Before going into the reviews of the individual games, I should make mention of the emulation features of this collection. I personally find them to be a major downgrade from the features that were in the first collection and can even be a bit confusing to use at first. The main feature this collection has is "Checkpoint Saves", which you would think would be saving your state in whichever part of the level you're in. But no, the game auto makes Checkpoint Saves at default at regular checkpoints and Checkpoint Saving in the middle of a level will basically just save your current health, weapon energy, and life count for that Checkpoint rather than making a new checkpoint. You can use this to your advantage though. If you came into a checkpoint with middling or low health and found a large health recover shortly after hitting the checkpoint, you can Checkpoint Save and now, when going back to the save, you will have higher HP. The best use of this is basically infinite lives. What I would often do is either just going back to a Checkpoint Save after dying or I would let myself die once if I came into a checkpoint with low HP, Checkpoint Save upon revival, and then I can always go back to that Checkpoint Save with full HP without having actually lost a life. It's a very nice system at least for the purpose of rarely, if ever, having to deal with Game Overs, but it's still inferior to the features the last collection provided.
I found Mega Man 7 to be a pretty fun game with a nice 16 bit aesthetic. The Rush Armor in this game is super fun to use, especially if you get your hands on the fist upgrade that will let it hone in on enemies. One thing I really like in this game is that you can actually get all the shop upgrades in the 8 main stages (although I would definitely recommend a guide for finding some of these as some of them require the use of Rush Search and it's admittedly not entirely intuitive on giving you hints on when you should use Rush Search and the Rush Search itself can be a bit finnicky). The final boss is infamously considered the worst Mega Man Wily Capsule in history and I would agree with that, although with healing items fully stocked up it is doable. Overall a fun time.
Mega Man 8 I wasn't quite as smitten with, but I wouldn't call it a bad game, just okay. It doesn't do a whole lot bad but not a whole lot great either. The 32-bit art style really did more favors for Mega Man X than the OG Blue Bomber. The cutscenes, while well-animated for the time, have arguably the most abysmal voice acting I've ever heard (even worse than the almost as bad VA work from Mega Man X 4), but it's in the realm of "it's so bad it's funny" admittedly. There are a handful of hoverboard segments that are admittedly kind of annoying (the one in Wily Stage 1 is particularly bad). On one hand I like the shop having a variety of upgrades for you to choose from so you can pick and choose which upgrades you want, but on the other hand there are some upgrades that are way more useful than others (no knockback is way more useful than climbing up ladders faster, for example). But there are enough useful upgrades that it still is interesting enough to make you think about what elements you prioritize more and what you would want to upgrade and what you may want to leave behind (there aren't enough bolts for every upgrade, so you do have to pick and choose). The overall level design is fine (minus the mentioned hoverboard segments), but isn't amazing. Overall a decent game with a somewhat neat upgrade system but some minor flaws in certain departments.
I won't lie that I didn't go all the way through Mega Man 9 and 10. I did attempt both briefly, but I just couldn't find myself getting into them. On one hand, they have really nice looking 8 bit graphics and the music is great. On the other hand, I feel like the developers heard people say the old games were hard (when really they may've been hard to people not used to platformers but to seasoned platformer gamers they are a slight challenge but not overly difficult most of the time) and they decided to make these games balls to the wall hard. It's not an enjoyable difficulty anymore but rather is frustratingly difficult. I wanted to like these games, but they just brought about frustration out of me rather than enjoyment. If you are able to get past the insane difficulty, then you'll probably like these games. But if really difficult games aren't your Forte (Bass), stay away from 9 and 10.
