I picked up Mega Man 9 yesterday. It’s very early, of course, but so far I’m impressed. It’s not Mega Man hard, but it’s hard. It’s also certainly not Mega Man 4 hard so far, because the levels seem well designed.
Though with the whole screw-and-store system, I’m expecting that either a) the boss levels get really hard or b) the game just gets easier as you snowball up power.
Of course that might make sense, since you start without mega buster charge power or the ability to slide. So we’ll see I guess.