Though it is rightfully eclipsed by its immediate predecessor, it's definitely worth a play in 2022. That dastardly Wily aside, however, Mega Man 7 is a solid game in basically every respect. It's one of the only major blemishes on the game, and perhaps one of the major reasons why some Mega Man fans don't give MM7 the time of day. Still, the timing is so bizarre and specific that the average player will die dozens of times to this second phase without beating it unless they save up all their E tanks for this specific purpose. Wily's four balls of homing death, you can find plenty of clips of masters doing it on YouTube. Let's be fair: yes, it is technically possible to avoid Dr. However, it's the final boss of Mega Man 7 that truly lingers in the imagination, and for all the wrong reasons. ![]() The second is significantly easier to overcome, but still quite challenging in its own right. The first Bass fight is the worst kind of Mega Man boss: a Blue Bomber-sized enemy that jumps and fires in a highly random fashion. The last few bosses of the game require a level of finesse and mastery of the mechanics that the previous levels only barely hinted at. If we have one major criticism of Mega Man 7, it's that its final stages are far more difficult than the ones that proceeded them. Though experts can certainly power their way through Sigma's stages without heart power-ups or the armor upgrade, it's no easy feat. While a few of the upgrades are hidden in downright arcane locations - sending out your robo-dog Rush to sniff the floor every few feet was apparently expected - none of the power-ups are actually that essential for beating the game, though the Super Adapter comes in handy for a few clutch fights. The Mega Man franchise was well into its Metroidvania-curious phase even before the SNES era, and 7 is no different. It also has the side effect of allowing Capcom to give the game more of a gradual difficulty curve, since you have to earn your way to the latter stages, but that does somewhat cut against the choice-based concept of the franchise to begin with. While this is definitely a fair knock on the game, in our experience, most players end up looking up the proper order to beat the bosses to take advantage of their weaknesses anyway, so it doesn't have much impact on the overall experience. One of the most common criticisms of Mega Man 7 is that it inexplicably segments the usual eight Robot Masters into two sets of four, which limits replayability. By the end of X, I was tired of spending every boss fight humping a wall, waiting for the right moment to strike, and abusing the dash to get out of tough situations the simplicity of 7 was a welcome respite. The slide in particular feels a great deal better than you might expect - it's faster and a bit longer compared to its 8-bit equivalent - and it's a sort of secret sauce that gives the game a more action-oriented feel than its predecessors. Mega Man 7 might lack certain features compared to X, but it makes use of its limitations in novel ways. Today, however, I think it's fair to say that most of us recognize that less can be more when it comes to video games, especially those that deliberately throw us back to earlier eras of the medium. ![]() If the machine can do lens flares, we're going to stick a lens flare wherever we can if we can do sweat better now, all of those football and basketball players are going to perspire a lot more than they did last year. In the older days of gaming, when everything was driven by the technological limitations of the consoles, bigger was always better: more features, more levels, more moves. In contrast, Mega Man 7's Blue Bomber has the same basic move set as his latter-day 8-bit equivalent: slide, jump, and shoot. Though X only gives the player the dash early on if you know to play the levels in the right order - one of its major shortcomings, by the way - the entire game feels a lot more technical and demanding as a result. Perhaps most crucially, 7 jettisons the new mechanics that X brought to the table, particularly the wall-jump and dash. While 7's spritework is a lot cleaner and more detailed, X's novel art direction and sense of outlandish style made it feel like a breath of fresh air compared to the lo-fi chiptune charms of the 8-bit Mega Man games. It's easy to understand how the technology-obsessed games press of the '90s would take one look at 7 and dismiss it as a step backward from X. ![]() This is what Mega Man X looks like, if you forgot.
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