Finished this on the same night I beat Mega Man 5. I wanted to finish the first Legacy Collection since I realized how short these games really are, but man are they such a blast, and that goes for this game too. I didn't know what to rate this one at first so I slept on it, and honestly, I think this is my favourite of the NES series. What makes this stand out to me are the Robot Master themes, I love that the tournament they were going to hold consisted of four Elemental and four Warrior robots. It made the game all the more satisfying because I started with Wind Man and when I beat Plant Man I thought "the Elementals are down, now for the Warriors." Something as simple as that really put a smile on my face while I played it. Also, the levels here are really good, especially since some of them have diverging paths, and going to those diverging paths in the Warrior Robot Master levels unlocked Beat if you did them all. I honestly didn't use Beat too much, but I thought he was a great addition to Mega Man 5 so I'm glad he returned here. Anyway, the weapons you get from this game are probably my favourite of the bunch, mainly because there isn't a singular niche weapon here, closest being Centaur Flash, but that's only really niche because Wind Man is the only boss that takes damage from it. I'm okay with Centaur Flash as opposed to other niche weapons because of what it does, where it kills enemies on the screen and can ignore enemies that have shields, but this can freeze Mega Man in place. I also actually found a use for this weapon as opposed to something like the Gravity Hold in Mega Man 5 where I just thought it'd be better to save it for later if I ever needed it (like in the Boss Rush) since the Mega Buster already did a lot of damage and I could rely on that better. The other weapons are all really fun to use because most of them are really simple to use and the energy of each weapon feels fair for what they do, most of them not using too much up so I could really get a good use out of each weapon instead of worrying about saving it. There's also the Rush Adaptors, which I really love, especially the Jet one. The Power one is really fun to use because you can charge up punches or go one at a time and I feel like a big brute which is really cool, but Jet is super useful and I love how it controls compared to some of the other Rush mobility options in previous games. I don't know if they'll bring it back for Mega Man 7 or any other game going further, but if they do, that would be a very welcome addition for the future games in the series (I don't know anything about 7-11). Overall, I would say that in my opinion, this is the best NES Mega Man game, since it has a lot of content, great weapons, fun stages and bosses, and a great new gimmick.

Reviewed on Dec 19, 2023


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