Man, talk about a mixed bag. This game was way ahead of its time in some elements, and totally behind in others. Lots of contradicting ideas here and there. Like, the game has this ingenious choose-your-level mechanic, where every boss you beat gives you a new weapon to use in further stages, but then the game makes it so that half of the stages REQUIRE a specific weapon because either the boss is too hard to defeat without its weakness or there's a special, MANDATORY ITEM for game completion that you need an external weapon to collect. Consequently, I think you have what? 2 or 3 out of the otherwise numerous possible stage orders you could take that are actually reasonable. Some bosses have straight up ridiculous patterns, the level design, while good for the most part, has a couple of really annoying sections that revolve around RNG with certain enemies/obstacles, which on one hand motivates you to make the most out of your weapons to clear them, but on the other just reinforces the linearity issue, making you avoid stages that contain said sections until you've acquired the optimal weapons for them.
Regardless of everything, though, I still think there's a lot to like about this game. Sure, in hindsight, it's one of the bumpier Mega Man games, but for an early NES title? This is great. It's got that characteristic charm of the series, a really good (although lackluster for Mega Man standards) OST, mostly fun and creative levels/bosses, awesome Run & Gun action, and at least some amount of replayability thanks to the trial-and-error nature of the game's learning curve. I think it says something about a game's core design when it transcends several generations. You can see every single aspect of this game present in the following entries of the series, all of which getting progressively more refined over the years. While I find some of the creative choices questionable, Mega Man laid the PERFECT groundwork for one of my favorite franchises of all time, and its daring, innovative design can NOT be understated. I will always love replaying this game, despite all of its flaws.
Regardless of everything, though, I still think there's a lot to like about this game. Sure, in hindsight, it's one of the bumpier Mega Man games, but for an early NES title? This is great. It's got that characteristic charm of the series, a really good (although lackluster for Mega Man standards) OST, mostly fun and creative levels/bosses, awesome Run & Gun action, and at least some amount of replayability thanks to the trial-and-error nature of the game's learning curve. I think it says something about a game's core design when it transcends several generations. You can see every single aspect of this game present in the following entries of the series, all of which getting progressively more refined over the years. While I find some of the creative choices questionable, Mega Man laid the PERFECT groundwork for one of my favorite franchises of all time, and its daring, innovative design can NOT be understated. I will always love replaying this game, despite all of its flaws.