catching up with Mega Man...

[Edmond Dantes]

So that whole "didn't get any new consoles until the Switch" thing meant that I missed Mega Man 9 and 10 when they were new. In fact, I played Mega Man 11 before either of those.

Just thought I'd jot down my thoughts before I disappear for another however long.

So.. Mega Man 11... does anyone else get a sort of "back to basics" feel from the game? I don't know how to describe it, but it feels like its meant to be a jumping-on point.

But not in the standard ways.

Mostly its in the game mechanics and the story. The story finally gives us a definitive answer on why Wily went evil (and it amuses me for whatever reason that it actually kind of justifies the way things went down in the Ruby-Spears Mega Man cartoon from 1995).... altho if you're the kind that insists on trying to make Classic connect to the X series, it raises questions.

Admittedly when I say "back to basics," well... you gotta remember I went from 7, 8, and Megaman and Bass, straight to 11. In those prior three games Capcom seemed to like messing with how things worked, and often not for the best (for example, 8 and MM&B don't have Rush Jet--scripted uses don't count--or E-Tanks). 11 Goes back to how the first seven games worked in that regard, the Rush abilities are the standard coil and jet, no foolery with him digging crap out of the ground. Altho I'm sure we're never gonna see Super Adapter Mega Man again.

That said even Mega Man 9 and 10 were experimental in a way--the eight-bit aesthetic and the complete removal of series staples like charged shots and the slide, which are now back.

One thing that's not "basic" about 11 is the difficulty. When I first played the demo, I thought that maybe Block Man's stage was just incredibly hard or something... nope, the full game is like this. Mega Man 11 either just hates you, or really loves you and believes that love should be painful. Several times I cried out "I can beat MM&B and find all the data discs! Why the hell is THIS game giving me a problem?" (And this was playing with the 8BitDo SN30 Pro +, which is designed like a SNES controller).

Admittedly tho I think I realized something: Mega Man controls slightly differently in some respects that you won't notice, but they do screw with you a bit. It's hard to put a finger on, but play any 8-bit Mega Man title then play 11 and see if you don't feel it as well.

...........

So ultimately, I kinda hope the Double Gear system becomes a recurring (or even permanent) thing. Admittedly I liked the Speed Gear more (and I never even knew about the ability to use both at the same time until the end of the game) but still, if anything freshened up classic Mega Man, this was it.

I've heard the statement that MM11 was basically a reaction to Mighty No. 9.... which I don't have a system that can run it (Mighty isn't on the Switch), which kinda sucks because parts of Mighty look interesting and I would like to play it for myself rather than trusting reviews that say its bad. That said I always kinda thought Mighty No. 9 himself kinda looked like a dork compared to Mega Man.

............

I have not yet played MM10 but last night I tackled Mega Man 9.

Loved it, but Wily's Fortress can go screw itself. Also this game confirmed for me that I really am just out of practice when it comes to the blue bomber because a lot of these bosses gave me problems, even when I had their weaknesses (in fact Hornet Man seemed to get worse after I got his weakness). I would nitpick the storyline but it honestly almost feels like they were being tongue-in-cheek with it.

Actually... going back to Mega Man 11, another thing that makes that feel "back to basics" is that neither Proto Man nor Bass are in it at all, unless they're extremely well hidden or future DLC.

Anyway, out of time, see ya later.

[kupomogli]

One thing I thought Mega Man always needed to work on was its bosses. While the bosses themselves work, throughout nearly all of the games until 8 they really just do one thing on repeat with just the most minimal of AI to fulfill these actions. Mega Man 10 also has the bosses having multiple different attacks that they can do. The AI is still similar between old games, but there's now more of a predictability to how the bosses actions are and it feels more fair when it plays like this.

Mega Man 11 does it best and the bosses in Mega Man 11 are the best in the series by far. Not only do all the bosses have multiple attacks, but when they use the double gear system it's brings out yet another pattern that the player has to dodge for a minimal amount of time, or for Block Man has you fight a completely separate version of the boss with multiple different attacks beyond what the first version of the boss had, and then the last version of the boss has one final attack string that he uses before he finally dies.

While Mega Man 3 was my favorite out of the classic games and X series, a series I don't much care for over the classic series, after I finally played 10, I think that game is an altogether better game, and then 11 comes out and would say it is easily the best game in the series.

Mega Man 11 does everything amazingly well, the double gear system is an amazing system that has a really high skill ceiling. I'm never going to come close to that, but if you go into the extras menu and you watch a replay of any of the top 10 best runs on a single stage, you'll be like, . On the PS4, the person beat Block Man in 17 seconds, without him even entering his second form because the ultimate gear technique.

At every point point in every single stage, the game offers something different to the level design, and near the end of every stage, not just one, but every stage, there's a very hard section that really tests your skill at the game. However, these parts are hard, but they're not unfair. Unknown here, but my first reaction of the game was that it was complete bs, yes, but more so about the ridiculous checkpoints. You'd get through long portions of the stage only to restart very far back, possibly even the beginning, so when you finally got to the boss you only had one life, and you can guess how that turns out when it's your first time fighting them.

Replaying the game I can beat stages without having to continue, but if I want to do so from the beginning to the end I'll be using most of my bolts on extra lives to keep doing so for the further stages. I've beaten normal without continuing, but that speedrun trophy is ridiculous.

[IMJ]

I've always sort of secretly wished that Capcom would remaster all of the Mega Man games so that they uniformly followed the same art direction as the graphical style and generation of Mega Man 8 on the PSOne. There have been graphically impressive Mega Man releases after that of course, but there's something about the entire production of Mega Man 8 that stands out and sort of encapsulates those characters nicely.