Enemy Analysis # 1

Unsurprisingly, the focus of the Boss Analysis series has been on... bosses. Big Bosses, Tiny Bosses, Bosses with low health, Pathetic Final Bosses, you name it.

But after all the attention I've lavished upon the biggest threats in gaming, their underlings are starting to feel a little left out. But I'm only too happy to change that, though they might not like exactly HOW I'm going to go about it...

[whoisthisgit]

I know you can freeze Big Eyes with the Ice Slasher and then switch to another weapon to get some hits on them. I don't know why I forgot to mention it in the video, I guess I had either pacifism or ammo preservation on my mind, or simply thought I mentioned it and didn't realize I didn't.

[tristarnova]

and a giant big eye got turned into a boss in Megaman powered up, so the boss analysis name kinda works

[GQuack]

Enemy Analysis #1? Foe Analysis? Leave my Health alone? This could be the start of a new series.

[flextape]

For a security robot, Big Eye does its job quite well

[Swordkirby]

Mega Man fan games with Big Eye do him right. Not only is the big jump telegraphed with him closing his eye, but he also can never go more than 3 short hops before making a big jump.

[timothywilcox]

The best thing ever done for the Big-Eyes was in Megaman Maker-

They made it so that whenever the big eye would do his high jump, he'd stop for a second longer and close his eye, giving you a tell that that is when you need to go under him if you need to avoid it. Of course, it choosing to do the high jump is still a matter of luck, but now that it has a tell, it's much easier to deal with.

[chaosgreyblood]

I'm more than willing to bet that Big Eye was the bane of RoahnMythril's existence when he made those no-hit videos of Megaman 1.

[GINTegg]

Wily should've just mass produced Big Eye and waited for Mega Man's broken remains to be brought to him

[obotprime]

Actually Big Eye's 20 hits puts him above Guts Man, Bomb Man, and Fire Man as well, who take 2 damage units from the Mega Buster and thus 14 hits to kill. The only robot masters with more health than Big Eye are Ice Man and Elec Man.

I've got a soft spot for Mega Man 1 since it was the first NES game that I ever beat and it got me into not just Mega Man but retro gaming as a whole, but I can't deny the Big Eyes are ridiculously annoying to fight.

Though one trick with using the Ice Slasher against them is that you can switch weapons while the enemy is still frozen. So you can switch to the Mega Buster or Thunder Beam and destroy them before the thaw.

[therealjohnrenzi]

My least favorite regular enemies (as a long-time JRPG lover) are ones that take multiple stereotypical 'tough enemy' traits and combine them. Summoning other enemies, crippling status, insta-kills, high HP/defences, high damage, etc. Not only are they stupid annoying, it takes away one of the ways to actually make interesting grunt fights in needing to prioritize targers. Like, if you have a summoner, a status spreader, and a high-damage enemy in one fight, you need to use your brain to decide who to kill first. But if you stack all that on one enemy, then they'll always be the first target irregardless of the situation. I understand having enemies of different threat levels in one location, but the disparity shouldn't be too high. There are certainly ways to make it work, but more often then not its both frustrating and boring.

[rcblazer]

In terms of regular enemies that can cause one to rage, Big Eyes are a good choice. Others I can think of are the Red Arremers from the Ghouls 'n Ghosts series, Cliff Racers from Morrowind, and of course the Medusa Heads from Castlevania.

[breakfastatepiphanies]

Beating MegaMan 2 when I was six was the crowning achievement of second grade for me. I was more proud of that then learning to read.

[prayingkabutops]

You should never use auto-fire in the original megaman. Because for some reason to due to a bug, it’ll take longer to kill the an enemy with high hp. Also I think you can only damage the big eye when they’re in the air.

[photophone]

Sniper Joe could probably improved as an enemy (if you either made him have less health or stay with his shield back for longer after he is hit.)

The bouncing guy could also be improved. If he is supposed to be a miniboss then you should have to kill him before moving to the next room.

To make him more fair they could have his regular jump higher. After a few jumps maybe he could do a really high jump. When he does a high jump he goes off screen and you have to avoid him. And when he lands on the ground he gets stunned so you have a chance to damage him.

[napoleoncomplex]

Ah, so this is what you were hinting at. No need to worry Git; love a good enemy analysis. I was always going to watch this video whatever you titled it.

[trueblueryu]

The worst case of a boss being a wimp while the regular enemy is nonsense is the Great Moroborols and Monoliths in Final Fantasy X. You get through the fourth Seymour fight, which is a complete joke if you’re even remotely decently leveled or prepared, but immediately after you’re thrown inside Sin to a point of no return, and these enemies can inflict the worst status ailments in the game; stone, poison, confusion, and they can do more than 1 at a time, and to more than 1 party member at a time! The worst part is that, because it’s a point of no return, if you lose to a regular enemy, you have to restart your save from right before the 4th Seymour fight again! And remember, skipping cutscenes isn’t a thing… Riku-Ansem has competition.

[zergvsgenin]

I think we could call this series "Mook Analysis" or maybe "Grunt Analysis"?

[ShadowDx]

I had no idea Sniper Joe would keep chasing you like that. 😮 2:01

[MasterKnightDH]

I have some mooks to throw about from a few given games for earning my ire:

*Beamos statues in Zelda: A Link to the Past - these are seemingly simplistic emplacements that have predictable eye movement of anticlockwise, but their laser attack is so fast that you're not going to dodge it on reaction. You have to use either terrain cover, which has its limitations, or prehandled movement that would trick out the laser. The 4th floor of Ganon's Tower has quite a few of these headaches as well, and 2 of the rooms with them has ice flooring to involve LTTP's Nayru awful ice physics that scream at the player to cheese those rooms with the Ether Medallion. Oh, by the way, did I forget to mention that Beamos statues are invincible in this game? Yay.

*Medusa emplacements in (again) Zelda ALttP - I'm not talking about the Yomo Medusas, although they do complicate things in an early room in Ganon's Tower on the east path of 1F. I'm talking about the regular ones, with their ghost faces. Like Beamos statues, Meduas are invincible. And unlike Beamos statues, Medusas continually shoot at you. The good news is that their fireballs are slower, but they're often mixed with other obstacles. They're particularly bad in Misery Mire, but can cause problems in other locations as well such as the Swamp Palace. By the way, you see one mixed into the rematch with the Lanmolas, who in their own right clearly weren't obnoxious enough the first time.

*Dancin' Fools in Secret of Evermore - these things are not particularly tough, but their hit detection involvement is simply bogus. They will continue doing their little dancing jab spam until you finally get yourself hit by them.

*Bone in (again) Secret of Evermore - not really entirely annoying, but they can be because of their freaking flying too high while they can hit you just fine if you get in their vicinity at all regardless of which altitude they're at.

*Gunships/Bombers in Battalion Wars 1 & 2 - please note that there are scenarios where neither the Gunships nor the Bombers are capable of being sufficient threat. However, there's more than enough times where their promise of death from above can become needlessly able to deliver, to the point where even having a couple of Anti-Air Vehicles won't be enough of a guarantee of sufficient mitigation. Gunships can tear your ground support to shreds if left unchecked, particularly showcasing itself in the second game where they see alarmingly frequent deployment by the enemy. Even in the first game, Gunships can draw your attention away from the ground threats, and they're particularly vicious early into Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers where they can juggle your Anti-Air Vehicles and decimate them. Bombers can be just as nasty as well, being able to hit your forces all at once for devastating amounts of damage, and they have the added bonus of being sickeningly durable. This is before going into Bonus Mission 3. Just....Bonus Mission 3. Oh, and BTW, Strato Destroyers are effectively boss units, so I don't throw them in here, although they would be similar to Bombers for the purposes of this, aside from them also having some air-to-air power.

*Interceptors in Game Boy Wars 3 base game - I have nerfed Interceptors in my PALBal patch to where they still have their Special unit capabilities, but they are not the monsters that base game turns them into. Interceptors, for those who didn't know, have a maximum range of 5 spaces on their air-to-air missiles? Oh, that doesn't sound so bad, Anti-Air Missile Launchers in AW1/2/DS have that and they suck? Well, did I forget to mention that there is no restriction on moving and range attacking at all in Game Boy Wars 3? Yes, you heard me. And not only that, but Interceptors in base game have 13 Movement Power, the highest of ANY unit in the entire Nintendo Wars franchise other than Super Famicom Wars' Train, without even the drawback of a very restricting Movement Type. Now Interceptors can't fire on the land force whatsoever, where Fighters and Lite Fighters can although with junk MGs, but this doesn't matter when Interceptors will give your air force unending nightmares to especially aggravate the presence of Attackers (basically jet planes that can attack both land and air units at the cost of worse power stats), and it makes Bissum Desert (Campaign Map 36) especially problematic. What did I change in PALBal? Well, there's attack power penalties for attacking from a distance after moving, and the Interceptor has reduced mobility AND range. These are the most relevant changes and they would surely stop Interceptors from rampaging.

*Erinys in Kid Icarus Uprising - a lot of enemies in Kid Icarus Uprising could arguably qualify for being hateworthy mooks, but I'm going to point to the most consistent idiocy. Erinys has a Turns Red portion of splitting into 2 enemies that can involve convenient attack synching with the top half doing a spinning lunge that has to be Parry Dodged and the bottom half running to do a kick that has a nasty habit of being accurate. By itself, this would already be an issue, but overall still standard fare for KIU mooks. What pushes Erinys into a spot for this is its appearance in Chapter 20 with a Tempura Wizard. Get the Erinys split up before killing the TW and you're in for triple trouble with one of the attackers being capable of causing effectively instant death against you if you don't manage to pull some sort of convenience with the Tempura debuff. Oh, and the TW likes to use the Erinys as a meatwall as well, so that's fun.

*Bladers in (again) Kid Icarus Uprising - these Force of Nature fliers want to involve flying and firing down a continuous laser that has NO reliable way to Parry Dodge because you'll just be vulnerable to being caught by the continuous attack once the intangibility ends. I'm pretty sure these things have too high a flinching threshold to stop the laser as well. These things are outright jerks and they can tear through your HP like wet tissue paper if they're not killed fast enough.

*Skreetle in (yet again) Kid Icarus Uprising - enemies that are crouched down except when about to attack with a shooting attack that tends to be annoying to dodge should not be surviving a Palutena Bow Dash Shot at a decent distance on 6.0. They also get paired with the Armins in Chapter 21, keeping in mind that Armins already have dumb hit detection with their armor involvement.

*Zaurum in (for the 4th time) Kid Icarus Uprising - Confusion shockwave, okay, I just have to Parry Dodge. Oh wait, THAT DOESN'T WORK. This guy gets an entry just for that.

*Juggernaut in (you guessed it) Kid Icarus Uprising - most Juggernauts are actually fair, at the very least by KIU's general standards, to combat, helped by a weak spot on the back to allow for destroying it faster. It's the one in Chapter 20 right before Possessed Palutena that gets this entry. It does a slow sweep MG attack from outside the battlefield you're stuck in. You're not allowed to exit the field to shoot it in the back because the game says so, so you have to Parry Dodge the MG, and this is a sick joke with how precise the Parry Dodge needs to be, not helped by the MG bullets' slightly slanted angles. This is further exacerbated by the presence of a Centurion Strongarm, who conveniently respawns once as well when killed, and a Centurion Archer, who would be easily dealt with by an available X Bomb if you can even maintain it from the enemies just before. The whole scenario is very dumb, honestly.

That should be all of the enemies I want to cover here.

[temuror]

I think we can all agree that the infamous Red Arremer are the most frustrating regular enemies in all of gaming.