Finished in 5h
My order: Napalm, Chill, Tomahawk, Galaxy, Dust, Jewel, Spark, Pharaoh
Mega Man 6 while still good is my least liked NES Mega Man game. I never played a romhack of MM6 before, let's try that with Rockman VI Unique Harassment (R6UH) which I heard good things about it.
...Huh?
First of all what, why is there only one robot master from MM6 in here? Well the game looks like will have lot of change. So much that inbetween game session I decided to replay the original MM6 because I didn't remember the game a lot and to appreciate better the changes made. Let's talk about the levels first. All bosses but one are new, and all the levels are new too. In fact, most of the levels have nothing to do with the robot master associated to it. Like why is Dust Man level a japanese style level? Why does Napalm Man level have teleporters that send you to completely unrelated levels? You shouldn't think about it and just enjoy the levels. Which are goods. The level design is good, not too hard, it mix various enemies from various Mega Man games, and enemies from MM6 have new attacks. Like MM6, some levels have path you can reach only with the Rush upgrades, and visiting them is very encouraged : the original MM6 had BEAT parts in 4 levels, here there's 4 secret upgrades in levels that unlock some neat upgrades even if it isn't explained what they do so you'll have to guess yourself with the icon in the pause menu.
What am I doing in SMW?
The boss are quite something, the biggest change of the game. In the robot master levels, you do not lose lives when dying to a boss. An interesting choice, but it make sense are the boss are very hard. The first boss especially without other weapons. They went all in in the boss: every boss has two health bar. When you deplete the first one, you regain all your health and the boss change to a completely different pattern. About that, the pattern of the boss are all new, and almost have nothing to do with the original bosses. They could have been new robots master instead of ones from previous MM games it would've been better. The boss pattern are interesting, very original. Quite hard, but nothing too unfair. You will get hit a lot by the bosses, but they usually don't deal too much damage. You can even damage tank some boss. Honestly I prefer boss with more simple patterns, but I will admit they are well done.
Everything is normal here.
The boss weapons are good, and pretty strong. Sometimes even too much I feel like lol. Most boss have multiple sub-weaknesses so really it's the first boss that is the hardest. Napalm cracker seems to work well on most bosses, and Pharaoh's weapon can surround you with something that auto-attack and works great on some Wily bosses. About Wily, still two fortress. The final boss is impressive, but they went hard a bit too much. Hopefully the game provides enough E-tanks which respawn after game over or when you exit and restart a level, so if you want you can farm E-tanks in Dust Man stage.
Power Rush suit is strong.
As for the game defaults... well, it's a bit hard especially some bosses if you don't use other weapons (and sometimes become too easy if you do so). There's parts where you must switch to Rush suits and like the original there's the cutscene that plays every time that is annoying even if you can skip it. There's also parts that didn't seems to be made with Rush suits in mind and seems very easy with it, especially platforming section. I guess it's up to you the player to chose if you want to play normally or cheese it with Rush. Which is good, having choice is nice. As said, some mechanics like the secret upgrade you unlock aren't explained ingame (maybe in the .txt file with the game that's all in japanese?). Also the game crashed once for me, after I died at the same time as Pharaoh Man did one of it's attack I disappeared and got CPU Jammed error in Nestopia. But I think it was a very rare crash, it shouldn't happens to you. Take screenshots of your passwords or use savestates just in case. No other than that the game is fine. It's just has a different feel than most MM games, especially the two health bar boss battles, that you may enjoy more or less.
I didn't talk about the graphics or musics: They're all good, no complain.
This water level is special...
Rockman IV Unique Harassment is a unique Rockman hack. It has huge amount of change, with it's high point being the new eccentric boss battles. It can be hard at time, but using the right weapon or Rush suit can make it easy.
Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Very good, must play