Review - Mega Man 11 - When A Saga Shines Again

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Hello dear readers, I'm on the road of my first coverage series for old sagas that on the last few years revived with the glory once had.

MegaMan 11, a platformer classic on the old days that by nothing short of a miracle appeared again a couple of years ago.

Today we're going to be honest with the game, it was that good or was the old glory echoing to this day, after the review we will know.

The Prelude :

The perfect example of "is something is not broken, don't fix it", it's MegaMan, in terms of story, they will tell you almost the same every time with the same core.

The tweaks or little variations are here to present the new mechanics or enemies, this isn't really bad or needs to be more complex.

In fact the story serves more as a tribute to the old titles and a so much appreciated origin story for the rivalry of Wily and Light.

The traditions never dies

The Story:

We are traveled in form of static images to the past far behind of the first entry of the saga to a Young Dr Light and Dr Wily on the point where their paths converged as sworn enemies (Willy decision).

As the two are being reviewed by a committee to accept one of their projects, the autonomous robot minds from Dr Light or the double gear system from Wily.

A bit of bad luck and some words from Dr Light explaining the danger of the double gear makes the Dr Wily hate for Light begins and it's research is cancelled.

Next we travel to the present with a Willy suddenly remembering the double gear and the same thing happens again.

Great detail showing us the reason of the hate that Wily has for Light

Dr Wily appears in front of Light and captures the 8 new robots to reprogram them and MegaMan starts it's journey.

With a little twist, Dr Light implements the double gear system on Mega to help him defeat the new robo masters and that's it, we start playing.

       The game feels like the originals and the                       gameplay are well polished

The Gameplay: 

We are in a classic 2D scroller with some 2.5 D elements on the background or hazards on the stages.

We play as any Classical MegaMan game (without the strange little drift that Mega had on MegaMan 1 and the Wily wars ) 

We can jump, shot, charge our shots or slide in a purely 2D sidescroll view, also we have the classic Rocket and the abilities that we get from defeating the robo masters.

A wonderful detail is that Mega appearance changes according to the power that is using

Now we get to the double gear system , Mega has two gears, one with the capability of slowing down the time for more precise platforming or dodging, and the other gives more power.

This means hitting way harder, we have a cooldown between uses but it's a great idea that creates a better gameplay, also if we are getting damaged and our health is on dangerous lows.

Both powers can be activated at the same time making the player almost invincible, the  problem is after that we enter on a "Burnout" and we can't activate the gears powers for some time.

The special powers we get from the robo masters have a "power variation" from the gear system, some are useful, others are nice to watch a few times and one of them is just broken (Personal opinion).

If we fill the bar we also enter on the burnout state , on a shorter period of time

The Levels and boss fights : 

If you never played a Mega Man, this game uses a free choice structure of selection of stages, the game has a hidden "optimal order of levels " but it's your job to discover it or tackle the robo masters in whatever order you like.

Most of times we use the logic to unravel the order (water beats fire type of logic), every boss have a weakness, courtesy of one of the other masters and does a lot more damage and staggers or disables an exceptional dangerous attack.

Every subsequent entry the robots were more complex in their powers, slowly transforming into a trial and error contrary to planning the route and using the logic of elements.

The freedom of the choice in the classic way

The stages are a lot longer and more dinamic, the mid boss fights are improved and more epic, giant balloon robots, a golem or a excavator are some examples of the diversity of enemies.

 

Unique hazard per levels, different of the typical pit of spikes or hard platforming sections, we have little robots that puts acidification liquids on the water.

You have to avoid that because the platforming will be more hard or you will have to tank forced damage to continue, strong wind and some others that I prefer to keep as secret.

The environments are pretty cool

The boss fights have a lot of improvements, now the enemies do a lot of different attacks and not spam the same one movement all the fight, also they have something that is a rage mode mid fight.

On this part the behavior and attacks changes, sometimes the stage or the robo master transform too and a couple of them have armor and only a weak point to hit them.

Making some of the best fights in the saga as a personal opinion because they're more dinamic, faster and interesting.

The classic, a hit me here giant red button 

The shop :

I didn't talk about the difficulty with the shop as a reason.

This game is hard, no doubt, the enemies kill you in a few hits and the stages being somewhere between a 50 to 75% more longer than the previous games makes a difference but for the fans this will be absolutely no problem.

The boss fights also are a little longer so that's a plus for difficult, but as a personal opinion the game feels fair.

Now for the new players or people not so skilled in platformers, you have the help of the shop.

This addition sells things like lives, energy tanks, ammunition tanks, protections for one shot spikes or pits and to this add an upgrades section, playing across the levels will unlock you permanent upgrades.

The presentation haven't changed a bit

Things like a bigger charged shot, spiky shoes for not slippery controls on certain surfaces, and a lot more, the currency of the game are screws that are standing around the stages.

You can farm a lot and make your game easier or straight up ignore the shop and don't buy anything.

I really recommend to at least check it out on a regular basis, you can buy upgrades try them and then disable them with no problem if you don't like them or want a more classical experience.

From time to time the shop will get new additions so check it out before every stage.

With this we reach the end, I have been getting a lot of feedback about the length of the reviews, grammatical improvements and the fact that sometimes I never get to the point and circle around it.

Thanks for taking the time to help make me hone my writing and be certain that I am working on it, see you on the next review!

In conclusion :

It's a good game and a well crafted MegaMan game, but the fact of the longer stages makes for some boring sections and some stages that you feel that will never end.

There are a couple of them that drags so long and become more of a chore than a fun gameplay.

For tribute to the original (I think) the stages have a mid stage checkpoint and the classic boss checkpoint.

Sadly this just don't work in this game because the other games stages are like the half of 11 and dying only meant a couple of lost minutes.

In this game you can die on the end of a stage and respawning in the middle can mean a solid 5 to 10 minutes of progress if you can get across the level at first after dying hurting the replay value a lot.

The difficult curve is kinda strange

Little personal opinion of Bouncy man stage, not important for the review:

 

As a personal opinion if I am gonna replay this game I get a specific power that helps the mobility on the air because the bouncy man stage starts good but becomes hell of the long and repetitive that it is.

Things like that depends on the player, maybe someone out there loved that stage, that's why I remark the personal opinion.

Thanks for reading, see you on the next one!

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