WishJewelReview

I am coming from a position of passion.  I've been a part of the Mega Man community for the better portion of my life now, and in that time, I've played a *lot* of fangames—both interesting and boring, both the best and the worst.  With this in mind, I believe that my position is informed by years of experience, and I must tell you that when I played the Wish Jewel demo...I found it very dull.  And I shall do my humble best to explain why starting now.

Let's begin with game feel.  If you want to properly evoke Mega Man, your engine still needs significant work.  Compared to Mega Man, there's much less weight to Vary's movement; the lack of the "step" part of his run cycle makes him feel like he's gliding across the floor instead of properly running, and his  jump is much floatier by comparison, too.  These things may not *seem* very significant, especially since the game doesn't demand a 1:1 recreation of Mega Man's original movement, but things like these go a long way in how a game feels, which will be very important in getting longtime fans of the game you're attempting to emulate to actually enjoy your game.

I understand that the levels of this game are likely unfinished, seeing as half the game's robot bosses are fought immediately after taking the fork at the beginning of the level that leads to them, but I would like to say that as they are, the levels have a strong lack of identity, since they have no defining gimmicks and all pull from the same pool of very generic-looking enemies.  Even in the first Mega Man game, each level's enemy set was fairly unique to it, and a few of them were themed to fit the level itself (As a couple examples, the Picketman in Guts Man, and the Peng in Ice Man), and I think designing more enemies like that is key to keep the enemies feeling fresh and interesting.
In addition, the idea that it's okay to copy-paste parts of level geometry is a very *wrong* idea to take away from the first Mega Man game.  Even back when MM1 did it, it was lazy, and it would be phased out by the very next installment in the series, but at least MM1 often had the sense to change the room *slightly* by changing the hazards and the enemies on the reiteration of the screen; here, level design is copied verbatim, it's very apparent, and it just feels bad.

I am not a musician, so it is difficult to give proper critique on music, but even a novice could tell you that your sound design is one of your weakest departments.  Your music is not evocative; it does not set a mood for any of the levels, nor does it excite the player into wanting to run and jump and fight hordes of robots.  It registers as aimless noise that does nothing more than annoy the player.  Half of your sound effects are still lifted straight from MM1, and the other half are nothing more than hollow, shrill imitators that are harder to listen to.  I understand that it is probably very difficult to do sound design without any formal study of music, but that being the case, I may consider seeking a colleague to do music and sound effects for you.

The most disappointing part of the whole game for me, though, was the bosses.  I know that you are already planning to give them more attacks, but I feel the need to stress that in their current state, the robot bosses are *incredibly* boring.  Their projectiles all behave identically, they all have the same basic loop of "shoot projectile, then move to a new location"—hell, Fire and Glue are pretty much exactly the same boss, just shooting different projectiles.  Even Thunder, the boss I found the hardest of all of them (If in a very un-fun and very unfair way) can just be damage-raced; pelting him with uncharged buster shots efficiently enough usually means you'll kill him first, or at least kill him at the same time he kills you.
I understand the desire to remove the "random" movements of the MM1 bosses that often made them feel chaotic and unpredictable, but when you go too far in the opposite direction as you have here, you create bosses that are very boring and immemorable.  From my perspective, you have to strike a healthy balance between randomness that forces the player to react on the fly, and predictability that allows players to learn strategies to defeat the bosses.  ...That's...practically boss design 101.

I would like to reiterate that, despite what you and your fans reading this right now may think, I do this from a position of passion.  I'm not here out of hatred; I didn't come here to tell you all this because I hated your game and I wanted you to feel bad for making it in the first place.  I came here because I love Mega Man, you obviously do too (Hence making a game like this in the first place), and we both want this Mega Man-esque game to be as good as it can be.  But I am telling you that in order to meet the standards of the Mega Man community in the modern day, almost everything about this game will have to be changed and improved.

...But even if you don't do all that, please consider these small bug reports and feature requests:
> The horizontal movement applied to Vary by moving platforms still affects him after he jumps off of them, until he lands on solid ground again.
> If you kill a boss after they've killed you, the game reloads the boss room, but the boss immediately explodes instead; the weapon chip appears in their place, but Vary cannot pick it up, resulting in a softlock.
> Collecting a boss's weapon chip while the charge-shot sound effect is playing causes the charge-shot sound effect to play on *every frame,* resulting in a cacophony that can only be stopped by closing the game.
< Because of the game's overall length, not to mention the softlocks, the ability to save your progress between stages—even if in an extremely outdated way, like the password systems used in Mega Man 2 through 7—is absolutely necessary.
< While you can get away without native controller support due to the existence of programs such as Joy2Key, the ability for players to customize their keyboard controls in-game is also absolutely necessary.