My first playthrough was with Mega Man and it was a miserable experience most of the time. Some enemies take way too many hits, most robot masters are too difficult to fight without their weaknesses and the level design can be infuriating, like cheap traps, the typical disappearing blocks but here they have inconsistent timing and the biggest annoyance are large rooms where you cannot see what is below or above you, so you may end up jumping into hazards sometimes instant-death ones.
And I played the Super Famicom version, I dont want to imagine how bad those parts are on the smaller GBA screen.

My second playthrough with Bass was a little more enjoyable. Mainly because I was familiar with the boss weaknesses this time and because of his double jump that makes some parts less frustrating. But it also makes others too easy.

If you don't feel the urge to play through the entire series like I did at the time of writing this, I'd say you can ignore this one or just play through it as Bass.