Mega Man VII
Platform Played On: SNES
ABOUT
Mega Man VII is the next numbered entry into the mainline Mega Man games on the Super Nintendo. Though it's not Mega Man's first Mega Man game on the SNES it is still the first of it's original series atleast. It features a whole graphical upgrade, new gameplay mechanics, secrets, and etc.
STORY
Mega Man VII takes place 6 months after Mega Man VI, which in that game Dr. Wily got Arrest. Apparently, Dr. Wily had a trick up his sleeve in which if these 8 Robot Masters weren't getting any activity from Dr. Wily, they will wake up and proceed to look for Dr. Wily all the while causing chaos. The game starts out with a cutscene in which Mega Man, Roll and a new character Auto are all going to check out the carnage that was happening in the city. There's also a funny moment in which Auto gave Mega Man a Met hat but proceed to give him his iconic Helmet. As Mega Man goes through the city and fighting off some of the baddies in his way, We get introduce to a new character "Bass and Treble" (I c what u did there capcom...) as they help Mega Man and Mega Man considers himself a friend of his. As you progress you later on meet Bass once again in which he was injured and Mega Man let Bass get some help with Dr. Wily to repair. Unsurprisingly later, It turns out that Bass was evil all along and destroyed part of Dr. Light's lab alongside his invention. Mega Man and Bass both battle it out, twice, at Dr. Wily's castle as you finally reach the end and defeat the final boss that may take you half of your playtime. At the end, Dr. Wily pleaded with Mega Man that he gives up. However, Mega Man is Mega fucking pissed and doesn't wanna deal with this shit anymore and so he was about to straight up shoot and kill Dr. Wily right then and there. Dr. Wily told Mega Man that Robots can't kill Humans, and Mega Man told Dr. Wily that he was more than just a Robot. Some Debris falls on Dr. Wily as Treble shows up to rescure Dr. Wily and Bass shows up. Telling Mega Man that this wasn't the last of this as he teleports away, in which Mega Man does as well. Mega Man at the credits walks towards the camera as in the background you can see Dr. Wily's castle absolutely up in flames as he walks back, Going back to auto's shop and that was pretty much it.
This game had plenty more cutscenes compared to the original NES games, Utilizing the SNES's capabilities of graphics and memory and all that to slide all this in. Overall, I think the story is pretty good and well setup compared to the last game. It would have been so so satisfying if Mega Man did blast Dr. Wily's head right off with a fully charged Mega Blaster. But eh, that would cut the series kinda short wouldn't it?
GAMEPLAY
So the Gameplay... I should say that once you get a lot of the items, It becomes really fun overall. Many mechanics are switched over for the next generation of consoles as they could do a bit more with this game now. Sutff like Mega Buster and Sliding are still the same. Rush comes back with Rush Coil, Rush Jet and a new Rush Search, In which you unlock by finding them in various levels. Now I will say, Rush Coil is back to the older styled Rush Coil where instead this time Rush is more like a bounce pad once again, Rush jet is about the same as it was on the previous two titles. However, Rush Adapter is the combination of MM6's Rush Jet and Rush Power adapters. You can now make basically like a diagonal double jump and you can charge your buster to make a fist attack. There is an upgrade you can get for it which launches the fist a lot further and even homes in ont a target, Pretty much I like this one a lot better. To unlock it though you need to find the "RUSH" letters in 4 stages to get it. Now, in this game you may notice that instead of 9 E Tanks you now only have 4 E Tanks, This kinda sucks but it's actually fairly easy to farm for E Tanks as well. As long as you get the "Escape Unit", you should be able to get full 4 E tanks in about less than 5 minutes in Burst Man's stage (It's litterally at the near beginning). There's also W Tanks in which replinished all of your weapons and a S tank that does both the E tank and W Tanks, but you can only get 1 of them. We're not even done yet and I have like 5 lines of text here jesus, Okay so. In this game, there's also a Shop that you can access with the select button on the screen, In the shop you can get various items like the E/W/S Tanks, Lives, etc. You may see some Upgrades but never get those since you can litterally find all of your upgrades with Rush Search, You may have to get a guide out on this game on where everything is because there's stuff like Auto's Screw in which gives you a Discount on all the items and unlocks more of the items in the shop, Again don't buy upgrades from the shop.
Okay so, The Stages? They're honestly alright, Some of them are great but some are okay if I'll be honest. You will be going through these stages like multiple times if you need to find something or farm something, I kinda have them all implanted in my head at this point as they now are more easier the more that I went through them finding secrets. Oh yeah, There's Secrets you unlock like Beat and Protoman's Shield in which you can obtain when you find him like 3 times and fight him. Secrets is just a huge thing in this game and as I said, get a guide before playing it if you need help knowing where all the secrets cuz I can garantee you that you will probably only find the Rush Adapter suit on your own (Mostly). As for the bosses, There's some new interesting things about that. You see, when you first start the game, You only get a selection of 4 robot masters, They do all share the same weakness. There's also a mid game boss that's a robot clown you need to fight but you only fight like once. The Robot Masters can vary, of course they can be hard even if you know the mechanics but most of them are a cake walk. Litterally with cloud man, You just keep firing danger wrap as soon as it's about to get up and you can just stand there fighting it. Or Junk man in which you throw a electric ball at it, proceed to slide under and do it again repeatedly. I'm not joking, for how the final boss is which we will get in a bit, I have No hitted about half of the bosses at this point because of how many times I fought them with the rematches... Now for Bass, You fight him of course his fights are interesting and cool in my opinion. The first fight isn't too bad, it took me a couple of tries to fight him but I eventually got him. Now for his second fight is him using the Treble Adapter and I gotta say he looks fucking SICK. But his fight is quite hard and the best thing to use is also use your rad Rush Adapater (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD FIND THE POWER UP FOR THE RUSH ADAPTER AS THAT WOULD HAVE MADE IT EASIER IF I KNEW ABOUT IT PRIOR). He's all in all a tough fight but once you get him down, it's satisfying to see him go down. Okay so, Dr. Wily. Luckily this is the game where you go straight to Dr. Wily's castle instead of Tip Toe around with a secondary character (it got kinda annoying after a while). The first phase of Dr. Wily isn't that bad at all and really fun, It's the DREADED SECOND PHASE!!!! OH MY GOD!!!! HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!! Imma be real, When you know the strat it's still kinda tough... But this Boss fight is so bullshit and it's the single handed fight that makes me never to want to play this game after this. So okay, He's in his pod once again firing his balls at you and stuff. Yeah this time it's a bit different. He appears around the arena going invisible and visible at random place, you must hit him with the Freeze weapon which is the best to use cause you can aim it up or hit down as one of the shards can hit him. He summons these elemental balls as the first kinda stuns you as your health slowly depleats, The ice one that freezes you in which you gotta button mash to try to get out of fast or have the electric ball attack where it goes across the ground hit you, and there's the electric ball which is actually IDEAL to get hit by if you needed to take damage. These ball are summoned in a large square and has a moment to move a bit before being fired against you, What you'll need to do is to be right under wily, Dodge by sliding and then jump from the slide to dodge it (Hopefully). A strat I picked up is by hitting Wily with a ice, pause, choose electric and hit him with the electric attack to not make him cancel his elemental ball attack. Keep doing it and you won the game.
*sigh*, didn't mean to make it a guide but litterally half of my playthrough was against his final phase. If I had to say anything, The gameplay is good and can be quite questionably better or worse depending on how you felt about some of the changes (Rush jet has a whole transformation animation that takes a moment before you can ride on him...)
MUSIC
The music being upgraded to the SNES is actually so good in this game. Don't get me wrong, chiptune is nice but I really like the music in this game especially Turbo Man and ahem, the secret music of Shade Man (Press A+B while selecting Shade Man and you're in for a treat!). The sound effects and everything was just really good. I don't have any complaints on it overall, I just think there's tracks that should be very Notable imo.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Mega Man VII is an experience and a half, Part of me want to say that this was a great Mega Man game for someone new but also that final boss is just, Yeah nah. If anything else I think the Graphical upgrade is nice but Mega Man's sprite is really quite big, Probably Bigger than X's sprite in Mega Man X (I've never played that one but I have seen gameplay). I do think it's interesting how there's secrets you need to find in this game as it does enhance the gameplay to be even better and they really did good with my favorite powerup in any Mega Man game, Rush Adapter. Overall, I do wanna put this above Mega Man IV but below Mega Man II for what I have played so far.