Mega Man 4 gets a lot of hate, and deserves some of it. As the first of the three Mega Man games that appeared on the NES after the launch of the SNES, it represents a highly polished and mostly faithful continuation of a series that was perhaps running out of steam.
Visually speaking, Mega Man 4 is gorgeous. The Mega Man games only get better with time, with 6 being the best looking, and 1 being the worst. But the advancements are far more marginal here than in the great leaps forward in the second and third games. Other than that, the only major difference between three and 4 is the addition of an innovation which would carry forward into essentially every Mega Man game from 4 onward, the ability to charge up your shot to power it up.
While some people argue that this is a balance busting change, due to the fact that the charged mega buster does nearly as much damage to bosses as their weapon weaknesses, I don't think that this is the case. While it is true that the damage is similar, the reality is that charging the buster makes dodging harder, and takes time, due to the fact that you are now focusing on doing two things at once, and that the shot takes two seconds or so to charge up. Using the weapons is definitely easier than a charged shot, but the gap is definitely more narrow, undercutting one of the definitive aspects of the series. Adding the charge also significantly slows the pace of the game, as you are heavily compensated for taking time to charge up the shot before moving on. Later games like Mega Man X and the Zero series utilize the charged shot in better ways, although I don't find this to be the heretical change that many do.
Other improvements come in terms of tinkering with the existing designs from Mega Man 3. The Rush Jet is FAR superior in Mega Man 4, as it flies in one direction, with you only being able to slowly adapt the height of Rush. This reduces your ability to lean on the Rush Jet too hard in avoiding difficult areas.
The levels are again well done, with plenty of challenging platforming elements, and plenty of beautiful and enjoyable enemies to defeat along the way. The difficulty is definitely harder than 2, although much simpler than 3, so it probably represents a nicely challenging game for the more casual Mega Man fan, although people who want a challenge will probably gravitate more towards 3.
There are plenty of weaknesses to the game, however, besides the overblown concerns about the charged buster shot. The music isn't as good as in 3, and is far worse than 2, although it's still solid. When your progenitors are so excellent, even good work can seem pedestrian, so this problem is less important than you might think.
The plot twist at the end was about as hackneyed and predictable as you could get, so the designers' attempt at telling a slightly different story with better storytelling elements is pretty much a flop here.
Some of the robot masters are simply so stupidly designed as to be farcical. Who remembers that legendary robot master, Dust Man? To boot, some are so simple to beat as to be completely lacking in value whatsoever, including Toad Man.
All in all, Mega Man 4 is my least favorite NES Mega Man game, although I'd still take it ahead of X3. It's one major innovation is mostly panned, although I find it to be only a weakness, rather than the crushing force of the game. The main problem with Mega Man 4 is that it does basically everything worse than 3, and begins to beg the question of why this game was developed for the NES rather than the new SNES. That question, however, should be shouted louder and louder with the next two games, as the SNES was at least new at the release of Mega Man 4, while 6 was released several years into the SNES' lifespan. But judging based on Mega Man 7, maybe it was a good decision to keep our happy robot friend in the 8 bit era for a while, and let X dominate the SNES.
I'll give Mega Man 4 a 8.0/10. It's still a good game, but it stands in the shadow of greatness.
-TRO
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