Mighty Blunder
Everyone knows by now that the Mighty No. 9 is universally considered both a colossal disappointment and an indictment on future Kickstarter projects in general. Comcept and Inafune even started a new Kickstarter for a new IP (Red Ash) before their first project was even completed. Much has been said about the game as a spiritual successor to the Mega Man franchise, and while it is a little unfair to compare a new series to a classic one, this project was always intended to be THE successor to the blue bomber's finest 2D adventures. What I'll do instead is attempt to critique Mighty No. 9 as simply a game, unshackled by the burden of Kickstarter and the pressure of living up to an old name.
And yeah, no, Mighty No. 9 is still a vapid and underwhelming experience.
The experience falls apart almost immediately with incredibly lame voice acting that hearkens back to the embarrassing examples of 90s Capcom games, minus the unintended humor. The "doctors" quip endlessly and robot masters deliver puns such as "you zzzaved me" (because lightning based powers) which interestingly enough put me to zzz. The story is unmemorable, featuring a main character named Beck with a decidedly off-brand style that reminds me of Mega Man (last time I mention him I promise) in only the most depressing of ways.
The generic visuals don't end there, because even more depressing are the barren levels featuring that sanitized, 2.5D look that eschewed the game's previous style. There is little to no style exhibited here. The game's second level, Water Works, has an underwater section that literally shows what it might look like if you were to see someone submerged in murky swamp water. Comcept also does an admirable job recreating NES quality levels of slow down during this sequence and essentially any scenario in which too much is happening on screen at once. And the music? Completely forgettable, regardless of whether you're comparing this to a classic franchise or not. Apparently there's an 8-bit toggle, but the menus are so cluttered with inane features that I gave up looking for it after a couple of minutes of exhaustive searching.
I suppose all of the above could be forgiven because still, this is a video game, and ultimately it should be judged on its gameplay. Mighty No. 9 introduces an admittedly intriguing combo system that has you dashing through enemies while they're in a weakened state. This gives Beck short term abilities such as quicker movement or more powerful projectiles. The problem is, most of the game's level design doesn't account for enough opportunities to accumulate decent combos. Even more puzzling are the moments leading up to a boss battle that are overrun with one-hit kill environmental traps that encourage cautious play over zippy movement. Like the original Sonic games, it is superficially encouraged to go fast when in reality the games' level design is telling you another thing. Mighty No. 9 does not know what kind of game it wants to be.
Traversing through each stage can generally be considered an uneventful slog to the boss room, occasionally peppered with death traps such as electrocuted floors and collapsing oil rigs. While the common enemies are a boring but relatively easy affair, the amount of infuriating insta-deaths are where most people will inevitably stop playing. Most follow the standard left to right pattern typical of classic 2D side scrollers, but a couple stages later on slightly alter things. In the Capitol Building (?) level, Beck is tasked with finding robot master Counter-Shade, a stealthy sniper who spends the entire stage hiding from you. Though not particularly exciting, the variety is enough of a welcome change after so many bland trials of tedium.
The other "unique" stage has you actually utilizing stealth in the most rudimentary way possible, and somehow ends up being less memorable than the levels before it. As Call, the female robot hero who for some reason only gets one level of play time, your goal is to find key cards while evading robots with a two foot long cone of vision. Even better, the level can be exploited rather easily as the penalty for discovery is a delayed reaction and maybe a sliver of health just so long as you keep moving right.
The game's one saving grace lies within the boss battles, if you have the patience to make it that far. The middle game bosses are where Mighty No. 9 briefly finds its groove, escalating with a fun air based battle that has you ricocheting sniper rounds for damage. Defeating a boss grants you its power, obviously, and some bosses (not all) do in fact show a weakness to specific powers. Rarely do they make sense though. For instance, the Mighty No. 1, the game's first boss if we're believing the game at all, is a heat based robot who is not weak to the Mighty No. 2's ice attack, no, he is adverse to one of the very last robots you will encounter. I understand the need to make the boss patterns unpredictable, but Flame Man happens to be one of the most difficult bosses in the entire game.
The Mighty No. 9 is not a terrible video game. It isn't. It plays well enough and Beck even moves with a certain fluidity - the dash is actually almost fun. And yet, even removed from all of the connection and expectation of being a true Mega Man follow-up, the game still scans as horribly mediocre. Keiji Inafune has (rightly so) accepted most of the blame from the fallout, which has been appropriately brutal. After all of the delays, gameplay tweaks, false promises, and added Kickstarter projects, the Mighty No. 9 is less a game and more a failed idea, a dissertation on people's unfair expectations and the misguiding principle of nostalgia carrying over as a tangible feeling that can be recreated.