Well, describing this game is a bit hard, I think to put it in few words it's a "pick up and die" type of game because death is something that I become familiar the longer I play.
To start with positives at least the game does look very good, the characters and the backgrounds, both look great, and the parallax scrolling with the fake 3d gets my approval.
The controls are quite solid, I mean it's a Mega Man game, I don't need to say more, and the intro stage is perfect, it's hard but it's balanced and challenging, I have no complains about it.
And the music is quite rich and memorable, with very well composed tracks, I like both the 8-bit and arranged versions, the arranged versions really sound something out of MM11, if there was a thing like a "Famicom CD" this would be the closest.
But my praise stops there, because of one major prevention, THE DIFFICULTY, yes, it IS really that hard, for full disclosure I had been playing this game since yesterday, and with only short rests, and yet I only saw one boss and that yeeted me.
While the enemies making a lot of damage would be bad enough(yeah I know Proto Man is fragile but still), but the combination of other things like insta-death spikes everywhere, and bottomless pits, things that requiere split second reactions, puzzles that confuse and latter frustrate you, and so on, the combination of all of these things make what would be enjoyable into a frustrating experience, I would accept those on a Dr. Wily stage, but in normal robot master stages?... yikes!
Don't get me wrong, you did have put a lot of effort into the assets and everything else in the game, but this game suffers from the same thing as Mega Man and Bass, another "pick up and die" game.
My recommendations would be make less damaging enemies, try to not have as many instadeath spikes or bottomless pits, don't have "Don't screw up or you D I E" puzzles at the start of the game, balancing some enemies, like those things that throw balls are invincible while they throw balls at you and please, I beg you, shorten your levels! because having them being too long makes it even discouraging to continue, moreso because of the lack of checkpoints.
In any case I will try to keep updated once I manage to defeat Static Man, the only way I could get across his stage was via grinding... yeah, and I died at the guy.
Update: I finally managed to beat Static Man, I had to stack up on half damage upgrades, the good thing is that I don't auto-equip them but rather I can equip them whenever I want, so that helped a lot in the boss... which was barely acceptable standards. So My point still stands... still sastifying as hell to had beat up the guy tho.
Update 2: Scorch Woman was better, at least her stage is more straightforward and didn't took me as much time to figure the stage out, but still it's a bit frustrating and again it takes too long, also a bug made a pillar of flame stay in place and play a destroy sound constantly kind of like if I was using a turbo fire against an invincible enemy, so I had to mute the sound.
Update 3: I managed to finish off the game with Smirk man and... to be honest, that stage is actually halfway decent, it's only two sections long, it has an ok difficulty curve and the boss is enjoyable, plus I was in joy destroying everything with Static Man's weapon, using it was hysterical... ah yeah, that's one positive, at least the weapons are fun to use and useful. Only thing I got against are the typical cheap enemy placement in bottomless pits and two is the roulette, that is made for the sole pruporse of bribing you in and taking away your bolts... granted, it's a smart move from the villain but at least put me a hint that tells me not to use it! yeah I know I can restart the game but still, I found it quite confusing and annoying.
In short I don't call this game bad, it's an alright game and you can have some fun with it, just I think my points stand and I think the game would benefit so much more with those improvements I mentioned before, as it stands now it's on the same level as the aforementioned Mega Man & Bass, which is also solid but with major drawbacks.
To start with positives at least the game does look very good, the characters and the backgrounds, both look great, and the parallax scrolling with the fake 3d gets my approval.
The controls are quite solid, I mean it's a Mega Man game, I don't need to say more, and the intro stage is perfect, it's hard but it's balanced and challenging, I have no complains about it.
And the music is quite rich and memorable, with very well composed tracks, I like both the 8-bit and arranged versions, the arranged versions really sound something out of MM11, if there was a thing like a "Famicom CD" this would be the closest.
But my praise stops there, because of one major prevention, THE DIFFICULTY, yes, it IS really that hard, for full disclosure I had been playing this game since yesterday, and with only short rests, and yet I only saw one boss and that yeeted me.
While the enemies making a lot of damage would be bad enough(yeah I know Proto Man is fragile but still), but the combination of other things like insta-death spikes everywhere, and bottomless pits, things that requiere split second reactions, puzzles that confuse and latter frustrate you, and so on, the combination of all of these things make what would be enjoyable into a frustrating experience, I would accept those on a Dr. Wily stage, but in normal robot master stages?... yikes!
Don't get me wrong, you did have put a lot of effort into the assets and everything else in the game, but this game suffers from the same thing as Mega Man and Bass, another "pick up and die" game.
My recommendations would be make less damaging enemies, try to not have as many instadeath spikes or bottomless pits, don't have "Don't screw up or you D I E" puzzles at the start of the game, balancing some enemies, like those things that throw balls are invincible while they throw balls at you and please, I beg you, shorten your levels! because having them being too long makes it even discouraging to continue, moreso because of the lack of checkpoints.
In any case I will try to keep updated once I manage to defeat Static Man, the only way I could get across his stage was via grinding... yeah, and I died at the guy.
Update: I finally managed to beat Static Man, I had to stack up on half damage upgrades, the good thing is that I don't auto-equip them but rather I can equip them whenever I want, so that helped a lot in the boss... which was barely acceptable standards. So My point still stands... still sastifying as hell to had beat up the guy tho.
Update 2: Scorch Woman was better, at least her stage is more straightforward and didn't took me as much time to figure the stage out, but still it's a bit frustrating and again it takes too long, also a bug made a pillar of flame stay in place and play a destroy sound constantly kind of like if I was using a turbo fire against an invincible enemy, so I had to mute the sound.
Update 3: I managed to finish off the game with Smirk man and... to be honest, that stage is actually halfway decent, it's only two sections long, it has an ok difficulty curve and the boss is enjoyable, plus I was in joy destroying everything with Static Man's weapon, using it was hysterical... ah yeah, that's one positive, at least the weapons are fun to use and useful. Only thing I got against are the typical cheap enemy placement in bottomless pits and two is the roulette, that is made for the sole pruporse of bribing you in and taking away your bolts... granted, it's a smart move from the villain but at least put me a hint that tells me not to use it! yeah I know I can restart the game but still, I found it quite confusing and annoying.
In short I don't call this game bad, it's an alright game and you can have some fun with it, just I think my points stand and I think the game would benefit so much more with those improvements I mentioned before, as it stands now it's on the same level as the aforementioned Mega Man & Bass, which is also solid but with major drawbacks.
