Review: Rockman 4 minus infinity

 

Completion time:

My order: Toad, Bright, Pharaoh, Ring, Dust, Skull, Dive, Drill

One of the most famous Mega Man romhack, I'm only playing it now. Let's see how good it is.

Indeed, the item is dug.

Rockman 4 Minus Infinity (let's say R4MI) is a japanese romhack of Rockman 4. There is a "engrish" language option made by the autor and translation tools to somewhat understand a bit the game. The game say a proper english translation may be made in the future, but considering how old the game is starting to be, it's not happening. Not like there's many text, or that the text really matter. It's Mega Man after all. The game start simple (although you can see a really neat option menu at the start) but become really crazy at the end. I would compare it to Brutal Mario in some ways.

 

The train Metool from MM5. Strangely it appears only twice in this level, here.

 

The first 8 robot master levels. The level graphics is mostly vanilla, unlike other romhack it doesn't try to completely change the theme of the levels, instead it build on it and introduce new and exiting gimmicks. I though some levels were longer than others (especially Toad Man), being a bit longer than the original but still not absurdly long. The new gameplay elements are of course impressive technically, but blend well with the level. I have a critic though, is that in some of the levels (not all), some elements are underutilized, which seems a waste. Two contradiction examples is Bright Man, the two halves have their gimmicks which is great, while Toad Man has too many different level ideas that came and go too quickly like the rush surf at the end (the game also doesn't teach you that you can double jump in that part). Pharaoh man may be the worst offender in that case. Skull man level, being centered about platforming was awesome, my favorite robot master level.

 

Diagonal scrolling? Awesome

 

The endgame levels and the boss is where Puresabe show all it's ASM knowledge and try to show how impressive it can be. Indeed, it become really impressive. But sometimes it's too crazy, some bosses can spam you of projectiles you can barely dodge, or have movements too erratic. At least they don't deal too much damage, but it becomes a bit of brute forcing, using an e-tank if needed. Also notable is the invulnerability frames were greatly decreased.

Yes I lost 8 times to Toad Man. He's a pain in the ass in this version.

The game tries to be kind to the player. There's many option to chose to adjust your difficulty (I played on normal), you start with some items like the energy balancer and can get new ones in-game. You have Rush dug to find items, you get the two items while playing normally (even if you can unlock them earlier though a challenge alternative path), the game isn't shy to give you e-tank and lives, as seen above where I game over only twice but lost 84 and could have lost more if I didn't use e-tank in some bosses.

 

Still icy.

 

But all these quality of life are balanced by the fact that, like I said, some bosses goes a bit too crazy. I think all of them can be done without e-tanks, except Wily. The levels also goes crazy, you will see many sprite flickering due to the sheer amount of simultaneous sprites on-screen. This craziness really gives it a "romhack" feel, which I like but some may prefer their hacks to be more "clean", have a more "this could be an official game" look. The absurdity of the game doesn't deter from it's enjoyment, except in the end and the postgame, but talking about it would be a big spoiler, so avoid the section below if you want.

Flickering hell

Spoiler for the endgame and postgame: How the fuck are you supposed to dodge all those attacks willy capsule throw you. It's a full danmaku fight. Yes, this is really, really impressive, but it's at this point that the impressiveness of the coding deter from the gameplay. Not only that, why does Wily have two health bar? Just to make the fight longer. Well I used 4 e-tanks for this fight. Also the postgame, yes there is a lot of content including a postgame. Spoiler more: it's an arena. Kirby-like boss fight arena. But it's not Kirby. Arena in Kirby are fine because it's rather easy, if it was in MM4 it could be okay but here with the new bosses it's a bit too much. If you don't find it fun after 10 tries, you should give up. You miss on some content but it's fine, the main game was fun, better stop here before you hate yourself. I wanted to see the new stuffs, so I enabled invincibility cheats. Well spoiler there's a true arena, with 40 (FORTY) bosses, all in hard mode, still limited to one life. You have some e-tanks, but it's bullshit. Then the second to last boss barely takes damage and has two health bar of course. Then he grabbed me and INSTANT-KILLED ME. 30 minutes lost. And it was with cheats. I gave up. If you want to see the true secret final boss yourself, use savestates or you will be miserable, especially if a boss decide to say fuck you and instant-kill you.

 

haha yes

 

Conclusion : R4MI is a really impressive hack technically, one of a kind, and discovering all it's new elements is very fun. The game is generous in resources but sometimes goes a bit too crazy with the number of sprites on screen. I absolutely recommend playing the main game, but do not recommend doing the post-game.

 

 

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Very good, must play