Mega Man 11

Mega Man 11 grabs the traditional Mega Man formula and tries a couple of different things with it. As a long time Mega Man fan, I wasn't thrilled about all of it, but it still was a fun experience.

The first and noticeable change with the 11th game is the Double Gear system, a power that you start with, for story reasons. You have three ways to use these systems, you can slow time, you can increase the power of your blasts or you can use both, but without being able to stop it. The bomber has a heat system, it's a bar shown whenever you use one of the Double Gear abilties, if you use only one of them, you can cancel before you overheat, having a faster recovery to use it again. But if you use both at the same time, it'll go untill the end of the bar. The idea is that using both of them should be your last weapon in a boss fight, when you are fighting for your life and has the enemy on the brink of defeat. Other then that, it's better to just use of them. Me personally, I used the slow 95% of the time, the damage increase 5% and never used both at the same time, to not lose control of the heat bar. And that's something that could be more balanced imo.

Another difference from this game to its predecessors, it's the level design, they are longer, and all of them have a mini-boss at the middle of it. Some levels even make you fight it two times. I think it's a change that makes both ways of the spectrum, it's good to have a long game, with so many challenges and different level designs. But it kind of frustating to sometimes see that the level was increased just for the sake of being bigger, not changing that much and not being much fun. The levels were hit and miss, for me. And most of them were way harder then the boss fights, what can appeal to some people. I'm not sure how I feel about it.

That said, the game looks fantastic, it's one of my favorite looking Mega Man games ever, despite sometimes the sense of 3D making you hit your head in a platform that you think you wouldn't. Considering just the look of the game, I loved it. And that's enhanced by another change they made, now when you defeat a boss and earn one of their weapons, Mega Man's armor slightly changes to look more like the boss parts of armor, and it looks really great, I loved that, they have so much character to it. As well as the bosses themselves, they are some of the best looking bosses in a Mega Man game that I can remember, at first I was worried about the 2.5D style, but ended up being great in my opinion.

The shop system is back from the later entries in the main series, you collect bolts throughout the levels and when you're at the level select screen you can go to the lab to spend those bolts into upgrades or items that will improve your chances. At first I was having real trouble with the game, and it wouldn't be possible to progress if it wasn't for the fact that you keep going to the shop and becoming more supply heavy. Stacking up E-tanks and lives, buying some upgrades like not taking as much knockback, or not having so much trouble walking on ice. It would be incredibly tough to beat the game without getting all of that, I don't think I would be able to, but I think that's the design idea, for you to farm some bolts to have a better chance going forward. The game is really hard, like all the traditional Mega Man games, I've already beat all of the previous 10 and had some trouble with this one, but nothing that the E-Tanks couldn't save me.

I would recommend for those who like those challenging 2D Action-Platformers, the game will test your skills really hard.