Not much to say here. This game's just better than the previous 3. There's good variety in the levels. No boss is unnecessarily cheap, but they're mostly all challenging. The music slaps like always, and the arsenal of weapons is varied.

If I had to gripe about one thing, I'd say the weapons aren't all too balanced. In a level, all of them are good except for the skull barrier, which is easily the worst shield in the series so far. Just try using it as Dive Man's weakness without wanting to die. Overall though, most weapons are decent or great.

My issues lie in the endgame bosses. Of all 9 non-robot master bosses, 7 of them are weak to one of three weapons: the Ring Boomerang, Pharaoh Shot, or Dust Crusher. One of the outliers is weak to the Drill Bombs and the other to the Mega Buster. This may seem nitpicky, but it ends up feeling like the other 4 weapons were afterthoughts outside of being a weakness to a robot master. 3 weapons wreck everyone's shit and the other 5 don't. I feel like some bosses could've been cleverly designed to be weak to the other weapons while still being tough. It's really disappointing, but a nitpick. This game's still really great.

8/10 - Really good, but with a flaw that, to me, keeps it away from excellence.

Played on the Mega Man Legacy Collection on Switch. Every time I crave playing a Mega Man game, im always like trying to convince myself “Come on, its not that bad. You’ve played and beaten plenty of platformers, you’ll be fine.” Then I start playing, I’m enjoying myself, listening to the great music and appreciating that fun art style, occasionally using the rewind feature a couple times per level, but nothing too bad. Then the back half hits. And I am reminded why I take so long in between each of these games, abusing the rewind to a ridiculous extent. All this said though, its another Mega Man game. I still enjoyed my time with it at the end of the day and just love the world of Mega Man. Mega Man 4 honestly feels like the developers were easing up the gas a bit though in terms of difficulty, ehich is MORE than welcomed by me. Things like that robot that throws up gifts at you, fairer platforming challenges, more E Tanks than normal, etc. It’s still trash difficulty, but definitely the most enjoyable classic Mega Man to play ive played so far (Mega Man 2’s soundtrack and over all vibe is still better though). Also the whole Russian plot is really random, but I kind of like it for how out of left field it is.

It’s interesting how I originally didn’t gave much attention to this one. I always felt it was lacking some flavour, or that it overstayed its welcome with the longer endgame (which is not as terrible as Mega Man 3’s Doc Robot stages, but still a bit too long for my taste).

Upon replaying it now after years without touching the thing, what I found was the most consistently built Mega Man game for the NES, and it’s definitely become one of my favourites.

Whilst not as colourful and vibrant as 5 (my original favourite) and 6, and despite its inferior charged shot (which was actually introduced here), the level design is, as I pointed above, simply consistent through and through, having both the polishing of the titles that came after it and the old-school challenge of the titles that came before. The bosses are cool-looking, with fun battle patterns and - despite most of them being mostly situational - useful weapons.

As I said, there may be a bit too much stages by the end of it, but they are all nicely designed and present many possibilities to experiment with the weapons, and I ended up having a good time with them.

So, wrapping up: it’s not only the middle point of the original NES series, but it perfectly represents both the original challenge and feel of the older titles and the quality of life improvements of the subsequent ones. Overall a great time, and not only one of the best in the series, but definitely one of the best platformers for the NES.

Even though this is by far my favorite of the classic series, it's very clear that this game still have that air of mediocrity that permeates MM5 and MM6 at parts.

Half of this game is fantastic, the best the NES has to offer in action platformers, the other half is stuff like ToadMan, you can barely qualify it as a boss.

I'll still defend MM4 for all its flaws though, because albeit not consistent in its quality, its lows are less low than 5 and 6's lows, and a lot of the level design set pieces of the game show genuine effort put into them.

MM4 more than any other classic Mega Man exemplifies the heights that the development team could reach if not for the strict deadlines imposed by Capcom at the time.

I typically don't have much to say about Classic Rockman games, as the X series is much more my cup of tea, but this one was cool enough to warrant some comments. The Robot Masters of this one were much more challenging and fun to beat than other games, I loved learning all their patterns. Genuinely takes some skill to beat a lot of these guys if you're not just looping or stalling them with weaknesses like Toad Man or Pharaoh Man. I don't think their weaknesses are particularly obvious, though, and that's half the fun of Rockman for me: seeing the names and designs of all the bosses you'll face, trying to "solve" their weaknesses with logic, and then experimenting to see if you're right. Some made sense, some were completely wack to the point where I was getting frustrated spending time playing through the whole stage, many of which are also very difficult, just to find out I was wrong. Even so, I love all the designs of these Robot Masters, if nothing else.

Dr. Cossack and Kalinka were cute as a subversion of expectations, the first time a "twist" villain was done in one of these games.

The final Wily Capsule fight is absolutely the standout part of the whole game, though. Really awesome and challenging fight.

After seeing a general increasing improvement in the Mega Man games, I am severely disappointed in this entry, borderline hating it.

I want to say a few of the things I like about it first. The weapon select screen is the best seen so far with actually detailed icons that make it so I know immediately what I am selecting. The soundtrack is still great with plenty of classic tracks and the sprite work is also a continued improvement. Also, the upgrade to the mega buster was a very nice addition, allowing you to charge your gun for increase damage. That's pretty much it.

Now on to my frustrations, for starters, I would say I only liked about half of the stages in the game. Most of the stages felt like a severe test of patience with countless trial and error jumps, sections that require specific upgrades, or extremely annoying enemy placements. I never really felt the sense of level of mastery I experienced in previous titles with certain runs also resulting in me taking a lot of damage. I'm almost sure that there are a few sections that are nigh impossible to get through without just tanking the hits. I can forgive some of these difficulty spikes in the levels since they generally do not take me too long to get through, if only for the fact that these are some of my least favorite robot masters I have fought so far.

Generally with these fights, there is a surefire tactic one can employ that makes the fights significantly easier. That is still the case for some of these fights, what I don't understand is why each boss takes nearly a quarter of my health with each hit! Seriously, these bosses take so much health off of you that having to fight them all again at the end was nightmarish. It also doesn't help how some of the fights are very RNG-dependent. Bosses like Bright Man, Drill Man and Ring Man you can't hit reliably sometimes depending on what their move set decides to do. Bright Man in particular I think is just horribly designed with no reliable way to dodge his attacks and with an unavoidable stun attack that leaves you defenseless. I have my qualms with each of the fights but none compare to that of Bright Man.

I got as far as the second to last stage where I had to repeat the 7 rematches over and over again just to get a chance to fight Wily who is also a badly designed boss. The second to last Wily fight is entirely dependent on the drill that if you run out of, you can not finish the fight so you'll have to restart the stage and fight the 7 rematches again! It again, does not help when you CANT DODGE HIS ATTACKS!

I wish I could talk about the final boss as well but I did not beat this game despite me having like 10 minutes left. The thought of having to refight all of the poorly designed robot master fights again makes my skin crawl and I would rather do anything else with my time. I generally like to be positive when writing reviews but this was just such a headache to play. I would not be as critical if every other game that came before I enjoyed more. I don't know how I enjoyed the first game over this one, especially given its reception.

In due time, I might cool down on this one a little bit and give it another shot, but for now, this was one of my least favorite games I have played in a while. God willing, I hope the next one is better.

I really like the difficulty balance here. feels like they finally figured something out after the first three games would swing up and down at an insane rate. the robot masters are very hard to beat without their weakness but the weakness chain actually makes a lot of sense and is fun to figure out. a strong contender for favorite set of bosses in the series. overall just a very solid game & way more consistent than what came before even if said previous entries have other things that make me like them better.

I think this is the one Mega Man game that has made me appreciate whenever a game in this series (Mega Man 2) is exceedingly good at being a game. Because Mega Man 4, after the sudden supposed ending of the series in 3, comes back and it's actually a really fun game, good balance, good levels, good music and good enemies but overall just kinda basic and doesn't innovate much in the formula besides upgrading its graphics, it's an okay Mega Man game, probably the easiest so far too. Figures what happens when you don't make the Cossack/Wily stages suck and don't make the game as hard as ever.

I don't even have much to say about it just from how OK it is compared to the amounts of complaining and I did point out for the other ones.

Mega Man 4 is easily the best of the original 6 Mega Man games, and honestly, I think at this point it's the best game in the entire series. The newly upgraded Mega Buster adds a whole lot to the base formula, as its inclusion makes it a lot easier to fight Robot Masters with your base weapon, which makes the game more replayable as you're more capable of choosing new level orders if you get bored of the basic boss order. I found myself using just the Mega Buster to go through a lot of the later bosses in the Cossack in Wily Castles and had a whole lot more fun doing that than just spamming the weaknesses. This is easily one of the best games on the NES, and additionally one of the best games out there. Absolute must play.

Specifics:
- I found the weapons in this game to be extremely well done. None of them felt broken like in Mega Man 3, and I found myself using them all the time. I think the only one I didn't end up using much was Toad Man's ability because I wanted to keep it for when I most needed it, but my cautiousness led me to never actually use it in battle.
- The music in this game feels far ahead of Mega Man 3. My favorites were Cossack Stages 3-4, Wily Stages 1-2, Pharoh Man, Dive Man, and Drill Man.
- I'm happy to see another intro cutscene in this one after the surprising lack of one in the previous title. I really loved it.
- Rush Jet has been downgraded in this game, but I honestly don't have too much of an issue with it. Yeah, I missed being able to move more freely, but I still got plenty of use out of Jet here.
- I'm very impressed this game managed to work in 2 new utility abilities alongside rush without making the new abilities feel useless. The ballon, while basically the same as Item 1 and accomplishing much of the same things Rush Coil does, was very useful in my playthrough. Though more than Balloon, Wire was by far the most useful utility in the entire game, even more useful than Rush.
- My one big issue with this game is Phase 2 of the Wily Machine. I could not figure out how to hit Wily without having to use a utility like Balloon or Rush Coil and then immediately switching out of it. How was I going to beat him if I ran out of energy on those utilities? Maybe there was some other way that I was not aware of...
- While having to refill my Pharoh Shot for the final boss was bothersome, the final boss itself was very cool.
-I really like that this game relied on newer characters rather than just having Wily return from the jump. Works especially well since he "supposedly" died in the last game getting crushed under the rubble of the falling Wily Castle. That's something I really like in 5 & 6 too, even if they do fall back on Wily for a big reveal.

10/10

Best one so far for me. The levels hit the sweet spot that I felt was missing in 3 with them not feeling too short but none of them overstayed their welcome. It provided a nice challenge too. The upgraded Mega Buster allowing you to charge it up now is a great addition to me. It allows for a new style of playing. Would you rather wait for a more powerful blast or try to shoot down your enemies immediately Especially since they’re different levels to the charged version. Dr Cossack’s castle is way better than the Doc Robot levels and I’m hoping nothing as lazy and frustrating as those levels will show up in this franchise ever again. Wily’s castle isn’t stupid easy like in 3, and no stupid puzzle boss like in 2. I’m gonna be honest though some of the power ups kinda suck, but it honestly felt the most versatile for this game’s weapon wheel.Bright Man’s power is just the time ability Flash Man had. Pharaoh Shot is just a better Mega Buster and that’s cool I guess, but it shows cause I only used it for the final boss. Being able to detonate the drill bomb manually was nice as well but it’s just a better Crash Bomb from 2. The Dive Missiles were cool for taking care of enemies that were annoying to hit with your Mega Buster, and Rain Flush was a nice screen nuke ability. These are better than 3 and even 2’s weapon wheel since the only thing used there by everyone is the metal blade with how broken it is. Overall I could definitely see myself coming back to this one over the other 3 so far, but they’re flaws. I think some of the level design is a little odd but the branching paths were nice. Also we’re 4 games in and Mega Man’s gameplay hasn’t really done TOO much. That’s not a bad thing but it makes it a little harder to fully enjoy these games when you’re playing them back to back. I still really enjoyed my time though which is why it’s getting 4 stars from me.

(Also played via Legacy Collection)
Damn, much better than I remember! Amazing visuals and probably my favorite soundtrack out of the 6 NES Mega Man titles. The levels are all-around pretty great and make some neat usages of the Robot Master weapons, as well as Rush. I love the weaknesses for the Robot Masters, they're pretty bonkers but they make sense in this series' absurdly comical and over-the-top logic.

Some hiccups here and there keep this from being a top-tier Mega Man game, the charged shot doesn't feel as polished as in later games and there is a few bullshit moments that Mega Man games (especially the classic series) insist on doing for some reason, like stupidly precise jumps and enemies that unexpectedly rise from the bottomless pits. But overall this is an incredibly solid game and a huge improvement from the messiness of Mega Man 3. I might actually like it as much as Mega Man 2 honestly.