Mighty No. 9 Review

(Enjoy the piece of art I drew up for this review)

Coming from someone who has been continuously playing Mega Man since about 1990: Mighty No. 9 is a pretty good Mega Man style game.

There were a lot of controversies surrounding this game's development. Some of the outrage was justified.

Some wasn't.

Such as...

The embarrassing nontroversy surrounding Dina that was born from ignorance and listening to angry demagogues who's livelihoods revolve around controversy...

The game only being delayed 3 times and by only about 9 months, which is completely normal in game development...(Admittedly normally release dates aren't made public until later in development, but Kickstarter is different.)

And Red Ash's existence being because Mighty No. 9's artists jobs were done and they needed to justify their paychecks with not sitting around with nothing to do while the coders did their work...

...But this is a review for the final product, not its development.

One final thing before we move on - I played the Playstation 4 version of the game. This review reflects that version of the game and no other. (Edit: I tried the PS3 version, because it's cross-buy. With V-sync on, it runs like garbage, 20 FPS with dips, and that's with bloom off. Console players, please prioritize PS4 and Xbone versions above all others, or at least turn off V-Sync if you must play PS3 and I assume 360 versions. I really wish they hadn't promised so many consoles back with the kickstarter, because I dread what the portable versions will run like.)

Also, I have yet to play through the game as Ray, this review is only from playing through as Beck. (Edit: Ray mode is too flawed and difficult to be enjoyable except for a select few.)

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=NOTABLE THINGS I LIKED=

-The general gamefeel-

Don't let the game's artstyle fool you: Mighty No. 9 does NOT play like any Mega Man Classic game.

It plays like Mega Man Zero.

While Classic is relatively slow and methodical, moving at a consistent pace through obstacle courses while dispatching foes using jumping and shooting, the Zero series revolves around constant high speed dashing, speedrunning through stages using twitchy muscle memory, quickly destroying enemies along the way...with some pretty high difficulty spikes.

That is Mighty No. 9 in a nutshell as well.

In Mighty No. 9, every enemy takes a certain number of shots before they are "destabilized" and change color, becoming surrounded by glowing colored squares. In this state, they can be instantly dispatch by dashing into them, regardless of their size. The game revolves around this entire mechanic. It's fast, it's twitchy, and it's built for speedrunning in mind.

If you approach it like Mega Man Classic and repeatedly attack enemies with your buster while also using dashing minimally, you're going to have a bad time.

DO NOT DO THIS.

DO NOT map your dash button to a face button, it's on the shoulder for a reason. Please.

Different doesn't equal bad, and as soon as you come to terms with this difference, you will begin to have a lot of fun.
I thoroughly enjoyed it and am STILL enjoying it as I master the ins-and-outs of this game. Please give it a fair, open-minded chance.

-The story and characters-

Without spoiling the main story, Mighty No. 9 does a few surprising things. It could have very easily been made a carbon copy of Mega Man Classic's tropes. Instead, it did some things to actively defy them, while also adding quite a bit from Mega Man X as well. It's nothing Pulitzer level, but it was a bit more effort than they needed to put in. It has a ton of potential to be an interesting universe.

Meanwhile the character designs were one of the things that won you all over with the original pitch for the game. I want toys of all of these characters please.

I also want to touch on Call, who is an interesting character who I particularly liked. It's really easy to write Call off as just a clone of Roll. Nothing against Roll, but Call seems to potentially have a lot of story surrounding her that is separate from Beck and the Mighty Numbers, that the game only hints at. She was created by Dr. Sanda, the Dr. Cossack of the game, who gave her a more primitive AI than Dr. White's Mighty Numbers. Because of this, she lacks any real personality, while still being sentient and able to think. She's comparable to Dorothy from the Big O, or Tempo/Quake Woman from the Archie Mega Man comics, when she first showed up. I like this, and injects robotics into a story about robots.

At one point she asks why Dr. White's robots have an aversion towards murdering other robots, while she has none. This was surprisingly deep and mildly disturbing...

Sanda also may have connections to the mysterious Ray, who you have seen from her DLC. Call and Ray may have interesting ties... but this is conjecture.

Also Aviator is a delight to listen to. Write more of the lighthearted characters like him, please.

-The level design-

About on par with typical stuff from Inti Creates. Which is to say, if you like the Mega Man Zero series, ZX series, Gunvolt, or Mega Man 9 and 10, this is in the same vein.

-Once a boss is defeated, they will help you in another level-

This is a nice touch that harkens back to the first Mega Man X, where levels will change depending on the bosses you have defeated.
One notable thing about this is that the boss of that stage is weak to the weapon of the boss that is helping you. It helps take the guesswork out of figuring out weaknesses.

-The 8-bit soundtrack-

This was a really nice touch and I'm glad they threw it in, because otherwise, except for the main theme and boss theme, the music is kind of forgettable. Not bad, but forgettable when compared to Mega Man 9 and 10's.

-The Boss fights-

The Mighty Numbers are mostly a delight to fight. They're quite hard, but with patterns to learn and tricks to figure out to dispatch them easily with enough skill. Just like in Mega Man games.

The other boss fights are all also quite nice. I particularly enjoyed the boss fight when playing as Call.

The final boss is really hard, however.
Not in a bad or unfair way...just...I will explain in a bit. Keep reading.

I MAY ADD NEW THINGS HERE AS I THINK OF/DISCOVER NEW THINGS

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=NOTABLE THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE=

DO NOT SKIP DIRECTLY TO THIS SECTION. READ THE ABOVE SECTION FIRST!
I REALLY ENJOY THE GAME, BUT THESE COMPLAINTS NEED TO BE ADDRESSED. THEY WERE WELL THOUGHT OUT AFTER DAYS OF PLAYING THE GAME REPEATEDLY TO GIVE A FAIR ASSESSMENT, AND WITHOUT CONSIDERING ANY OF THE DEVELOPMENT CONTROVERSIES.

-The graphics-

Everyone's go-to complaint. The game's aesthetic is comparable to Mega Man X8, Maverick Hunter Mega Man X, and Mega Man Powered Up, just upscaled and with some better lighting effects. These games are a decade old and older. For most this was unacceptable.

I got over it pretty quickly.

I would have preferred something more visually appealing, or something with 2D animation, but whatever.

-Some of the writing-

The story itself is not bad, and sets up a potentially interesting universe as I said above. But some of the lines are too silly, and come off as eye-roll inducing instead of funny.

Specifically Dr. Sanda's over-the-topness, Dynatron replacing all S sounds with long Zs, and Cryosphere's constant ice puns all border on insufferable. Maybe this was written with children in mind but, it certainly wasn't for me.

Aviator was the only exception among the more lighthearted characters. He was legitimately funny and entertaining to me, I loved hearing him gleefully talk to himself in his news reports and I wish the other three mentioned above were as endearing.

People complain about the English dub, but it isn't even that bad. It's just difficult to deliver any line well with writing like that. When they are taking themselves seriously, or are Aviator, the dub is usually completely fine.

-A few notably unfair difficulty spikes-

There are a couple very notable ones that come to mind...

First is the double turbine segment in Dynatron's level that require you to crouch dash under them. The hint for that only comes up immediately before you're required to do so, and for some players they dash right into them without stopping, only to see the tip pop up after their death, almost mockingly.

This wouldn't be too bad if this part didn't require pixel-perfect timing. It's a pretty high difficulty spike that is guaranteed to completely drain the lives of every first time player. It needs to be fixed.

(Edit: Disregard this next part about Seismic's level, I'm an idiot. You're supposed to grab on to the floating platform and fall off over the pit. Much easier.)

Secondly is a segment in Seismic's level while being chased by a giant drill, involving air dashing through a corridor with instant death spikes above and below you, then dropping down into a pit. Go too far and you fly right into more spikes strategically placed on the other side of this pit to make you thread the needle.

On top of that, a floating platform moves through the corridor that forces you to stop and wait for it to move out of the way for you to dash under, while simultaneously making the corridor more narrow. It's too hard, and will definitely drain lives without intense practice.

A spike-filled descent in the CherryDyne Robotics Factory, and a similar segment in Call's stage are also pretty hard.

-Call's level-

When people saw the stretch goal of a playable Call, I'm sure they wanted her to be playable through the entire game and have power comparable to Beck's. Instead, she gets a single stage involving sneaking into a prison. She can't absorb enemies, and she can only have one shot on screen at a time.

The game is built around absorbing damaged enemies and not slowly shooting them to death with the buster, so this makes killing enemies with her a chore. The stealth isn't even that good, as being seen by enemies isn't a big deal anyway.

Her boss fight was actually really nice though, as I said earlier. (Unless you're speedrunning, then this boss's RNGness is a total pain. But it's a good boss for first time players.)

-Boss weapons-

Switching between them is a pain, and all but Battalion's and Brandish's are pretty useless. The game was built around the buster, and it really shows here when using any weapon but those two (utilizing a few boss fight weaknesses being notable exceptions).

The weapons should be less situational, you should be able to still fire the buster while having a weapon equipped like in Mega Man 8 and the PS1 X games, and the game needs a traditional weapon menu like Mega Man games instead of a cumbersome options menu.

-One unfair mechanic-

Countershade and an enemy type in his level have a poisoning ability that temporarily scrambles your control scheme. It seems to always be a random change that makes everything too confusing.

I hate this.

It should have been like Magna Centipede's poison in Mega Man X2, with which every dose makes you lose one ability during the fight - things like dashing or your charge shot. It desperately needs to be a more predictable change like this.

(Edit: You know I think all it does is switches your jump and attack buttons. I tried it out and this was my result those times. So, not so bad!)

-Countershade's level doesn't seem to have Checkpoints-

Noticed this one later while playing as Ray, so I have edited it in.

Because of the nature of this level being one big level that loops, with the objective being to find a sniping Countershade and do enough damage to him to make the boss fight begin, dying in this stage seems to reset the entire stage from the beginning. This is nonsense.

Making it worse are electrified instant death wires liberally sprinkled throughout the second half.

-Unreliable equivalent of E-Tanks/Sub Tanks-

In this game, absorbing enemies builds up a Sub Tank-like item that once filled, allows you to refill your health with the touch of a button. Alternately there is VERY RARELY a second one that you can find as an item, giving you two to use should you need.

However, they empty/vanish upon death or leaving/completing a stage, instead of carrying over like E and Sub Tanks.

You cannot stockpile them.

This makes the final boss especially difficult. This lack of readily exploitable health items makes her in the ballpark of some of the most difficult final bosses in some of Mega Man's games.

-The music-

The music is not bad at all, but none of the songs except the main theme and boss theme are particularly memorable as I said before, especially compared to Mega Man classic's.

-The sound mixing-

The default sound mixing is really odd. I definitely recommend changing it. I use BGM Volume at 10, SE Volume at 2, and Voice Volume at 7.

-The explosion effects-

You know, the pizza that everyone made fun of.
In still screenshots, it looks laughable. And in motion it isn't much better. They are big and loud and weird and their hitboxes are unpredictable and sometimes they obscure the action far too much.

This needs fixing.

-The Action Shift button-

This was literally useless for Beck. At least it activates Call's barrier.

I MAY ADD NEW THINGS HERE AS I THINK OF/DISCOVER NEW THINGS

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=VERDICT=

Mighty No. 9 is a good 2D platformer, with some high unforgiving difficulty spikes at a few particular moments.

I can't recommend it for anyone who is not a Mega Man or classic NES/SNES era gaming fan though. It does next to nothing to ease non-classic gamers into it, with its sometimes brutal difficulty and lack of any easy mode besides the ability to let you start with up to 9 lives in Normal mode.

(On a related note, I saw Mike Fahey over at Kotaku angrily say that Mega Man earned it's difficulty, while Mighty No. 9 did not.

What does that even mean, dude...?

Boo hoo I have to actually learn stage layouts instead of clearing everything without dying first try. It's almost as if it's made to be like a Mega Man game...)


In a sense that may be a good thing, its something for a group of people who are being catered to less and less as time goes by.

This game absolutely doesn't deserve half the hate it is getting. Period.

For Mega Man fans, I give it a 7 out of 10.

For reference, I would give the first Mega Man X a perfect 10 out of 10...


Mega Man X4 a 9.5 out of 10

Mega Man X5 and X8 a 7 out of 10


Definitely give it a fair try!