mighty no 9 does not deserve the reputation it has gained, most "bad" games don't really but this one especially feels like a victim of its reputation doubly so, after a bad kickstarter full of some very unfulfilled promises (though the vita port will come one day) and a pretty wretched marketing campaign the game was still hated despite that the game that came out of it was actually pretty good, not the best in the series sure, but a big step up from many of the early entries i feel and it ended up feeling like one of the most accessable games to me and one with a lot of passion and a very clear vision that i think had a lot of potential, though the way it was made being so mishandled is very unfortunate i don't think should be held against it, especially now almost a decade after the fact especially since we did get a mega man 11 atfer this game released, so its not like its the only option for a modern game anymore.

the game exists to be a spiritual successor to megaman, it was obvious in the designs, gameplay and the whole campaign existed to bank off that, this is something that i find can be really hit or miss because so many successors just end up being diluted versions of those older properties and this one did risk being that, but i do think it has enough that differenciates it to make it very worth experiancing, the vision here was for more than just "mega man but again", it was also banking very heavily on keiji inafune's involvement, he's became a contravercial figure over the years because of this and the capcom western push and again i don't think he really deserves it, the man has worked on a ton of classics even outside megaman, onimusha, deadrising, shadow of rome and lost planet for capcom, and even some of his comcept projects were fantastic, soul sacrifice delta is just one of the best games i've ever played and both recore and yaiba are super fun games that i love a lot, his work on the gunvolt series seems very popular as well, though i'm not super familiar with those, point is he isn't a hack, despite what his involvement in sweet fuse (my least favourite otome game) might lead you to believe. Anyway onto the game proper, it just plays like a mix of megaman and x, with the dash being the most prominant move as it lets you take out damaged enemies to rack up a combo meter and gain you back some energy, it's also how you steal boss weapons (in a very .hack inspired animation) and this alone i think really gives it its own flavour compared at least to the mainline games, you're encouraged to really speed up combat and go for those combos and once you get some of the better boss weapons like the sword and the cryo-blast, it becomes really fun and easy to combo, i like this system a lot, the bosses are also really fun, none of them are too difficult outside of the end boss and the dlc fight was kind of tricky and beating them can directly change level layouts which is really cool, an ice character freezing fire in the oil rig level, or another coming in an underground level to clear some debree, it's really cool and it makes you want to find the right combo even more than any of the mainline games for me since it felt like i was actually benefitted by more than just being given a win button for the boss, it's cool, though these are really the only major gameplay differences, you can play as another character with DLC and shes much more focused on melee combat and the combo system, but i found her too difficult to really be all that fun, you also have a stealth segment with another character later but that was really fun i thought, but it was the games one other major difficulty spike. it's not a hard game really though, it's the easiest megaman ive played barring maybe 8 and that's the main reason i'd reccomend it to newcomers, it's so much more accessable.

the game has some amazing music too, some tracks like the main theme can rival any of the best of the mainline osts and the level themes all own too, the main theme, first level, water level and the mine all stand out, but almost every song on the soundtrack is great, seriously even if you don't play it, you have to check out the music, the ost is primarily done by 2 people, one being Manami Matsumae, of dragon quest swords, derby stallion, some megaman games like 1, 2 and 10, final fight, trip world and recently he's worked on games like the good life and shovel knights dlc, he's cool, you also had Ippo Yamada who worked mainly on the mega man zero games, MM7, 8 and 10 and a bunch of other stuff like resident evil, demons crest and galgun, recently he's been working with inti on many similar games like gunvolt, gal guardians and bloodstained . visually i love all the designs too, it goes for a style much closer to a cartoon style than megaman, almost resembling the roids from yugioh GX. especially the plane robot felt ripped right from it, the vibe is much less threatening and the robots dont even get destroyed unlike megaman, they stay around and its clear they're all friends with beck and that just has a good vibe to it, especially when they all have dialogue with each other and beck in the final level, it sets up a world i actually like, very much like a quality kids show and this is what i think sets it apart from megaman, like its for a younger target demo and with the animated show they had planned i think this was the point, they clearly had a lot of plans for it and they had real passion for this world they designed. i love cells design too and i wish she was playable for more of it, she was the big other standout design to me, though i'm not super into the other human designs. it's a colourful game though, bright and just nice looking with some very varied environments, from the white house to frozen labs and burning rigs, they all look really cool, double shoutout to the highway level which has some very nice looking rain and a dark night sky, it's really cool looking, though some effects can look a little bad like the pizza explosion, but i think it looks fine when you consider they were also targeting a 3DS version, this looks good really, the hate for the style is overblown.

it's about 3 hours long too, standard platformer length but if you end up buying the dlc you do get an extra stage and a new character to play with, you even have a huge, and difficult challange mode to try out and it may take you even longer than the campaign will if you want to try it out. it's nice and cheap too, it's easily one of the cheapest games on any system you want it for, there's even a physical copy for ps4, xbox one and wiiu, though i hear the wiiu port is very buggy, i played on ps4 with the physical copy and had no real issues though, its nowhere to be seen on fully modern systems though which is a shame, a switch version would have been nice to have, but i don't think we'll really see much of this again, beck and call do appear in some gunvolt games like galgunvolt burst and have cameos in some other inti games, but mighty has been left by the wayside in favour of it, which i can't really blame them for, its taken off much more. comcept havent done much on their own sadly since bar recore and a mobile title, but recently did merge with level 5 and worked on some really cool stuff like yokai watch, megaton musashi and are working on the new fantasy life game with inafune as the producer, so thats nice. also working on it was Kinshi Ikegami as director who helped make MM ZX games as well as bloodstained and one of my favourite naruto games, naruto powerful shippuden. play the game if you can, go in with the right expectations and i think you'll have a good time.