@Slaid-0080

10 months ago

I liked Mega Man 11 well enough when it came out half a decade ago(!!!) at this point but haven't gone back to it since, and while I like pretty much all of the mainline Mega Man games to some extent, it's never been MY Mega Man in the way that X is. I think this has kept me from being either super entheusiastic or super critical of any of these games. They all just kind of get tossed in the It's a Pretty Good Mega Man Game bucket. It's on sale on Steam right now, so maybe I'll pick it up again and give it another playthrough. It does really feel to me that ever since even the SNES days mainline Mega Man has been grasping for an identity of it's own. It continues running even though it's already passed the baton to the X series. While I like the dual gear system, I really do think that it's emblematic of that need to find that identity. Trying to push that branch of Mega Man forward while still fitting within the mainline series. It's a series pulled between the need to "innovate" while also being this retro throwback thing. It doesn't help that the franchise as a whole has spent the last fifteen years or so without a steady stream of new games(outside of re-releases) so it feels like every new entry has to contend with the franchises legacy, a trap that so many sequels throughout all mediums have been dealing with. At this point, after they're done with all of the remasters they want to do, I hope that they let these old sub-series rest and start a new one for a new generation of fans, like they did before with X and Battle Network.

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