VideoGame Great game gameplay wise, but try not to pay attention to the story.
Being a fan of Mega Man fangames, I can easily say Rock Force is my favorite fangame I have played so far. Though not as famous as Unlimited or Revolution, I do feel like Rock Force has a lot of things going for it that sets it apart.
For starters, the over all physics are surprisingly faithful to the Mega Man (Classic) games. Never once did the controls feel awkward or caused me to die because of muscle memory. It also manages to put some clever spins on concepts never really touched upon, as Mega Mans buster shots still have a hit box that can damage enemies even when reflected. The overall platforming feels challenging without being cheep. Whenever I died, I knew it was my own fault and not because of something that was out of my control, and even when the game starts spamming death spikes, it still offers alternative routes through robot master weapons if you don't feel like dealing with them.
Speaking of the robot master weapons, they're all surprisingly well balanced and fun to use. Never once did I feel like one weapon was superior to another, and a lot of them actually made me WANT to use them instead of HAVING to. A lot of them are useful and easily interchangeable if you run out of one or the other, the shield weapon is actually useful without being OP like the Jewel Satellite, and the Crypt Cloak offers a good alternative to getting by tricky areas.
However, with all the praise I'm singing about this game, I do have one major complaint. The story. Though I love the idea of previous robot masters showing up and helping you out, and Justice Man being an Evil Counterpart to Mega Man is cool... the overall debate about the Three-Laws Compliant and robots not allowed to have free will is absurd. It's make sense if the humans of the series were more repressive towards robots, but we've never really seen that in the series before. Robots are shown being allowed to pursue interest out of what they're designed for, and in 9 the robots didn't start rebelling until someone had convinced them to, and even then he had to go in and manually alter their programing before they did so.
There's more I want to say, but I'm reaching the word limit. Overall, I feel like it's a fun experience that I also feel is the most balanced fangame out there in terms of difficulty, but if you're looking for a good story, I would suggest looking else where. 8/10
VideoGame Everything about it is either amazing or terrible
This is a game has a lot of really good points and really bad points with very little in between.
The level designs were very good and creative. There are a lot of levels whose aesthetics I really loved, like all of the details in Terror Man's stage. The weapon selection is also great, if a bit overpowered at times. The part about the Robot Masters helping you in the post-Robot Master stages was also a really nice idea.
However, the story is not only the game's major downfall, but I'd say quite possibly the worst video game story I've ever seen. The past Robot Masters in the Rock Force are probably the only characters in the game that are likable, because everything else is pure Wangst. Mega Man spends the whole game whining about Justice Man, a copy of him the player has been given no reason to care about and then skirts close to Humans Are Bastards territory after killing him while also claiming that Justice Man and his terrorist group never did anything wrong. A Downer Ending like this simply doesn't belong in a Mega Man game and certainly didn't work at all in this case.
On another note, the great aesthetics generally didn't extend to the Robot Masters. Most of the Robot Masters whose designs weren't bland and forgettable were downright ugly, especially Shock Man, who looks like a robot that a 10-year-old built out of cardboard, and Fish Man, who just looked like a guy wearing a mascot costume of a Mario enemy. Even the bosses whose designs I liked or accepted, like Virus Man, Death Man, Charade Man, Terror Man, and Polar Man, were still only passable (Terror Man's problem more being that his sprite makes it difficult to tell what he's even supposed to be). In addition, I would put forth that most of the robot masters were edited from existing Mega Man sprites (Virus Man looks suspiciously like an edit of Blade Man).
The fact that there are technically 16 Robot Masters also makes it look like the creator didn't feel like creating a second game, so they shoehorned both sets into one.
All-in-all, this was a 5/10, mostly because everything was individually either 1/10 or 9/10.