The journey to play every single main title Megaman game is almost over, and I have crested the hill of 16 bit games and went into the 32-bit era (not for long, apparently). I have actually played and beaten this game once before with my friend Kevin (the same one I played Megaman 6 with) when he was my roommate briefly. We played it on the Gamecube's Megaman Anniversary Collection, which included the first 8 titled Megaman games. I am sort of shocked I did not decide to play all of them at that point in my life, but I suppose I was busy with other games (likely Final Fantasy IX and World of Warcraft).
On to my thoughts....
I discovered via a Let's Play I watched years ago that there is a trick you can do with the Megaball in this game to allow you to almost indefinitely maintain your air height. This exploit helped a lot with some jumping puzzles. That said, this was on its way to being my favorite game int he series, outdoing 7 in a lot of ways. It was easier to play level design wise, the boss patterns never felt unfair, and some of the weapons earned from bosses felt interesting to use at times. I got a particular use out of the Flame Sword and Grenade shot. Also some of the purchasable upgrades like the Laser Shot made the game feel very unique compared to other Megaman titles. Yes, it has flaws like the cut-scenes (which are animated well enough but the voice acting is legendarily bad. The game is even considered to be very easy since its checkpoint system is very forgiving, as each level has a halfway point that can be restarted from even as I got a Game Over.
In terms of thing I might not have liked with the game, Wily Castle 1 has a snowboarding section which has been and may remain the bane of my existence for playing this game. It is a button timing sequence where the penalty for even a half second of failure is instant death. This section took me 2 hours to complete, I am not proud to admit. I said several times, out loud, "I am not having fun", because of the frustration with this part of the game. I also cannot really defend Astroman's entire stage, since it is obnoxious for the sake of it with an ever changing maze. Oddly, no E-Tanks in this game, but that might be because of how easy it is and the checkpoint system.
Did it stay my favorite Megaman game by the end? Nope, that Wily Castle ruined it for me, I honestly made me never want to play this game again. I enjoyed the new mechanics like the swimming in the water levels and the Gradius-like levels that appeared so often. The silly voice-acting even got a smile out of me. The small details though, like simple checkpoints and upgrades make the game very unique, but for a ten year anniversary title more feels like it could have been done for polish.
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