OVERVIEW

Mega Man is back on the NES for his 5th adventure and this time he is on a more serious mission. His creator Dr. Light has been kidnapped and as a cape falls to Mega Man's feet, the kidnapper appears to be none other than his own brother, Proto Man. Say it ain't so, Proto Man.
 
The game's eight bosses are (in order of creation):

Gravity Man – Has the ability to control gravity and makes it hard to determine which way is up.
 
Wave Man – Modeled after Atlantis people with a trident on his head. He we shoots spears and makes geysers sprout from out of nowhere.
 
Stone Man – True to his name, he is made out of stone and he can crumble into rumble and make himself invincible.
 
Gyro Man – Carries a propeller on his back and likes to hide in the clouds and throw miniature propellers that come down and home in on you once.
  
Star Man – Take a trip into outer space where the gravity is low. Star Man like to protect himself with his Star Shield.
 
Charge Man – Thomas the Tank Engine gone wild is the best way to describe this robot. He will be looking to run you over.

Napalm Man – Bombs away, Mega Man. Napalm Man is looking to blow you to smithereens with his Napalm Bombs.
 
Crystal Man – Nice and shiny he is and his weapon called the Crystal Eye is hard to avoid as it splits into four.
 
Graphics - A
 
Graphics are still up to par from the previous games and once again they can play a role within how you expect to play the game. A good notable example is in Gravity Man's stage. You will see in the background that there are arrows pointing up and pointing down. These will actually cue you in on when the gravity is going to reverse when you pass by that arrow. Up = upside down and Down = right side up. Stone Man's stage is made out of lots of rock and it actually hides a lot of paths that leads to items. Some of the graphics make the secret areas obvious as you can shoot them away and others are not so obvious aside from seeing an item in a spot that looks like it is closed off. If you are familiar with Flash Man's stage in Mega Man 2 and Gemini Man's stage in Mega Man 3, you will definitely love Crystal Man's stage as the stage is made completely out of crystal and the stage really sparkles as you go through it and the colors are so nice. Aside from the stages, Mega Man's charging color has changed. In Mega Man 4, he would turn green when fully charged. Now he will change to a blue and black color.

Controls - A

Nothing really changed from Mega man 4, except for the little graphical change when charging a shot that I mentioned earlier. However, there is a weapon that functions different from the other weapons as far as using it. That weapon is the Charge Kick. When you have this weapon equipped, you it by sliding. You can also shoot the Star Crash at enemies if they are in range and with the Gyro Attacker, you can press Up or Down to change its direction when it is in flight.

 
Gameplay - B-
 
I had to take some points of for this game as far as gameplay goes as at least half of the weapons you gain from the robot masters are damn near useless except in some boss fights and one of them is even totally useless even in a boss fight and it is better to use a fully charged Mega Buster to deal with just about any enemy or boss in this game as it is more effective than anything else. In each stage, you will find a letter that spells out the word MEGAMANV in the end. In the Japanese version, you will look for the letters that spell ROCKMAN5 instead. Doing this will introduce Mega Man's new comrade, a bird named Beat who homes in and attacks the enemy. He also obtains a Super Arrow which can function as a ride if you jump on it in time and you can also use it to climb. It is not so useful as a weapon. Rush loses his Rush Marine ability and his Rush Coil has been changed to where he will hop up to give Mega Man a boost instead of using a springboard the previous two games.
 
Here is a small guide to the weaknesses of the bosses in order to their creation:
Gravity Man (weak to Star Crash)
Wave Man (weak to Charge Kick)
Stone Man (weak to Napalm Bomb)
Gyro Man (weak to Gravity Hold)
Star Man (weak to Water Wave)
Charge Man (weak to Power Stone)
Napalm Man (weak to Crystal Eye)
Crystal Man (weak to Gyro Attacker)
  
After all eight robots are deal with, you will fight through two castles just like in Mega Man 4 (one by Proto Mer by Dr. Wily when he is revealed to be the true mastermind.) The concept would later on be abandoned after Mega Man 6. The first castle consists of four stages and the second castle has four also. In Proto Man's Castle, the gameplay is nothing you have death with already but there is one small twist. All the bosses in the Proto Man Castle are named Dark Man with a roman numeral from I to IV. They are each weak to a different robot weapon and attack in different ways. Dark Man I will only try to roll into you but he falls to the Water Wave easily. Just try to stay away from him as you shoot at him. Dark Man II is weak to the Crystal Eye. He does not try to attack you with any weapon, he just surrounds himself with a revolving shield and just try to run into you. Just jump over him and run to the other side when he gets close. Dark Man III ups the ante even higher. He is weak to the Gyro Attacker but his attacks can put you in a bind with the ability to freeze you in your tracks. When you are frozen, you are at his mercy and you'll be lucky if he doesn't hit you with any of his shots or flat out jump into you for massive damage. In Proto Man Stage 4, be careful which bricks you shoot away because you have to avoid getting hit by the spikes above. When it comes time to confront Proto Man, you'll notice his trademark whistle is off-key. He blasts you and reduces you to one bar of health and then you will hear his whistle again and it sounds like the correct one. The real Proto Man arrives and blasts the fake one revealing the true kidnapper of Dr. Wily, Dark Man IV. Dark Man IV attacks similar to Dark Man I and II but also has the ability to shoot his shield at you. This is one of the rare occasions where the boss is weak to Beat. When he falls, Dr. Wily comes out of the shadows and reveals he framed Proto Man as an act of revenge for betraying him back in Mega Man 4.
 
Once again, Dr. Wily is revealed to be the culprit behind it all. You fight through a whole new castle and in one of those stages you deal with the Yoku blocks. The bosses get a little bit tougher to defeat as you have to do some fancy fighting to defeat them. The first Wily boss is Big Pets. You have to shoot his two lower segments while avoiding being hit by the side drills then get on top of its platforms and blast its face with the Crystal Eye before the platforms retract. The miniature heads make it harder to fight him. The second Wily Boss is Circling Q9. Watch out for the rocks it rains down from above then when it opens it's sides and swoops down, plug a Gyro Attack into the side of its face. It takes seven hits to kill it. In the third Wily Stage, you will fight against all the eight previous Robot Masters you faced before. They all retain their same weaknesses.
 
Difficulty - 3

The game still retains a little difficulty but its a stepped down from Mega Man 4. One of the difficult parts to watch out for is during Crystal Man's stage where you will see crystal shards raining out of chutes. Without Star Crash, the jumps can be difficult to make without getting hit by the shards and being knocked into the pit to your death. Gravity Man's stage despite the changing gravity is not too bad. When you are upside down, you have to adjust to the situation but at least the cardinal directions are not affected. You can however die from falling up the pit. Some enemies will change Gravity with you. In Wave Man's stage, you go through a water ski section which is only difficult if you don't keep shooting and watching out for Jet Ski Joes coming from behind. Star Man's stage has some spikes that are placed inconvientienly on the ceiling but they are so bad. The difficult bosses to fight in this game are Charge Man and Napalm as they are a real pain to fight.
 
Earlier I mentioned how some of the weapons are totally or near useless. I'll go through them. Charge Kick is only useable by sliding. Not many people will think of attacking the enemy this way as you risk taking damage if the enemy doesn't die from the hit with the exception of Wave Man which you can get away scott free if careful. The Water Wave is only useful for attacking ground enemies. Power Stone is not even worth using even against Charge Man whom is weak to it as it barely hits anything unless done up close. Gravity Hold is only good for enemies with 1 HP that are affected by it. One use and they will float away. However, against Gyro Man, it will be his worst nightmare as no matter where he goes, he will be hit no matter what. A similar weapon will come into play in Mega Man 6 called the Centaur Flash and it has similar function but different effect.
 
Sound/Music - B+
 
The soundtrack is still catchy as usual but it is not that much any better than anything I've heard already. My favorite songs out of the bunch was Wave Man which was real catchy, Gyro Man which fit the stage pretty well. My only gripe about the music in this game is the fact that the music stayed the same in both castles as in the music was retained through all Proto Man stages and the same story happened with Dr. Wily stages.
 
Replay Value - A-
 
The game is still fun to play over and over again because I have said it so many times, you can't play the game the same way twice, there are some stuff you may have wanted to do the first time but didn't get the chance to do so like some levels having different paths. You also may want to look for some secret stuff which Stone Man's stage had plenty of including needing to shoot away some walls in order to find the letter G (letter C in the Japanese version). A buster only run is viable here as you don't need a special weapon to kill any of the bosses like you needed Crash Bombs against the Wall Guns and Bubble Lead against the final boss both in Mega Man 2 or the Snake or Top Spin versus the final boss in Mega Man 3 and even the Pharaoh Shot against the final boss in Mega Man 4. The Mega Buster/Rock Buster can take care of any and every enemy and boss preferably when charged up of course.
 
Overall - B+
 
Never really liked this one as much as I did the other Mega Man games but I will still give this game credit where it is due and give it a B+ which is still a passing grade in my book. It could have gone a little bit better with more useful weapons but it seems that Capcom themselves were testing some waters on use of Robot weapons or may have ran out of ideas but oh well. Final grade is a B+ for this game.

To me this is actually my leas favorite megaman game ever it is way too easy and unimaginative, 6 was only slightly better. Good review Azul  keep up the good work