NonnieGrey

With me, it's not so much "why did I play this" as much as "why am I still playing this". Gonna have to say... Mega Man Battle Network 4. I mostly got it for completion's sake considering I'm a hopeless Mega Man fansomething and I already enjoyed the previous games in the Battle Network series. Good gravy, that game is abominable. The writing is horrible, the translation is just sad, and all the meaningless sidequests you have to go through... three times. At least! It doesn't even have enjoyable music. Its only saving grace is the fact that the system is fairly solid. But, of course, you can always build a bad house on a good foundation. And yet I keep getting roped back into playing it thanks to the guides I write. I think I've played through that game four times over and gotten nearly everything each time. *sighs* The things I do for research...

Really liking the new stuff. Looking at Carol's Wild Kick in action for the first time had me afraid that it would be the ultimate bane of midbosses the world over, but it's surprisingly well-balanced. Strong, but not overpowered. Speaking of balance, I noticed a couple of things in the Academy that you might want to have a look at. Sometimes, when clearing the last target in a room while falling, the "Clear" text, final time listing, and "New Record" (if applicable) tends to clump together. It got really bad once in Stage 11 for me, but I've also seen it happen in Stage 3. On a side note, it was getting pretty tough to get a good example picture of this. Is the edge of the stage supposed to act like a normal wall that can be climbed or bounced from? It completely trivializes Stage 13 for Carol. Are you supposed to be able to attack during the "Ready" countdown? It can only really be abused in Stage 14, but still. EDIT: Couple of other things I noticed and didn't want to doublepost about. An issue I had with earlier versions of the game that recently returned to my attention. Occasionally, when using Lilac's boost ability, she skips straight to the boost instead of charging for a moment and then boosting. It seems to occur completely at random and it's always an angled shot. Worst of all, it always seems to happen when I'm trying to get a forward shot. If it helps, I use a wired XBox360 controller to play this and the pad sometimes likes to think I'm pressing up or down as well as to the sides. In the Mahjong minigame, the game got stuck after I clicked on the Stop button. The pieces disappeared, but the "Win" text never appeared. The background and all the animating bits kept doing their thing, but I couldn't move the cursor and couldn't back out of the minigame. Had to Alt+F4 out. I had been playing for a while when this happened, though. If you pause and quit during the silent moments when you beat the first snake boss then re-enter the stage (without backing out to the title screen), the stage music will start normally, then suddenly stop when the title card comes in. Getting to the first snake boss seems to remedy this, as does dying. On that note, if you die to the boss in question, the "Act 1" boss theme still plays when you respawn at the checkpoint. I'm pretty sure it's been mentioned before for previous versions.

The bunch of crystals makes me think more of a bunch of balloons at first glance. Are they supposed to be so round? I'd probably have to see it in action, but I get the feeling that the treasure boxes would start getting confusing. There's not really much indication of what you'll get out of them apart from a slightly-different color scheme and design. Then again, I'd also have to see the other three before I can truly start criticizing that. My vote as to the contents of said boxes has to go to "whole shield" for that measure of certainty. Or... would it be possible to go both ways? Lilac gets "whole shield" and Carol gets "five keystones"? Since Carol can switch shields, she could pretty much have the one from the box on reserve if she had picked up too many of the other colors to give the boxed stones precedence. But... that's just me rambling silly ideas.

Been following this for a while, but only just got around to making an account (though I hate to make an account for the sole purpose of posting on one topic...). This is a great thing you have going here. I like the new Lilac as well. To be honest, seeing her in motion, I could barely tell the difference between the old and the new. Might be the similar silhouettes. Caught a few bugs some time ago while I was exploring and being all scientific with this thing, if it's not too late to point them out. When getting a Game Over by drowning, the Game Over/Continue? music doesn't start. (On a side note... the silence is much more unnerving than even Sonic's drowning jingle. Not that it's a bad thing; silence makes me think more of drowning than any melody ever could.) Related to the results screen bug FanGameRevolver mentioned a couple of pages ago; if you select Quit when paused during the results screen and start up the level again without first exiting to the menu, your character will enter the stage in her victory pose. This even works between characters (Lilac can back out of the results to have Carol in her victory pose and vice versa), but doesn't affect gameplay. If the Continue? timer runs out, the game does not remember your difficulty settings. Probably has to do with the software reset. If a character roll-jumps, the lack of air control passes on to all other actions until she touches a floor, even if that action would cause her to uncurl. For example, if Lilac roll-jumps and lands in water without first touching a floor, she can only swim vertically until she touches a floor... if Carol roll-jumps and attaches to a wall without first touching a floor, she cannot wall-climb properly because she can't redirect herself to the wall. Very likely the fault of Sonic Worlds. And if we're still posting speedrun times... This is just about the best I could muster for Carol. I think it can still be improved, but I'm not sure how much.