This game really tries to be the epic grand finale to the Mega Man X series with ambitious gameplay ideas, like greater customization and a wider time limit system. But it's also got a lot of questionable design choices. For example, the RNG and missable elements are designed to incentivize repeat playthroughs, but some of these mechanics are a little confusing to be honest. It's like there's these little systems going on in the background that you only sorta understand. Instead, Alia pop ups in the levels to explain that you need to jump on platforms so you don't fall. At least you can skip her text easily.

In general difficulty is lower than usual for a Mega Man game, since if you pick X at the start, you begin the game with the upgraded armor from X4. You can find other armors throughout the game, but you can't use them until you find all four pieces, and the game's countdown system de-incentivizes going in and out of levels to search for armors. The boss fights are often really easy, and subweapons have so much ammo, it almost feels like they shouldn't have even bothered limiting them. Worse still is that the game offsets this general easiness with some truly terrible difficulty spikes, like the green lasers in the first endgame level or the bike section in Squid Adler's level.

Now the graphics and music are as good as ever. The music especially is awesome and maybe probably even better than X4's. But the overall presentation takes a big hit because the cutscenes are presented in a very dated, low-budget fashion compared to X4. Going from voice-acted anime cutscenes to text over still images for what was intended as the grand finale to the series' storyline feels really cheap. It would've been really cool to see some of these sequences animated, especially the parts where Dynamo pops up. He probably could've been a cool and memorable rival if animated sequences gave him a chance to really shine.

Mega Man X5 still isn't necessarily bad, but it is really messy. They definitely should've stopped here though, or at least not rushed X6 and X7 out the door the way they did.

Doom is great simple fun that was just unbelievable at the time. The keyhunts can be annoying your first time through, but as you play through the game more and more and familiarize yourself with the level layouts, you'll find the game more and more fun. The heavy metal aesthetic, reflected in both the music and the awesome and iconic monster designs, is hard not to love unless you hate fun. The gameplay structure of making your way through levels and blasting away all the monsters in sight with your whole awesome arsenal is primally addictive. And that's before you factor in deathmatches and insane modability, though the latter technically moreso comes in with Doom II. Doom is the shit.

Just remember, there's no shame in playing it with GZDoom and mouselook.

FF9's presentation is really fucking good. The music is great as always, the graphics are quantum leaps above FF7, and the English script is very, very good. The story is outstanding and pulls you in right away, the characters are all great, and the Active Time Event system gives you plenty of time with them. The gameplay is almost awesome, with a lot of nice streamlining and a brilliant ability learning system that actually gives equipment more weight than "This sword make number go up, discard old one and use this one now". I also appreciate how generous the game is with level-ups, minimizing the amount of grinding.

FF9's combat is really fucking slow. It's the only thing holding me back from giving this a higher rating. Battle sequences begin and end with several seconds of loading, animations take so stupidly long that your attacks get pushed far back in the cue, and even at max speed, those ATB bars seem to take their sweet time filling up. I've seen people complain about the unreliability of ATB before, but this is the only FF game where I seriously felt it was an issue. Even with speedup in an emulator, the fights are so slow that I can only assume the speed at which they play out was some technical compromise to keep the battle screens looking as good as they do. Combine this sluggishness with random encounters, and dungeons can be a slog at times, even when they're well-designed.

Still a great game, and the ending was really beautiful. I just wish the battles didn't test my patience.

The atmosphere of this game is insanely good. The controls are smooth and just naturally fun. The comments on the music being weak are really baffling to me. It's more lowkey and atmospheric than the NES games' music, but the game is generally going for more of a spooky vibe. I might like Castlevania 3's soundtrack a little better, but songs like "Theme of Simon Belmont" and "The Cave" are so easy to love. "The Waterfalls" is a really beautiful piece, so somber and downbeat and unlike anything you'd expect to hear in the background of an action-platforming game.

This game being so looked down upon nowadays by some hardcore Castlevania fans seems like an example of a great sequel being dismissed because it emphasizes different things than its predecessors. Castlevania 4 isn't obligated to control like Castlevania 1-3, nor is it obligated to have more upbeat music. It kicks fucking ass on its own merits and the Mode 7 effects are cool. Maybe people are putting their YouTube video essay caps on too tightly to enjoy the game for what it is.

The specific formula of Mega Man's gameplay synthesizes into something uniquely addictive and enjoyable, certainly worth milking into a long line of sequels and spinoffs. It's no wonder the great Angry Video Game Nerd described the classic Mega Man series' gameplay as "a science that triggers a phenomenon in your brain." The simple fun of jumping and shooting, the joy of experimenting with new weapons, the varied and inventive levels, the tough but doable challenge, it's all already there in Mega Man 1.

And it's all already compounded by the stylish graphics and rockin' music the series would be known for. The graphics of the Mega Man series hit just the right balance between simplicity and detail that's allowed them to age better than almost every other NES game. The music is already so damn catchy and energetic, and perfectly attuned to the NES's audio hardware. Later games would push the system's capabilities in graphics and sound harder, but even in this humble first game we're already seeing a lot of what made Mega Man so iconic and untouchable. The presentation of the classic Mega Man series is inseparably tied to the NES, as though Capcom and the NES understood each other on a spiritual level--this is back when games were actually made for a specific platform in mind.

Being the first in a long series does mean there are a lot of areas which unfavorably compare to later games. There are only 6 Robot Masters, invincibility doesn't rescue you from spikes, there are no E-tanks, there's no password system. The sequels' improvements in these areas are definitely welcome, yet I don't really believe this game suffers on its own for lacking them. A lot of people disagree, which is part of why the game's average on here as of this writing is 2.8. The bigger reason is that this game is hard, but it is totally doable with practice, except for that damn Yellow Devil which you can and should cheese.

Mega Man 1 stands head and shoulders above most of its competition and is definitely one of the best games of '87. A lot of the mainline sequels are better, but this one did it first and that counts for something.

This game beat the "Breath of the Gmod" and "Glorified DLC" allegations. It totally leapfrogged BOTW and kinda embarrassed that game in hindsight. It does carry some of its flaws--the memory system doesn't really fit the game well, the durability system is more annoying since the weapons actually have far more meaningful differences in utility now, the music could've been less minimal in places, and the game is still tied down to the decrepit Switch hardware.

But I'm glad to see my general skepticism disproven. The main quest is generally far stronger, as the dungeons and bosses are much better and the finale is a lot better as well. It feels slightly more restricted and "guided" than BOTW which I think is a plus, as BOTW was so free and open right from the start that in retrospect, it kinda trivialized a lot of that game. Also, there's now an absurd amount of side quests in every town. The game even helpfully differentiates between "side quests" which are often filler-adjacent, and "side adventures" which are usually more substantive.

I was frustrated with some of the building controls (and controls in general, it's like there just aren't enough buttons on the controller for the amount of actions they wanted to give you) but it's objectively impressive how much flexibility Nintendo managed to accomplish with it. Fusing stuff was surprisingly quite fun to play with and helped with the durability. I'd say that overall the sandbox systems are deeper and more fun to play around with.

I'm curious to see how wider reception for this game will change after its honeymoon period is over. But for the moment, I get the hype. Fantastic game.

So many weapons and items, so many stats, so many areas to explore, so many great songs, so many atmospheric touches, so many beautiful sprites, so MUCH is jam-packed into this wonderful game! Symphony of the Night is absolutely amazing. I especially love the minor RPG elements, like stats and status effects, which are totally unnecessary but add a cool new layer to the experience anyway. Best of all though, they make backtracking more enjoyable because each and every enemy you kill adds to your total EXP count.

Re: this versus Super Metroid (another 10/10 game for me), I think the level design is a little better in that game because it's more compact, whereas this game has a few too many long hallways. This one does let you warp around the map a bit which helps some at least. I prefer the combat and overall feel of this a little bit, though that game plays awesomely too. Play em both!