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.
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.
An extra set of fortress stages to tackle and a new charge buster to tackle them with help lift up an otherwise standard sequel.
MEGA BUSTER YEEEAAAAHHHHHHHHH
i've run out of things to remember about mega man except it's good. but isn't it weird he's mega MAN and not Mega BOY?
This one's got some neat additions like the mega buster and more collectibles, but it doesn't quite stick in the memory like others. The difficulty's smoother, though, and the music and graphics are solid. Overall, a decent addition to the series but not the most standout.
This is the best NES Mega Man I think, awesome set of themed stages, some of the best music in the classic series, and I think this is the best portrayal of Wily in the series where he feels a bit more than just a cartoonish goon that pulls slight variants on the schemes.
"why does dust blaster counter skull man?"
"cause dust is dead skin and you vacuum up dead stuff so you vacuum up skull"
- a conversation between me and pixel
"cause dust is dead skin and you vacuum up dead stuff so you vacuum up skull"
- a conversation between me and pixel
just another megaman game
Mega buster
Fuera de que sale el señor chistoso, se me hace un juegazo, y de paso es Megaman 2 si fuera bueno.
Not as good as 2 or 3, but still terrifically fun. I feel like the Robot master ideas started getting weirder here, but the difficulty stays at the "tough but doable" level 2 and 3 had set.
Played on the GameCube version of Mega Man Anniversary Collection, as well as the 3DS and Switch versions of Mega Man Legacy Collection. Collected all utility items and finished the game.
the best NES Mega Man, has its issues but still a really tight package
The series keeps improving in my opinion (not the music as I only really liked one song - pharaoh man stage).
Charge shot is here! The gameplay is still top notch (no more megaman slides on its own like on a freeze surface - I guess that was corrected on 3) and the bosses are also enjoyable enough.
The story was interesting with new characters introduced and protoman returning.
The last stretch was a bit too much with so many stages and bosses tho.
Charge shot is here! The gameplay is still top notch (no more megaman slides on its own like on a freeze surface - I guess that was corrected on 3) and the bosses are also enjoyable enough.
The story was interesting with new characters introduced and protoman returning.
The last stretch was a bit too much with so many stages and bosses tho.
such a good NES title. i would absolutely recommend this over the second game for newcomers, and even Capcom seemed to agree based on the intro. from the pacing to the weapons, this is just an all around solid experience that gives you some of the best of what the series would come to be known for.
Okay, Mega Man 4 brought back those nostalgic feelings of platforming frustration mixed with that sweet dopamine hit when you finally nail a difficult boss. The new charge shot was a game-changer, and some of the Robot Master battles are classics. Definitely not the best in the series, but solid retro fun.
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.
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.
A pesar de no tener el impacto del 2 y del 3, sigue siendo un gran juego, gran soundtrack y buenos controles, pero la saga ya dejo de aportar gran cosa, lo mas destacable aqui se implementó el Buster cargado.
i got hella bands
Ainda divertido porém mais fraco que os anteriores
has some stinkers but overall pretty great
eeeh?
Megaman 4 is notable in the franchise because it was the first game in the series that's actually finished. That being said, the difficulty curve is still mildly fucked. every robot master is still extremely difficult (albeit not as much as mm3) unless you have the weakness weapon. the one exception to this is toad man, who telegraphs his only attack like five seconds in advance and then just doesn't do it if you shoot him, so you can pretty just not stop shooting him and win easily with any weapon. i think a generally simple and predictable fight is a good thing to shoot for in a megaman boss, but there is no challenge there.
the end result of this is that pretty much the only good order to play the stages in to start with toad man's and then follow the weakness order exactly without deviating. so yes, you CAN play the stages in any order you want, there's like forty thousand possible orders you can choose, and they all suck ass except for this 1. That just makes it the same as another game with linear levels, except with the extra work added of googling which order to play them in first, and you do have to google them because you will not guess otherwise. there are zero clues in the stages, in the boss patterns, in the names of the bosses. Oh well of course the only weakness of a vacuum cleaner would be a giant comically oversized floating ring, it would be ridiculous if they made it anything else!
back in megaman 3 they added the slide, and it revolutionized the core moveset. now with megaman 4 they want to do it again, so the idea is to make holding down the shoot button squirt out an even bigger, fatter shot. and this completely changes the entire gameplay loop. Some would say "ruins"; i would say, changes, in a very "ruin-esque" way. to be fair there are pros and cons, especially in the context of where the series was at megaman 3, because that game had very standard difficulty levels but extremely difficult bosses. this absolutely solves the boss difficulty issue, at least helps, but charging still exists when youre playing the levels themselves.
the issue is that all the enemies can't have the same amount of health, because then you'd blast through them all easily, so they all have to be harder to kill now, but that makes all the actual boss weapons less effective in comparison, and since they're harder to kill, you pretty much have to be holding down the shoot button constantly. and since youre holding down charge all the time, it's making this really irritating warbling sound the whole time, which drowns out the music. you can see how this one change to make the boss fights easier has so many ramifications, even for things like hearing the music properly. and you want to hear the music in this game, it's one of the best megaman soundtracks there is, same main composer as megaman 3, which is also one of the best.
fun fact! if you combined guts man, skull man, and skin man, you could create a working human!
the plot trope of an evil genius mad scientist trying to take over the world, is simply too cliche, too uncreative, even, for megaman 4, so in lieu of dr willy we now have dr Cock Sack, who is literally exactly the same. these are just wily stages with a different name.
so there's three wily stages which is actually four wily stages, plus those four cossack stages which were also actually four wily stages - thats eight wily stages total, equal to the actual core game's length, and it kind of feels like an eternity honestly. plus, a lot of these stages are using actual new stage hazards instead of reusing the robot masters' assets. the point of these levels is to be a combination of previous assets in new ways, so if its all new assets then: just make a new robot master level. like, most of the first cocksack stage would make a fantastic snow themed stage. and the side scrolling one after that, well, ideally that one just never gets made. sorry bad example. but you get the point.
and dont tell me "oh but that would make there be more than eight robot master stages, everyone knows it's illegal for a megaman game to have more than eight robot masters, it's scientifically determined to be the optimal number" no it's not, you just think that because all of them do.
overall this is a pretty good entry, good level design, good weapons, great music. i think the five hour sex scene with dr cossack was a little strange (i wouldve preferred closer to six or seven hours) but besides that definitely a banger. no, it is not the best megaman game ever, there's still a few loose ends here and there, but i think it definitely was the best at that time.
the end result of this is that pretty much the only good order to play the stages in to start with toad man's and then follow the weakness order exactly without deviating. so yes, you CAN play the stages in any order you want, there's like forty thousand possible orders you can choose, and they all suck ass except for this 1. That just makes it the same as another game with linear levels, except with the extra work added of googling which order to play them in first, and you do have to google them because you will not guess otherwise. there are zero clues in the stages, in the boss patterns, in the names of the bosses. Oh well of course the only weakness of a vacuum cleaner would be a giant comically oversized floating ring, it would be ridiculous if they made it anything else!
back in megaman 3 they added the slide, and it revolutionized the core moveset. now with megaman 4 they want to do it again, so the idea is to make holding down the shoot button squirt out an even bigger, fatter shot. and this completely changes the entire gameplay loop. Some would say "ruins"; i would say, changes, in a very "ruin-esque" way. to be fair there are pros and cons, especially in the context of where the series was at megaman 3, because that game had very standard difficulty levels but extremely difficult bosses. this absolutely solves the boss difficulty issue, at least helps, but charging still exists when youre playing the levels themselves.
the issue is that all the enemies can't have the same amount of health, because then you'd blast through them all easily, so they all have to be harder to kill now, but that makes all the actual boss weapons less effective in comparison, and since they're harder to kill, you pretty much have to be holding down the shoot button constantly. and since youre holding down charge all the time, it's making this really irritating warbling sound the whole time, which drowns out the music. you can see how this one change to make the boss fights easier has so many ramifications, even for things like hearing the music properly. and you want to hear the music in this game, it's one of the best megaman soundtracks there is, same main composer as megaman 3, which is also one of the best.
fun fact! if you combined guts man, skull man, and skin man, you could create a working human!
the plot trope of an evil genius mad scientist trying to take over the world, is simply too cliche, too uncreative, even, for megaman 4, so in lieu of dr willy we now have dr Cock Sack, who is literally exactly the same. these are just wily stages with a different name.
so there's three wily stages which is actually four wily stages, plus those four cossack stages which were also actually four wily stages - thats eight wily stages total, equal to the actual core game's length, and it kind of feels like an eternity honestly. plus, a lot of these stages are using actual new stage hazards instead of reusing the robot masters' assets. the point of these levels is to be a combination of previous assets in new ways, so if its all new assets then: just make a new robot master level. like, most of the first cocksack stage would make a fantastic snow themed stage. and the side scrolling one after that, well, ideally that one just never gets made. sorry bad example. but you get the point.
and dont tell me "oh but that would make there be more than eight robot master stages, everyone knows it's illegal for a megaman game to have more than eight robot masters, it's scientifically determined to be the optimal number" no it's not, you just think that because all of them do.
overall this is a pretty good entry, good level design, good weapons, great music. i think the five hour sex scene with dr cossack was a little strange (i wouldve preferred closer to six or seven hours) but besides that definitely a banger. no, it is not the best megaman game ever, there's still a few loose ends here and there, but i think it definitely was the best at that time.
Bottom of the barrel garbage
Mas de lo mismo pero con el mega buster
O melhor dos 4 primeiros, o design desse jogo é maravilhoso.
I last played most of the original Mega Man games on the Anniversary Collection on my GameCube when I was much younger, and it's been way too long since I've played them. A friend of mine in the UK asked me to pick her up a few Famicom games, and I figured it wouldn't hurt to indulge in a couple of them before I sent them off to her X3. Rock Man 4 is one such of those games. I didn't remember damn near any of this game, having only played through it once so long ago, but I ended up being quite pleasantly surprised (especially by how much I love the rightfully lauded dog bone-style Famicom controllers I used to play it X3). It took me about 4 hours to complete the Japanese version of the game.
Most Mega Man games don't really have a terribly important narrative, at least in the original series, and this is no exception. The bad guy this time isn't Dr. Wily, but a new evil inventor: Dr. Cossack! Of course it's revealed that Dr. Wily was really behind it all in the first place, but the fact that there's such storytelling at all in a Mega Man game at the time is sorta neat, and it really caught me off guard when text suddenly started appearing on screen once I'd beaten Dr. Cossak XD. It's a neat twist to the formula as it'd been done up to that point, and it sets up the action at play more than well enough.
The action at play is, predictably, Mega Man as it'd been up to that point, but with a bit of a twist. In addition to his dash he gained in Mega Man 3, this is the first game in the series that allowed you to charge your main weapon: the mega buster (or "Rock Buster", as it's called in Japanese). Like the dash, the ability to charge the mega buster is an addition to Mega Man that is pretty divisive among fans on if it's actually a good change, but I at least love it. The mobility and lowered height that the dash gives you combined with this new ability to charge one big shot makes boss fights so much more fun than they were in the past. Instead of it being a choice of a quite hard fight with only your normal pea shooter or demolishing the boss with their weakness, now you have a middle-road option via the charged mega buster. There was only one boss I ended up not fighting with only the mega buster as a result (Dive Man, who was just too hard for me XP), because it was just so much fun fighting them that way.
There are of course eight robot masters to fight, and they're all pretty good fights. My personal favorite was Pharaoh Man, as he makes for a really great fight if you're fighting him with only the charged buster (though I did use their weakness when fighting them in the boss rush. I'm not quite THAT gung ho about it ^^;). The level design is really solid as well, with only really Bright Man being the one I thought had a pretty unfair part or two. It's what you'd expect from a Mega Man game, and it's a very polished version of that experience.
The presentation is again what you'd expect Mega Man 4 to have. The enemy and robot master designs are fun and interesting, and Mega Man himself is as iconic as ever in his traditional 8-bit look. The music is also predictably excellent, with my favorite track being Dive Man's stage. He may be the hardest robot master in this game, but his stage's music is really good~
Verdict: Highly Recommended. This was only the first of what has proven to be quite the dive/re-dive into retro Mega Man stuff, but it was one I enjoyed a lot! It's a very polished experience that brings both old and new together in a really satisfying and fun way. If you've got it on one of the loads of collections its been released on over the years, or can somehow find an original copy, this is absolutely a Mega Man game not worth skipping.
Most Mega Man games don't really have a terribly important narrative, at least in the original series, and this is no exception. The bad guy this time isn't Dr. Wily, but a new evil inventor: Dr. Cossack! Of course it's revealed that Dr. Wily was really behind it all in the first place, but the fact that there's such storytelling at all in a Mega Man game at the time is sorta neat, and it really caught me off guard when text suddenly started appearing on screen once I'd beaten Dr. Cossak XD. It's a neat twist to the formula as it'd been done up to that point, and it sets up the action at play more than well enough.
The action at play is, predictably, Mega Man as it'd been up to that point, but with a bit of a twist. In addition to his dash he gained in Mega Man 3, this is the first game in the series that allowed you to charge your main weapon: the mega buster (or "Rock Buster", as it's called in Japanese). Like the dash, the ability to charge the mega buster is an addition to Mega Man that is pretty divisive among fans on if it's actually a good change, but I at least love it. The mobility and lowered height that the dash gives you combined with this new ability to charge one big shot makes boss fights so much more fun than they were in the past. Instead of it being a choice of a quite hard fight with only your normal pea shooter or demolishing the boss with their weakness, now you have a middle-road option via the charged mega buster. There was only one boss I ended up not fighting with only the mega buster as a result (Dive Man, who was just too hard for me XP), because it was just so much fun fighting them that way.
There are of course eight robot masters to fight, and they're all pretty good fights. My personal favorite was Pharaoh Man, as he makes for a really great fight if you're fighting him with only the charged buster (though I did use their weakness when fighting them in the boss rush. I'm not quite THAT gung ho about it ^^;). The level design is really solid as well, with only really Bright Man being the one I thought had a pretty unfair part or two. It's what you'd expect from a Mega Man game, and it's a very polished version of that experience.
The presentation is again what you'd expect Mega Man 4 to have. The enemy and robot master designs are fun and interesting, and Mega Man himself is as iconic as ever in his traditional 8-bit look. The music is also predictably excellent, with my favorite track being Dive Man's stage. He may be the hardest robot master in this game, but his stage's music is really good~
Verdict: Highly Recommended. This was only the first of what has proven to be quite the dive/re-dive into retro Mega Man stuff, but it was one I enjoyed a lot! It's a very polished experience that brings both old and new together in a really satisfying and fun way. If you've got it on one of the loads of collections its been released on over the years, or can somehow find an original copy, this is absolutely a Mega Man game not worth skipping.
I think dust man is pretty cool
Peak NES mega man
There’s no real reason for Mega Man 4 to be a huge drop-off in quality. Really, looked at in a certain light, it’s got more polish than ever, but that’s part of the problem. Mega Man 4 is the double-digit seasons of The Simpsons; a high-quality failure whose greatest failing is a misunderstanding of what made the golden era of the franchise so perfect.
The plot and the presentation is straight-up intrusive here. From the opening video to Mega Man’s cartoon-ready presentation on the weapon get screens to the actual in-game dialogue from Cossack’s daughter, you get the feel of a game that really wants you to know it could be an animation if it really wanted. These touches don’t necessarily create the impression of a development team ashamed of the fact their creation is reduced to a video game, but it does make it seem aspirational, like being a fun, gameplay-focused video game isn’t enough anymore.
The levels are… cheaper? The series as a whole gets a bit of a bad rap for sudden enemies knocking you into pits or onto spikes, and up until now I don’t think that was merited, but the bullshit is here in spades. Lots of cheap one touch deaths, where twitch response or memorisation are now essential, and it feels like it’s replaced the smarter level design of the earlier games. This is particularly annoying in the obnoxiously plentiful Cossack/Wily stages, which outstay their welcome long before we even learn Cossack’s reasons for attacking us. Harsh but fair level design ruled the first three Mega Man games, and yet here it’s more common to just get comedically fucked over.
The robot masters… well… it’s nice to see Dust Man, a creation of Yusuke Murata, who would go on to be the artist for Eyeshield 21, as well as One-Punch Man. It’s nice to see him. But he’s a chump. As is Frog Man. Two entry points to the loop, and they’re both the sort of easy bullet sponge idiots I was hoping wouldn’t exist after MM3’s stronger opening gambits. On the plus side, half the weapons you get for blasting through this easy assortment of Masters are dreadfully boring, so you can resent your quick victories in more ways than one. It’s hard to be creative this many masters in, but a less good time freeze, a lump of shit, and a homing fist are not gonna get the old brain going, and frog man’s rain ability is just a great example of a power making ‘sense’ not stopping it from sucking.
The new robot master weapons aren’t the only new weaponry to hand, as we have a charge beam, which feels like a long overdue feature, mainstay of the series that it becomes, but that isn’t actually any more effective than my quickly flailing thumb is in most situations. Thankfully the wire grapple goes a bit further as a unique and interesting weapon, and the returning Rush abilities are… wait, why did this game have Rush Marine? I didn’t use it once! I forgot all about it!
All these abilities are chosen from the new pause menu, sending us completely away from the action for the first time so as to fit everything on one screen, and while it feels wrong somehow after the first three games, the added clarity of the full screen is appreciated.
I really can’t overstate how this outstayed its welcome with me. I don’t know that it’s actually any longer than the other games, especially considering the doc robot stuff in MM3, but by having two separate maps for the final sprint I had fatigue set in way earlier, not helped by the shittier design choices along the way. And then at the end I got a 3 stage Wily who’s beyond easy to beat. The first Wily boss literally has a safe spot to stand right next to it! That level of exhaustion with one of the most surefire franchises for me as a person who plays games is weird, especially when these games are all such short experiences.
A drop from 5 to 2 stars feels harsh, but MM4 feels like an exercise in making the wrong choices within the right framework. I know things improve quickly again, but for me this is the black sheep of the NES Mega Man games, and that’s a bit of a bummer. Onward to MM5, it can only go up from here.
The plot and the presentation is straight-up intrusive here. From the opening video to Mega Man’s cartoon-ready presentation on the weapon get screens to the actual in-game dialogue from Cossack’s daughter, you get the feel of a game that really wants you to know it could be an animation if it really wanted. These touches don’t necessarily create the impression of a development team ashamed of the fact their creation is reduced to a video game, but it does make it seem aspirational, like being a fun, gameplay-focused video game isn’t enough anymore.
The levels are… cheaper? The series as a whole gets a bit of a bad rap for sudden enemies knocking you into pits or onto spikes, and up until now I don’t think that was merited, but the bullshit is here in spades. Lots of cheap one touch deaths, where twitch response or memorisation are now essential, and it feels like it’s replaced the smarter level design of the earlier games. This is particularly annoying in the obnoxiously plentiful Cossack/Wily stages, which outstay their welcome long before we even learn Cossack’s reasons for attacking us. Harsh but fair level design ruled the first three Mega Man games, and yet here it’s more common to just get comedically fucked over.
The robot masters… well… it’s nice to see Dust Man, a creation of Yusuke Murata, who would go on to be the artist for Eyeshield 21, as well as One-Punch Man. It’s nice to see him. But he’s a chump. As is Frog Man. Two entry points to the loop, and they’re both the sort of easy bullet sponge idiots I was hoping wouldn’t exist after MM3’s stronger opening gambits. On the plus side, half the weapons you get for blasting through this easy assortment of Masters are dreadfully boring, so you can resent your quick victories in more ways than one. It’s hard to be creative this many masters in, but a less good time freeze, a lump of shit, and a homing fist are not gonna get the old brain going, and frog man’s rain ability is just a great example of a power making ‘sense’ not stopping it from sucking.
The new robot master weapons aren’t the only new weaponry to hand, as we have a charge beam, which feels like a long overdue feature, mainstay of the series that it becomes, but that isn’t actually any more effective than my quickly flailing thumb is in most situations. Thankfully the wire grapple goes a bit further as a unique and interesting weapon, and the returning Rush abilities are… wait, why did this game have Rush Marine? I didn’t use it once! I forgot all about it!
All these abilities are chosen from the new pause menu, sending us completely away from the action for the first time so as to fit everything on one screen, and while it feels wrong somehow after the first three games, the added clarity of the full screen is appreciated.
I really can’t overstate how this outstayed its welcome with me. I don’t know that it’s actually any longer than the other games, especially considering the doc robot stuff in MM3, but by having two separate maps for the final sprint I had fatigue set in way earlier, not helped by the shittier design choices along the way. And then at the end I got a 3 stage Wily who’s beyond easy to beat. The first Wily boss literally has a safe spot to stand right next to it! That level of exhaustion with one of the most surefire franchises for me as a person who plays games is weird, especially when these games are all such short experiences.
A drop from 5 to 2 stars feels harsh, but MM4 feels like an exercise in making the wrong choices within the right framework. I know things improve quickly again, but for me this is the black sheep of the NES Mega Man games, and that’s a bit of a bummer. Onward to MM5, it can only go up from here.