Now that I know Mega Man lore, I realized it’s a lot like Kirby and Pokemon where at a surface level, it seems innocent enough, which, to be fair, the Classic series kind of is. It’s pretty much just “stop Dr. Wily” or “stop a seemingly new villain but obviously Dr. Wily is somehow related,” and the plot only exists so the game can exist, which makes sense since the first six of them are NES games and two more of them are just pretending to be NES games. But then the events of the Classic series lead into the X and Zero series, which tend to have actual (not always good, but at the very least, actual) stories and can get more serious and depressing, especially the latter. For example, most bosses/Mavericks used to just be normal robots/Reploids, and some were even friends with the main characters, but became evil due to various causes, and when they’re killed, which is done in some cases by the people they once were friends with because there’s no other way to end their suffering, they’re dead for good, and not just damaged but reparable like Robot Masters. I think it’s even more this than Kirby or Pokemon because the compilation rereleases of all the X and Zero games that came out a few years ago were rated T when the original releases were all rated E, while obviously no Kirby or Pokemon game has been rated T. I think some fans of the original games don’t like that it’s more serious but I personally love it. The main issue, besides the games that have bad stories, is that some of the X games have cutscenes with atrocious English dubs, but that started with Mega Man 8 so it’s not inherently an X thing.
