Part 21: Why would you name your villain that!?

But we were given the StaffKey item!



Oh well, there's the machine. Time for the first dungeon of the demo.



What'd I say about this reminding me of AirMan? This dungeon uses the same tileset and background, the only difference is the purple filter to represent the poisonous gas. Sprite re-use is fine, really, so long as the content is enjoyable. We'll see whether it is or isn't.



Oh great, it's like ShadowMan/GyroMan's cloud puzzles in MMBN5. Not a good sign.



Fortunately, doing this is a free action you can do at any time, and the gas clouds don't come back. That's an improvement.



And it will slowly drain MegaMan's HP. I mean very slowly. About 1 HP per 5 seconds. So it's not a significant worry at all.



So, to proceed through the dungeon, and this wasn't readily obvious at first, you need to suck up all the gas clouds. This results in, I'm not going to sugarcoat it, fairly annoying, repetitive gameplay. You have to keep refilling the fan's gauge with fresh air from the single vent in the area, so there's too much back and forth.



WindBoom: The first custom virus! The sprite looks good, even though it's a combination of a P.A. from MMBN1, a Canodumb, and a HardHead's base. They're not very threatening, they just create a tornado on the panel MegaMan is standing on if he moves into their row. You can just move forward or backward from that panel and even stay lined up with them, so they're actually even less dangerous than the CanoDumb viruses. I assume the tornado they create does more damage, though, I never got hit with it.



They drop the TornadoGun chip, which seems to behave like a weaker version of the classic Tornado chip, but has a 3 panel range instead of a mere two panels. Arguably a useful chip.



There are Mr. Prog NPCs in two of the gas clouds, and they fork over MiniEnergy subchips that make the gas even less of an issue.



Mystery data coughs up another new chip, the HydroPump K chip. I actually tested this one, it basically is an aqua element FireHit chip.



The second area takes the problem I had with the first area, that being the backtracking due to the limits of the fan, and runs with it. Two vents to recharge the fan in a gigantic area, each at opposite ends of the whole thing down stray pathways. The sheer amount of backtracking and slogging around really makes this area feel tedious. I actually found it simpler to just jack-out and reset the fan that way rather than have to haul ass all the way to one of the vents again.



After that's over with, the door to the boss opens up. Thank god, any more than two areas of this dungeon and I'd have been a lot nastier about this review.



Pressing L to talk to Lan reveals another glitch. I'm pretty sure Lan is supposed to be saying something totally different.



Approaching the control panel, the unnamed villain confronts MegaMan.



No! NO! Why...why would you name the villain THAT!? Raven is the most cliche, horribly Mary Sue'd up name you could have picked! This suddenly bodes very badly. Is his full name something like Raven Darkheart Devylflame Blas'phemer Dragonspyne!?



After a bit of back-and-forth, it's time to actually engage Raven in battle.

He instantly redeems himself by being insanely fun to fight! Holy shit, that just redeemed everything negative I've said about this so far. He's tough, his attacks are varied, the field keeps you on your toes, and he's not a totally pathetic first boss like any of the others.



FIGHT ME AGAIN!



My renewed faith and enthusiasm for this project aside, it seems that this situation is echoing MMBN4 and MMBN5's writing about darkness in MegaMan's soul or something.



Raven holds his hand out and begins sucking the power out of MegaMan.



If I had to guess, the idea here is that the DarkPower used for ChaosUnisons in MMBN5 never really left MegaMan, it was just dormant during MMBN6.



And that purble glowblob is it.



MegaMan falls unconscious, leaving him an easy target for Raven, who actually is going to do the competent villain thing and try to delete him now rather than just leaving.



There's a slashing sound effect, and this guy, wielding beam tonfas, appears to defend MegaMan. Odds of this character being the Navi for the kid Lan bumped into earlier are about 100%.



Raven flees the scene, deciding that he got what he came here for at the very least.



That's the end!? But...aw...I wanted more boss fights! Raven was great!



So it seems as though the Navi who saved MegaMan was BladeMan.EXE. I assume this was before MegaMan 10 was released, BladeMan being intended as an original Navi, because they look nothing alike.



Might want to correct Rebecca Valentine's name there, I mean, don't stoop to the level of Bowne and screw up the credits at least. Poor Christpher...



Wait, SoulRed12? I recognize that name! He had a Newgrounds account that had a few MMBN remixes I found one day while looking for them. Checking it led me to his YouTube account.



Poor Rebecca.



I guess I sort of count as a beta tester.



You guys have my support as well, especially after that Raven fight. When you guys finish this game, no matter how far in the future that is, I will LP it.



My final take on this demo? Very similar to the feel of MMBN1. It's a foundation for greater things, and while unpolished and even boring at some parts, it has enough charm to make itself worthwhile. With improvements, I have no doubts the project will be successful.