The first "throwback" Mega Man? I know this is sometimes regarded as a step back by folks who were there when Mega Man X changed the game. It's funny to think about that now from a modern perspective, knowing that Classic and X are separate subseries. But I suppose that assurance wouldn't have existed at the time, so, fair enough, I guess.

MM7 definitely feels like it's trying to apply lessons learned from Mega Man X. The presence of an opening stage, plus the increased emphasis on things like cutscenes, hidden power-ups, and narrative themes feel like a deliberate choice to backport X's contributions. In particular, you have that ending, where Mega Man grapples with Asimov's First Law of Robotics. I can only assume this exists here since Mega Man X introduced robots that have free will. Ergo, it stands to reason that Rock Light, for as much as he's presented as a little boy with a strong sense of justice, would still be beholden to Asimov's Laws, at least in part.

...of course, this is futzed with somewhat in the localization, but hey. Incidentally: the reason Mega talks so slowly there is because the text was changed, but the text speed is consistent between versions. The original script simply had him say "...", so that slow speed effect would've been impactful. Having Mega speak a full line of dialogue at that speed, not so much.

It is insane to me that this game was developed in three/four months. If this was another NES title, that would still seem too short - Mega Man 2 had a hellish 8-month dev cycle, remember. But effectively having to build a game and its engine from the ground up in half that time? Yet by all accounts, the team had a ton of fun making this one! I guess it made for a fun challenge, kompressing development time and working to meet the challenge?

With this in mind, while I do have some criticisms, I actually find that there aren't any I specifically pin on this crunched dev cycle. Maybe how a couple of the stages (Slash Man, Turbo Man) are a little lackluster, despite how high-concept they are? But, like, the ridiculous difficulty spike of the Wily Capsule is clearly a deliberate decision, not a consequence of crunch. The Super Adaptor's implementation is a progression of existing Rush Adaptor ideas from 6 more than anything unique to this game.

Heck, the team was able to sneak in stuff like secret moves and boss fights, despite the crunch! Commendable for sure.

But for me personally, the game's biggest impact will always be Bob & George, and the downstream consequence of the sprite comic scene coming into existence out of Mega Man 7. True, Neglected Mario Characters predates Bob & George (and was a personal favorite, at least in its heyday); true, Mega Man 7 is relevant to Bob & George more out of coincidence than anything; true, sprite comics probably would've come into being anyway. Doesn't matter; I cannot look at a single main character sprite from this game without thinking about the long, long history of sprite comics and recolored OCs to stem from its iconography. I can't really rate the game based on that, but I'd be lying if I didn't mention it.