Megaman 11 - Started this up while on vacation.
I chose to play ‘classic’ mode for Megaman fans rather than ‘casual’ mode for people who hadn’t played Megaman in a while, despite not playing Megaman for a while. In hindsight, this might have been mildly optimistic on my part. Well, whatever. I beat all of the robot masters and I am enjoying the game a lot. It reminds me a lot of MM8, with the longer stages and often technically tricky stuff, as well as some oddball mechanics that feel right at home in 8. The weapons are mostly quite potent and more consistently solid than the weapons in some of the previous games.
The game’s main wrinkle in the traditional Megaman mold is the introduction of the Power and Speed gears. The Speed Gear makes the action move slower for a short amount of time (five seconds?). This is obviously helpful against pretty much anyone you use it on. In particular, it is very useful during the stages where fire/a shredder are chasing you for instant death. And it can be a very nice option for bosses sometimes, especially those that you don’t have the weakness for. There are situation in which the Speed gear can backfire. For example, it can also be used for platforming, but can sometimes interfere with platforming rhythm (especially with moving platforms and such), so I don’t usually use it for that.
The power gear is pretty useless without weapons. With the weapons, it gets more interesting. I will outline how they work based on each weapon. My feeling is that the weapon energy used is about double of what is used normally, but I haven’t really quantified that number.
-Bounce Ball just sends projectiles bouncing around. There are three projectiles; one above, one middle, one below in front of Megaman. It’s relatively weak but an interesting weapon nevertheless. The powered up version just shoots two sets of balls, one behind and one in front. it’s interesting, costs less than the other weapons in the game which is nice (I feel like MM11 has a lot of expensive weapons!)
-Tundra Storm is the height of the screen and about twice as wide as Megaman and pretty much crushes everything in its path. The power gear version is a fullscreen clear and costs a lot of weapon energy, unsurprisingly.
-Block Dropper is a little bit different. It drops four blocks from the top of the screen about the size of Megaman. The cool thing about it is that it drops said blocks quite far away from Megaman in front of him, which means you can use it to snipe enemies from far away. I find this weapon EXTREMELY good and greatly enjoy it. Its Power Gear version gives you more blocks. I rarely use it because the base weapon is so useful that I don’t want to spend the ammo.
-Pile Driver is the one I’ve played around with the least, since it was the last boss I fought. It moves you forward in a dash, stabs the enemy, and then moves you back a bit. It’s pretty damn stylish, for sure, but I’m not sure how good the weapon actually is. It might actually be more useful as a dash than it is as a weapon, but I haven’t experimented too hard with it yet. The Powered version just makes you go further.
-Blazing Torch moves upward at a 45 degree angle for a while and then turns down at a 45 degree angle. Despite the bizarre trajectory, it is great because it can casually kill a lot of powerful enemies, including many shielded enemies. It kills Sniper Joes in a robot in two hits, which is grand. The Powered up version adds two more flames, which again could be useful but the weapons are pricy without power gear…
-Acid Barrier is a very useful shield! You can shoot some little acids while you have the shield up, and it blocks a lot of stuff very consistently. The Powered up version allows you to kill enemies too, so I often use it instead. Such a great platforming tool, especially in Wily 1 which is evil and hates you personally.
-Chain Blast is the worst weapon regularly, I actually don’t fully understand how it works. But the Powered up version OHKOs Sniper Joe robots so I mostly just use all my weapon energy on the powered up one.
-Scramble Thunder is the best ground crawler in the series. It’s fast, it’s deadly, it breaks through shields, it can be shot upwards to the ceiling/ kill enemies. The Powered up version just makes it larger, which is kinda pointless to be honest.
tldr; the weapons are all actually useful in different ways! wow!
The stage design is generally quite enjoyable and diverse, which i really like. The stages are quite a bit longer than old-school classic Megaman, which is interesting. I found them a little too lengthy for how hard the game is, overall, but it’s fine. I’ve heard people complain about the length of the game but I am finding that it is taking quite a while on a first playthrough (admittedly very rusty on MM in general….). The boss fights are largely enjoyable and feel like classic Megaman bosses. I like Tundra Man in particular because he’s a prissy little jerk. (He’s probably the easiest boss, too, and has an amazing weapon.) The profiles for the robot masters are quite cute and add a little extra flavor to the game.
I’m currently on Wily 1. That stage is an absolute monster. Bonus points for guessing what asshole retro Megaman boss inhabits this stage!
