Originally conceived as Kickstarter project, Mighty No. 9 is the brain child of legendary director Keiji Inafune, who is responsible for some of the most influential games such as Vanquish, Mega Man and Onimusha. Keiji set out to create a spiritual successor to Mega Man with this game, and that fact mixed with Capcom’s reluctance on progressing the Mega Man IP, was assuredly a strong reason amongst distraught Mega Man fans to successfully fund his latest game. After numerous delays, and sketchy release choices, the game has finally been released.

As a long-time fan of Keiji’s work and Mega Man itself, I refuse to believe that Inafune was serious about this, or was even completely involved in its creation. As a man who has a reputation for good level design and progression with published games that support that fact, this does not feel like his work, as unfortunately the only aspect that is mighty about this game, is in the game’s equivocal title alone.

The game is riddled with bad design choices that make the game pointlessly hard, as the controls don’t feel responsive at all, which for a platformer is unequivocally not acceptable. As the titular hero, you possess an ability to absorb other robot’s abilities, giving you an edge in combat. The way this mechanic works is that once you have weakened your enemies, you have to dash through them. It sounds interesting, but it has not been implemented in a way that makes it feel both powerful and enjoyable.  You have no control over how long you dash which needlessly takes away the accuracy required in certain situations.

Furthermore, the way the hazards have been placed in conjunction with the platforms, hinder the difficulty balance. These days, a lot of the developers seem to be having confusion between the words hard and challenging. You can make your game hard easily, but it’s much more difficult to make it enjoyably challenging, and that effort is unfortunately amiss in this title, as if this wasn’t given enough time to be developed. Which begs me to ask, what were the delays for? Most gamers are now accustomed to Mr Miyamoto’s iconic quote, “A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever.“, and in this case it proves that not always can delay be a good thing.

They managed to acquire a sizable amount of money, and yet we’ve got low-res, and bland assets in part of the game. For a game in 2016, where even my android can play GTA San Andreas, that is neither acceptable or excusable. If inspiration was all they wanted, they could’ve easily looked at Double Helix’s excellent Strider, which has lush visuals and to the point control design, but I am afraid a breakthrough game was not the plan with this project.

The character designs are very reminiscent of Mega Man characters, but even then they fail to visually promote any personality. There are no noticeable facial animations for the game’s character which shouldn’t have been hard to create, as Unity (the engine the game is created on) has an expansive range of tools that make it easier for you to do so, but again, they cut corners there. The voice-over sounds like a bad English dub you’d notice on an anime and do not effectively portray the characters they are supposed to, everyone sounds whiny. So, as you can now tell, the characters are not hugely likable, at least not in my opinion. One of the bosses is literally just called, Round Digger. 

I wanted to like this game, I really did, but every time I play it, it gives me no incentive to carry on, and the dull looking assets mixed with the repetitive gameplay makes it too dull to be fun for engaging periods of time. There is extra content in the game available, such as challenges but again, the main gameplay isn’t fun enough to warrant you spending time with them.

Some cut scenes are literally just slideshows of different artwork with a voice over on them. In my opinion, to truly make this work, and give MN9 even a remote chance of becoming something big, they should’ve been animated. I don’t mean animated as in completely animated like a cartoon, as even I know they didn’t have that much budget. What I instead mean is that would’ve been better to have motion comic elements to it, then either showing image slideshows with uninspired voice over on them or the barely animated 3D sequences.

I understand that at this point, my review may be a bit scathing, but there is a reason why I am not giving this game a bit of leg room. Firstly, they managed to acquire $4,000,000 in budget from the Kickstarter campaign, and I have seen much more impressive efforts with far less amount of money. Seriously, have you guys seen Braid? That game looks amazing, and the mechanics it features are exhilarating, and care to guess how much it cost to make? $200,000! Sure even that isn’t cheap, but if you could take Braid and give it a 10x bigger budget, it would still only amount to half of what Mighty No. 9 had.

Secondly, Inafune was behind this, he promised gamers a lot of things, promises which were not entirely kept. How can a reputable man with solid on-paper experience manage to sink a project so bad? More importantly, did he even care about this project, and gave it the effort it so desperately required? From what the game plays like currently, we unfortunately have to lean on NO, he hasn’t.

So you see, I am not infuriated only because it is a bad game, but also because it is quite a huge tragedy from a developer’s standpoint. There is nothing special about this game, it’s boring, and doesn’t keep you hooked. It genuinely feels like they cut corners in order to save money. In conclusion, Mighty No 9 is not only a bad game, but is also a warning for future backers, that no matter how big of a developer is asking you to pitch in, they may not have the skill required to carry the game.