9 is my favorite, followed by V (the Gameboy one), then 11.

Hmm.......

I've ranked the Mega Man X games many times, but never the classic series.

It would probably be.

11, 5, 6, 2, 4, 7, 8, 3, 1, 10, 9.

I like 3, but it's so low on the list because of how crappy it runs on original hardware. The positions of 10 and 9 will be unpopular, but those games are brutally difficult and I did NOT have fun with them.

5 and 6 were the best of the NES era. They ran really well.

11 is my #1 because it looks great, plays just like a classic Mega Man, has lots of different game modes, and most importantly has several difficulty settings to onboard new players into the series.

I'd rank 11 just under 9 and 10.

11 is pretty solid, very newbie friendly without a baby easy mode like 10 has, and has a lot of nice quality of life features.

where 11 is weakest:

- Music: the songs are great, but the instrumentation is pretty miss unless you're crazy into europop. europeans tend to love the MM11 music.

- Precision: because it's a 3D game in 2D, you have that unfortunate effect where only platforms in the center are flat, while everything else is seen at a slight angle. this makes it harder to be precise and judge jumps, as everything outside of the center is slightly further than they appear.

- Stun: The stun in this one is really annoying compared to prior games. in the NES games, you lose control and slowly inch back a little while falling. in 8 and &B you jerk back but don't fall until control is regained, with items to remove all knockback. in 11, you jerk back and fall. it feels awful.

- Wily Stages: comparable to MM3 in incompleteness. it feels like there's a missing stage or 2. doesn't feel like they finished the game and just released it as was.

- bloom: if you're photosensitive at all, this game has a lot of bright light effects. everything glows and a lot of the time, it's hard to tell what's going on on screen, and there's no option to tone this down.

what 11 does well:

- weapons are okay. some are just remixes of weapons from 9 and 10 like plug ball, rebound striker with triple blade, and solar blaze. Their usefullness is improved by having a power gear alt version of every weapon akin to the charge versions in MMX, except instantly useable.

- bosses are good. block man is an annoyingly designed fight, but the rest are pretty solid. They're more like MM7 and 8 than the classic NES style robot masters in that you can't just obliterate them with their weaknesses in 3 seconds. but using their weaknesses doesn't pause the fight either with annoying animations.

- very robust store: like MM&B, the store is expanded to give you a lot of fun options

- newbie friendly: speed gear is completely optional, and is useful to help newbies learn how to deal with things in slowmo.

Originally posted by Maid Leila:

I like 11 the most. It's one of the only two Mega Man games that allow you to map slide to a button other than jump (the other being 8). The control is pretty fluid and feels good. All the special weapons you get from bosses are useful in some way, unlike previous entries were most of the special weapons are useless except for niche circumstances.

The bosses in 11 are all pretty well designed and their attacks are well telegraphed but also fast enough to still make the game interesting. Previous Mega Man games have telegraphing issues and often require luck or memorization to get through them. The difficulty in 11 isn't over the top like in some previous entries. 9 is especially egregious, and so is 10 but less so. I'd say that 11 is also the most challenge run friendly. You can play 11 on Superhero, buster only with no upgrades, items or gears and still have fun. You can play the others that way too, but, you'll run into some problems.

The only thing 11 is inferior in is the music. The soundtrack in 11 is pretty weak for the most part, which is a shame because Mega Man games are known for having great soundtracks.

Mega Man 1 - 10 aren't "bad" games but they are outdated. If you didn't grow up with them, 1 - 10 may seem archaic to you.

If you want to see my "credentials", so to speak, check my profile. I have 100% achievements in every Mega man game on steam (except for the Battle Network games because I don't have them yet). Honestly, the three best Mega Man games are 11, X2 and X3.

wow, X3? really?

terrible weapons, mostly useless and almost all super unintuitive. weakest point is music, like 11. contact damage is redonk, worst mavericks possibly in the series. volt catfish is up there with infinity majinion and flame hyenard!

the only thing X3 has going for it is alternate bosses based on your choices... but there's only one right combination to get the Z saber.

X2 is really good, but if we're talking about the whole series, Z3 easily tops all the X games hands down. no contest there.

9 and 10 really aren't outdated at all. they're retro graphics, but they really are the epitome of the series, especially 10, and with 3 different playable characters and the OP rockman killer weapons.

9 and 10 weren't that difficult. for every challenge, they give you plenty of tools in the store to easily deal with it. spike guards, pit guards, E tanks, W tanks. but if you want to challenge yourself, you can forgo all help and go hog.

My favorites in the Classic Series are easily MM10 and MM11. MM11 has better gameplay and polish, but lacks Proto Man and Bass as playable characters (or them even appearing in the game at all for some reason). Overall, I feel like there's reasons to play both, they're both really good. I don't like MM9, but I overall enjoyed MM8 despite its reputation and the occasional frustrations within it. Some of the other games are pretty good, though I feel like MM2 is a bit overrated and MM1 makes me wonder how the series took off to begin with considering how... Kinda terrible it is. Play Powered Up instead of MM1 if you can get your hands on a legal copy.

My favorites in the X series are X4 and X8, with both having a similar thing going on in regards to there being reasons to play both games over each other. X1 is good, though I felt Maverick Hunter X was far superior. I also enjoyed X2, though X3 was a bit on the tedious side despite my attempts to like it. I'd recommend the Legacy Collection versions of X1-3 for the ability to save your data so you don't have to use the password system. X5 was okay, though it felt like a step down from X4 to me, and the level design in X6 was kind of terrible. X7 is not good, though it does have some good ideas that were mishandled. If you want to play X7 play the Legacy Collection version so you can play in Rookie Hunter mode, it makes the game just a bit more tolerable.

The Zero series gets off to a little bit of a rough start with Zero 1 as it's not very beginner friendly, but Zero 2 is decent in that regard though still challenging and Zero 3 is truly fantastic. Zero 4 is a bit worse gameplay wise, fitting somewhere around par with Zero 2. However, the Zero series is very narrative driven and the ending of Zero 4 is truly a high point of the Mega Man franchise in general, so I'd consider it overall worth playing. Just keep in mind that before you get to the ending, the story in Zero 4 is a bit... Rough.

ZX and ZX Advent are both very good, though ZX is a bit beginner unfriendly with its map. It's similar to MM10 and MM11 for me in that I just can't bring myself to choose an overall favorite because they both do things better than each other. Unfortunately the third game got canceled and hasn't been brought back since, so if you get the full ending in ZXA you are going to end up left off on a cliffhanger. If you want to play these games, I'd easily say the Legacy Collection versions are the most accessible, have the highest quality presentation, and can be further enhanced by mods. That all together makes it the definitive way to play, though you will need to do some setup if you want to fix some issues on Steam Deck.

The Battle Network series is pretty good. So far I've played all of the main series BN games except 6, and of the ones I have played I'd say 3 and 5 are the high points. These games are narrative driven RPG's, I would definitely recommend grabbing these if you get the chance. Once again I'd recommend the Legacy Collection versions for modding support and native QoL updates.

I've not played the Legends or Starforce games properly, though I've heard they're pretty good as well. I don't have much of anything to comment on these though.

Overall based on what I have played, my top 5 ranking would be:

1. Zero 3 with honorable mention of Zero 4
2. ZX and ZXA
3. X4 and X8 with honorable mention of MHX
4. BN3 and BN5
5. MM10 and MM11

Everything else I've played would rank below. Everything in my top 5 is good in my opinion, though they're not the only ones I consider good. I don't have a placement for games I've not played, because that would be unfair.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/742300/discussions/0/3113656428101786037/

as a megaman veteran, i think that the boss select screen music is good. i can not remember the rest.

How come no one mentions the mega man RPG games? forget what they were called...

Originally posted by asapa:

How come no one mentions the mega man RPG games? forget what they were called...

Battle Network and Starforce.

because they are not really comparable and barely "mega man".

one is a timeline with robots where the games revolve around platforming, the other is a timeline with non-physical entities that fuse with a young boy protagonist and involves no platforming outside of random spin-offs.

really, you can only reasonably compare network transmission and that one wonderswan game.

Originally posted by khaosklub:

because they are not really comparable and barely "mega man".

one is a timeline with robots where the games revolve around platforming, the other is a timeline with non-physical entities that fuse with a young boy protagonist and involves no platforming outside of random spin-offs.

really, you can only reasonably compare network transmission and that one wonderswan game.

Eh, if you wanted to get really purist you wouldn't count X, Zero, ZX or Legends either.

They're definitely competent games, even if they're totally different. My favorite of them was Star Force 1, and it's not even close.

it's about comparability. you can't compare super mario bros with mario & luigi, nor final fantasy with chocobo racing.

X, zero, zx, and legends are all platformers... though legends barely has platforming and is more adventure. legends is just barely comparable. the other games are much more similar.

battle network doesn't even involve jumping!

I'd say 11 is the best of the classic series. All the stages are fun, all the bosses are well-designed, all the weapons are useful (which can't be said about most MM games), and the new Double Gear mechanic is a lot of fun. I personally only have a major problem with the lack of Bass (lost story potential) and how the item shop can potentially destroy any difficulty.

Originally posted by Sith_1ord:

I'd say 11 is the best of the classic series. All the stages are fun, all the bosses are well-designed, all the weapons are useful (which can't be said about most MM games), and the new Double Gear mechanic is a lot of fun. I personally only have a major problem with the lack of Bass (lost story potential) and how the item shop can potentially destroy any difficulty.

I'd disagree. it had potential, but it has some issues.

- the 3D perspective makes jumping a bit harder to be precise.
- pretty short, feels unfinished when you look at the fortress stages
- vertical scrolling, pretty bad to have in a mega man game. block man's stage is full of it.
- personally, I really dislike the way mega man takes damage in 11, the worst in my opinion out of all the classic games.

while the game is pretty, there's waaaay too much bloom going on. and 11 has some of the weakest music in the series too. I'd argue that music is very important to the series.

it's definitely really good, one of the better classic games, but I'd say that 9 and 10 are the top classic games.

mega man powered up is also really good when stacked against MM11. you have 12 playable characters, and you have time slow, which works pretty much like speed gear.