Uploaded January 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
We close out the special stages with special stage 1, which houses Enker. Like the other two, the stage has a variety of enemies and obstacles, though aside from the disappearing block section early on, they're more straightforward than what we faced in Punk's stage. This is the only special stage without an E-Tank, though, which is kind of a problem, because Enker is rather a nuisance to fight. He has various ways that he can jump, run, and shoot, all of which are fast and with no apparent pattern. I ended up just using his weakness, which is Ballade's weapon. I could probably have gotten used to him enough to beat him with the buster eventually, but I really didn't feel like playing through the entire stage every time.
And that is what my biggest problem with these stages is. It's not really fair or fun to make them only available in Time Attack mode, and therefore, require playing through in one try. The stages are challenging enough in their own right just from the level design, at least as much so as the Wily stages, but even the Wily stages at least had checkpoints, and the special stages are longer than any of them (except maybe Wily stage 2, and even then, I'm not so sure). I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Forcing the player to go through long stretches without any checkpoints, especially entire levels, doesn't really make them any more difficult. What little additional difficulty it may add is entirely fake, and mostly, it simply makes those parts of a game more annoying and tedious. So...these special stages are kind of a neat throwback for people who played the Game Boy Mega Man games, and it's cool that they actually do give you special weapons, but thumbs down on them overall.
We close out the special stages with special stage 1, which houses Enker. Like the other two, the stage has a variety of enemies and obstacles, though aside from the disappearing block section early on, they're more straightforward than what we faced in Punk's stage. This is the only special stage without an E-Tank, though, which is kind of a problem, because Enker is rather a nuisance to fight. He has various ways that he can jump, run, and shoot, all of which are fast and with no apparent pattern. I ended up just using his weakness, which is Ballade's weapon. I could probably have gotten used to him enough to beat him with the buster eventually, but I really didn't feel like playing through the entire stage every time.
And that is what my biggest problem with these stages is. It's not really fair or fun to make them only available in Time Attack mode, and therefore, require playing through in one try. The stages are challenging enough in their own right just from the level design, at least as much so as the Wily stages, but even the Wily stages at least had checkpoints, and the special stages are longer than any of them (except maybe Wily stage 2, and even then, I'm not so sure). I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Forcing the player to go through long stretches without any checkpoints, especially entire levels, doesn't really make them any more difficult. What little additional difficulty it may add is entirely fake, and mostly, it simply makes those parts of a game more annoying and tedious. So...these special stages are kind of a neat throwback for people who played the Game Boy Mega Man games, and it's cool that they actually do give you special weapons, but thumbs down on them overall.
