Mega Man's 4th NES romp introduces the charge shot for the buster, making this the first Mega Man game with a "complete" moveset. Although not as impactful as the slide introduced in MM3, this does still change the way you'll approach most stages and bosses.
Stages are much more setpiece-driven than before, having a lot of midbosses to utilise your charge shot against. The stage design is overall another step up in quality here, utilising more elements of conventionally "good game design", but there are more frustrating moments compared to MM3, including some complete shameless bullshit like the kaizo traps at the start of Dust Man's stage.
The robot masters feel as though they hit a lot harder compared to earlier games, which was probably a result of capcom acknowledging that the bosses need to be tuned differently if Mega Man has a charge shot, since the presence of the charge shot inherently makes boss weaknesses less important than before. Some of the bosses are the best the series has had up to this point, such as Pharaoh Man and Magnet Man, but others like Dive Man feel like a bit of a crapshoot given how fast they move and how much contact damage they deal.
So yeah, MM4 is another good blast of fun for fans of the series, but there's still a sense of something missing with the experience as a whole. Honestly the best thing about MM4 is the simple fact that it has the first set of actually good wily castle stages in the series, which is even more important for this game considering that it effectively has two wily castles.
Stages are much more setpiece-driven than before, having a lot of midbosses to utilise your charge shot against. The stage design is overall another step up in quality here, utilising more elements of conventionally "good game design", but there are more frustrating moments compared to MM3, including some complete shameless bullshit like the kaizo traps at the start of Dust Man's stage.
The robot masters feel as though they hit a lot harder compared to earlier games, which was probably a result of capcom acknowledging that the bosses need to be tuned differently if Mega Man has a charge shot, since the presence of the charge shot inherently makes boss weaknesses less important than before. Some of the bosses are the best the series has had up to this point, such as Pharaoh Man and Magnet Man, but others like Dive Man feel like a bit of a crapshoot given how fast they move and how much contact damage they deal.
So yeah, MM4 is another good blast of fun for fans of the series, but there's still a sense of something missing with the experience as a whole. Honestly the best thing about MM4 is the simple fact that it has the first set of actually good wily castle stages in the series, which is even more important for this game considering that it effectively has two wily castles.