QCF: Mighty No. 9

o after all of the anticipation, in spite of the delays that served to simultaneously fervor and stifle the excitement; Mighty No. 9 is out, and well, it’s most certainly left an impression, that much is safe to say. Inafune’s premier project banked on the charm of its ambition, which in hindsight, explains why lackluster delivery out of this project hit so hard, and almost why it was sort of doomed from the start.

The initial appeal to this endeavor was how it was poised to be the spiritual successor to a franchise that we all assumed that Capcom long forgot, but Mighty No. 9 just clumsily fumbles about in the shadow that Mega Man casted over it as it fails to cast one of its own.

When I mentioned that Mighty No. 9 fumbles, I mean it really fumbles; you’ll recognize all the familiar balls that it picked up from the Blue Bomber’s court, that follow with a the crushing realization towards just how clumsily it runs with them the moment the actions starts.

Look, a lot of reviews out there are going to focus on contrasting what Mighty No. 9 does wrong in comparison to Mega Man, and I just don’t think that applying that approach in entirely constructive because to Mighty No. 9’s credit—it did try to offer unique twist to the formula that it was essentially succeeding. The real issue here is how rough, and thrown together everything seems, and how poorly the game communicates it to you; none of the mechanics found in Beck’s premier adventure are intuitive upon first glance, and the execution is to unavoidably clumsy, no matter the skill level of play involved.

For instance, let’s pick apart the level design for a bit to illustrate what I’m talking about; the construction behind most of the various perils and obstacles encountered in each and every stage is just plain sporadic, with no sense of cadence, and little, if any deliberation to its makeup.

I want to make clear that there indeed are moments where the hazards in Comcept’s side-scroller are balanced with just the right kind of imposition to instill a sense of timing and agency to scan for the right kind of tactic to overcome it, but only moments. A majority of the time the traps and challenges will blindside you with trial and error bull shit that isn’t particularly clever, or polished for that matter.

The Mine stage in particular is easily the biggest offender to this regard, are several sequences that are flat out lethal to any degree of error, and the inferred direction to navigate the course is just lazily telegraphed on screen, leading up to players resorting heavily upon trial and error as result. This issue is compounded even further with mind-bogglingly bad enemy placement.

Most of the mechanical opponents that roam the screen will take residence in the most treacherous area of stage that they can, especially in relation to the adjacent obstacle whenever stumbled upon, and the challenge of powering through them isn’t really satisfying, just annoying—as if you just contended with a bad Mario Maker level. The biggest issue is how frequent your foes will hover above you, always flying outside of your line of fire, with little to no jumping options available at any given point to contend with the threat they present effectively, leaving you with no choice but to evade.

“Yeah George, we get it, the level design is really bad, but what about the boss fights and combat, that shit is cool right?” No, no dear reader, that shit is most certainly not cool either.

Let’s talk about the dash dynamic; in order to destroy a metal minion efficaciously, you’ll need to shoot at it until it glows a certain color, then dash through them to “assimilate” them and disintegrate them out of existence. I say “glow” instead of stun because I’d be lying if I said that, the danger isn’t eliminated at all when you reduce a baddie to its “breaking point” and you’ll have to stay vigilant throughout the entire engagement.

The emphasis of the new dynamic to this very old combat formula is certainly new…I’ll give it that, but after the introductory stage, it’s more awkward than anything else. More often than not, enemy encounters will assault you in numbers, and as I mentioned before, they’ll populate the most annoying points of the stage that they can, you can’t really dispose of them from long-distance because the killing blow requires some form of close-contact with your stupid dash maneuver, which just comes to be so suffocating at times. Now I understand that getting ganged up on incentivizes players into chaining their dash kills consecutively through some well places shots and thrusts, that much is clear—but do you want to know what isn’t clear?

The core fundamentals that determine how the hell you actually get scored; As in so far, I’ve empirically concluded that dashing into more than downed enemy within a single boost, I’ll get a boosted score, but I could not explain to you for the life of me the proper technique behind acquiring a recognized chain of kills in Mighty No. 9. It seems like the criteria used to dictate that accomplished constantly changes: do I have to make sure that I do it all in a certain time frame? Do I have to tag through all the bad guys in a flurry of dashes before I touch the ground for it to count? I really don’t know, because it feels like I’ve tried experimenting with these assumed stipulations and the results were always inconsistent, without me changing anything I did between both instances.

It all goes back to the biggest issue that Mighty No. 9 has; it half-asses everything it’s trying to infer upon its players with mechanics that are marred by a fragmented execution, or really, really poor communication on a multitude of levels on explaining how to even properly play it.

What’s more disheartening is that Mighty No. 9 does follow through with what it’s trying to do, it’s just mediocre at best. The boss fights are more of a choreographed exercise than they are a battle of life and death, and the powers that you acquire don’t really offer any additional applications from their use outside of the boss fight they’re strong against, most of them are just impractical and borderline useless out of their sheer gimmickry to be honest. Aside from the few moment I used Battalion’s explosives, I stuck with switching off between Brand’s blades for its strength, and Avi’s propeller for the boosted jumps and maneuverability—yeah by the way, no explanation given on how Avi’s power can improve your jumping, I had to figure that out much later than I would’ve wanted in the game.

Mighty No. 9 aspires to invite players into a house that was built by the same man who was integral in laying down the groundwork for the foundation of Mega Man. The reality is that it brings you into a shoddy bungalow that doesn’t come close in delivering upon its promised potential, or justifying the time and money that it took to build the damn thing even for that matter.

Mighty No. 9 isn’t awful, but it certainly isn’t good either, and considering the level of pedigree that it was promoted behind, and the climate was poised to flourish the most in given the void it was meant to fill, I can most assuredly tell you that no, no Mighty No. 9 is most certainly not better than nothing.