incredibly difficult game to review due to my long history with it and its general mismatch in quality between (apparently still to some extent ongoing) updates.

i will say as a positive, it’s very accessible… though this accessibility comes at a cost, and every level designer i’ve met who’s used the game before has admitted feeling restricted by it, and eventually giving up on it entirely. there are much better options for both “ways to make mega man levels” and “ways to play a bunch of mega man levels”, but mega man maker continues to thrive purely because none of these better alternatives sound as simple and broadly appealing as “mario maker for mega man”.

even still, mega man maker has begun to flounder in this one niche, adding more and more assets in their arms-race to make every update larger that take half-steps towards true free customizability while still having handicaps for staying “newcomer friendly”, appeasing no-one and only serving to fill a bullet-point list of Big New Things; a list that’s becoming so bloated that it ironically might scare off would-be newcomers.

the intricacies of my problems with this game could fill an entire ocean, but i’d rather save myself the headache, especially as i, to some extent, only write this review so that i won’t have to later if someone unassuming comes along to recommend the game or ask why i dislike it.

in some ways, i owe a lot to mega man maker, even if a lot of it was indirect. but i really don’t see a reason to ever come back.