After playing through Mega Man 1-10 a while back, I had a good few people tell me I should play this game as well to genuinely finish out the classic series. I had the GBA version as a kid, and I got fairly far in it but never managed to beat it. I had hesitated for a bit, as this version actually isn't available for sale digitally anywhere (not in any of the collections, and the only versions on Virtual Console are the very inferior GBA port), but I discovered much to my joy that I actually did have this ROM sitting around in my collection (it was just filed differently than I expected it to be). I broke out my Xbox One game pad and it took me about 4 hours to complete the game without save states or rewinds using ZSNES.
Coming out on the Super Famicom in the mindbogglingly late year of 1998, Rock Man & Forte (better known as "Mega Man & Bass") was the last of the classic Mega Man games until Mega Man 9 a decade later. You can play as either titular character (I myself picked Mega Man) as you fight against the mysterious new robot King, who has raided Wily's lab and Dr. Light's Robot Museum to collect blueprints of past robot masters to create his new master army to make a world devoid of humans where robots can live in peace. It's got a fair amount of text for a Mega Man game, but the story still boils down to a very familiar formula where King was actually being used by Wily the whole time. It does the job just fine, and King himself is a well-designed new character (even if he has the life expectancy of most new Mega Man antagonists ^^;).
The game recycles two robot masters from Mega Man 8, Tengu Man and Astro Man (who both fight quite differently than their PS1 counterparts), but then has six more original robot masters for you to fight in addition to the fortress at the end. However, this is definitely one of the weakest of the classic series, and it is arguably also the worst of them for similar reasons for why Mega Man 10 isn't very good. Sure, the bosses vary between some of them being really weirdly easy (especially with their weaknesses) or being trials of frustration to deal with (the category into which most of them fall), but the big bugbear here is the stage design and how it relates to the two playable characters.
Mega Man 10's big problem comes from its stages feeling too homogeneous because they need to be completeable with all three main characters. Rock Man & Forte has the opposite problem but for the same reason. Mega Man has the charge buster and the dash-slide he has in every other classic series game between Mega Man 4~8. Bass, on the other hand, has no charge beam but an 8-way rapid fire (which are each a little weaker than Mega Man's normal shots), as well as a Mega Man X1-style dash ability instead of the dash-slide. This means the game is divided into two significantly difficult variations depending on whomever you picked to play as, because you can't change character midway through the game. If you picked Mega Man, your charge shot will allow you to generally have an easier time with most bosses, as will your ground slide in dodging attacks. If you're Bass, your dash ability will give you a generally much easier time with the stages, but your eight-way shot and lack of a charge shot will make certain bosses easier and certain bosses harder.
I would tentatively put Bass as the easier to play of the two, as it doesn't much matter if you can beat bosses if you can't even GET to them, but the problems are there all the same. The stages are generally really meanly put together in ways that remind me of games like Mega Man X6 and Rock Man World 3. Particularly as Mega Man, there are some jumps he can JUST barely make due to his lacking a dash ability, and the difficulty curve of the game is all over the place as a result. Inafune apparently wanted this game to be made for the more "hardcore" of the Mega Man fanbase, but the effect is similar to how the original Super Mario Bros 2 was also made for "super" players. The overall experience feels designed to be difficult rather than fun, so it's far more often frustrating that you're dying to cheap deaths rather than satisfying as you conquer a good challenge.
The game also has a shop where you can buy a bunch of (very good) upgrades, though only one of them can be equipped at a time, for most of the best ones. There are also a bunch of collectibles to find scattered through all the levels in the form of little ID cards of genuinely all of the boss and allied robots that have appeared in prior Mega Man games (even super obscure ones like the bosses in the Wily Tower in the Mega Man: Wily Wars). However, just to add insult to injury in one more tiny way regarding the playable characters, some of them can only be gotten as either character, so if you want a completed collectible database, you'll need to play through the game at least once as each character.
The presentation is pretty good for the most part, particularly the graphics. This is pretty damn amazing looking for a Super Famicom game. Tons of assets are taken right out of Mega Man 8, sprites, animations, and all, and the game still runs great despite that (though that could easily be due to my running it on an emulator). You do have the problems that Mega Man 7 has with Mega Man being a bit big and overly animated so it's hard to do the platforming, but it's nowhere near as bad as it is in that game. The music is also pretty good, but that part of the game is overall nothing special.
Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. This game is veeeery close to being not recommended, but while it may be mean as heck, it's still got a baseline level of quality in its design that can make it an enjoyable time. If you're a BIG Mega Man fan and just have to play every game in the series, or just really like action platformers and don't mind a bit of a sub-par experience, this is worth playing (although likely not importing with how expensive it can be ^^;), but if you're a more casual enjoyer of either of those two things, I'd avoid this one like the plague. This is easily the worst of the classic series, as far as I'm concerned, and you'll need to be really dedicated to conquer this bugger and see the adventure through to the end.