Mega Man is such a fascinating series. I’ve been on a mission to complete every game in this series, from mainline to the most obscure spin-off titles, and Mega Man V is one of those immensely satisfying payoffs that makes this sort of series completion checklist so fun to do. With Mega Man moreso than most series, you really have absolutely no idea what you’re going to get; the spectrum encompasses everything from “suspiciously poignant in a backstreets alley” bad to “where has this been all my life what the fuck” greatness. Mega Man V is in the latter camp, and after the credits rolled I had to take some time to sort my thoughts on how…this is just straight up one of my favorite Mega Man games now?
The previous four GB entries demonstrated a steady increase in quality as the team’s confidence increased and the focus of the titles became less about emulating their console counterparts but more about capitalizing on their own unique ideas and premises. The difference in quality between GB Mega Man I and GB Mega Man IV is shocking to say the least, but even with IV’s good ideas and more concise design I still found myself more frustrated than not. Mega Man V, on the other hand, is the team who worked on these games reaching the absolute apex of their creativity. Aside from series icons who appear in literally every entry, essentially everything in this game from top to bottom is completely new. It was such a breath of fresh air, especially when considering that the prior 4 GB entries all borrow heavily from the mainline series, and that alone gives Mega Man V a lot of credit in my book. But new elements alone don’t matter at all if said new elements don’t work for whatever reason. Thankfully, Mega Man V nails the execution. Robot Masters this time around are all based on planets which gives the game a really unique identity and a thematic throughline that makes the entire experience feel much more cohesive. I love many of the series’ Robot Masters, but oftentimes it just feels like a random collection of hoodlums (and while that’s part of the charm for sure, I just really like Mega Man V’s unique approach to this). Levels and stage gimmicks are consistent and based around the space theme too, not to mention just generally used pretty meaningfully in most instances. They even trimmed a lot of that “Mega Man stage hazard bullshit” as I’ve come to call it (aka the ‘I fell into a pit of spikes that I never could have possibly known was there/got hit with some bullshit offscreen thing that there was no way to react to’ that was egregiously present in the past 4 GB entries especially).
Moment to moment platforming, enemy placement, and boss design was all very thoughtful and there’s even a pretty fun line up of special weapons thrown into the mix. There’s even this really unique feature where your buster gets powered up substantially at game over benchmarks, creating a really interesting system that gives players struggling a safety blanket and gives experienced veterans a challenge. This dichotomy alone gives the lives system more weight than literally every other game in the series, where the only consequence of lives is a lost stage checkpoint. Mega Man V is the whole package, really, and I’m sad that the team behind it didn’t continue to a 6th entry even if V’s ending does serve as a lovely little sendoff to the GB lineup. What a unique little subseries that, while far from perfect, had a lot of good ideas that inevitably bled into the design philosophy of mainline entries (7’s chip system originated from IV? who knew!)
The previous four GB entries demonstrated a steady increase in quality as the team’s confidence increased and the focus of the titles became less about emulating their console counterparts but more about capitalizing on their own unique ideas and premises. The difference in quality between GB Mega Man I and GB Mega Man IV is shocking to say the least, but even with IV’s good ideas and more concise design I still found myself more frustrated than not. Mega Man V, on the other hand, is the team who worked on these games reaching the absolute apex of their creativity. Aside from series icons who appear in literally every entry, essentially everything in this game from top to bottom is completely new. It was such a breath of fresh air, especially when considering that the prior 4 GB entries all borrow heavily from the mainline series, and that alone gives Mega Man V a lot of credit in my book. But new elements alone don’t matter at all if said new elements don’t work for whatever reason. Thankfully, Mega Man V nails the execution. Robot Masters this time around are all based on planets which gives the game a really unique identity and a thematic throughline that makes the entire experience feel much more cohesive. I love many of the series’ Robot Masters, but oftentimes it just feels like a random collection of hoodlums (and while that’s part of the charm for sure, I just really like Mega Man V’s unique approach to this). Levels and stage gimmicks are consistent and based around the space theme too, not to mention just generally used pretty meaningfully in most instances. They even trimmed a lot of that “Mega Man stage hazard bullshit” as I’ve come to call it (aka the ‘I fell into a pit of spikes that I never could have possibly known was there/got hit with some bullshit offscreen thing that there was no way to react to’ that was egregiously present in the past 4 GB entries especially).
Moment to moment platforming, enemy placement, and boss design was all very thoughtful and there’s even a pretty fun line up of special weapons thrown into the mix. There’s even this really unique feature where your buster gets powered up substantially at game over benchmarks, creating a really interesting system that gives players struggling a safety blanket and gives experienced veterans a challenge. This dichotomy alone gives the lives system more weight than literally every other game in the series, where the only consequence of lives is a lost stage checkpoint. Mega Man V is the whole package, really, and I’m sad that the team behind it didn’t continue to a 6th entry even if V’s ending does serve as a lovely little sendoff to the GB lineup. What a unique little subseries that, while far from perfect, had a lot of good ideas that inevitably bled into the design philosophy of mainline entries (7’s chip system originated from IV? who knew!)