I may purchase the Steam release someday but not recent years. All my hypes and interests toward the classic Mega Man franchise had been lost in the past days due to long absent of decent fresh new titles (in my view)...
The other factor - X Legacy Collection... X Challenge mode (hard) Vol.2 6-3 stinks, which further builds up my bad first impression of current men leading the revival of Mega Man franchise.
Believe me, this Zero Nightmare + X5 Sigma scenario (hard mode) is worse than the whole X7.
It cut my SAN value straight to zero and it's just simply impossible to beat'em fair & square ("Cheat Engine is a must go" level of unfair).
A patch is definitely needed to fix this crap, I wait & pray until now, write suggestions at various places and it never happens. And they just left this crap behind and moved to MM11? bowlshiet
This attitude makes me puke
The double Gear system is well implemented and not too intrusive, though I felt the power gear was too easy to forget. aside from powering up your special weapons, most of them were well enough on their own that i didnt need to power them up. The speed gear is where the real magic was.
As for the double gear move, now THAT was incredibly easy to overlook, and I think i only ever relied on it once in the whole game.
that said, lets talk about shortcomings. Mild spoilers maybe-
1. the music. I loved some of the tracks, but overall, the sountrack, while good, suffers from the same problem X8's does, which is that all of it is composed with the same kind of instrumentation, making it all merge together. X8 was all generic rock, 11 is all synthy techno.
2.The wily stages. these suffered from X4 syndrome. Too short and too samey. their aesthetics felt samey throughout, and they didnt even have unique tracks for each one. They didn't feel particularly challenging either, compared to some of the robot master stages themselves.
3. Wily felt kind of underwhelming. I feel a third form in between his first and second form, or before the first form, would have been beneficial.
4. it suffers from the same issue I charge all mega man games that have a normal shop with- which is that you can grind your way to victory. grinding bolts wasnt even hard, just play through the game normally and you can just stay permanently stocked at 9 E tanks every stage, effectively brute forcing your way to victory. This is something that I always felt 8 did better. by making the number of bolts limited, and therefore limiting what you can buy in one playthrough, not only did it add replay value, but trimmed the fat. You only bought essential upgrades. Not extra lives or E tanks, which should be something you earn in stages.
Also, this is more of a nitpick on my part, but the fact that the plot was yet another "wily steals and reprograms Dr. Light's Robots" plot, when that was already the plot of 9, and technically 10, where they were miscellaneous civillian robots who got corrupted by his virus. I feel it wouldve been better if these were purpose built robots by Wily. poor dude hasn't built any original robots himself since Mega Man 8
Other than that, I really liked it, even if it played it a bit too safe. The visuals were especially nice and full of detail and care. Such as after fighting the mammoth robot miniboss in Tundra Man's stage, you see the exhibit he broke out of a little further in. Or how the Fuse Man Miniboss' sunglasses shatter upon defeat right before he explodes. It's all in the details.