Is Mighty no 9 really THAT BAD?

I was watching a live stream and from what I saw it looked like everything it needed to be. Mega Man throwback with a new mechanic (the XEL mechanic IS in the game) The music is fantastic and the level design does look fair but unforgiving at the same time.

I haven't gotten the game myself yet, but people are shitting ALL OVER THIS GAME maybe out of revenge for all the delays, maybe because Inafune forgot to include good review bribes in the Kickstarter funds or he pissed that money away in Roppongi. I dunno, I was one of MANY who was pissed off at all the delays but still decided to get the game since I had faith it was going to be good and from what I saw, it seems that way. But I will also never ever give to another Kickstarter again.

So Consensus here? Drama behind the game aside and the game on it's merits, is it better than people are saying it is?

I've heard people say it's Sonic Boom levels of bad.......

 

Music didn't particularly do anything for me, but it wasn't that bad. Level design is just... bad, I think. Lots of small annoyances that they really need some playtesters or UX people to look at in the level design, as well as being very dull. Visually it looks like something straight out of an indie jam: terrible palette choices, extremely basic shading, primitive UI.

It also doesn't help that the boss fights are incredibly boring and repetitive, and cheeseable at that: (spoilers)

 

Is the level design X5 bad or X6 bad?

Or is it on the level of Mega Man 9 where it's not bad but the levels are designed to violate you?

 

I've heard pretty mixed to negative things. While I haven't played it myself, watching through videos has shown me that it doesn't appear to be worth my time. I do think people are going a bit overboard with the negativity, though.

 

Here's my summary of the game (PS3 and PC specifically) as a slacker backer.

To preface this, I have taken into account the multiple platforms, what costs would be needed, and the length of time needed to do what they set out to do.

The game's levels are lazy. Most are beaten fast if you know the level. Enemies aren't diverse in the slightest and are recycled everywhere - even in the final stage.

The gameplay itself is as you expect. Controls are nice (though not the most D-Pad friendly) but the focus on dashing is really a problem. Yeah you can walk the normal pace, but there's no punishment for abusing the dash to just rush the level (exceptions to this are when you stop scrolling and have to fight enemies, and Number 7's 3rd stage segment). The bosses are varied enough to understand what to do (exception being Number 1 where his attacks are more subtle to guess - watch his animations), but the bosses don't feel varied in terms of this being a new game. Most either feel too easy or like a carbon copy of a previous Megaman game (which, despite being a spiritual successor, I can see this as bad since some are direct copies). Number 4 is basically Gutsman. Number 5's skill is literally just the Crash Bomb (for Beck), close to final boss is essentially Omega from the Zero series for some examples.

Powerups dont feel satisfying to use on either playable character (Call gets a shield) and no powerup feels important til the final levels, but even then the only reason you need them is due to mandatory "puzzle" solving. For beck you need powerups from numbers 1, 5, 6, and 8 and it's only for these "puzzles" so you can beat the stage, but after that there's almost no reason to use them (except 7 because it's broken and allows you to prevent damage if abused). For Ray the same applies but each feels more useful than Beck's. The final levels only need one powerup however (Number 3).

The DLC (oh boy) is simple. One powerup for backers (not slacker backers. The initial backers only) is very powerful and makes the game very easy. Gold Beck skin is exactly what it sounds like. The "Retro" (it's just Minecraft themed) hasn't even been working as it's not detected by the game itself, and this is for PC PS3 PS4 WiiU Xbone and I'm sure the same for 360 which is bothersome. Essentially releasing a DLC that isn't even usable on launch is an issue (only because it was a pre-order DLC).

The Ray DLC is the only part that seems to add something interesting to the table. Gives an extra stage to Beck to beat. Once you beat it you can play as Ray. Her HP depletes over time and you have to destroy things to stay alive. The only stage differences are as follows: Enemy placement is changed on some. You don't enter Call's stage. She plays through all the stages Beck would.

The cutscenes are static animations. Mouths may change textures on rare occasions for expression reasons, but spoken dialog uses static mouths. The Voice Acting, while nice to have, does not sound very good on the English and French selections. The Japanese ones sounds a lot better but even that has some issues.

The visuals. What happened? I don't know. What bothered a lot of the backers over time was during the polls to decide what content gets in and what content doesn't, even though things were leading in the polls, the Comcept and Inti Creates team ended up ignoring the votes and chose what they felt was the best choice in the end. So why even have the polls anyway right? The community manager stuff can be glossed over and we all probably know why. In the end the visuals took a huge hit and nobody knows why. Unreal 3 may be adding to it, but even then we all know it could look better with just the default values. The levels just look and feel rushed and thrown together with little to no planning.

And lastly, the release. Holy shit how messy can it be. PSN code redeeming was broken. Some people's WiiUs bricked after installing (the game crashes and has low framerate on WiiU). Backers STILL hadn't gotten the codes before the release, which if you ask me is pretty big to mess up since others were already playing the retail copy hours in advance before those that funded it (we eventually got it, but you'd think there'd be more attention there). Those on the East Coast of the US managed to play it once it rolled past midnight (on PS3/PS4 - PC was still getting worked out), however on the West coast (best coast), if you downloaded it from PSN and tried booting it you were greeted with an error saying you can't play til it's the Midnight, June 21st PST (which would be fine, but that also means those one the East coast should have had this error too, but they did not).

Gameplay - 5/10
Sound - 8/10
Visuals - 3/10
Story - nobody cares/10
DLC - Skin Skin Powerup and more reason to replay levels but changed slightly/10

In short - yes I don't like it, and I feel a lot of the things that have happened on this 3 year ride deserve to be upset about.

 

I have yet to play it but it seems like a game you should definitely just play yourself to see if you like it or not.

Lots of people, such as PB right above me, have had the game tainted a bit by the actions of the Kickstarter. I'm not against that, I believe it is warranted for a lot of what they did, however I myself backed the game and then really didn't follow it until recently so I had nothing emotionally invested into the game.

I'm sure if you're like that the game is "average" but to anyone who was dedicated to it, I can completely understand why the game's image has been tainted in your eyes.

 

After all this time and money, the game is bland and still feels unfinished. Framerate drops, screen tearing, low quality texture filtering, menu options broken... to sum it up, lack of any sort of QA.

 

That's exactly the way I felt. Bland is the best description for it. I've played better free games like Khimera: Destroy All Monster Girls than this. It feels like it has no real heart or soul. Like some kind of cheap shovel ware which is pretty sad.

 

How in the hell could they not get this to run at a solid FPS? Like really, it does NOT look taxing to latest gen consoles.

 

It's solely due to the lighting and the dash.
If they didnt add slowdown when you dash into things that could have been avoided.

PS3 version runs at 25fps so far with no sign of going higher

 

Ouch, that just sounds like lazy programming.

 

Two friends of mine were at the PAX Prime panel where it was announced and backed it on the spot. Only one bothered to download it and the PSN store crashed 3 times while attempting to redeem the code. He said the game was putting him to sleep, and that was the least of the issues it had. I kind of want to give it a whirl just because of how much of a disaster it is, but I'm definitely not plunking down any amount of cash for it.

 

It's better than nothing! xD

 

Meanwhile in other crowd funded news - backers actually getting demos

 

Yep, I got my download code. Thing is I'm not a member of steam and I don't intend becoming one. So I can't use my code. Oh well.

 

I backed it, and I like Mighty No. 9 for what it is, but like other's mentioned, it doesn't really do anything innovative for the genre. Played it once and I'm done.

I'm psyched for Bloodstained though. I backed that one as well, and I need to find time to take the demo for a spin...

 

Does it really need to be innovative? All it really set out to do was scratch us where we itch as far as new Mega Man games go.

10-15 years we're pretty much all going to be forced to use Steam, might as well

 

Meh, kinda. It barely scratched my Mega Man itch. It was mostly just a rehash in a lot of ways. The great thing about Mega Man and especially Mega Man X was the iterative approach. For me, there was always some new concept that was built upon the previous mechanics and always a feeling of progression. Perhaps it was just me, but I just didn't feel like it was there in No. 9.

Don't get me wrong, I rather enjoyed the game the first time through, but I probably won't be playing it again. Unlike Mega Man 1-6 and X - X4 which I still occasionally pick up to this day.

I do feel I got my money's worth though, so I'm happy with the purchase.

 

true but for now steam can scratch my balls. They are the forefront to killing physical media. Besides, someone will eventually leak it on to a file sharing site.

 

That's already happened
Weirdly, the game doesnt care if the DLC is legally obtained. If it's there it will load it. Then throw in the DRM-free Humble Bundle installers (for backers) made it just that much easier.