Making a game that’s simultaneously difficult and accessible is a difficult task. There should be a safety net for struggling players, but it should be unappealing enough to where it doesn’t become the dominant strategy. A good example of this is Ratchet & Clank with its RYNO superweapon. It costs a whopping 150,000 bolts, compared to your standard weapons which require about 10,000. It takes so long to farm for it that players will fill out their standard arsenal and do the best they can before resorting to such tactics. Mega Man 11 on the other hand makes circumventing the difficulty incredibly easy. You can buy an E-Tank which completely refills your health for 80 bolts, dropped by enemies in increments of 100. You can also buy lives, weapon recharge tanks, rescues for when you fall into a death pit, a helper character who brings you whatever item you need, or a powerup that reduces the damage you take by half, along with various upgrades like reducing how much you slip on icy floors. The hardest part of the game will be your first stage, before you have enough bolts to stock your supplies. After that, it’s entirely possible to brute force your way through the game and miss out on its finer qualities. The stage design in this game is fantastic, and the amount of unique challenges and screen gimmicks really blew me away, but there isn’t much point in patiently mastering them when you can essentially give yourself infinite health. What’s a shame is that this problem was already solved in the games before Mega Man 7, where getting lives and E-Tanks required repeating a stage. Just like getting a RYNO, it was viable, but a pain in the ass. If you wanted to regulate difficulty by playing in this classic way, you’re not even allowed to, given that these special pickups are now limited to one per save file. You’re stuck in a position where you want to use some E-Tanks because they were always a part of Mega Man, but you don’t want to use a lot of them because it cheats the difficulty. I couldn’t even presume to suggest how exactly you should limit yourself, given how everyone’s experience with platformers is different. I guess the only thing I can say is that along with my recommendation to play this game, I give a recommendation to challenge yourself a little bit.