Which brings me to one of my larger complaints about the game: balancing problems. It seemed like for every section of the game that ran super smooth and was a joy to play, there were two sections that were hampered by overly difficult design. A couple examples are in Mighty No. 1’s stage, where you are running through a gauntlet of flames and falling debris, or Mighty No. 4’s stage, where you have to avoid gauntlet after gauntlet of instant death drills. These sections are crazy difficult, and made more so by an unfortunate problem: slowdown. Now, I only encountered serious slowdown three times in the game, and that was in Stage 1, Stage 4 and the final stage. The other nine stages I had absolutely no issue with, as the game ran buttery smooth or only suffered momentary flickers of slowdown. I’m not sure what exactly caused these problems, but they seemed to occur in areas with tons of on-screen activity where Beck had to rush like crazy. Though frustrating, they represented the minority, as the majority of the time the game ran perfectly fine on my Wii U.
However, there is another problem that reared its ugly head as I played, and that was instant death traps. Remember playing the original Mega Man? It was littered with lots of ‘gotcha’ moments where, if you hit the wrong thing or made the wrong jump, you would die and have to start all over. This design is alive and well in Mighty No. 9. Now, to be fair, in this game, unlike classic Mega Man, there are numerous checkpoints to help alleviate your stress, but that doesn’t help until after you get past a frustrating area. I would have preferred the game utilize fewer instant death and more challenging, yet balanced areas. Hell, I also would have loved a branching level or two, as every level is linear. While that was probably a decision made to accommodate the fast and frantic dash mechanic, it felt like a missed opportunity to me, especially since it meant I rarely had reason to utilize Beck’s ReXelection powers for any puzzle solving.
Now that we’ve thoroughly touched upon how the game plays, let’s spend some time on the graphics. I’ve heard numerous complaints about the game, some calling the art mediocre, even comparing it to cell phone games. Now, while it is true that the graphics in this game weren’t as vibrant as we were expecting from the concept art, it is a far stretch from being terrible. In fact, I found most of the game to be colorful and interesting, with one odd exception: Beck himself. Now, don’t get me wrong, Beck is an interesting character, but the way he was rendered makes him look washed out. Worse is that his facial expression never changes, which would be okay if he were as robotic as Call, but based off his voice acting, Beck should express a full range of emotions. It left me feeling disconnected from his character to hear the voice actor do such a great job and see the model constantly expressing the same blank stare. This is further exacerbated by how all the bosses and even many enemies change to express emotion, yet Beck never does. It’s definitely one of the weakest aspects of the game, since it does little to endear the hero to the gamers controlling him. On the audio side of things, I’ve already raved about the voice acting, but I should briefly mention the music. While I found the music to be inoffensive, and nothing was particularly bad, I also didn’t find any of the tracks particularly memorable. However, I haven’t tried the retro music option, which would likely make my opinion far more favorable.
Much as I enjoyed the game, I would be doing a disservice if I didn’t touch upon a few things. While I find most of the game to be well designed and enjoyable, there were a couple design decisions that left me utterly baffled. For example, while the game does spend the intro stage teaching you the basic mechanics, they also leave a bunch of stuff out. For example, though you do learn how to AcXelerate, they don’t mention that you can crouch dash low to the ground or do a vertical dash downwards. I also thought it odd that they never explain how to transform after beating a boss, nor explain what their powers do once you acquire them. Granted, all this info and more can be found from the pause menu, but I can’t shake the feeling it should have been covered naturally during the course of the game. Also, and this is a personal critique, I felt that in a game where you are required to constantly dash forward into danger, they should have provided some sort of backflip move. Nothing huge, just something to keep the flow of battle going even smoother.
In the end result, I think that Mighty No. 9 got a bad rap. Granted, there was a lot of money invested in the project, and, as backers, we should feel we got our money’s worth. But I also feel the anxiety and negativity that plagued the end of the campaign and the release of the game heavily biased all the early reviews that came out. After playing the game myself and beating it, I found Mighty No. 9 to be an enjoyable, if flawed, experience. However, for $19.99 for the Steam version or $29.99 for the physical version, I feel fans get their money’s worth. The main campaign is fun, but when you factor in the Ray DLC, the other playable characters, the boss rush and other features, there’s a lot to enjoy for a while to come. If nothing else, I hope I have given fans of the project some hope that their money wasn’t wasted. As much as I love and adore the Mega Man series, it has its issues and problems, as well, which is something I feel we all conveniently forget whenever we condemn Mighty No. 9 for not being perfect.
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Review copy provided by author
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