5 replies to this topic

[Shosci]

Is Mighty No.9 Really THAT Bad? 

After playing Mighty No 9 for the first two times, I feel like the game isn't all that bad. The Wii U port might be broken as hell, but the PC/PS4 version is fine enough. Levels might come across as cheap, boss patterns can be seen as trial and error, but the core gameplay that made Mega Man 'Mega Man' is the still there. 

 

What caused Mighty No 9 to receive such mediocre reviews might have to do with how the development was handled. Considering that this simple platformer was created for 3 years, funded over 4 million dollars, and delayed about 9 times, we expected better. Part of this reason also comes from the excessive amount of kickstarter goals which came across as extra content that a new franchise didn't need from the start. 

 

So to others who have played the game, do you also think it's bad on it's own or was management really its issue?

 

[thepsynergist]

We kind of already have a Mighty No. 9 thread for this...  

[Nicholas Steel]

1) They didn't want a publisher so when their Kickstarter was either finished or nearly finished they decided to get a publisher! Surprise!
 
2) At some point well after their Kickstarter had begun they announced a cartoon series, DLC and other dumb stuff that were not part of the original product advertising, these things were sprung on the Kickstarter users without warning. No one wanted these things, it looked like they were wasting the money people were putting forward towards a game they wanted to play, towards side projects that no one cared for (at the expense of the game they put their money towards).
 
3) The delays pissed everyone off, repeatedly.
 
4) The Backer Forum was visually aesthetically abysmal and lacking in basic features and functionality. It also didn't help that it felt like a desolate wasteland with no interesting or believable "communication with the developers" being possible making it fairly pointless. It was mostly just fans talking with fans, what little social activity there was with someone that had a more meaningful roll in the project, was incredibly underwhelming.
 
5) Because the various polls they held for deciding various aspects of the game were handled privately, there is no way to confirm that the results weren't tampered with/if the community really had a choice in things or if it was all just a charade to make us THINK we had a choice and to think that we were helping shape the final product.
 
6) The company tried to do multiple major projects simultaneously even though their current project, the one everyone financially contributed towards, was being repeatedly delayed.
 
7) The final product feels like it has abysmal production values for what should've amounted to a pretty simple platformer game (Terrible animation quality, terrible lighting, terrible visuals in general, the dash mechanic feels clunky, the in-game cinematics are pretty lousy etc. There are also features cut from the final product because they can't afford them (Gee, maybe if they didn't spend our money trying to make a cartoon and shit...).
 
8​) They originally announced we could only have either English or Japanese voice acting, not both. They then messed with stretch goals and polls several times regarding how this would be decided and eventually hey, lets just have both just because!
 
9) Considering the cutscenes and script, I can't see how they could think that a $4,000,000+ budget wasn't adequate for both English and Japanese voice acting.
 
There's more shit that I can't think of off the top of my head but those 6 listed above are probably the more bigger issues I have with the company that made Mighty No. 9.

Edited by Nicholas Steel, 18 July 2016 - 06:22 AM.

[Gleeok]

Kickstarter didn't make a shitty game; the development and management team made a shitty game. Mighty No.9 is just a shitty game, period. Trying to justify this fact by blaming stretch goals is just a silly attempt to rationalize this in some way that may excuse it through some backwards logic.

Even if you took all the extraneous kickstarter fluff out of the equation you're left with an unbalanced and unpolished psuedo-2D platformer core game that can't even run at 60 FPS of super-computer-level modern hardware. It's jittery and the effects look awful. The truth is every single PS2 sidescroller-type game I own looks better and runs faster than Mighty No.9, and, is also just way better.

So yes, it's just bad on it's own.

[Moonbread]

Blaming Kickstarter is like blaming the waiter when your food is undercooked.

[Magi_Hero]

I blame spoons for making me fat.

Ok, not the best topic title, but Epad does specify that management can hurt he production of a game. I agree with the comment on stretch goals; it's excessive and sometimes completely pointless. The backers wanted the game. Don't beat around the bush.

Edited by tim, 18 July 2016 - 01:28 PM.