Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest 3 Blind Playthrough Part 100 - Worthless Man
Well this stage's title is a blatant lie...as this stage is anything but worthless! Puns aside, the premise and story centers around a robot master called "Worthless Man" who laters realizes that he doesn't feel male but more female hence the end bosses are Luna and Celestial Women which I will return to later.
Okay, let's talk about the stage, upon beginning the stage, I hear a remixed version of one of the JoJo openings and immediately it puts a smile on my face as I enjoy this song so much, I stayed in this stage for a while and never did it get dull as this 8-bit rendition is fantastic.
The only enemies in this stage are Joes but these aren't standard Joes, we have Spark Joe, Top Joe, Air Joe, Gyro Joe and more which I find charming. These Joes may be a bit too tanky for their own good especially in the position they are placed in the latter parts of the stage which truly push the difficulty to the extreme.
I really liked the concept of making familiar robot masters be enemies and have them take the form of a Joe, only the Top Joe is a stage obstacle as it cannot be defeated, however many of the Gyro Joe placements make them both an enemy as well as a stage hazard with how dangerous they become especially in the latter half of this stage.
With the enemies covered since like I said its only Joes of various kinds which are all custom objects that I really adore. The main gimmick of this stage is changing between day and night which resulted in most screens having two variants, and we have to change between both day and night to progress constantly as there are blocks that only appear at day as well as night and vice versa.
The beginning to this concept is clear and easy enough to grasp, which progressively gets harder as the puzzles get far more engaging and genuinely difficult. The latter set-ups are truly innovative pushing this gimmick to its limit and for that I have to give it credit. This stage created a new gimmick and stuck with it throughout the stage making it be thematically coherent and appropriate.
There is a LOT of death that occurs in this stage since the latter puzzles get quite mean and devious, one specific room near the end caused plenty of death with many timings feeling extremely precise but its a learning curve which makes pulling them off feel so satisfying.
The tokens in this stage push the gimmick to its extreme as they are by FAR the most difficult portions of this stage, which is how it should be, there are no free or gimme tokens (maybe besides the first), the remaining four are behind rather difficult challenges, these tokens certainly get my approval!
Next, the bosses of course, Honey Joan is a bit of a trippy fight with how disorienting her sprite is plenty of the time, almost as if gravity keeps pulling her in many directions. JoJo Joe is a comedic boss which uses past robot master holograms to attack you, the Metal Man hologram is FAR more aggressive than the previous two, he does not mess around and I couldn't pick up his pattern at all.
Finally, there are the two end bosses, Luna Woman which is the easier of the end bosses which I never fought myself personally so I don't have much to say but then there's Celestial Woman...oh dear god is this one of the coolest and most impressive boss fights I've EVER seen in a Mega Man game period!
Luna Woman has 2 health bars whereas Celestial Woman has a whopping 5, when the warnings at the beginning of the stage warned me about a super boss, they weren't kidding as this boss is truly something to behold...
I only had two attempts at Celestial Woman, my initial blind attempt which did only a bit over one health bar, in my second attempt it was chugging time to experience the battle in all its glory, my successful battle takes over 7 mins which marks this the longest single boss battle in Mega Man that I've ever faced.
The reason this boss takes so long is because she has 5 health bars and stays airborne for plenty of the battle, the boss also has desperation attacks every time the phase changes which are so cool and awesome, there is honestly so much love and care put into this boss making it one of the grandest bosses in the Mega Man franchise I've ever fought.
Needless to say, this is a Touhou boss as the song is an instant giveaway however many attacks are creative and epic bullet hell patterns which feel so satisfying to pull off. I'm running out of characters so I will be ending soon but believe I have so much to say on this spectacular super boss.
Overall, this stage and epic finale of a boss are extremely memorable, this is a fantastic stage that implements an original gimmick that pushes its challenges to the extreme, marking it with an absurdly phenomenal final boss, all this for just one stage in a massive contest like this, you as the creator have ascended by creating this stage and making it an experience I certainly won't be forgetting for a very long time, so massive props for that!