I almost gave this four stars, but felt like it deserved an additional half of one just because I like the cute little skitter that the people and some of the robots do.

Doesn't do anything too terribly standout, but I think it was put together really well. Kinda weird that this isn't an arcade port, it feels so much like one.

I really like the route change system it has going on.

This is one of those games where I'm REAL glad I had a navigator, because the draw distance kind of sucked. Meaning, the one problem I could have had with it is mitigated by the design, and presented to you as a base mechanic. You can even see the bullets on the minimap, so you can't really get blindsided by anything as long as you just pay attention.

Everything has a real nice flow to it once you get a handle on the controls. The fan translation added a twinstick control option, so of course I HAD to jump on that opportunity- now I can't imagine what playing it on pad would even be like. Always nice to see shootemup design conventions in a 3d game, especially when it's done this well.

I really liked a lot of the new takes on stages, and the two new bosses were a treat! Huge fan of the Energizer Bunny being in this one and having an attack that reminds me of a Mega Man boss.

Fell apart at the end though when they throw 3 bosses at you in a row that all have really stupid changes to be harder than in the original game. The final boss isn't even the hardest in the game, and that's really saying something if it took me nearly 20 minutes to kill it.

I should note that the final boss only killed me once. Its hitboxes were so finnicky that it just.... took 20 minutes. Sheesh.

Oh well. It's fine otherwise aside from that doodoo final segment, par for the course for low budget games I guess.

I haven't finished this one yet, but the amount of dialogue is so dense that it's actively hurting my enjoyment.

I suppose there's always been worse fangames out there with this kind of thing, but the attempts at humor here don't really jive with me or seem all that in-character for anybody that's speaking. I audibly groaned when the game felt the need to ENTIRELY stop me in my tracks and prevent me from picking another level, just so that I could talk to some shady cloaked OC... that Mega Man even asks "Why are you cloaked?" to.

Like, what's the joke there? Is the joke that Mega Man's stupid? Hahahahaha???
Cool, can I play another shitty Tier 1 level instead and get them over with instead of having this filler inbetween? Why would you even add a plotline to a level contest with no cohesion anyway? How can you possibly justify all of this with a story? And if you could, why would you WANT to?

I don't understand it. I took a break because this game's already long enough without the unskippable cutscenes. :/

Doesn't help that the game refused to let me map my controller, but whatever.

I thought it was fine, I'm not actually sure where all the low reviews are coming from?

This game's name is the worst thing about it. It's about 5 stages long, isn't too hard, and has some pretty decently put together mechanics. Looks nice, has a decent soundtrack, plays well.

I can't think of anything particularly offensive this game did aside from neither having hotdogs nor storms.

It was alright. I liked the mechanics quite a bit, enjoyed the tunes, and felt that the level design was strong (Chapter 5 in particular easily being my favorite), but the story just wasn't doing it for me.

I'm sure there's an audience for it. I can see the merit and value of something like this, but I wasn't really a fan of how bluntly heavy-handed its theme was. It felt to me like the theme was written first, and the story was shaped around justifying it. And I dunno, I'm just saying- I wouldn't be anywhere near this insecure if I had a sick as hell 8-way airdash that turned my hair blue.

Humble publisher name though. I enjoyed my time.

It's weird. I remembered this being way harder than it actually is, and I feel like a lot of that was due to my only real memory of the game being its shitty and tedious final boss.

The level design doesn't really do anything too new or interesting, and because very little of it stands out, all you're left to remember it by is some irritatingly placed enemies who all just so happen to be standing in the worst spots imaginable. I can appreciate that they tried to vary up the stages in comparison to Rondo of Blood with more verticality, more stairs, and more moving platforms... but it doesn't DO anything with these gimmicks. It's all just different types of moving platforms. Sometimes they're sideways, sometimes they're up and down; if a stage's got some platforms, it's 50/50 whether it moves. It's a shame, because I can see they wanted to make something more in line with the NES entries, but it's just not very creative. Not that it would matter if it was, because very large chunks of the levels can just be skipped with backflips!

A lot of the enemy types are reused from Rondo, but there's not really a lot to go around- it seems like they just took what they knew would be general-purpose and left it at that. A lot of the more interesting / challenging enemies were omitted from this game, so you're really just encountering the same Axe Armors, crows, and whatever the lance dudes were called over and over again. They're not an issue with proper spacing... and since you see them so much, you'll figure out what that was and not need to put much, if any, thought into it at all.

It kind of stings that so many of the cooler types of enemies are absent, since that game had more of a combat focus- Richter has all the same abilities here, but no real need to apply any of it since nothing difficult enough to justify it shows up. The bosses aren't anywhere near as capable as they were in Rondo either, so it's an utter curbstomp once you get to them.... and it's honestly really easy to put yourself on autopilot, walk forward, and whip them to death. I'm still reeling over how I stunlocked the minotaur boss. By accident.

I don't know. It's got some snazzy new backgrounds, the sound design is satisfyingly punchy, and the soundtrack is filled with some pretty faithful recreations of Rondo's soundtrack (Bloodlines in particular might even be an improvement over the original track!), but I left the game feeling underwhelmed by how much shorter and easier the package as a whole was. Especially compared to everything that came before it at the time...

Also, is it just me, or does Richter's walking animation feel like it's too fast? Boy you are NOT running what's going on