Mega Man X (Mega Man X Legacy Collection) (Switch)

Gotta continue with Mega Man X, hold as the best Mega Man-game for the SNES. Never played it as a kid. Bought this five times now. First time clearing it. A bit miffed that the rewind function from the Mega Man Legacy Collection isn't here. Story is that Dr. Cain, an archeologist discovers a hidden robot facility where Dr. Light have hidden X, a robot that have free will and was put to sleep in order to go through a diagnostic for 30 years that ensured he had a moral compass and such. Pretty much overslept for 70 years. With this Dr. Cain is able to create the reploids, free thinking robots. Some of them goes rouge, and are called Mavericks that have to be hunted down by... the Hunters. 

Dr. Cain then builds another robot to lead the Hunters, Sigma... that becomes a Maverick himself and brings with him a lot of Hunters to Mavericks and Cain sends the Hunter Zero and the awakened X to stop Sigma. Good going Cain. So X is on a highway fighting of a Maverick attack until Vile, a mercenary Maverick appears and Zero saves X. Zero tries to find Sigma and X stops the Maverick hunters. During the game you find upgrades left by Dr. Light that enhance X and with it you beat Chill Penguin, Launch Octopus, Storm Eagle, Armored Armadillo, Flame Mammoth, Sting Chameleon, Spark Mandrill and Boomer Kuwanger. Fun thing is that defeating the bosses effects other stages. Zero finds Sigma and both battle through Sigmas stages until Vile almost kills X, but Zero sacrifices himself so that X can fight off Sigma. 

Since I haven't played it as a kid I'm a bit meh about it. It was hard at times, and without looking it up, certain parts is pretty much impossible to find since they demand you know how to play it very well. One upgrade demands you have the hard hat and perform a perfect jump so that you can climb and destroy it, but you only got that one chance since if you break the lowest blocks without getting to the top, you have to restart the stage since you can't reach it again. And the non-maverick bosses... f***ing cheats. Eyes and noes that you have to hang to the wall with a death trap right below you? God damn. 

It's a bit overhyped for me. I don't actually get it really. Graphics nice and music is probably the best since Mega Man 3. But more than that? It's fun fully upgraded, but heres the thing, I think I played on some sort of easy mode for this version, playing it normally would probably have driven me mad with anger on the frustrating part. Really wished for some rewind.

Mega Man Legacy Collection (Switch)

Super Fighting Robot - Mega Man

Though we would go through the whole package of the legacy collection since there is a couple of things that doesn't show up when I write about the separate games. No, it isn't because I need to fill out the weeks since my backlog of 100 hours JRPG:s is getting out of hand (well, maybe). Back to the collection you get the rewind function for the games, a database library for every character in the games. Things like box arts from the three main regions, the japanese instruction manual and posters from Japan and the USA. Small fun things. What caught my interest for a couple of minutes was the music library with the music from the games. Some sketches and such. Sadly no summary of what happens in the games and such, gotta play the game... and read the wikipedia article on what happens.

The other big thing that might have caught peoples interests are the challenges. Clear certain portions of stages, either in a single game or over a couple of games. Boss rushes or 1 single boss (take that Yellow Devil). I am obviously not that good since I was just able to unlock 15 challenges. It also showed my over-reliance on rewind in the normal games since they take it away from the challenges and platform challenges really trips me up when I, a couple of times I might add, just jumps down a hole. Yeah, I'm not that good.

Overall, I would recommend the package, unless you already bought them 5-6 times (with the NES and Sega Mega Drive Mini I got Mega Man 2 six times at this point). 

Mega Man 6 (Mega Man Legacy Collection) (Switch)

Sir-Not-Appearing-In-Europe

The 6th and final Mega Man game on the NES and as that the most polished in graphical and gameplay ways. The story is that the first annual robot tournament have concluded and the organiser, a certain Mr. X takes the 8 robot masters and reprogram them to conquer the world. And as stated in the beginning of the game, apparently is the one behind Dr. Wily. So Mega Man is called in once again to save the world from the robots Flame Man, Knight Man, Blizzard Man, Plant Man, Tomahawk Man, Yamato Man, Centaur Man and Wind Man. This game was not released on the NES in Europe, which is a bit strange since it's the first (and I think only) game where western people could participate in a design competition of the robot masters so Knight and Blizzard Man are non-japanese. 

Rush have been overhauled so there is no rush coil and instead been turned to adapters that enhance Mega Man in certain ways. The power adapter gives you a punch that open up different pathways to finish the stages or beat up enemies that the normal mega buster can't handle. The other adapter is the Jet adapter that gives you a small flight ability. Both are important to reach the alternative boss chamber on certain stages to get letters that spell out Beat and gives you access to him. Didn't have a use for him this time so didn't use him. The great thing about it is that there is no need to refill the power meters, the jet recharge automatically when not in use and the power adapter you have to charge up to use the better abilities. No more fear of running out of rush coils or jet powers so that you are stranded and either have to grind for refills or restart the stage. 

So Mega Man defeats the robot masters and goes after Mr. X and beta him up, and it turns out it was Dr. Wily... shocking! Do the Wily stages and refight the robot masters, yuo corner Dr. Wily and now tie him up and take him in to custody ending on... to be continue? So 5 that ended with him escaping didn't have a to be continue, but this one has? Bold move Capcom, bold move. The adapters are a welcome addition, but there is something amiss when you don't have the coil. Overall, better than 4, maybe equal to 5.

Mega Man 5 (Mega Man Legacy Collection) (Switch)

Revenge of Proto Man

Continued with the 5th game and the cutscenes gets better and better. And now the stages begins to show use of other mechanics. Water was used from the second game on, but now they added a gravity stage and to break up the water stage you get a short water bike section. Interesting stuff. Story is that Proto Man have kidnapped Dr. Light and tries to take over the world with 8 robot masters. Mega Man once again is tasked with saving the world and battle Star Man, Gravity Man, Gyro Man, Crystal Man, Napalm Man, Stone Man, Charge Man and Wave Man. 

Battling through Proto Man's base you encounter the villain, and as you are unable to fight against your own brother, you are taken down to 1 sliver of health, when the familiar whistle sounds and another Proto Man shows up, blast the fake showing the Dark Man robot behind the exterior face of Proto Man. Mega Man finish it off and Dr. Wily reveals that he is the one behind it all and have Dr. Light at his base. Shocking... I know! You defeat Wily and rescue Dr. Light, but as you try to apprehend Wily, the roof collapses and as Mega Man saves Dr. Light from being crushed Dr. Wily escapes, but Proto Man intervenes and saves them so that they can escape. Game ends. 

Bosses was much easier this time around and there weren't that hard reaching them either. The Proto Man stages also had some decent music, but I can't help to feel I've heard it before. Might be that I've played it before on all the other virtual consoles I've have on these games. Added to this game is the star arrow... which I never used and knows what it does special. Also, getting all letters from the stages that spells out Mega Man you get access to Beat, a new robot friend that is a bird. Rush still here, but the mariner is gone. Feel it's better than 4 at least.

Mega Man 4 (Mega Man Legacy Collection) (Switch)

Mega Man... 4

The fourth game in the series and it seems that they upped the graphics a bit with moveable cutscenes. They also added the charge buster to the growing starter arsenal of Mega Man and it it makes certain enemies a bit easier to deal with since you can prepare a shot in advance. Story is that suddenly the Russian Dr. Cossack attacks and tries to conquer the world with his 8 robot masters. Dr. Light sends out Mega Man to fight off Pharaoh Man, Ring Man, Dust Man, Skull Man, Dive Man, Drill Man, Toad Man and Bright Man. Defeating them all you take the fight to Dr. Cossack's Kremlin-like base and upon beating Dr. Cossack Proto Man teleports in with Kalinka, Dr. Cossack's daughter that have been kidnapped by Dr. Wily to force her father to build the robot masters and fight Mega Man. With this knowledge Mega Man take the fight to Dr. Wily.

And I gotta say, this Dr. Wily is hard as hell. Not only is the Wily Machine almost impossible to hit in its second form, then they expect you to fight him in the darkness. Cheating bastard. I had to use all my energy tanks on the rematch with the robot masters and the Wily machines so I was really afraid in the end, but I persevered... and the rewind button worked out rather well. Overall, not as good as 3. The mega buster is a good addition that stayed for the rest of the series. I found it harder than the earlier games, and the proposed "easy" order of the bosses was hard as nails. Pharaoh Man don't screw around so the first energy tank was used to stay alive since I didn't get the pattern down. And while the graphics improves, I can't say the same about the music. Nothing really catches my ears as they did in 3 (and 1 and 2 had some good tracks as well). Don't know if the nostalgia plays in more in this category.

RiME (Switch)

Go all the way to the tower!

Find all the secrets behind!

I've had my eyes on RiME back in 2017 when it was released, but a lot of games together with a bit of negative reviews on the games, especially the switch version, kept me from it. Until now when it was relatively cheap. What caught my eye was that it gave me some Mysterious Cities of Gold vibes, and maybe the clothes of the boy since it looked like Estabans clothes. It took me 5 hours to play through it once, and I gotta say. I really enjoyed it. It's basically an adventure with platforming elements. Story is that this boy have washed up on some island with ruins of a lost civilisation with some technological marvels together with some mystical magic around the island. There is no dialog so what you see and observe with your own senses is what you get out the story. First of you awaken some kind of magical fox that was trapped in some statue and leads you across the adventure. You will see a man in a red cloak similar to your own scrap of cape, meeting some kind of machine eyes on bipedal legs that will help you on your journey. Beyond these friendly characters you have some shadow creatures that seems afraid of you in one chapter, then attacks you and tries to drain your life and then ends just looking at you. And then we have the monstrous pterodactyl that hunts you if you go out in the open until you fry it with summoning a cloud of lightning from several windmills scattered across a plain. 

So you gotta solve puzzles like moving boxes into place to reach higher places, align shadows to touch or not touch light sensitive buttons to open doors, and all you gotta get with context cues. It's nice to feel smart some times, didn't use a guide (like that would be an achievement am I right?). So if it's this good, why wasn't it recieved better? Well, the switch port was apparently at launch a disaster since the frame-rate was horrendous, the game would chug at crucial times and apparently felt unplayable. They fixed a lot of those, but when I notice, at the very first screen part of the background blinks in and out, then I can see some people finding it really bad. Still chugs at times and I got stuck on a branch in the first 15 minutes of the game so I needed to restart to the nearest check-point. But I liked it.

Spoilers for those who cares about that, or want to experience it for themselves. In between what I would classify as chapters you get some flashbacks it turns out. First you are on a ship that looks stranded in snow, but as you follow your red cloth to it and as you climb the ship it disappears and your are on the open sea and storm clouds comes upon you. The next vision is you looking through the ship at sea. Next vision is doing it again, but this time trying to reach the man clad in the red mantle you've seen across the island as the storm rocks the boat and he falls of and while the boy tries to drag him up you will see that it's just a shadow with the mantle draped over him. The mantle rips and leaves the boy with his scarf or whatever you would call it. And then the final vision hits. The roles are switched, it's the man trying to reach the boy as he falls off in his raincoat, and the raincoat rips as the boy disappear in the ocean. The game gets really surreal at this point. Right before the vision it went from bright to darkness with constant rain. The machines you resurrected sacrificed themselves one by one to open the doors so you could reach a statue with a crying child that looks like the boy where the fox disappears, and the boy is turned to some sand statue, and after breaking free is also a shadow with white glowing eyes as he climbs a lighthouse and lights it. He ends up in a room, walks through a corridor and sees the man from the boat, sitting as a sand statue and touching destroys it, transporting the child to a whirlpool that the shadows jumps into, and then he follows. Which changes the story to the man, as he looks through his sons toys and seeing a vision of his dead son.

Fantastic. Apparently the games chapters is based on the five stages of grief and the twist over who was going through the stages are fantastic. Also that I empathised so much with the machines that helped you and then died was also rather heavy on the heart. Would I compare the game it probably has taken inspiration from Ico (which I've never played, I got stuck on Shadow of the Colossus while playing through the Ico Collection on PS3). As said, it took me 5 hours, but I wasn't that thorough since I missed a lot of collectibles, like the keyholes that I assume tells the story of the boys family. I checked if there was an alternate ending and there is. If you find 4 white shades you get a bit more, I found one. Being 5 hours it's not impossible that I run through it again. I can understand locking progress between chapters, but making it impossible to walk back through a door or jumping down from a plateau  in the same chapter feels rather irritating. Still, well worth a play, but maybe not the switch version due to the still lingering graphics hiccups. 

Mega Man 3 (Mega Man Legacy Collection) (Switch)

Loved the box art

The best game in the series... as far as I know since I haven't played 7, 8, 9, 10 or 11 (or any of the X-series). Probably something we shall see when I get there. Borrowed it from my neighbour as a kid and pretty much my only Mega Man experience until I got the games on the Wii virtual console so my glasses might be tinted a bit out of nostalgia. Did beat it a couple of times as a kid... by using a password I got from a Nintendo Magazine I had. So not really.

Story is that Dr. Wily have reformed and together with Dr. Light tries to build the peacekeeping robot Gamma. They send out the 8 robot masters Top Man, Shadow Man, Spark Man, Magnet Man, Hard Man, Snake Man, Gemini Man and Needle Man to mine for crystals to power Gamma, but they go rouge. During the battles he faces of against Beak Man and afterwards have to fight the doc robots that contains the attack moves off the robot masters from Mega Man 2. After this Dr. Wily steals the crystals the robot masters where mining and takes Gamma with him. Battling through Mega Man defeats Gamma and Dr. Wily, but the lair collapses over them, but Beak Man shows up and rescue Mega Man. Turns out Beak Man is Proto Man, Mega Man's brother. Well, at least according to the wikipedia article that summarises the plot. The game itself is rather bad in explaining why you do that you do. 

But since when was story important for Mega Man? Here gameplay reigns supreme. And they definitely upgraded how you play Mega Man, first off you get the slide enabling the player to avoid damage and get past certain allowing different routes. Then, Rush is introduced that first only allows reaching higher ground from the get go and then can turn into a submarine and lastly a jet. Pretty much replacing the item's from the 2nd game. You get some cutscenes in game and the music is overall better. Sure, 2 had the Wily theme and the start up theme, 3 has Top Man Stage, Hard Man stage, the Intro theme, Spark Man, Snake Man... I mean most songs are killers. And I think the people behind the collection does as well since several tracks appear all over the menus and such. A sad part is that the best tracks are on the stages that doesn't get revisited while fighting the doc robots. Still find the game enjoyable and replayable... although it has a Yellow Devil so just the robot stages are enough, especially with that soundtrack.