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.