)...yeah.
Actually interesting final boss, though not really what I'd call hard; showed some effort and was not stupid and retarded like half of the Navis in this game were *punts Quickman, Magnet Man and Freeze Man*
Overall thoughts? Game was better than MMBN1, and I was considering it giving it above average marks...but argh, that last stretch of the game left a bad taste to leave the game with. The new stuff was kind of neat, as was making battle areas actually start differently (or at least, did it more often; can't remember if MMBN1 actually did stuff like Automatic Cracked Fields and such), but that one fetch quest near the end of the game, and the second Boss Rush alone lowered the game a point. Probably a 5/10, I guess.
And yes, looking forward to the epicness of MMBN3 <_< >_>. Outside of "DO NOT PLAY MMBN3" which version should I grab?
