A fun game but does it live up to its predecessor?
Another disappointing feature to this game is the music. It's kind of cheezy. The stage tunes are not very catchy. It seems like the composer didn't even try to write the same quality of music that made these incredibly hard stages bearable and enjoyable to play. One thing I could almost always look forward to in past Mega Man games is fun stage music, and this game was severly lacking in that department. I will admit, the sound track began to improve about 1/3 the way through stage 1 of Wily's castle and throughtout from that point. Just one thing to keep in mind: while an action movie relies on a great soundtrack to enhance the viewing experience, the same is true for video games, and it was sad to see a Mega Man game fall short here when it has always had great music in the past.
This game's saving grace, besides the inclusion of a playable Protoman, is the ability to set the difficulty level to easy. THANK YOU CAPCOM! Face it, Mega Man is an extremely difficult game, and some of us need to ease our way in to the game without dying a thousand times before we figure out what we're doing. It's kind of disheartening to be killed repeatedly on the first stage. After playing through easy mode, which was still pretty difficult at times depending on the stage, it made the transition to normal mode much more bearable. But don't even talk to me about 'hard' mode (available after you beat the game on 'normal'): it's rediculous!
Overall, I consider Mega Man 10 well worth playing for all fans of the Mega Man franchise, especially if you're curious about controling Protoman for a change, but due to some of its previously mentioned shortcomings, I cannot consider it a great improvement on its predecessor. It's certainly not worse but probably only a hair better. It's a good game, but it could be much better.