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 Mighty No. 9 Is Good Why am I here, writing this OP? Making this thread about a good game being a good game? A part of me deeply hopes I'm just insane, and that I imagined all the negativity and poor reception for this game and its mechanics. Maybe those “analysis” videos I watched were just a very vocal statistical outlier? Maybe most people did really appreciate the game? But no, I've gone too deep to feign ignorance now. People hated this game at worst, and thought it was mediocre at best. But I'm here to tell you in plain words that Mighty No. 9 is a good game. What? Without descending into garbled frustrated nonsense, I can certainly say that MN9 succeeds in several very important respects. A) It succeeds in being a fast-paced action platformer where skill and twitch-based movement have equal value B) It succeeds in introducing new and novel mechanics that expand on Mega Man's idea of using an enemy's abilities against them, extending them to the normal gameplay C) Dashing into enemies to increase your combo multiplier and get big scores is very satisfying The back of the case and some of the advertising material claims the game is “Japanese side-scrolling action, transformed”. In a way, that's exactly what it delivers. Several familiar ideas, but reinvented or twisted into something fresh and exciting. I'm honestly, thoroughly baffled at how badly people play this game on average. Maybe the mechanics are somehow beyond their grasp, or something, but now that I'm making these videos, they don't have an excuse anymore. This thread isn't for me to make friends, or feel good; it's to do justice to a good game that was shat on by far too many people. This stupid poo poo is why I make videos. Why I exist. The videos will be informative-styled, but don't be surprised if a little anger slips in now and again. Videos 0. Trailer  1. Dash Through Negativity, Absorb Conviction  2. Spice and Dice  3. Plant It, Punk  4. You Missed Me, Fucko 
GamesAreSupernice fucked around with this message at 10:56 on Mar 12, 2019 |
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Feb 23, 2019 17:31
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I remember the backlash this game got and boy were people mad that it wasn't the Second Coming of Christ. I can't help but wonder if this game helped push Mega Man 11 into production, sort of like how Dragon Ball Evolution helped spur Dragon Ball Super.
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Feb 23, 2019 22:13
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Mraagvpeine posted:I remember the backlash this game got and boy were people mad that it wasn't the Second Coming of Christ. Or even as good as the initial previews of the game were. There was a lot of other shady poo poo that went on where Inafune suddenly found a publisher despite being on Kickstarter which understandably made people upset. quote:I'm honestly, thoroughly baffled at how badly people play this game on average. Maybe the mechanics are somehow beyond their grasp, or something, but now that I'm making these videos, they don't have an excuse anymore. I'm curious to see this because honestly I found this game to be really half-baked across the board. It has some neat ideas, but they are not as original as Comcept likes to think they are and frankly a lot of the game just left me thinking of "I could be playing Megaman ZX right now, a much better and more innovative game"
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Feb 23, 2019 23:33
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I was definitely one of the naysayers, such as it was, though in the fullness of time the easiest way of putting my frustrations would be "if I wanted to buy a $20-price-point nostalgia cash-in game that fondly remembers the Mega Man series, the game that actually cares about the same things I do was Shovel Knight, and by the time I started actually playing MN9 I had finished the main campaign thereof." Looking over my notes at the time, these were the bits that stood out for me:
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Feb 24, 2019 00:32
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The game really does fall apart in the final levels IMO. There is some straight-up bad design there.
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Feb 24, 2019 00:39
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SSNeoman posted:The game really does fall apart in the final levels IMO. There is some straight-up bad design there. Your're right but has there been a Wily Fortress in the Mega Man series that hasn't been trash garbage? It's definitely an imported issue from that series.
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Feb 24, 2019 00:51
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Bellmaker posted:Your're right but has there been a Wily Fortress in the Mega Man series that hasn't been trash garbage? I do admit a lot of Wily Fortresses tend to have too much of a love affair with insta-kill spikes and other horseshit but at least you still have all your tools to tackle them. Eh, we'll get to that part when we get to it. I will admit it's the nadir of the game, I was just shocked at how amateurishly bad it was coming from people who ostensibly made Megaman.
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Feb 24, 2019 01:18
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When I played this game one of the things that bothered me was that it felt like Beck should have a upgrade system. Like after you beat a level you can take the Xels that you aquired and use them to upgrade Beck with something like a stronger Buster, faster Accel Charge accumulation, more health. It just feels like it is something that would have helped the game a lot.
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Feb 24, 2019 01:24
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More like Mighty No. 2, amirite Really though, I played the first level when it was free on PS4 and promptly deleted it so I'm looking forward to the defense
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Feb 24, 2019 01:31
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Mraagvpeine posted:I can't help but wonder if this game helped push Mega Man 11 into production, sort of like how Dragon Ball Evolution helped spur Dragon Ball Super. You're not the first person to think Mega Man 11 was made in response to MN9, two guys I'm subscribed to did a stream that started with a brief talk about MM11 as well as the new cartoon: Mega Man 11 and Mega Man Fully Charged discussion with a steaming bowl of HOT RALSTON Regarding Mighty No. 9 though, I believe at least one of the issues was that the game was riddled with programming issues at launch. Chimera-gui fucked around with this message at 07:20 on Feb 24, 2019 |
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Feb 24, 2019 07:02
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I appreciate all the responses, even though I can't figure out what to say to them all. Not nearly as much negativity as I expected, which is good, but people here tend to be fairly approachable and introspective on average. I think when we get further into the game I'll probably have more to say to people's perceptions of the design.
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Feb 25, 2019 02:05
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2. Spice and Dice I am aware I spelled "avoidable" incorrectly, yes.
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Feb 26, 2019 02:41
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I put too much into the KS to ignore the game and it got patched. I guess it got lost in the backlog which I am finally going through last year. I like the consideration of having a training section for trying out your new moves beyond showing what the regular and powered attack looks like. What if the regular and powered attack do very different things to stronger enemies? Tough luck, found out for yourself.
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Feb 26, 2019 03:58
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Brandish! That's one way to have it put its best foot forward. This and Countershade were my favorite levels. Also I'm aware that we're not here for the plot, but I felt like this was the only level that really sold the fact that Beck (correctly) believes himself to be rescuing his siblings from If you are in fact serious about your comments involving visual disabilities, Mark Brown's Designing For Disability has a full video on various vision deficiencies and how to design around them. (Mostly colorblindness, of course, because that's the failure mode that's most common.) My best guess based on watching the playthrough, is that this is an issue of both contrast and total amount of motion. The things you need to shoot are moving left across the screen, but are doing so more slowly than the background. I don't remember having trouble with the street signs when playing this stage, but watching the video I did occasionally struggle to pick out the street signs until they were a third of the way or more across the screen—at YouTube resolutions the street lights streaking past much faster jumped out as "important high contrast moving object" more often and drowned out the rest of the visual input. ManxomeBromide fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Feb 26, 2019 |
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Feb 26, 2019 04:27
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ManxomeBromide posted:Brandish! That's one way to have it put its best foot forward. This and Countershade were my favorite levels. i'll read that link
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Feb 26, 2019 04:58
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This was brought up in the video I linked earlier but what made Mega Man as a franchise so successful are the Robot Masters themselves who made Mega Man feel like a good Silver Age superhero game, something that could not be said for the actual licensed superhero games of the time which were usually terrible. There's a reason many Robot Masters became Navis in the Battle Network series and why both the Reploids in the X, Zero, and ZX and the Electromagnetic Beings in the Star Force series follow the format set by them. This is also the big aspect that carried over into MN9 in the form of the Mighty Numbers themselves.
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Feb 26, 2019 06:00
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Chimera-gui posted:This was brought up in the video I linked earlier but what made Mega Man as a franchise so successful are the Robot Masters themselves who made Mega Man feel like a good Silver Age superhero game, something that could not be said for the actual licensed superhero games of the time which were usually terrible. that's a pretty fair point, and it probably explains why i liked the games so much as a kid GamesAreSupernice fucked around with this message at 12:46 on Feb 26, 2019 |
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Feb 26, 2019 12:44
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To be up front, I have not played the game, I have no stake in it (read: didn't back) and will only sound like a backseat designer, but I wish to say a few things. This game is not perfect. No game is. There will always be something that is wrong to SOMEONE, even if it isn't the same thing. That said, this game is still good in many ways. It is visually appealing in it's own way, it does make you think of the games it comes from, yet it also makes you look at what it brings to the table to make it different so it stands out on it's own. Most of the voice acting is good but some feel stilted and one in particular *cough*Call*cough* sound so deadpan/phoned in that I really wish they re-recorded to give them even just a little life. I agree with GAS that the game doesn't need to teach as you play. It has a section for that but that is where I think the biggest fault comes from. GAS calls them what they in the game and THAT is where I think almost every complaint comes from. "Challenge" missions. That is NOT what they are. They are TRAINING missions. The sliding and action move? Never ONCE did I see either in another persons play though. Either because they didn't know it existed or, as stated, thought they were useless/situational and thus never used them. Weapon usage was relegated to either a slash screen style tutorial, think a page out of a manual, or the "challenge" missions. To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't even think of touching the "challenge" missions till either late in the game, when I finally feel ready to actually do them because I've finally gotten use to the controls, or second play through, assuming I didn't get pissed at the game for be so "hard"/"unforgiving". But then to find out that there were actually there to TEACH me how to use everything properly? Instant table flip. If you want people to learn how to do something, don't be an idiot and misname things to be the opposite of what it really is. Honest question: When you hear/read Challenge, what do you think it means? Me? Not tutorial, that for certain.
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Mar 2, 2019 22:49
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Again, game isn't bad; it's just mediocre. Problem with it lies in the background info ie, the Kickstarter. Disclaimer: I was a backer (or Becker as they called us) of this project so my opinions are jaded. MN9 is an example of a poorly handled Kickstarter. My main issue with it was that it was billed as a culmination of Inafune's works on the Megaman series (so you'd think Original, X and Zero series) and tibits of that can be seen (most as DLC) but the majority of the game feels like the classic series. That's fine if you like the classic series but honestly they're boring compared to the changes over the years. This can be chalked up t the fact that Inafune did not work on the actual game, he only gave the okay on things. The game was developed by an overseas group that had to have a translator tell them his problems with something. That's when I started to check out, well that and the fact that his problems with thing boiled down to "this is too easy, make this jump harder". Then of course there's the physical rewards that took forever to be sent out (if they ever did, been so long I can't remember that exact detail from memory) So yeah, I dislike the game because I did not receive the game I had envisioned, how narcissistic of me. But had I known this before release I would not have backed. I was hoping for a more X-style game with weapon and armor upgrades and whatnot. This is just a poor man's Megaman 11.
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Mar 3, 2019 00:38
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If the average person plays the game poorly then the mechanics are poorly explained
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Mar 3, 2019 01:29
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The game just feels heartless to me, the animations lack polish, the stages are visually (and usually mechanically) boring. Much of the stuff just feels like perfunctory inclusions. This stuff all could've been fixed with a bit more 'juice' but as is  Overall it feels really rushed and you can tell that the project ran out of money in development (because they tried to launch on every system at the same time for no reason). I think the game ~could~ have been good in time with another year in the oven or something. I also think that the people who DO enjoy the game are forgiving many glaring flaws to defend some of the solid game design decisions that are at the core but those decisions are so buried in lazy mediocrity that I'm not surprised most people can't really see them. I'd feel pretty comfortable applying the word 'bad' to this game. Agent355 fucked around with this message at 01:52 on Mar 3, 2019 |
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Mar 3, 2019 01:50
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Hitlers Gay Secret posted:This is just a poor man's Megaman 11. I feel like it'd be more correct to say MM11 is what Mighty Number 9 done right given the timeline of the production of these games.
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Mar 3, 2019 02:16
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Chimera-gui posted:I feel like it'd be more correct to say MM11 is what Mighty Number 9 done right given the timeline of the production of these games. Oh no, I mean that as that was the next possible Mega Man game when it was being made.
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Mar 3, 2019 02:26
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Endorph posted:If the average person plays the game poorly then the mechanics are poorly explained
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Mar 3, 2019 05:31
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If the average person plays the game poorly, the game may simply not be intended for the average person. Some games have mechanics that are genuinely difficult to explain through play. Not to mention that -even if someone does strive to show the mechanics through regular play- there will be those that don't grasp the relevance of the information they just used. My impression of many people who play games is that they're only slightly better than Dean and his infamous struggle with Cuphead's tutorial. The mechanics in MN9 have a menu dedicated solely to explaining them, a database accessible to anyone whose muscles have not atrophied from the extreme laziness that creates the entitled attitude I see everywhere. I have absolutely no faith that this conversation will go anywhere, but this fetishistic obsession with an "ideal" way to teach players mechanics is absurd, and I rarely see this kind of bizarre nonsense in reference to other hobbies or non-digital games. Indeed, in most circumstances, one is expected to read rules and comprehend them before playing something or participating in its mechanics. Videogames though, should apparently sacrifice their design for the sake of players who have suddenly lost the ability to comprehend text on a screen. I cannot express in words how endlessly frustrating this "teach the player through playing" nonsense has become. It feels like a desperate cry for some kind of unreasonable solution to something that already had a very reasonable and sensible one: Read the signs in Spongebob's house, you idiots. As for the "Challenge" missions, yes, those are poorly named, but they're a mixture of Tutorial and Training, so the devs may have been confused as to what name it should be given. Dr. White explicitly calls it a "VR training" program, though, and there is still -again- a dedicated menu to learning the mechanics. GamesAreSupernice fucked around with this message at 07:07 on Mar 3, 2019 |
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Mar 3, 2019 07:05
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Oh hey Supernice, haven't seen you in a while. I like your LPs a lot, you have an infectious enthusiasm and deep knowledge of lesser known and flawed-but-enjoyable games. Keep up the good work! 
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Mar 3, 2019 08:17
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ThisGamesAreSupernice posted:If the average person plays the game poorly, the game may simply not be intended for the average person. is really loving stupid. "Git gud" in this day and age?
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Mar 3, 2019 11:36
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GamesAreSupernice posted:The mechanics in MN9 have a menu dedicated solely to explaining them, a database accessible to anyone whose muscles have not atrophied from the extreme laziness that creates the entitled attitude I see everywhere. I have absolutely no faith that this conversation will go anywhere, but this fetishistic obsession with an "ideal" way to teach players mechanics is absurd, and I rarely see this kind of bizarre nonsense in reference to other hobbies or non-digital games. Indeed, in most circumstances, one is expected to read rules and comprehend them before playing something or participating in its mechanics. Videogames though, should apparently sacrifice their design for the sake of players who have suddenly lost the ability to comprehend text on a screen.  I'm really starting to question why you're defending this game so hard if you're literally going to start blaming people over not being a read/write learner like you. 
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Mar 3, 2019 11:46
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GamesAreSupernice posted:If the average person plays the game poorly, the game may simply not be intended for the average person. Ahaha this game may be universally accepted as being mediocre and disappointing but have you considered that maybe you're just not a real gamer? After all you need to have a very high IQ to appreciate Mighty No. 9 Are you serious
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Mar 3, 2019 12:18
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GamesAreSupernice posted:The mechanics in MN9 have a menu dedicated solely to explaining them, a database accessible to anyone whose muscles have not atrophied from the extreme laziness that creates the entitled attitude I see everywhere. I have absolutely no faith that this conversation will go anywhere, but this fetishistic obsession with an "ideal" way to teach players mechanics is absurd, and I rarely see this kind of bizarre nonsense in reference to other hobbies or non-digital games. Indeed, in most circumstances, one is expected to read rules and comprehend them before playing something or participating in its mechanics. Videogames though, should apparently sacrifice their design for the sake of players who have suddenly lost the ability to comprehend text on a screen. intuitively being able to learn mechanics through gameplay is the best possible design, though. even if you read somehing it doesnt necessarily show you how things work in practice. there's some things that can only be taught through text but being able to learn by doing is an enjoyable experience if it comes naturally and at a quick pace. this isn't about entitlement or anything, it's just about what's fun to play. the beginning of super mario 64 is fun because you can just run around in an open field and climb trees and poo poo. if the game opened with a giant wall of text about the exact mechanics of mario's slide, it wouldn't be fun. the game has some text-based tutorials if you need things explicitly explained to you, but you can also just learn things by doing them. this is the ideal, because doing things in a video game is the enjoyable part of playing a video game. and you literally do see this in reference to other hobbies or mediums. almost every visual medium praises the idea of showing concepts to the audience and letting them intuit how the world works/what characters want without having it explicitly explained to them. look at film, there's tons and tons of tricks to get the audience to learn things without an exposition dump, in order to prime them for important scenes or the general plot of the movie, or even just jokes. if you have a character run away from a dangerous situation twice, you know that he's a coward without the movie having to tell you he's a coward, so that in the third act when he actually stands his ground it registers as a turnaround for him, even without anything being explicitly communicated through dialogue to the audience. Likewise, if you just have a character stand his ground in the third act without having established him having any trouble with that, and act like it's a big turnaround for his character, then audiences will be confused and underwhelmed. Again, outright text-based tutorials aren't bad, just like outright exposition isn't bad, but ideally it should be working together with something that allows the players to learn things for themselves. and even all that aside, mighty number 9's tutorials explain things incredibly poorly, there's lots of mechanics that don't get properly explained in them, and the tutorial level (which, by the way, exists, so clearly they wanted the player to learn things through gameplay) outright contradicts them or punishes you for engaging with them in the way the text-based tutorials tell you to. Endorph fucked around with this message at 12:30 on Mar 3, 2019 |
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Mar 3, 2019 12:25
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as an addendum, you aren't an ubermensch because you like mighty number nine, dude. i like plenty of games that got poor critical receptions or i feel people are dismissive of, but you can explain those things without getting insanely mad at people who dislike it or acting like people are somehow inferior for not liking it. Like, Yggdra Union is incredibly poorly explained and has mechanics that can easily force you into a nearly unwinnable situation without you even being fully aware that you're getting into one, and the ideal method of play is counter-intuitive. I love that game. These two things can exist at the same time? I'm not gonna say people who don't like Yggdra Union 'don't get it' or that they're lazy.
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Mar 3, 2019 12:29
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This is all really quite wrong.
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Mar 3, 2019 16:33
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Gameplay aside the art and sound direction is still going a long way towards confirming I made the right call when I got the game on PS+ to play one level for the cheevo then delete it. Woof. I was never a big Mega Man guy so no real comments on the gameplay beyond not really feeling the absorption mechanics. Wasn't a big problem with the Kickstarter that they used half the money to make an anime no one cared about as well?
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Mar 3, 2019 16:36
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I tried to find out about an anime and they did try to cross market a bunch of stuff like manga, anime, and a saturday morning cartoon series but only the saturday morning cartoon went into production but even that was likely scrapped before the game even released and we don't know how much money was spent on it. Probably the single biggest problem is that they kept promising more versions of the game without understanding just how hard it is to dev on mulitple platforms simultaneously. If they had just stuck to steam only with other consoles later it would've worked so much better but like most failed kickstarters they get overconfident and try to do too much with the money. Part of this is the way that kickstarter is funded, you say 'hey if we get another 200k we'll do X' but the thing is, in real game dev you don't know how much a feature is going to cost and promising that you'll get X for 200k can really hogtie the studio. They can't just cut X if they're going over budget because the kickstarter people will expect it. Other games will have tons of cut content that the end user never even knew existed so there was never an expectation of a fully realized dynamic lighting system.
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Mar 3, 2019 17:01
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Pathologic 2's hitting the same problem but instead of trying to make an anime they tried to put too much in the game then the Russian economy blew up again so they're releasing it piecemeal now.
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Mar 3, 2019 17:02
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Early access is a real good solution for games. People bitch about it because of the abandoned projects, and yeah that is a downside. But it lets the dev produce things at a steady pace and still get crowdfunded while not being forced to over promise features or platforms that they can't meet.
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Mar 3, 2019 17:05
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It's kind of flattering to see so many people having this many passionate opinions about games as a medium in this thread. I don't even violently disagree with all of them.
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Mar 3, 2019 18:55
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RBA Starblade posted:Gameplay aside the art and sound direction is still going a long way towards confirming I made the right call when I got the game on PS+ to play one level for the cheevo then delete it. Woof. I was never a big Mega Man guy so no real comments on the gameplay beyond not really feeling the absorption mechanics. That anime actually got funded, btw. There's still been no word on it.
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Mar 4, 2019 02:00
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Endorph posted:They talked about making a bunch of tie in stuff for Mighty Number 9 that never materialized, and halfway through they started a kickstarter for an entirely different game, and also a third kickstarter for that game's anime. The game/anime/whatever in question is/was Red Ash: The Indelible Legend, which is basically Inafune's reroll on MNo9 after its colossal faceplant. It's wrapped up in a bunch more controversies in and of itself and is probably gonna be dead on arrival too once it's finally published through bad press alone, not to mention the fact that it's being made by a sub studio of Level-5, which is usually the kiss of death if you're not lucky enough to be a Layton, Inazuma Eleven, or Yokai Watch title. The anime has only produced so far one product, a CG short called Red Ash: -Gearworld-, that was supposed to launch concurrent with the release of the game, but then went and aired on Animax back in 2017 for some reason and everyone thought it had leaked prematurely like the Cartoon Network Mega Man series did. Thus far the actual game of Red Ash has no release date and probably won't see the light of day for a while to come. Over all it's been one amazing slip-n-slide shitshow disaster for Inafune ever since he left Capcom. Capcom in the meanwhile actually seems to have gotten the message from his departure and has been actually paying attention to the Mega Man IP lately without him. Also I have no interest in playing either Red Ash or Mighty No. 9, despite being a fairly big Mega Man fan in my earlier years. So I'm just gonna take Literally Everyone's word for it and go with "Yeah, it's bad." Sorry OP.
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Mar 4, 2019 02:36
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My Mighty No.9 experience can be summed up thusly. I played it, disliked it. Was talking to a friend who doesn't like Megaman one day and she said she couldn't see the difference between the two. She went and brought it, played it, came back and went "Nope, that was a shitshow." Specifically, she mentioned how, due to unfortunate degeneration in her eyes, she can only see out of one of them, and in a few years she's going to be completely blind. Mighty No.9 hurt her to play. Not because it was 'ugly' but because the actual visual clarity of the game hosed with her vision bad. She plays Payday 2 and Battlefield games very well, because, like or hate those games, the visual design is such that even her almost-blind self can play.
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Mar 4, 2019 04:16
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