Mega Man 7 (1995)

Is this a worse game than its predecessors because it's so freaking difficult? Now that I've beaten it, I would say no, but at a few points when I was just flabbergasted at what they expected me to do with three lives, I may have said yes.

Not a ton of advancement from Mega Man 6, but it's a fun little game. I'm not really sure what I expect to get from the series at this point. They're just not my favourite games, but I like having beaten them because they're really difficult.

I thought Dr. Wily might be a challenge too great for me, but in the end it only took me about 7 or 8 game overs to beat it. I ended up beating it on the very run where I created a save state after the first half of the fight, but I didn't end up needing it.

Mega Man 7, for SNES

Rating: 8.5/10; Great

Played: Feb 2019

Mega Man 7 is a 2D sidescrolling shooter platformer. The only abilities you start off with are jumping, sliding along the floor, shooting directly straight and summoning your robot dog companion to give you a jump boost. Later on you may find other abilities, most of which involve the dog and are quite useful, though the search ability is time consuming if you want to restore your health or ammo. The story and characters are interesting, and displayed in very bright cartoonish graphics that hold up extremely well.

In traditional Mega Man fashion, the game is divided into a series of relatively short stages which end in a boss fight. Each boss drops a unique weapon for you, which has limited ammo. Each boss is also weak to one specific weapon. Using these special weapons is quite fun as they have different kinds of projectiles and cover different areas and angles. The game starts off with only 4 stages available, with another 4 opening up afterwards, so you are much more likely to correctly guess a boss’ weakness. All bosses can still be defeated without using their weakness, and the boss gauntlet near the end ensures that you will have the opportunity to try out every weapon on every boss.

The stages include a variety of generic enemies, some minibosses and fairly simple platforming. Cool special effects, such as weather, water and darkness can hinder your progress or at least make the stage more interesting, while certain weapons or dog abilities can be used to counteract some effects and/or find secrets. Loot found in stages and dropped by enemies can be used in the shop and inventory; you can buy goodies and carry health and ammo restore items that can be used in battle. Unfortunately, the game did not mention anything about either the shop or inventory while playing (maybe should have read the manual first).

The worst feature of the game is the password saving system. Why is that still a thing? Some of the bosses are also quite challenging, especially the final boss. Still the game is great fun to play with decent replayability to find all of the secrets.