My 1st impressions after beating MMX2. Tries to hard to make lighting strike twice, but it just can't be like MMX.
The bosses in this game are an oddity in the Mega Man franchise, it's not just that they look weird, but they also react very differently depending on how you fight them. For instance, the Centipede maverick actually gets harder if you use his weakness, while if you use the mega buster he is a lot more tame and easier to handle. However, other bosses like the Snail Maverick are just so long and tedious that it gets to the point that his weakness is crucial unless you are able to stand fighting him for an hour. Really a lot of the bosses are just a dodge till they expose a chance to shoot them and then dodge till you get a chance again. This makes a lot of fights tedious and annoying as you will often be spending a large amount of time doing this, if you're using the buster only, which for some bosses it just seems better to use. Perhaps that's my biggest complaint about the series so far, the reliance of the buster over other weapons, the buster simply beats them all in that regard, which kinda beats the whole purpose of this game being called Mega Man, doesn't it? Perhaps, it be better off being called a different name, I know its a different "Mega Man" series, but that still doesn't feel right, it simply doesn't feel like it has the same kind of heart.
As for what I did like in this game? Well the items were hidden rather well, and you felt really accomplished when you found one. There is just something that makes getting collectibles so much better in X2 than X. The story is still nice and the fact you can change it a bit depending on your actions is a nice touch, certainly one of the more "in-depth stories" for Mega Man I have ever played. But in comparison to the first Mega Man X game, I still have to hand it to the original. While the original is nowhere near perfect, things are just overall better in X. The bosses were easier to deal with, the weaknesses effectively worked well; it also had a better story, and overall just felt like the better designed game, despite my previous ranting on the difficulty itself. I can't really think of anything else to say either, just seems like they were trying mimic Mega Man X's success, but didn't quite do it.
Conclusion:
While X2 copies the original Mega Man X well, it certainly doesn't hold up when comparing the two. The bosses are more so tedious then they are hard, starting out is still difficult to do, and all the while the game gets far easier the more you get through it. Really X2 just feels like more of the same, and it's a shame it can't be anything better than that.