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Mega Man 11 Game Review

Mega Man 11 is a 2018 platform video game developed by Capcom for Windows and other platforms. It is the eleventh numbered entry in the mainline Mega Man series.

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“Elegant!“

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Back in 2008, ‘Mega Man 9’ was released and this venerable series was back after a long period of absence. It was a retro game that tried to emulate the feel of the original games, which the eventual sequel did as well. With Mega Man 11, we have a different story. This is where the franchise finally moves forward with new, polished graphics and some fresh ideas as well. I played the PC version and I am going to review that one.

This is the first game in the series since the eighth one to actually include an extensive story and voice acting. The latter is still weak and mediocre, but thankfully much better than the disastrous voices in the aforementioned installment. The plot is surprisingly much more complex than its predecessors with an interesting exploration of the Light-Wily relationship, but it made me wonder what if we had a full-on Mega Man story with better realized characters and conflicts. This one moved toward that, but only for a couple of inches.

The gameplay functions almost entirely the same as it always has been in this franchise, so I won’t go through the structure all over again. There are the usual eight Robot Masters and the Wily Castle at the end. The game has additional features, which are fine, but nothing too exciting. But the main difference is the inclusion of the Double Gear system, which I honestly really appreciated. Speed Gear slows everything down while Power Gear makes your charged shots more powerful. Both are extremely useful when encountering the hardest bosses in the game, though they obviously did render some of the special weapons a bit useless.

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The stages in Mega Man 11 are huge and expansive for better and for worse. On the one hand, it made for a longer playthrough and more variety in terms of level design, but on the other hand, it led to overly steep difficulty curve. Playing it on the PC with no save states possible was especially difficult for me as you only get three lives and just a couple of checkpoints per level. These levels range from colorful to desolate, but all are absolutely enormous and filled with countless examples of unforgiving enemy placement. It was so hard at times that I had to use the Double Gear system and for me these games are much better when they can be beaten with the regular weapon.

Block Man is definitely one of the hardest bosses in this game. That is mostly because he is the first boss you encounter, so you can only use Mega Buster against him. The first form is very easy, but the second robot form is highly challenging. It is the boss that has the biggest disparity between the forms by far. Acid Man is less memorable and it’s not as difficult, but he moves quite fast, making the fight far from easy.

Impact Man requires a lot of patience and trial and error, but it is beatable with the right weapons and a well-timed Speed Gear. Bounce Man is probably the easiest boss of the bunch as his move patterns are quite predictable and unimposing. But Fuse Man is way too frustrating as his desperation attack makes him extremely fast. Thankfully, there is one weapon that makes this fight at least bearable. Speed Gear helps a lot too.

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Tundra Man has some hilarious catchphrases and is fun to play against, but overall a bit too easy in comparison to the others. The same goes for Torch Man, a Robot Master who gets pretty much decimated with the right special weapon. Blast Man is the final boss and he is on the more difficult side of things, but he is beatable with again the right weapon and with a lot of patience.

As for the final bosses, I did not care for Yellow Devil MK-III. As is always the case with these bosses, they require too much patience and aren’t all that fun to play against. This one at least wasn’t too demanding. As for Mawverne, it’s a pretty disposable late boss, which was unexpected and odd. As for Wily Machine 11, he isn’t among the hardest final bosses in a Mega Man game, but he isn’t disposable either. It’s the right difficulty level for sure as you will need to use both gears, special items and weapons to properly beat him. It’s a very well executed boss fight. The game also features some surprisingly strong mini-bosses that were in a couple of instances even better than the main ones.

Graphically speaking, Mega Man 11 is a huge departure from the previous games in the series. It’s the first installment to bring the modern next-gen polish to this franchise and the results are gorgeous. While some may accuse the game of having an overly big cutesy look, I love that animated charm to my games, so that was pleasing to me. In that regard, this eleventh entry channeled the eighth game, but it went even further with more colors and polish.

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Going through each level was especially pleasant for those graphics. They made this otherwise unforgiving game more tolerable. The world building is pretty solid and the robots are well designed and some are quite unique. Speaking of those Robot Masters, each gets to have a voice in this entry, which I appreciated. It led to killing them being surprisingly touching as they would scream in anguish. Their catchphrases were also a lot of fun. The sound effects are terrific, but the score left a lot to be desired. Gone is the retro tone of the series in favor of more modern, but highly forgettable tunes that all sounded too similar to each other. As for the controls, the game uses way too many buttons, leading to a somewhat confusing experience.