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Rockman 5: Wily's Dream Space

Levels: Excellent

Graphics: Good

Music: Good

Enemies: Okay

Bosses: Okay

Weapons: Eh

Castle: Excellent (platforming heavy)

Difficulty: MEDIUM-HARD (Wily castle can be HARD)

Comments: Wily's Dream Space is a hack with amazing level design that'll push you to the limit... but not much else. As far as I can understand, it's strangely based off of CHIKO's "Killer to Hell", but made to be significantly more palatable and engaging. Levels have strong (but sometimes ugly) themes and both Dark Man and Dr. Wily's stages are expertly crafted, meant to crush your spirit until you master them. The big problem with this hack however is that your arsenal is fairly underwhelming, making stages especially difficult as you can't quickly neutralize some enemies. Bosses are largely the same steroid-infused monsters as in Killer to Hell, though they don't do an infuriating amount of damage anymore. Wily's Dream Space is a must-play for veterans looking for a challenge (the gravity sections are amazing), but folks looking for an gentle-but-crafty experience like Double Jumper should probably stay away.

Whew, where to begin? This is a rom hack that revamps Mega Man 5's levels and bosses to be refreshing and interesting, but also challenging to those looking for a bit more of a challenge from the game. On some fronts, the game definitely delivers. The vast majority of the levels are sporting new layouts, gimmicks, and looks that help them feel fresh. The game has new music almost all over the place, most of which sound nice, though whether they fit the stage is up to your opinion. Some of the enemies have altered behavior, which can be a mixed bag at times; it makes going up against some of these old enemies feel fresh, but at other times it can be a bit frustrating.

Personally, the strongest point for this hack is it aesthetics. A lot of the stages look quite nice with their new themes, which are quite fitting for the robot masters they're associated with. They feel wholly distinct from their original counterparts and are decently memorable, even if they borrow from other games, which isn't a bad thing. They're nice little references and help reinforce their theme.

With that said though, there's a myriad of problems I've personally had with the hack that kept me from enjoying it much at all, especially towards its conclusion. Let's start with the level design. There's many areas in which I feel this game could have much stronger, fairer level design. In many levels were there metools in places that would make their attacks effectively unavoidable if you don't shoot them before they fire in the first place. In some cases they're also stationed near pits, which only adds to your frustration should they manage to knock you into it. There's also the Mizzile enemies, some of which are placed similarly in places that you wouldn't expect them to be and they end up similarly knocking you into a pit.

In other cases with enemies, sometimes you might find that they're spammed far more than would be reasonable to have to deal with. Most prominently, I look towards Wave Man's stage as an example as to what not to do. The wavebike segment is utterly spammed with enemies, many of which are more durable than in the original game, to the degree where dodging or dealing with them all without sustaining any damage feels impossible. Adding to that problem is the sprite flicker which I experienced in many places in the game. In some cases, that sprite flicker caused some enemies to disappear for a time, causing me to not even realize that they were there.

And in the castle stages, though something the official games do, I'm not a fan of the forced item usage such as with Super Arrow or Rush Jet. Though I'm grateful they generally do supply you with energy for them, the amount of time I had to use those items did wear on the energy I had for them. And in many of those cases, there weren't many enemies for which I could grind for energy should I have run out.

And there were more than one case where the graphics worked against the game. In a few stages the new graphics concealed a threat that I didn't see until I got hit by it, such as one of those gas-spewing blocks, or a spike that blended in too well with the stage. That's not getting into some of the tilesets, such as for Dark Man Stage 3 that I found just plain bad. In other cases, such as in Wave Man, Gyro Man and Crystal Man's stages, it was confusing to figure out what was a background element and what was a foreground element.

Then come some of the stage gimmicks. The ones I wish to draw attention to are those in Gravity Man / Dark Man Stage 3, Charge Man, Dark Man Stage 1, and Wily Stages 1 and 2. In the first case, these stages use the gravity switch mechanic. While normally fun to work with, I experienced nothing but annoyance with it during my playthrough. Some of the gravity switching elements were far more narrow than their graphic would indicate, and especially in Gravity Man's stage, were near impossible for me to pass without heavy save state abuse. The ides they had with the gimmick were neat, but their execution left something to be polished. For Charge Man, his conveyor belt gimmick is thematically cool and appropriate, but in some cases made the stage more annoying than was probably intended, especially with the placement of some enemies with it. In one case with one of the train mets, you're forced to slide to dodge it, but the conveyor you're on will probably end up carrying you past the opening you're meant to jump into.

For Dark Man Stage 1, the idea of showing you the level layout at the bottom is a neat idea, but once again, poorly executed. The idea isn't properly introduced beforehand in a safe manner, and the enemy placement is quite irritating to get around without special weapon usage, which I feel should never be a requirement to complete a stage. The last portion of that section of the stage doesn't convey what the game wants you to do well either.

But the Wily Stages take the cake for the worst parts of the game. In the first two stages there are two large dark rooms that you can't see the layout of and simply have to fumble around to find your way through without anything to help guide you outside of limited Water Wave and Crystal Eye assistance. Even those don't do enough to show you the layout of the room however, which also include large or numerous pits you need to stay out of, on top of all the enemies within it. These two rooms alone would have been enough to make me quit without save states.

Then come the bosses, which largely fell into two categories for me; either annoyingly to unfairly difficult, or simply boring with how little was changed about them. Gyro, Napalm, Star, Stone, Dark Man 1, 2, 4, the Wily Press and the Wily Machine all received only small changes to their fights that, while somewhat give a different experience to their original counterparts, don't do enough to make them stand out against them. Star Man and Dark Man 4 deserve some attention here though; Star Man can cheap shot you at the beginning of the fight with his Star Crash, while Dark Man 4 I'm not sure how you can dodge given the only change to his fight, the rebounding shots he now fires, seem like they keep rebounding until they hit you.

For the other bosses, special mention needs to go to Charge Man, Crystal Man, Dark Man 3, and the Wily Capsule. Charge Man is absurd with his charging lasting longer, his walking and now the conveyor belts pushing you towards him the whole fight. Altogether it feels unreasonable to be able to beat him first without at least an energy tank or two, and that's without noting how much damage his coals do. Then again, the same could be said for how many attacks in the game do almost too much damage to you.

Crystal Man is fast, jumps lower, and fires out five Crystal Eye shots in a way that makes dodging them, and him extremely difficult to nearly impossible. Adding to his fight is the ice physics you're also dealing with in his arena. It feels like he was overtuned in his difficulty and made to be virtually impossible to fight without his weakness or energy tanks.

Speaking of weaknesses, two robot masters, Star Man and Gyro Man, feel far harder to fight with their weaknesses due to how impractical it is to hit them with it. You're bound to hurt yourself more than just fighting them both with the buster.

Dark Man 3 is mostly the same, but being forced to fight him while stuck to the ceiling makes what's normally a fun, simple fight into quite the ordeal without his weakness, which, again, I feel you shouldn't be forced to use to win.

That leads nicely into the Wily Capsule, who was made immune to your standard buster. Granted, they have an enemy outside that you can grind ammo off of, but no boss should be granted an immunity to your standard weapon. That leaves open the possibility of being forced to get a game over to try again.

Changing gears, the music was quite nice for the most part. Most of the stages had nice tunes that fit their stage, and in some cases served as nice references to other games. That said, some of the renditions of the songs have some instruments or what have you that became a bit ear grating to listen to. Most notably, Gravity Man, Stone Man and Wily Stage 2 were three stages I felt where the music was lacking.

I will praise how the letters were hidden for Beat however. Some of them were decently clever and none of them required other weapons or items to collect them, which I think is great design.

Overall, this hack has some nice ideas, but many of the levels and bosses leave a lot to be desired, and end up making the game more irritating than fun to play through. Not recommended to play as is in my opinion.

...well, it was for me.

I asked Roevsky: "What good hacks would you recommend me to go through?" And among them is this hack.

!Before starting the review, I will make a note and a warning. In the hack - there are unpleasant flashes of light that can harm you. If you don't tolerate them, it's better not to touch the hack. YOU have been warned!

To be honest, I will write about each item under a number, because this is the order of things that hooked me.

1. Music in the hack. I honestly didn't like her. A little unpleasant to the ear, and in some locations - not in the subject. Maybe someone will like it

2. Level Design. Here I liked him 85%, and 15% managed to annoy me. There are really interesting ideas in this level design that it seems that we are going through tests in our own way. But then why did I allocate 15%? Because some places:

• Do not pass without a Rush Jet, because the pit is wider than necessary
• A problematic wall, where it is required to clearly get an arrow shot so that after squeezing "pixel to pixel" a small opening
• One place with gravity... Without the Rush Jet, I couldn't do it at all.
• Crystal man Stage: the trouble with bubbles... because I didn't have enough distance for jumping with him

3. Bosses. I have nothing to say here, because some are well done, and some are simply not interesting

4. I have nothing to say about abilities, because there is really nothing

Highlighting the pros and cons - it turns out that the cons are gone: "Music" and "Enemies". (Enemies due to the fact that some have a Different AI, and it turned out to be dishonest). And the pros: Levels (85%), Bosses (Most of them), Logical actions in the hack. The opinion looks ambiguous, but, to be honest, I surprisingly liked the hack. I will take it to the collection because it turned out to be interesting, and soon I will be using this hack to play games more professionally.

To put it bluntly, I can recommend it, but it's at your discretion, because the hack can upset you.

When I play it first time. It's very difficult but fun. Most of enemies health's adjust. All of stages are challenge but fun. For example, you can ride tier on stone, darkman 2 and wily 2 stage. Riding darkman1 on fighting to avoid get damaged. Music also is really awesome. I recommend it.

Ultimately, I would recommend this, but just barely. It utilizes very unique level palettes from other games like SMW2, Donkey Kong Country, and Kirby pretty well, and also has some great music to go along with it (for the most part). Each stage felt very alive and distinct from the originals, making it somewhat memorable (which can be difficult for a mostly Vanilla romhack). In addition, the new enemies, modified bosses, and modified weapons keep it interesting throughout. Aside from the Robot Masters, several of the Protoman/Wily bosses have also been changed up to surprisingly different forms.

All this being said, the game is brutally hard at points, and not in a good way. Cheap enemy placement and far-spaced checkpoints make some levels a chore to get through, and things get particularly bad in the Wily stages. The worst offender by far are the dark rooms, which the other reviewer mentioned. They are used in more than one Wily stage and require you to slowly use weapons like Water Wave and Napalm bomb to navigate a completely dark room with numerous holes and hazards placed throughout. As a small one-time gimmick, it may not have been so bad, but again, they are used in more than one Wily stage. Why? They are slow, tedious, cheap, and honestly are just better skipped via the use of save states if you value your time and sanity. As you can tell, they left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, which is a shame given how well the hack had been going up to that point

This hack knocked me out right away by beginning with a great chiptune rendition of Star of Darkness from Secret of Mana, and the hits don't stop! The robot master intro is awesome, too, but I can't remember which Mega Man it's from; probably one of the Game Boy titles. Oh, and the boss music is Spirit Chaser from Rudra no Hihou, one of my favorite boss battle songs of all time. When you fight bosses toward the end and they take away my beloved Spirit Chaser, they replace it with another great boss battle tune from the same game! The first Proto Man stage uses the first Wily Stage from Mega Man 7, which is an excellent choice. There are a few songs that don't quite work, though, like Star Man's rendition of Rainbow Resort from Kirby's Adventure; the original tune is beautiful, but here, it's a little grating, though that might be due to mapper limitations. Gyro Man also uses Kirby music, but the implementation is a little weird; there's an overenthusiastic sound channel that almost makes it sound like the chiptune orchestra is falling down the stairs... and yet, it works, in a way, creating something that I liked just because of how bizarre it is. The first Wily Stage has a song that I don't recognize; it's hot and primal, and really got me pumped... and then this... dog whistle comes in; some of us can actually hear those frequencies, you know!

The visuals are great, too; no new enemy tilesets, but the robot masters all have cool new palettes. The stages are completely redesigned, and not only do they look great, they also have some unique themes. Gravity Man's stage, for instance, is an Earthbound battle made into a stage, creating a psychedelic wasteland. The Proto Man stages are where the visual design really shines; the first one is just a castle, but it's an extremely well designed castle, really adding the extra to extraordinary. The second stage has dancing Toad Man graphics in the background when it starts raining in the dark, and the boss is just a silhouette. The third stage is my absolute favorite, beginning with the mists from 4-8 in Yoshi's Island, and taking you into a rainbow paradise.

As for the actual guts of the game, it's mostly good, but with a few problems. First of all, serious bonus points for making the Power Stone less useless; it was actually very useful against the final boss. There were a lot of creative puzzles in some of the castle stages, too, with good usage of Rush Coil, Rush Jet, and even Super Arrow; you really have to think about how to proceed. My favorite of these is probably the invisible block puzzle in the first Proto Man stage, which made me feel like a real dope when I figured it out. Some of these puzzles are infuriating, though, and I'd highly recommend using states for them. One of the worst offenders would be the dark rooms. They're a great idea, because you can use Water Wave to get an idea of the layout. The problem is that Water Wave isn't Bubble Lead, so you can only use it while on the ground, and Super Arrow isn't as much help as I'd have liked. There was often cheap enemy placement, too, knocking you off of platforms in particularly tricky areas, and since a lot of the enemies take a lot more hits, you get hit with a deadly 1-2 punch. Those back-and-forth gravity flips over pits or death spikes were awful, too, though they really only reached hair-rending levels of frustration in Gravity Man's stage. Despite its flaws, I would recommend this hack, especially to those looking for something fresh.