Mighty No. 9 is not the worst Mega Man game, but it is Inti Creates’ worst Mega Man game. This is a team that brought us the more mature style of Zero 1-4, the Metroid-like experimentation of ZX and ZX Advent, and the retro revival of 9 and 10. All of these are great Mega Man games. So it’s baffling to me that Mighty No. 9, a continuation of the series in all but name, feels full of rookie mistakes.
Our Blue Bomber stand-in, Beck, is far more likely to die from an instant-kill than from losing his health. Several bosses pull out one-hit KOs halfway through a fight and anything purple breaks the flow of the level completely as the terror of losing your progress overtakes you. So poorly are some of these traps implemented that the Power Plant stage actually has a message pop up telling you how to proceed. Spikes are the lesser of the evils here, though even they have become more fierce due to a comically reduced amount of invincibility frames after taking damage from enemies. I’ve beaten the notoriously difficult Mega Man 9 both while drugged up on pain-killers from a wisdom tooth removal and on a separate occasion after a healthy dose of liquor. Yet, I set Mighty No. 9’s lives option to the max setting, not because it’s harder, but because it doesn’t earn these deaths.
It’s not a total disaster. In fact, it’s core mechanics are both satisfying and different enough from its predecessors to be refreshing. Beck gets an air dash more versatile than the one found in Mega Man X2, combined with a rather ingenious absorption mechanic. Absorbing enemies gets you 1 of 4 positive buffs as well as some satisfying combo opportunities. When it works, you feel like an amazing speed-runner as you plow through the stage.
There are glimpses of modern design here. Lives fill back up to your max when returning to the stage select and there’s actually a concrete, subtle way to tell you have the right weapon for a boss before entering a stage. They’ve even revisited the idea of levels slightly altering themselves depending on who you’ve defeated (a great idea inexplicably abandoned after the original Mega Man X). Weapons occasionally have multiple types of attacks and a set of 3 quick-change buttons make switching between them rather seamless as you speed through obstacles.
But for every thing Mighty No. 9 nails, it seems to falter at one or more other things. A hunt for a sniper sets one stage apart with non-linear level design. Then, after finding him several times, introduces instant kill traps with no checkpoint. How quickly my opinion of the stage plummeted when I was forced to repeat the increasingly easy parts ad nauseam to get past the cheap death at the end.
One of the most glaring shortcomings, though, are the graphics. Inti Creates makes gorgeously detailed sprite animation. Mighty No. 9, however, uses 3D models to the effect of what can best be described as a budget-level GameCube game. Characters’ mouths are awkwardly motionless during dialog, the explosions are so bad that SEGA’s official Sonic twitter account made fun of them, and the art direction is often just… bland.
Often times the designs feel less like a spiritual successor to Mega Man, and more like the unlicensed version of him I find on packages of Asian market Cheetos knockoffs. Rather than taking the spirit of the past to make something new, Beck is an over-designed Mega Man, Call is an emotionless Roll, Patch is a rounder Eddie, Ray is a poorly voice acted Zero (some things never change), and the end boss literally steals attack patterns from the Yellow Devil.
If Mighty No. 9 was all bad, I’d be ok with that. What’s frustrating is that it has great aspects and moments buried under some terrible, (often easily fixable) design decisions. The result is a game I can’t recommend without a pile of caveats. And If you aren’t somebody who has already exhausted the large backlog made by all the same people, you’re better off buying something like the Mega Man Zero Collection for DS. It’ll play on your 3DS, it contains 4 games that are all better than Mighty No. 9, and despite the first being being released over 14 years ago, it looks better too.
This review is based on a retail code of the game purchased by the reviewer. Jesse “Mainfinger” Gregory is a music producer and extremely active in the Mega Man community, having worked on pieces at many publications about the series.
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