The MegaMan 8 style got back, now adapted for the Game Boy Advance console.
I won't lie, this game took the lack of difficulty the MM8 had, and thus we have a VERY, VERY DIFFICULT game, being sincere, I don't know if it would have been easier if played it in the time I've played MM1, but maaan... I do consider this harder than MM1 (if MM1 was well done).
Besides the great difficult, here we can play with Bass (this was released before MM10), yay! His gameplay is very different from MegaMan, with him, we can actually dash, as X and Zero can, we can double jump, and we fire fast quick shots instead of charge, as somesort machine-gun.
Anyway, I would probably try to play this again if I could, but because of the difficulty I wouldn't even touch MegaMan.
Go Bass 🎉🎉

Megaman and Bass is a spinoff that takes aspects from Megaman 8, by having a beautiful artstyle, and great music. With the exception of the difficulty where the game feels like a treat to play as 1 character with superior gameplay, while playing as the other character feels the game is punishing you for choosing the other character.

[Game itself]
In this game you get to select Megaman or Bass as playable characters, though essentially this is where you're actually choosing your difficulty option with Bass being Easy/Normal, and Megaman being straight up hell.

The problem with this game, as others point out, is like in Megaman 10, Megaman wasn't built for this type of game because Capcom have never tried or wanted to improve Megaman's overall gameplay for the sake of not pissing off a couple of pathetic fans, who care that Megaman only shoots left and right.
The problem with Megaman in this game is this game contains a lot of enemies that you need to take out at an angle, and Bass has an overhauled gameplay that allows him to shoot in 6 different directions: North-West, West, South-West, North-East, East, South-East and also contains a double jump. Now I'm not saying "give Megaman a double jump" I'm saying it's pretty stupid that even now (well considering Megaman 11) he still only shoots left and right depending on where he's facing.
Give Megaman the full axis of combat to shoot his buster. Now a lot of people say "Megaman has the Mega Buster Charge shot as a compromise" but when most of the enemies (Not even main bosses) have to take twice a full charge shot in order to full kill them, and still get hit by a enemy at a diagonal, Megaman can't reach them, but Bass can.
Honestly this should have been a Bass Game by itself, a spinoff essentially, sort of like Tron Bonnie got on the PS1.

Another issue is that nearly all the stages are full of cheap hits that it's more than likely you'll end up running out of lives before actually reaching a boss, and even then still dying to them, I know thats par for the course with Megaman but if the stage is what's causing the biggest issue in reaching the boss because it feels like it's not built for a certain character (IE Megaman) then it starts to feel like a drag to play.

It doesn't help that the game has a shop system that doesn't allow you to stack the amount of lives you want. What I mean is, Auto the robot (Green Robot with Red Eyes that is friends with Megaman) sells items for you on your adventure, and the more you progress the more items you can obtain/buy.
Most of the time you will be buying lives... the annoying thing is that Capcom never thought to actually allow you to stack buying of items, which means YOU HAVE TO INDIVIDUALLY BUY EVERY SINGLE LIFE. In the game you start with 2 lives (technically 3), and you can get a max of 9 lives, meaning that for the other 7 lives, you need to talk to Auto 3 times in a row to buy the item, it's a pain and a waste of time.
You can buy enhancers/absorbers in order to help Mega/Bass on their journey from Auto, but as soon as you die, you lose all said items ( and no you can't rebuy them until you get the same amount of screws from stages in order to rebuy them from Auto.

The game is a pain to play.
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[Robot Masters]

The Robot Masters in this game are unique in terms of design (somewhat) but also very strange, and sometimes straight up lazy as some characters are just similar ones from Megaman 8/inspired by.
The difficulty with the robot masters is that most feel like they get cheap hits in, resulting in cheap deaths, and there's straight up 1 robot master who you can't defeat unless you precisely know the exact frame to hit them with a charge shot, if you're not attempting to defeat them with their weakness, and keep in mind, the game starts off with you picking from 1 of 3 robot masters before unlocking the rest, and keep in mind, the one I'm talking about is Astro Man, he's one of the first one's available, and as Megaman is nearly impossible to defeat without the Magic Card ability from Magic Man.

Now I will list all the robot masters, their weaknesses, and their overall difficulty ranging from Piss Easy, Fair, or Straight Up Cheap and Annoying, or HELL. I'll also provide some thoughts on their designs.

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Cold Man- Weakness: Lighting Bolt (Obtained from Dynamo Man however Dynamo is one of the last robot Masters, so you'll probably never fight Cold Man with Lightning Bolt) - Difficulty Fair - Design: Ever thought Cold Man needed to look more like a freezer mixed with E123 Omega from Sonic = Cold Man

Astro Man -Weakness: Magic Cards (Obtained from Magic Man) - Difficulty without Weakness: HELL, Difficulty with Weakness: Piss Easy Design: Same design he uses in Megaman 8, still looks like a stupid weird ball with tiny balls around it with a green coat. It's very stupid looking

Ground Man: Weakness: Remote Mine (Obtained from Pirate Man) - Difficulty: Fair - Design: Cool simple design with drills, the color of a light-ish creamy yellow white mixed with Brown and blue stripes is nice, also the drills are really cool, and the vehicle drill he becomes is awesome.

Burner Man: Weakness - Ice Wall (Cold Man) - Difficulty: Fair and Cheap (Sometimes the hit box is the biggest problem since if he barely scrapes you, you still somehow get hit) -
Design: Love how unique he looks, taking inspiration from Fire Man, but instead, having a esthetic of a flame gas canister with Green flames, really awesome.

Pirate Man: Weakness: Wave Burner (Obtained from Burner Man) - Difficulty - Piss Easy with and without Weakness - Design: Cool Pirate look, has an awesome hat and even a single eye with an area that looks like where another eye should be but instead it's a cover that looks like an eye patch. Also really like how in 1 hand he has a canon like Megaman and Bass, and in the other he has a claw hand. Really cool and unique design

Dynamo Man: Weakness: Copy Vision (Obtained from Astro Man) - Difficulty: HELL with and without his weakness (is the only boss where he literally heals himself as you're about to defeat him making you have to destroy BOTH SIDES OF HIS REGENERATOR in order to stop him healing all his health) - Design: Such a cheap boss having such a shit design, looking like a green coil pylon is insulting, stupid design with an unfair boss fight.

Tengu Man: Weakness: Spread Drill (Ground Man) - Difficulty: Fair with and without Weakness (Just watch his patterns and you'll be fine, you will die, but it does feel like trail and error, not cheap deaths) - Design: Returning from Megaman 8, the design itself is weird, but not sure why the robot exists in the first place if it's based off japanese mythology, it's like making a robot Master of Son Wukong and calling it Son Wukong Man, why? IDK but the design is cool.

Magic Man - Weakness: Tengu Blade (Obtained from Tengu Man) - Difficulty: Straight Up Cheap and Annoying with and without his weakness (He moves everywhere throwing a bunch of stuff that has a small window of avoidance and can result in cheap deaths, but is nowhere as annoying as Dynamoman) - Design: really cool unique magician outfit and while he himself is unique his stage is a nighttime stolen version of Clown Man's stage from 8.
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[Story]
The story is your standard: ROBOTS HAVE GONE HAYWIRE AND ARE WRECKING THINGS and Dr Light asks Megaman to save the robots and also to defeat a new Enemy Named KING. As Bass you're asked to do the same as but with Wily asking you to do so.

You go through the game defeating the robot masters and have a final confrontation with King, where Protoman shows up and uses all his energy to destroy King's Power Shield giving Megaman/Bass a fair fight against King.

After King is defeat King asks them (depending on who you're playing as), why do they fight for humans when robots are superior?

If as Megaman: "It's not about Superiority..."

If as Bass: ".......... because Humans made us"

King then reveals that the true villian behind all of this is... OMG DR WILY (yeah no shit, like he's not in every single other Megaman Mainline game apart from the X-Series and Battle Network, etc).
Dr Wily takes control of King turning the Gold Robot into an evil mindcontrolled purple one, and has him... control a giant tank with 3 weakspots. After his destruction, King says to Megaman/Bass they need to escape before the Bass explodes.

As Megaman he worries about King and wonders if he'll make it.
As Bass he asks what King will do now since everything is being destroyed

King tells (whoever you're playing as): He'll teleport with them but that they need to go first, Mega/Bass do so.
King actually lied, since he doesn't have a teleporting ability like them.

King to Megaman after Mega teleports: "I wish I had teleportation like him... save the robots MEGAMAN!"

King to Bass after Bass Teleports: " I wish I had teleportation like him... we could've been good friends Bass."

As King dies in the explosion, REST IN PEACE YOU KING!

After that you head to Wily's fortress for a final boss rush of all previous robot Masters, and a final 2 phase fight with Wily which ends in him begging for his life.

In Megaman's ending everything is happy and all robot masters are save along with seeing a nice ghost/vision of King being happy knowing that there's someone like Megaman to save the robots.

In Bass's ending - Wily explains that the reason he tricked Bass was because he wanted to see if Bass really was the strongest robot he created to combat Megaman. He did this by creating an equally strong or "STRONGER" robot in terms of King. After King's defeat Wily immediately began working on KING THE SECOND, so he could be a partner with Bass so that they can both take out Megaman and be unstoppable. Protoman shows up and destroys the King 2 project. Wily immediately orders Bass to eliminate Protoman, but he doesn't. Protoman explains to Bass that he is free to do what he wants and doesn't need a master to tell him what to do, but also tells him that Bass will never EVER defeat Megaman because he doesn't have a reason nor purpose to. Until Bass finds that reason, he will never defeat Mega, Protoman leaves. The scene ends with Bass saying, "I Don't need a reason, I am the strongest and I will destroy Megaman"

As the game ends.

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Overall this game has a beautiful artstyle, tedious and annoying gameplay, and a good story in terms of Bass, and a generic one in terms of Megaman.

Now maybe the issue with the difficulty has to do with the version I played being the GBA version, so maybe the original SNES version is better, but personally I had a mixed and bad time with this game because while starting optimistic, I ended up dreading everytime I had to continue the game, so now that I've finally beaten it, I probably won't ever play it again unless they port it to a new Megaman collection, or remake it to be better.

I recommend it if you're a Megaman fan, but I don't if you're a casual player.

Mega Man & Bass is quite a mixed bag. On one hand you have some of the best weapon powers in the series like Ice Wall & Copy Shot & the bolts system is pretty neat & started how future Mega Man titles used them. It looks great & the music is good too. On the other this includes some of the most frustrating levels in the entire classic series. Not all mind you as the Cold Man & Pirate Man stage are well designed but ones like Ground Man, Burner Man & the final two King stages are atrocious & way too long for their own good. They could've been easily split into 3 different stages.

Bosses are mostly a mixed bag too especially Dynamo, Burner Man & the King fights. Bass is an interesting character with his double jump & directional shots though his shots are absolutely weak making some boss fights & some common mooks annoying. I wouldn't say the game is terrible as I would rather play this again compared to X3, X6 & X7 but out of the classics you could easily skip this.

i feel like maybe the difficulty for this game was a little bit hyped up, but i could just be saying that because i used save states at some points at checkpoints before bosses. i feel like the difficulty was on par with some of the less good mega man games ive played like 1 or 3, but i think having put up with so much mega man bullshit now i feel desensitized to this game's bullshit, this being the last mainline mega man game i had left to play. playing the game again as bass also considerably lowered the difficulty in the platforming, but the last few bosses as bass were way more frustrating than when i was playing as mega man which i guess is the tradeoff. still love playing as bass though because you could zoom through the game as him. overall though aside from being able to play as bass and like the one cool scene with protoman this game just didnt evoke that much from me, it just felt very fine and generic for the most part.