A Critical Look at Mega Man 7 Stages: Dr. Wily Stage 2

Wily Stage 2

This looks like a slow paced room, with shots restricting our movement and enemies out of reach, but a Bomb Sleigh is waiting to surprise us out of nowhere on the steps. This is the only one in the stage, and the designer was clearly having a laugh at us here. We can take it out with Scorch Wheel or Junk Shield, but otherwise there isn’t much chance to avoid damage.

After a few more Driver Cannons and the choice to run across for the bolt, we come to a room of Sniper Joes and Shield Attackers. The first Attacker covers the area we’d want to jump to so we can avoid Joe, while the bottom one makes us more likely to jump into a Joe’s shot. Not bad for two enemies that are relatively weak alone. This is a good place to try out Proto Man’s Shield and beat Joe at his own game.

More Joes. We’ve just seen them paired with other enemies, and their placements here aren’t particularly dangerous. Even the lower conveyor belt is moving toward the ladder.

Bass brings his dog in to match our own for round two, gaining similar abilities.

Gravity is weak in this room, and we have multiple screens to fight on. Bass can jump up the platforms and fire a spread of three shots, sometimes throwing in a larger shot. He can also charge up for a rocket punch.

The real danger here is his dash, which carries him toward us, loops up, then back to the other side, likely catching players during a jump to avoid the initial movement. He starts charging his punch immediately after, giving us little time to recover after dealing with the dash.

While he’s still weak to our punch, he only takes four damage this time, while dealing six with his. This works out to being a fair fight against an upgraded Super Adapter, but without it, players will have a rough time. His other weaknesses haven’t changed, so hitting with Freeze Cracker for two would likely be the next best option.

Trio is waiting to fire at us as we enter, but a quick Slash Claw can defend us. The next screen uses springs well, bouncing Mega Man to the left initially, then asking us to do it deliberately to reach the ladder at the top. The Kerones are a good choice here, being awkward to hit but not unfairly dangerous, as they tend to stay on the upper platforms instead of falling.

Another Trio tries to snipe us, and we have the option of shooting from the ladder instead of trying to attack its platform from above. The timed fire returns, this time filling a vertical shaft at a confusing variety of angles.

Taking it slowly, players will find that it’s not too bad here, with many safe places to stand. However, the jump shown in the last image is a tough one.

Freeze helps us out much more here than it did in Turbo’s stage, allowing us to cross this gap, then reach the ladder. This is also an interesting room to cross with the Super Adapter, as the extra jump opens multiple possible paths to take.

Another random assortment of enemies. The Battons can be dealt with one at a time with anything, but Danger Wrap is also useful for Gabyoall, so we can have some fun with it here.

This is also another rare case of Tripropellan getting to use its bombs. If we want to brave the fire here, we can snag a nice refill before the boss.

Gamerizer himself is simple, either shooting a flame across the screen, or dashing forward and back. He can dash a random number of times, which will make this part tricky, but the true threat is the Spotaros he leaves behind.

Three will appear, with different actions based on the number displayed. On 2 they bounce around the room, on 3 they burrow underground and pop up, and for 1, they simply walk forward and back while jumping occasionally. All are difficult to dodge, but almost any of our weapons will destroy them before they have a chance to attack.

We can slowly wear down Gamerizer between Spotaro drops, and a charged Wild Coil will hit for three, but we have a well hidden option to deal a full eight points by hitting it with a Spotaro in a Wrap bubble. This is very tough to do, but worth the effort if the player can pull it off.

Despite its overuse of Sniper Joe, this stage has a few interesting things to show us. Bomb Sleigh was already tough to dodge, but the steps in front of it take that too far, making it almost necessary to fight with special weapons to avoid damage. Bass is an excellent fight with the Super Adapter, and a challenging one without it, though the lower gravity gives us a means to dodge him without using our own flight abilities.

The room with springs, conveyor belts, and Kerone is one of my favorites in a while, quickly showing us an action and then asking us to do it, and placing enemies in a way that can be handled with the Mega Buster but encourages weapon use. The fire area is also done better than its first appearance, asking us to carefully consider the orientation of the traps and choose our path instead of having to run across a floor in one shot without being able to see everything ahead, and it gives us a better reason to use Freeze Cracker. While small, the stage fits in a couple good obstacle rooms and some decent opportunities to play with our weapon selection.

Gamerizer is a slow boss without knowing a weakness, and the Spotaros take up a lot of time crawling out one by one. Gamerizer himself is fun to dodge, but Spotaro is slow enough that we can easily destroy them with any special weapon before they do anything, which is a shame, as they have interesting patterns and would be fun to fight against if given the chance to attack.