Mighty No. 9 (PlayStation 4) Review

Mighty No. 9 is unabashed in what it is supposed to be, which is a clone of the original Mega Man series, but it could really have stood to take much more from the formula instead of the disaster it is. At its root, it is very simple: platform through various levels, fighting enemies along the way, concluding with a boss fight that gives its power afterwards. Pretty standard stuff for the genre, but it fails on so many levels it is staggering given how simple of a premise this is.

For starters, the platforming part fails. It tries to be a mix of simplistic platforming like the Capcom classics, mixed with a speed rush/agile of the Mega Man: Zero series, except that the main character, Beck, is woefully hard to control. In the Mega Man games, there were timing aspects that took some cleverness to figure out, but on the whole, it all felt like fair challenge, while here, from the very first levels this demands perfection of execution, or else it rewards with instant death.

Beck cannot wall jump, cannot wall hang, cannot air jump, or essentially just about anything needed for accurate platforming. He feels floaty but slow to turn, he never quite jumps as far as he needs to, and always hops a bit too high for any short hop needed. The control is really a sight to see for how rough it is. It would be forgivable if it was simply a run-and-gun type of video game, but, for a title with so many levels completely covered in deadly spikes, having a character control so bad is a frustrating nightmare.

The only options that the main character has are shoot, jump, and dash. The enemies are weakened by the shots, and he dashes through them to finish them off - it's a new change, but it doesn't quite feel good, since enemies are often still alive, and thus block critical platforms. It tries to have an arcade feel by giving the opportunity to rack up a high score, but there is a reason the first and last game to have a scoring system was the original Mega Man.

Without jumps, double jumps, or pretty much anything that has existed since the SNES days, this feels dull. The bosses universally have similar attacks, such as dashing, where you merely dash back and jump over. It's all unexciting and boring. The reward for beating the bosses is a new power, but they are so weak and useless that it's better to just use the regular gun - making the entire "reward" aspect non-existent.

The mechanics are a mess, but this might be forgivable if the story or anything else was good. Unfortunately, it's all laughably bad. The characters are like over-the-top '80s cartoon types played straight. Beck is some bumbling, hapless idiot that needs every plot point explained. Even the opening is cringe-worthy of endless "The robots have gone crazy, only YOU can stop them!" "Am I really the only one who can stop them?" type of narrative depth. His girlfriend, Call, was the most interesting character, and her archetype was that of the emotionless robot girl.

What is unforgiveable is how much time and money went into this product, along with major talent. It has the feel of an indie game, and quite frankly there are vastly better indie games out there because they radiate heart. This game is soul sucking, everything just feels off, cheap, and frustrating. The bad voice acting, the ham-fisted story, the endless spike walls Beck can barely navigate around, all serve to annoy. Really, the entire journey could be summed up by saying this feels like an attempt to transition out of the NES era, before the technically superior SNES Mega Man X came out.