YMMV / Mega Man Rock Force

• Awesome Music: Special mention goes to the title screen, Weapon Get, Shock Man's level, Circuit Man's level, Photon Man's level, Charade Man's new level theme, Plague Man's level, Power Man's level, and Death Man's boss theme.
• Breather Boss: Photon Man and Crypt Man are a lot easier than most of the other Robot Masters, thanks to their simplistic attack patterns as well as the latter giving the player a health refill before his boss fight. Photon Man still has a really nasty beam attack, but it's heavily telegraphed and easily dodged.
• Broken Base: Accessed by beating a Robot Master in the corners of the screen as the last one, the alternate set of Fusion Robot Masters added after an update. Are they interesting twists on classic Mega Man formula that help make the game feel wholly unique and push boundaries for fangames? Or are they gimmicky, puzzle-y slogs that stray too far from Rock Force's otherwise Original Flavour styled level design?
• Character Tiers: With the advent of the latest update and the ability to play as every Rock Force member, there will obviously be debates on which playable character is better than the others.
  • Mega Man - Good all-around character with the greatest ability to absorb the powers of defeated Robot Masters and use them as weaknesses on the others. He is clearly the best option for any level and is thus high tier.
  • Bomb Man - He could be considered low mid-tier considering he has some limitations to firing off of ladders. He can one-shot all enemies and most mini-bosses and can protect himself in a cocoon of explosions with some crazy dashing back and forth.
  • Fire Man - He's solid mid-tier since he can fire straight, upwards, and downwards to get at oddly placed enemies. The fact of his two-flame-limit jump boost helps his case a lot, increasing his mobility and functionality drastically.
  • Cut Man - He could be considered low tier since his cutters take some time getting used to with their aiming, and the fact you can only have three onscreen at a time and they can last a while before dissipating can stifle your attack plan sometimes. Finally, his wall jump isn't useful unless you have a second wall opposite nearby to scale, so in this instance, his wall jump is far less useful than...
  • Elec Man - Clearly top tier and one of the best to use of the Rock Force. He has crazy speed, has a three-pronged Thunder Beam that can one-shot most enemies, and his wall jump is godly. You can clutch save from many a missed jump with his wall jump. His crazy speed alone is enough to cancel out conveyor belts that are traveling in the opposite direction.
  • Dive Man - Bottom tier, although he can be mid to top tier when he's underwater. He has am infinite supply of missiles that fire straight ahead but has a limited amount of homing torpedoes that you can refill with weapon energy. His 'Psycho Crusher' attack is also useful as a mid-air dash, and once used, gives you invincibility frames to get past tough spots. Outside water, however, he walks rather slow, has a very low jump height, and his 'Psycho Crusher' attack only covers enough distance for a small pit.
  • Knight Man - Low tier, is slow and clunky. He can throw his Knight Crusher, which deals a nice amount of damage, in a variety of directions, but can only have one on-screen at a time, so if you missed your mark, you must wait for it to return to you before firing again, opening you up immensely. Although he has a shield to block forward shots, it doesn't cover his entire body, and if a shot hits his head or his feet, it goes past the shield. Besides the shield, his other saving grace is that his Knight Crusher does twice the damage of any other default weapon, which makes him somewhat more useful against enemies with long Mercy Invincibility, including the bosses themselves (even those not weak to his weapon) if you're able to reliably hit with it.
  • Nitro Man - Top tier, period. He can motorbike his way through most levels at top speed, and he can ride up walls in his bike form or with his Wheel Cutter. He can fling Wheel Cutters out in most directions, and they travel along the floors and walls. The fact that you can save yourself from a pit fall using his weapon also helps cement his top tier status.
  • Tornado Man - Mid tier, leaning towards top. His normal attack is similar to Cut Man's and functions about the same (minus the piercing capabilities), but has the ability to block bullets. His screen-clearing attack, however, decimates everything at the cost of some refillable weapon energy, and can boost his already considerable jump height as a bonus. His air mobility is great on tricky platforming segments that you don't feel like attempting; you can simply jump high and float your way across most obstacles. Pogo-stomping enemies to maintain loft is also very fun.
• Cult Classic: In comparison to other Mega Man fan games like Unlimited and Revolution, Rock Force didn't get much press coverage and is liked by certain fan circles. GoldwaterDLS is perfectly fine with this, since the lack of attention allows him to focus on refining the game and make it even better.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Charade Man, primarily due to the numerous hilarious easter eggs associated with him on the stage select screen.
• Funny Moments:
  • Charade Man has a few:
    • Before you select his stage, his portrait can change between several different options, including one where he's grabbing the edges of the frame, one where he's wearing a fedora, and one where he appears as Charade Woman. He reprises this last role in the post-ending sequence, leading to an Unsettling Gender-Reveal for an audience member—specifically, Blizzard Man.
    • When you select his stage, there's a chance that when Charade Man leaps into the air to do his opening pose, he misses his jump and falls off the screen.
    • Instead of "Ready", the beginning of the stage says "Break a Leg".
    • The first room with the dancing robot performers is filled with Vaudeville Hooks trying to pull you off-stage. The second one contains (explosive) Produce Pelting.
  • The behavior of the Rock Force members during the weapons demonstrations. Bomb Man is annoyed at Mega Man stealing his thunder when the latter demonstrates Phantom Fuse, for example.
  • Some of the Rock Force members have unique animations for sliding that are funny to watch. Cut Man, for example, looks absolutely giddy to be sliding around, while Bomb Man slides by curling up into the fetal position with a mortified look on his face. Dive Man has a unique animation as he slides underneath a small space. As the largest member of the Rock Force, he needs more headspace, so he'll reel his head back horizontally as to not hit it while sliding. Bonus points for his worried expression while doing so, as it seems like a close call for him each time.
  • After defeating the first 8 Robot Masters, the members of the Rock Force will show up in later levels to help Mega Man out, usually by providing Mega Man with healing items or by clearing a path for him. Elec Man's cameo in Terror Man's stage, however, has him running away from the speeding remains of Wily Machine 4 in sheer terror, then hiding in a nearby nook while quaking like a leaf and cowering every time the Skullker passes overhead. It almost makes you want to give him a hug.
  • Occasionally, a Rock Force member may show up to clear an obstacle blocking Mega Man's path for him. If you're quick on the draw with the Phantom Fuse, you can destroy the obstacle before they can, which changes their reactions and makes them all sulky and depressed that they didn't get to do their thing.
  • The ending of the latest version of the game contains quite a few humorous scenes featuring both the eight opposing Robot Masters and the members of the Rock Force, as well as some text-only appearances by some of the cast of Mega Man 6.
• Game-Breaker: Phantom Fuse and Circuit Breaker. The former can be directed (and has a wide blast radius), and the latter is low-cost and fires in two directions at the same time. Both of them do ludicrous damage, being able to One-Hit Kill pretty much everything except bosses, including most mini bosses. They're also explosive weapons, so they're key to breaking down certain barriers.
  • Pulse Stopper can be aimed in 8 directions like Metal Blade, penetrates foes while constantly damaging them, three can be on the screen at once, it can be used as a shield of sorts if you hold down the button, blocks enemy shots, and consumes little ammo.
  • Virus Outbreak is one of the best shield weapons ever conceived for a classic Mega Man game; the shield is very low-cost and durable, and the "throw" works like the Water Shield's, except that it's slower and comes back to re-form the shield again. It rivals the Jewel Satellite in shield usefulness.
  • As raocow quickly found out in his Let's Play, Eddie breaks the game right in half by giving out a disproportionate amount of E-Tanks and 1UPs, even giving out large weapon energy pickups to recharge himself. Roahm Mythril had a similar thing happen in his initial blind run when he tried to recharge his health with help from Eddie, and ended up with an extra life and three E-Tanks. (Fortunately, Eddie seems to have been Nerfed in a later update.)
  • Elec Man is quite possibly the best Robot Master of the Rock Force due to his blistering speed, high jumps, ability to Wall Jump Mega Man X style, and his attack having a wide attack range and is able to layer on damage to anything that doesn't possess Mercy Invincibility. Even though his attacks only do one damage to any Robot Master that isn't weak to it, his mobility (which allows him to run circles around them) easily makes up for it.
• Goddamned Bats: The Goddamned vultures in Crypt Man's and Terror Man's stage, especially when they appear right above you during the second half where you have to jump over the pits, causing you to take collision damage and fall into the pit.
  • Most of the mooks in Virus Man's stage will temporarily cause Mega Man's controls to invert and prevent him from charging if they touch him.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: One of the Robot Masters is named Fuse Man, and is weak to electric attacks. Come 2018, and it's revealed one Robot Master in Mega Man 11 is also named Fuse Man, and uses electric attacks himself.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: Early versions of the game were ridiculously easy, with Spikes of Doom only damaging Mega Man instead of instantly killing him^note Though the earliest versions of the game had Mega Man style spikes by default, no Charged Attack for Mega Man, and the virus effect in Virus Man's stage completely shut down his Mega Buster, and Eddie pretty much rendering the game almost impossible to lose due to giving out a huge amount of E-Tanks, 1UPs, and large weapon energy pick-ups.
• Moment of Awesome: The game's structure. Unlike the official games, the main villain has the foresight to send an entire army of Robot Masters at Mega Man, so every single boss is one of those. Mega Man still manages to defeat them all!
• Narm: The game's overly serious tone and presentation in the early versions did not gel well, to put it kindly. The original ending's melodramatic Wangst is narmy enough, but it became hilarious when the jarringly unfitting credits music kicked in. As Roahm Mythril said in his blind run, "An overly dramatic scene ruined only by kind of goofy-sounding lullaby music?" Interestingly enough, the revised ending still keeps this song, but its somewhat sad yet ultimately optimistic and satisfying presentation actually helps make it a far more thematically appropriate song to transition into.
• One-Scene Wonder: Shine Woman. Despite the fact that she only shows up in Fuse Man's segment of the revised ending, she promptly earned a number of fans due to her memorable character design, being the only original female Robot Master in the game, and hitting on Fuse Man for his manly arms, with some even hoping that she could be given her own boss fight if or when the game gets updated again. It helps that the game's official character illustrator KarakatoDzo gave her an illustration, since he liked her design.
• Replacement Scrappy: Justice Man to Dr. Wily, mostly in the original version where fans such as Roahmmythril thought having Wily be the true villain would help make the original plot make more sense, as well as inject some much-needed levity into what used to be a bleaker story. Like other criticisms of the game's story, this criticism lessened after later updates fixed people's issues with the plot.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Thanks to later updates smoothing over the story to make it less bleak, as well as fleshing out his motives to where they make a lot more sense, Justice Man began catching less flack as time went on. Didn't quite rescue him entirely though.
• Saved by the Fans: After fan outcry over their deaths not making any sense in the original ending, the Robot Masters' fates were changed to having their circuit boards retrieved, and they go on to live in the later versions of the ending.
• The Scrappy: Justice Man, due to his overall design being an uninspired Mega Man Palette Swap, his status as a Sailor Earth, the fact that he was the cause for the game's original Downer Ending, and his ridiculous name.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Early versions of the virus effect in Virus Man's stage were too strong; Mega Man couldn't fire his buster at all during it, and while his normal movement was reversed, his slide was not. This was quickly fixed, and while the virus effect is still unpleasant to deal with, it's more manageable now.
• Scrappy Weapon: The Charade Clone is a bit problematic in terms of being an actual weapon despite its excellent utility. It's not terrible against normal enemies, but other weapons like the Phantom Fuse can do its job of blowing up the enemy quicker and better without the caveat of being wasted if another enemy/projectile destroys the clone before it can attack the enemy. This is a huge problem when fighting Virus Man and Death Man, the bosses that are weak to it since they're easily capable of nullifying it with the projectiles they launch around their stage.
• That One Attack:
  • Fuse/Boom Man's basic attack is this, where he shoots the Phantom Fuse at the player thanks to the way it changes direction to catch the player when they initially dodge it. It's even tougher to dodge when he decides to toss a stick of dynamite to trip you up along with the fuse, which helps contribute to his That One Boss status.
  • Fish Man has an attack where he swims offscreen before coming back in with a huge shoal of homing, painful, erratically-moving fish, which are nearly impossible to avoid unless you use the Virus Outbreak, which is also the boss' weakness.
  • Polar Man can detach his top and lower halves for two different attacks. When his head/torso is the one attacking it isn't too hard to deal with, but when he sends his legs after you? Prepare to hurt. They move incredibly fast while you have to fight with ice physics, and when you jump over them they immediately turn on a dime and rush after you again without any kind of speed penalty. It goes on for some time and the damage they do adds up quick, and can easily kill the player in one go.
• That One Boss:
  • Fuse/Boom Man can be pretty nasty. He'll mostly use Phantom Fuse most of the time, but he'll also use plenty of dynamite, which can reduce dodging room due to him throwing three out at once. If he goes off-screen, he'll just throw out so many of them that they'll be almost hard to dodge.
  • Virus Man. If any of his attacks hit you, he screws up your controls and makes you unable to charge your buster.
  • The proper (and second) fight against Shock Man. He's not difficult to handle, but what makes him annoying is that the battle is essentially electric jump rope where all of his attacks force you to jump repeatedly and with good timing to avoid taking damage, and every time he lands on the ground, he shocks the entire floor. One of them even has him jump then bounce three times in succession, each time he lands triggering the conductive floor.
  • While Pulse Man's attacks aren't all that painful, he can make situations where it's nearly impossible to dodge at all if he throws out four bouncing projectiles that take up a good amount of space on the screen, coupled by the fact that all of his jumps are Shockwave Stomps and also having a large projectile that removes whatever dodging space you had left.
    • While it's true that the four Pulse Stoppers take up a lot of space, there is a decently reliable way to avoid them. If Pulse Man launches them from the center of the room, stay in one of the bottom corners. If he fires it from one of the corners, get to the center of the room. Do it right and all four shots (including ricochets) will miss.
  • After beating the first eight Robot Masters, you get a second set of four based on the position of the last one you fought. Both sets have one boss that really stands out:
    • If the last Robot Master was in a cardinal direction, you get Flare Man. He shakes the ground any time his feet come down on it, which not only makes you lose your charge shot if you had one prepared, but makes you slide backward, which tends to result in Mega Man getting pulled right into him and comboed for even more damage. Yeah, that's real fair. One of his attacks even causes three quakes in succession. Heaven help you if you get cornered less than half a screen away from him (which is very easy to do, considering there is no real pattern to how he jumps)....
    • If the last Robot Master was in a corner, you get War Man. He has a shield that lets him deflect anything other than his weakness, deals a ridiculous amount of damage with his attacks, and can easily trap you in a corner because he's too big to jump over. If you're Mega Man and start spamming his weakness^note Crypt Cloak, then he starts jumping around and causing quakes like Flare Man, although thankfully these ones don't make you slide back. It still hurts to get tagged by them, though.
  • Then there's Death Man, whose attack patterns aren't overly difficult to react to, but you have little to no room for error since he's perfectly capable of three-shotting you, and his weakness to the Charade Clone is hard to exploit due to his bouncing scythe often destroying it before you can use it.
  • Most bosses become this to the Rock Force sans the one member they're weak to: all of your attacks do one damage to them with no way to hit harder a'la Mega Man's charge shot, and thanks to how aggressive they are the bosses are good at simply outlasting you and winning through attrition. Elec Man can easily play around this thanks to his excellent acrobatics and wall jump, but it's an uphill battle for the rest of his comrades.
• That One Level:
  • Crypt Man might not start out difficult, but the later portions have Grenade Spam vultures and bombs that come from bottomless pits that might knock you into their pits.
  • Circuit Man's level becomes this for Tornado Man, the Rock Force member he's weak to. Not having Charade Clone to sneak past the surplus of spikes is bad enough already, but thanks to Tornado Man's natural affinity for high jumps, certain platforming sections become brutal for him, most notably the room where you have to be careful not to jump too high while leaping from one conveyor belt to another, lest you bang your head on the low spiked ceiling above.
  • Terror Man's stage while playing as Knight Man is also this: while Knight Man is excellent against him, most of the enemies really give him a hard time. The Knight Crusher's limited range and slow firing speed make it unwieldly against the Bubble Bats infesting the stage, and the already tough platforming sections where you're dodging bomb-dropping vulture robots become nightmarish since Knight Man has no way to defend against them.
  • War Man's stage can wear out its welcome in a hurry due to the Sniper Joe spam, the planes, and how easy it is to screw up the stomper puzzles and have one die due to enemy fire or fall in a pit. Of course, if you make it to War Man himself...well, see That One Boss above.
  • Even for the final level, Justice Man's stage is patently ridiculous. It combines gimmicks and enemies from all 8 of the original Robot Master stages, usually in very nerve-wracking ways that require extreme precision over spikes and bottomless pits. Special mention goes to the mine cart room and the second shot reflector/light bulb puzzle. It's also a Marathon Level, and it contains the Boss Rush and the Final Boss. Hope you brought plenty of extra lives and E-Tanks...
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: While the reasons for the name change are understandable, plenty of players don't like Fuse Man's upcoming name change to Boom Man. It sounds really silly and sticks out like a sore thumb when compared to the names of the game's other Robot Masters.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • During the final boss fight, Justice Man has an enormous eye-catching bird statue hanging around menacingly in the background. Given his eagle motifs as well as his fortress being designed after one, it's easy to assume that it'll turn out to be a mech he'll pilot for the final phase of his boss fight. But it's just a background detail, nothing more, which many players thought was a shame since it would definitely spice up his fight.
  • In a related example, while it was most likely done in homage to the initial Robot Master bosses in Mega Man 3 and Mega Man 5, the complete lack of faction icons above the boss doors in Justice Man's castle is glaring, especially considering how Justice Man himself has no door to warn the player about his impending battle.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The Robot Masters in earlier versions attacked people, and there was little explanation for why, but the player was expected to sympathize with them after they were killed. Later updates rectified this, by making it clear that they were revolting due to the expiration date law, and Crypt Man admitting that he was trying to make sure nobody got hurt in the process of their takeovers, making them much easier to feel sympathy for.
• Wangst: Mega Man's reaction to scrapping Justice Man and the robot rebels in the original ending was full of this, with him losing faith in himself and his mission to fight for everlasting peace because he "silenced [the rebels'] voices for good"... despite the rebels bringing it upon themselves for attacking people, and it being fully possible to rebuild scrapped Robot Masters. Thankfully, later updates did away with this altogether; and while Mega Man's still sad about Justice Man's death — which in itself is better-explained as being permanent in only Justice Man's case due to his Integrated Circuit being damaged beyond repair — he's able to keep himself together and is satisfied with being able to save the other rebels and set the wheels in motion for removing the Expiration Date Law, thus improving the rights of robots on the whole like the rebels and Justice Man wanted.

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