By the end of Keiji Inafune's 2013 Kickstarter campaign to fund the spiritual successor to Mega Man, over 67,000 backers had spent nearly $4 million to make Mighty No. 9 a reality. After an original release date of April 2015, the game has finally arrived. Has it been worth the wait? According to most critics, not really, no.
Mighty No. 9 may be one of the 20 most funded Kickstarters of all time, but its millions of dollars didn't stop the game from going through a development hell that saw it delayed three times.
Mighty No. 9 hit the headlines last month after its most recent trailer was released. Rather than being an exciting look at the 2D platformer, it turned out to be one of the worst promotional videos ever made. Even Takuyu Aizu, the chief executive of game developer Inti Creates, tweeted: "What the hell was [Deep Silver] thinking making a crappy PV like this?! Unforgivable."
Contrary to Aizu's words, the toe-curlingly bad trailer would have been forgivable if the final game turned out to be worth all the time and money invested in it. But sadly, it seems this isn't the case.
Mighty No. 9 has averaged around 5-6 out of 10 on most review sites and currently scores 60 percent on Metacritic. One of the more damning reviews comes from Videogamer.com's Tom Orry, who said: "Mighty No.9 is not the classic many hoped it would be. It has moments of quality, and long stretches of competency (although you can finish in 3-5 hours), but numerous terrible design choices and ugly presentation."
Destructoid's Chris Carter was a bit kinder. He gave Mighty No. 9 a below average 6.5 out of 10, but said: "Having backed it in 2013 at a low pledge level, I can't say that I'm exactly disappointed with the end result [...] most Mega Man fans will find solace in the fact that it didn't end up being a disaster. Other than the art style, of course."
Inafune talked about the future of the franchise a few weeks ago, which included the possibility of a sequel, anime, and a live-action movie. Whether the unenthusiastic response to the game will affect these plans remains to be seen.