SAGE 2022 - Demo Dragon Man: Reignited (SAGE '22 DEMO)

Hey, just a heads up - Windows Explorer's built in extractor doesn't seem to open this properly. Tested on Windows 11 21H2.

I beat Curtain Man and tried out the rest of the stages on normal mode with lives enabled. As far as general quality, the game is pretty good. Controls are tight, the graphics look nice, the music was all enjoyable (except the weapon-get theme which sounded horribly bit-crushed), and I like the designs of the robot masters. However, there were some aspects of the level design that put me off. There are too many instances of gaps requiring you to start a jump as far off the edge as possible, which are frustrating. There are way more random spikes dotted around than is typical for a Mega Man game, which isn't necessarily bad, but if you're trying to replicate the difficulty of the official games, it's a bit too much. I died on the first spike of Tremble Woman's stage because I couldn't even tell it was supposed to be a spike. I'm also not a fan of the Rush Coil equivalent being absolutely required for stage progression (unless I just missed something).

The most important thing, though, I think needs to be improved upon is how stage gimmicks are introduced. Something official games make sure to do is introduce a new mechanic in a safe manner for the player. This allows the player to figure out how it works without being in danger of getting hurt/killed just because they had no idea what to expect. Dying because you weren't sure how a mechanic would work is the opposite of fun. It feels unfair. A good example is in Curtain Man's stage, with the floaty glitch gimmick. It looks just like the flippy glitch tiles, so there's already going to be some inherent confusion, and there are instant-death spikes in the very first room you encounter the mechanic. It's very easy to run into them when trying to figure out how your new controls work.

Overall, it's a solid Mega Man fangame, but I think the difficulty needs to be toned down. Compared to the official games, normal mode feels like a hard mode. Reduce the number of spikes everywhere, make the extreme jumps more forgiving, and make sure to introduce new enemies and mechanics in a way the player doesn't risk immediately dying. Do that, and I believe the game will be A+ material.