4/5 ★ – BlueSorcerer's review of Mega Man 10.

Mega Man 10 is honestly pretty solid. In several regards, I can compare it to Mega Man 9. But in other regards, it doesn’t fully match the latter’s level of quality. The story of Mega Man 10 is honestly more dark and gritty than I was expecting. Granted other Mega Man stories have been pretty serious before, but this one honestly stands out to me a little more than others do. This time around, a virus known as “Roboenza” runs rampant and infects robots all across the globe, thus hindering human civilization. Roll herself becomes infected with the virus and Dr. Wily—while trying to create a cure for the virus—reports to have been attacked by one of his robots that got infected and flees to Dr. Light’s laboratory in need of help. Despite knowing how situations like this have gone in the past, Dr. Light agrees to help Dr. Wily and Mega Man, as well as Proto Man, set out to stop the eight new Robot Masters holding the materials needed to produce a medicine-making machine for the virus. As for the Robot Masters themselves, they are pretty good for the most part. Pump Man’s and Solar Man’s stages are pretty unique and the two bosses are well-designed. Chill Man’s, Commando Man’s, and Blade Man’s stages are a little more on the decent side but they are still perfectly fine stages, boss and all. And Nitro Man’s, Strike Man’s, and Sheep Man’s stages—while only alright to me—are still relatively unique and I do like the music in Sheep Man’s stage. The only two things I’m not the biggest fan of in the Robot Master stages are the mini-bosses and some of the enemy placements in Strike Man’s stage, and the disappearing and reappearing block sections in Sheep Man’s stage. But even then, I still don’t have a huge problem with both of these things. While taking down the eight Robot Masters, Dr. Light manages to create a prototype cure for the virus that he tells Roll to take. But after defeating the last Robot Master, Mega Man finds himself coming down with the virus and Dr. Wily reveals that he was the one who caused the virus to spread—who would have thought—and invites all robots who seek the cure to come and work for him. At first, I didn’t know what was going to happen here. I expected Mega Man to find a way to cure himself somehow, but I was not prepared for this. All of a sudden, Roll shows up and offers the prototype cure to Mega Man, haven’t taken the cure at all. I’m not going to lie, but this moment kind of hit me a little bit inside. I still had no issues with Roll whatsoever, but I would be lying if I didn’t say that I developed a lot more appreciation for Roll as a character as a result of what she did here. In offering the prototype cure, Mega Man gets back into action and—after curing Proto Man of the virus himself—and pursues Dr. Wily once again across his two bases. As for Wily’s Fortress this time, it’s pretty solid. The first stage is pretty good and I like how the mini-bosses utilize the abilities of past Robot Masters. The second stage is also pretty good even though the bosses feel like a slight step down. As for the third stage, it’s pretty cool and has some cool gimmicks, namely the elevator sequences. The boss, however, I do not like. It just takes too long, similar to the boss from Wily’s Fortress 3 in Mega Man 9. Gee, if I had a nickel for every time I did not like the boss in the third stage of Wily’s Fortress in a Mega Man game mainly due to it being a waiting game, but still liked a gimmick that was introduced in said stage specifically, I would have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice… I’m sorry, I honestly couldn’t resist. Once those three stages are done, the boss rush and the final boss with Dr. Wily take place in the fourth stage. The latter itself wasn’t all too bad and it didn’t take too long to put a stop to him—or so I thought. After taking out Dr. Wily’s two forms in the fourth stage, he retreats all the way to space where a fifth level commences. Intimidating, but at the same time where is Dr. Wily getting all of the funds to make these bases? Goodness gracious! Well, it wouldn’t be a Dr. Wily boss without the capsule form so who am I kidding? The stage itself is perfectly fine, but it does the “drills coming out of the ceilings and floors” thing from the opening level of Mega Man & Bass and I don’t know how to feel about that. Otherwise, the third phase with Dr. Wily is pretty decent and it’s relatively straightforward to bring him down. With that all said and done, Mega Man takes down Dr. Wily once again only for the former to find that the latter has come down with a sickness himself (perhaps human influenza). Mega Man, not giving into his demons like in the ending of Mega Man 7, takes Dr. Wily to a hospital where he escapes a few days later (Great!). Fortunately, Dr. Wily left behind enough of the cure to rid the globe of the Roboenza virus for good. And with that, Mega Man 10 comes to an end. Well, that was an interesting experience but in a good way. Mega Man 10 is honestly a pretty solid game all things considered. Like Mega Man 9, there aren’t really any stages that I actively dislike and I think that the level design and bosses are equally solid. There are some stage and boss elements that I’m not the biggest fan of, but even then they don’t detract my enjoyment with the game all that much. If there is anything else at all about the game that I’m not the biggest fan of, it would probably be the music. While I do quite like the music in the Wily Fortress levels, the rest of the soundtrack is really only decent to me. Of the Robot Master stages, Sheep Man’s theme is probably the only track that I actually like. Not to say that the soundtrack sucks; this one just didn’t really appeal to me that much. Regardless, Mega Man 10 is a pretty solid game in my eyes and I do like it for what it offers. I wouldn’t put it above Mega Man 2, 6, or even 9, but for what it’s worth it is certainly up there.