Charge Shot is very appreciated, but apart from that, this game is kind of just... okay. I have no idea why they felt the need to make boss HP fill up way slower.

I'll do the same format as my other Mega Man reviews and go game by game.

Toad Man Stage: The water gimmick is okay-ish; I don't like the instant death pits. Other than that, this stage feels shockingly short, and a really... really... REALLY mediocre boss doesn't do it any favors.
Bright Man Stage: I love the brightness/darkness gimmick with the darkness enemies and then having to light the area back up with a firework enemy, super creative stage. The optional pendulum platform section was also a highlight. Bright Man himself isn't too fun to fight; bosses that can just freeze you in place with no real counterplay aren't fun to fight. Fun stage, bad boss.
Pharaoh Man Stage: Love my Egypt, so this stage is... just ok. Sand is an interesting gimmick and the platform enemy section is fine. Pharaoh Man's fight itself is kind of lame if you use the weakness, it's more of a mash test than anything. Kind of a letdown, but at least Pharaoh Shot is a cool ass weapon.
Ring Man Stage: The platforms that disappear are just an okay gimmick, you can kind of tell they didn't have much for Ring Man. The hippo minibosses are a little annoying to deal with but nothing compared to the ring minibosses that are a royal pain in the ass and I honestly just ran into them and skipped them with I-Frames. Ring Man himself is actually a kind of interesting fight, so it's the opposite of Bright Man funnily enough. Bad stage, fun boss.
Dust Man Stage: Interesting stage with the trash presses and the forming platforms, definitely not bad. Dust Man is a pretty fun fight and it's fun to figure him out.
Dive Man Stage: It's a water stage with semi-interesting enemies and the whale miniboss is ok, but it's not really memorable. Dive Man is just like, one step above Toad Man and that's not really saying much.
Drill Man Stage: Interesting aesthetic, but otherwise a kind of boring stage. Drill Man's fight is also not really that good, you're mostly just waiting around until he pops back up to shoot him.
Skull Man Stage: I like the diverging paths in this stage, but that's about it.

Cossack Stage 1: First stage isn't really too memorable, though it is reminiscent of the first Wily Stage in Megaman 2. Boss is cool, love sliding under the boss.
Cossack Stage 2: The Rush Jet part is neat, game gets pretty generous and gives you a lot of free stuff here. The boss is also really cool, and it reminds me of the boss in Megaman 2 that was just the stage. Very nice.
Cossack Stage 3: You can do a funny Wire bug on the autoscroller parts which is fun. Other than that, not a big fan of the autoscroller section, and the boss is just really mediocre.
Cossack Stage 4: Not much to say about this stage. Cossack himself is a fun enough fight.

Alright, onto the Wily Stages.
Wily Stage 1: This stage is full of so many fucking Mets man. There's also a really cheap blind drop into water where there's a set of asshole spikes placed purely to spite the player. Kaizo blocks reappear and are kind of pointless since the player can just use Wire. And oh, the boss of this stage is a giant Met. Thankfully it's pretty easy.
Wily Stage 2: Fun platforming, otherwise not terribly memorable. The boss isn't really great either.
Wily Stage 3: Classic Robot Master rematches. Not much else to say until Wily Machine, where it took me an exorbitant amount of time to figure out I was supposed to hit him with fully charged shots. This fight sucked big time, I'm not going to lie.
Wily Stage 4: From a bad fight to a really fucking hype fight. This is probably my favorite Wily Fight? It's easy but it's so fucking cool and is a great victory lap.

Colorblindness Rating: A
By now, Megaman's menus are no longer confusing for the colorblind with much clearer labels. Thanks, Capcom.

The Mega Buster is an immensely appreciated addition to the series. This title also adds some optional branching paths within the stages. Some contain goodies such as E-tanks and extra lives, while others reward you with entirely new tools for your arsenal. Stumbling upon the Balloon upgrade by complete accident, and gaining the option to utilize it during the final stages during the game to make some platforming challenges easier felt incredibly rewarding.

Mega Man 4 contains both some of the easiest and the toughest Robot Masters I've fought as of yet. Toad Man for example is a complete joke, while Ring Man was a tough nut to crack, even with the weapon he's weak to.
Once again, I feel like the conclusion of Mega Man 4 falls flat due to some incredibly poor boss designs. Wily phase 2 almost made me rage quit until I found out that you can detonate the Drill Bombs on command. This made the fight much easier, but you are still forced to play the waiting game due to the boss's movements being random, and you have to wait for the optimal opportunity to strike if you can't afford to take any hits. Meanwhile, Wily's final phase was so easy that I question why it even was there to begin with.

With the ability to both slide and charge shots, I feel like Mega Man is starting to resemble Mega Man X, which I think is a great thing to see. Experiencing the progression of the series myself is a great time, and I can't wait to see what Mega Man 5 has to offer.

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.

Takes the previous formula that worked and straightens a lot of things out. No doc robot stages, no terrible gimmick boss fights, just a decent mega man game. The addition of the charge shot is really nice, although it's whirring always distracts me a bit from it's soundtrack (yes I know this is a nitpick.) Speaking of, the soundtrack is also pretty good in this game, not quite as memorable as 2 and 3 though. The weapons in this game are also a little forgettable and even more situational than the previous games' weapons, mainly only being useful against bosses. Also speaking of the bosses, why does their health refill so slow and with this horrible ear-piercing sound? Just, why?
Even though the weapons are a bit lacking, I do like the optional items, being the balloon and the wire, which both come in very handy in the wily/cossack stages. Overall, most of the issues I have with this game are pretty minor, making this game a lot more fun to replay, with a lot less to dread.

I wanna get this out of the way right now: Mega Man 4 is a good game. It’s fun, it’s not bad. However, it is definitely the least interesting of the original six NES Mega Man games. It is the most standard game, the one that is not exceptionally good or notably bad. It’s just a solid and fun game in a great series. Now, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot to be said about it, or that game designers can’t learn from it. The game does add a decent amount of new elements to the series that are worth looking at, and of course since the game is fun overall, there are elements of its stage design that stand out.

See the full review here: https://queenemilyscorner.wordpress.com/2024/05/09/mega-man-4-its-pretty-good-i-guess/