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Deus Ex Machina

Levels: Excellent

Graphics: Okay

Music: Excellent

Enemies: Excellent

Bosses: Excellent

Weapons: Excellent

Castle: Good (Platforming Heavy)

Difficulty: MEDIUM-HARD (Occasionally HARD)

Comments: Deus Ex Machina is an absolutely amazing hack that's pretty ugly and mean on the outside. If you can overlook the simplistic look of a lot of the stages, you'll find yourself enthralled by its tough-yet-fair level design, and the fantastic new weapons. The most downright impressive things are the new items, which change how you approach platforming and offer a really nice handicap for the cautious. Bosses can be a bit brutal but they're mostly well designed, especially compared to many other "hard" hacks (the Wily bosses in particular are very well done). Don't be deceived by Deus Ex Machina's simplistic look: there's a satisfyingly deep game lying beneath it.

This has to be one of the most ridiculous romhacks I had to ever deal with.

1) Some of the bosses are completely unbalanced, and just pray hope you have their weakness weapon or else you'll never beat Heat Man normally.

2) Some of the stages are ridiculously cheap that I wondered if the creator just liked to troll the hell out of people for giggles? THIS WAS NOT FUN. I finally gave up right at Wily 1 when I came across a ice spike floor next to a pit that WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO CROSS.

3) The forced Weapon usage was just getting tedious, and Wily 1 was basically the last straw for me too.

4) The only thing good going for this romhack is that the enemies are pretty fun to fight, and I no real issues with them except when it got tedious at times.

Sorry, I can't recommend this.

I have to admit , the music and graphics of this hack is Excellent , i really enjoy it . But is´t the only thing that I liked in this hack .

The level design is really unfair and frustrating , with cheap jumps , cheap enemies placement and attack patters and sections based on perfect timing and movement , which is barely possible to go through .

let me explain the enemies a bit : the crazy cannon shoot tons of bullets at once (which is a nightmare in hard mode) , sniper joes with curving shots with wily machine 2 hitboxes , the spring enemies moving as fast as Quick , air enemies blowing you away to spikes and off platforms , chains placed in cheap locations , requering PERFECT jump , move and speed , tellies moves twice as fast , prop-tops that never get away of you , mix this all with the high damage input and you will see what i´m talking about .

The stages have their individual cheapness sections , Crash with moving platforms and spike dogding , Flash with small platforms and slipping jumps , Bubble with fast water enemies and lots of spike jumps , Quick with laser sections with requires the fast movements that you can pull off , Metal with small moving platforms and large jumps , Air with trick platform jumps and blowing enemies , etc .

The bosses IA don´t help too , making barely impossible to defeat some of them with the buster .

If i would recommend this hack , it will be only because the Excellent music and graphics , but for gameplay , you definitely don´t wait to get near this one .

So, I see this hack, and I think that it could be fun. Japanese hacks tend to be a change of pace in most cases and rather unique. However, Rockman Deus Ex Machina is not one of those hacks. Riddled with horrible level design and new boss AI and damage models that will make you want to rip your hair out in frustration. For one thing, the Easy version of the hack (which is far from easy) will not let you complete the game. In one of the Wily Castle levels you'll spawn and immediately die. The only way I could find around this was to play the normal game and load a save state after a successful spawn. I'm not sure if this was intentional by Misty or not, I'm assuming it was due to how the rest of the game felt while playing.

The level design is full of holes and annoying and cheap shots, most of the time you'll find yourself trying to figure out how on earth you're going to be able to actually make it to the next screen, and then you just end up dying a whole lot and feel like save states are a necessity... which just screams bad hack design and just bad hack in general to me. Every single level in this hack just screams "oh, you're hurt? Here's an E-Tank you're going to have to use in order to even have a chance at the boss" Some of the bosses I couldn't beat even with two E-Tanks... I had to resort to using an infinite health code to get through the final bosses, and I literally sat there trying to beat Airman's rematch (which the room is covered in spikes, and Airman will randomly blow you and suck you in...) and the final Wily bosses and what I'm assuming is a horribly edited Zero sprite from the GBC Megaman X games. Also factor in that one of the most annoying weapons to use is the Crash Bomb, which is what does the most damage to Airman, trying to connect with this bomb on him where you can make it explode next to him is very difficult and makes you more annoyed than feeling like you're being challenged.

The majority of the bosses are really cheap, they take hardly any damage from any of your weapons, even the ones they're supposedly weak against, despite the fact that it seemed like almost all the bosses took the most damage from Bubble Man's weapon. The entire premise of Megaman is supposed to be based on Rock Paper Scissors, and while you're trying to do that your opponent has a shotgun and is constantly killing you. Misty seems to have forgotten this, as the balance in this hack is way off and some areas are borderline "Kaizo" which is a bit of a misnomer since Kaizo doesn't mean overly hard or "ass-holeish" in nature as it has been made out to mean in the English hacking communities. None the less, I hardly had fun while playing this hack, and the majority of the levels have decent ideas, but all the enemies are way too strong even on the easy mode...

The only other thing I can comment on with the enemies and bosses is the final boss is a freaking disaster, good luck defeating him legitimately...

The music is alright, it was revamped by Ika, the best track in my opinion was the remix of May's theme from Guilty Gear, Blue Water, Blue Sky. It's not enough to save this hack at all though... Ika also made Rockman No Constancy, while the hard version of that hack is ridiculously difficult, the easy version can actually be played by a normal human being and is an enjoyable hack for the most part, so don't waste your time with this hack. Play Rockman no Constancy if you want to play a good Japanese Megaman hack. I'd skip this one, it's not even worth looking into if you're even slightly curious.

Fantastic!

This game is excellent, it feels like an authentic Rockman game. When you play it, you won't think of it as a just a mod of Rockman 2. I do not know if the hackers had a famicom and tv screen in mind (I used the NTSC filter) but the background designs look absolutely gorgeous. I really enjoyed in particular the stages that have a very Japanese feel (you will know them when you see them.)

Music: A great new soundtrack (you may recognize a couple of tunes from your favorite games in here!)

Game play mechanics : Finally, Rock can shoot 4 pellets at the same time! All new abilities (more than simple sprite changes I assure you!) I particularly like power ups "2" and "3", and how you have to think about using them to clear certain levels in Wily's Castle. The robot bosses themselves act differently, with a variation on their powers.

Level Design: Without hyperbole, these are some of the best level designs I've seen in a Rockman 2 hack. There are often multiple ways to go (for instance a harder "path" at the top of the screen offering a power up.) It is important to note that with the new power-ups, having it in a particular stage can allow you to "skip" over areas that require excellent timing and reflexes. In this way it feels just like an authentic professional release. Throw in the new colors, custom music, and the excellent "flashing" during some of the big boss fights. You will feel a rush of adrenaline and nostalgia (I can almost see the instruction manual with a warning about not using rear projection TV's, and not to play if you have epilepsy.)

Conclusion: It is just a classic game. Even if you are horrible at Rockman, use save states, cheat. I don't care, just play this game!

Negative: The only negative is that the intro and upgrade screens are in moon language (aka Japanese ;) )

Go and download! Play it now!