Some of the reviews of this game made me think that there'd be like, some insane difficulty spike that'd sour the experience, or parts of the level design that'd REALLY make me wish I had a crouch (seriously, why isn't there a crouch?)

I finished it blindly with less than 80 deaths in a few hours. That difficulty spike never came, every single one of my deaths felt like my fault for being overzealous with my dashes.

What's the problem? Sure, it's not very original. Sure, it pays homage to the NES games it's inspired by, maybe a little too closely sometimes. But wasn't that immediately evident from the screenshots alone?

It plays fine. It controls nice. The music sounds good.
Didn't particularly care for the story in this one, but the cutscenes were well-drawn. I don't think it was trying to be a deep narrative to begin with, just a reason for you to stab things. And so, stab things I did. I enjoyed my time with it.


I guess my standards aren't very high these days, but sometimes "enjoying my time with it" is really all I'm asking for.

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 one's really hard for me to go back to. I feel like every time I replay it, I like it a little less.

The main thing that gives Mega Man lasting appeal to me is its weapons. Being able to choose any boss in any order and try different strategies out in different stages, to me, is the entire core of what makes these games so special.

So if I whip out Air Shooter, which exclusively fires upward, and those little clown dudes that only ever spawn above you are immune to it, what the fuck am I supposed to do? When I whip out Crash Bomb thinking it'll wipe out a big enemy, and not only does it not explode but it doesn't deal any damage... why would I ever bother with Crash Bomb again? If I swap to Time Stopper, press the button at the wrong timing, and now I just literally cannot move past an enemy until it runs out.... and I can never use it again...... what's my conclusion going to be? "Oh, damn, better luck next time?" No, I'm just not going to bother.

I want to use the weapons, I want to experiment. So why is the game actively punishing me for having "a-ha!" moments and making enemies immune to the perfect firing arc to deal with them? It just discourages me from wanting to try anything else, makes it feel like there is a "right" way to play it. It goes against the entire idea of nonlinearity if trying a different strategy is actively punished.

Just doesn't make any sense. I don't actually want to use Metal Blade for everything.
I can appreciate what this game did for the series and what it did uniquely at the time, but that doesn't make it any more fun to play through...

One of the greatest competitive games ever made, no question about it. Simple to get into, and fun no matter how many times you play it. There is no universe where rapidly countering supers back and forth isn't cool to do AND exciting to watch.

Weird aside, but I don't know why Steve Miller is replaced by Beeho Yoo in some versions. I always thought Steve was the more charming of the two.

Guess they thought it was lame to have two English speakers. Which does make sense, I guess.

A LOT of the music in this game loops just as it sounds like it's about to kick in and that just drives me up the fucking wall

Bubble Crab is half a song
X-Hunter stage 1 is a third of a song
Zero's theme is a quarter of a song

I don't have much to say about this game that hasn't already been said, I don't think. It's a Pokemon game and I'm 13 years late to it... but I do have a few things to say that aren't really connected, so I'll just say 'em.

N has what is probably the most uniquely compelling character arc in the entire series thus far, with a really unexpected payoff. I've not played anything past Gen 5, but I'm kind of scared to... because I know for sure they're gonna try and fail to capture this kind of vibe again.


My playthrough can be entirely summed up with "Gigalith is fucked up". Something's strong against the Pokemon I'm trying to train? Gigalith. Encounter rate getting me down? Gigalith. Underlevelled, stuck in a Trainer battle with better Pokemon and plenty of Hyper Potions? Good one- but unfortunately for them, Gigalith. My trump card was a literal fucking mountain, so it's not a huge surprise that no one could do anything about it. It was pretty great, so this is a great gen! That's the fun of Pokemon! Finding one guy that's your favorite of all the guys, then stomping all the guys that think they can beat your guy. I'm understanding that 100% correctly; if you disagree because spamming Rock Slide is "too easy" and I would be punished for it in a "good" RPG, you just don't get what Pokemon is about, man.


I kind of love how quaint the presentation of this game is. It's not particularly impressive graphics for 2010, but plenty of areas in the game take the time to zoom out and change camera angles, as if Game Freak themselves are going like "Look! We figured out how to do 3D! Look at this bridge! Look at these buildings! Isn't it great??" And y'know what, dude, it is pretty great. I'm proud of y'all.

Gen 3 was still better tho

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.