Rockman 7 EP is a Rockman 7 hack by PureSabe, the author of Rockman 4 Minus Infinity. It definitely is not as good as R4MI. Expectedly, it's held back by Rockman 7's poor FOV, though better level design mitigates it somewhat.
One of Rockman 7 EP's many vehicle sections
The levels are full of ideas and most of them are good. They feel pretty long in general, with lots of gimmicks and gameplay shifts, as is PureSabe's style. You've got autoscrollers, vehicle sections, a shmup level, and more. There are tons of midbosses which tend to be pretty easy, but are at least more interesting than the roadblock enemies Rockman games always have. The level design is overall more conservative and less interesting than Minus Infinity, but taken on its own merits it's perfectly good, right up until the ending where it gets completely absurd.
In the final stage you fight weakened robot masters as normal enemies. That's not the absurd part, though.
I've said before that Minus Infinity's greatest flaw is that the ending goes a bit too far over the top. Wily's Optical Capsule in particular makes E-tanks nearly mandatory. I don't take it too seriously, the last level is literally called "Final Farce." Swallow your pride, burn a few E-tanks on the last stage and you'll have a good time the entire way through. Well guess what, the ending to Rockman 7 EP is even more ridiculous. The penultimate stage clearly wants you to use E-tanks, and the final stage is far, far worse. Near the ending, Blues and Eddie show up and give you literally hundreds of E-tanks that automatically activate when you run out of health. And it's necessary that they give you an enormous amount of supplies because the final boss is a joke in more than one way. You can't really lose to him but it's a near certainty he'll make you use a bunch of E-tanks. Even beating him with "only" 5 E-tanks used is pretty good. 20 isn't out of the question at all. I've made peace with Minus Infinity's Optical Capsule, but the fact that R7EP has two of these stages, and that its final boss is even more of a joke drags the experience down for me.
This is the absurd part. You can't tell because of sprite flicker, but the entire screen is covered in bullets, not just the right side
Had high expectations for the weapon set going in. They are good, certainly a lot better than Rockman 7's set, but they're still a disppointment because Minus Infinity's guns make Contra look bad. The standout is Turbo Man's Self-Burning. It's broken. It covers Rock in flames and makes him deal contact damage to anything he touches, while also being immune to both contact damage and fire damage. A ton of enemies have no way to defend themselves if you sit inside their hitbox with that. It's very expensive in terms of energy, but once you've started it up it stays on until you take a hit, so as long as you don't mess up you can keep it going for the entire stage. Good risk/reward mechanic. The fire immunity lets you cheese more than a few obstacles, and if you go underwater with it, the water will boil and damage every enemy inside. Burst Man's aimed three-way shot is thoroughly solid and can largely replace your buster. Shade Man's ripple laser is also a good alternative. I do appreciate that the buster is still fairly usable, in Minus Infinity it was a penalty item.
Self-Burning in action
Even setting aside the final boss, R7EP is insanely generous with resources. E-tanks are easy to find lying around, and often the game will drop a bunch of them into your lap all at once. There's a shop, as in Rockman 7, and you can also buy full stocks of E-tanks, W-tanks, and extra lives for next to nothing. Everything it sells is super cheap except for one upgrade that costs 999 bolts. It's basically the ultimate armor from Rockman X4 - X6. It's very strong, but you're not likely to be able to afford it until the final stage, and no, it isn't enough to make the final boss sensible. One interesting new feature of this hack is that you can overheal if a healing item takes you above full life. Your health will slowly drain until you're back to 100%. There's a full healing item before most boss fights, so if you arrive with 100% health, you can start the battle at 200%.
Perfectly normal
"EP" seems to stand for "Economic Power." The ending goes over all of the items and lives you used and totals up how much it all cost. I think it's intended to be a type of scoring system, where lower is better, and the point of the final boss is to make a good score that much harder. The ending also lists dozens of achievements to shoot for in your runs, and which ones you got. I can't read the Japanese to say what most of them are, but there were ones for spending low and high amounts of money, completing the game quickly, and low% and 100% which presumably are for item collection. I got 100% item collection, which means this game is disappointingly short on secrets. Might be some interesting things to try in there, I couldn't tell you.
Actraiser!
It's honestly pretty good if you don't mind the ending. It's a letdown compared to Minus Infinity, but that was always a near inevitability.
B
You can download the patch for Rockman 7 EP here:
http://borokobo.web.fc2.com/#Rock7
really pleasant point between casual and hardcore that i look for in a game. 
They really loved that NYC skyline.
Indeed, you better wield that sword, and not just for the 2x bonus! It cancels enemy shuriken and kills would-be backstabbers dead with its generous hit area! Intercepting fire/enemies will eat your wire-fu ass alive without it!
He never quite toppled that brick wall, but by God in heaven did he give it a battering, as we lessers found ways over/around. 
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(ROTN coulda used some Cagnazzos, and Valkyries, and Venus Weeds, and Salomes, and Grave Keepers... its enemy design is middling at best even by SOTN's modest standards. COTM's aggressively pursuing (you can flat-out run away and they'll stay on your heels), TaitoLazoring Fallen Angels, its Wind "Dodge This Motherfucker" Demons, and BROOTALLY advancing Dark Armours walk all over ROTN's best. Ninja is alright. Master Carpenter and Bloodless shoulda been regulars. Fuck, this is turning into a longpost 
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I try not to shit on Digital Eclipse too much, but when I saw one of their top guys knock the ArcSys Kunio collection for a lack of rewind, claiming in essence "Ain't nobody got time for that shit no mo" (eg: 
at SMT3: Nocturne's description of Hard difficulty, many years ago: "For those who wish to experience the thrill of death." You'd think we were playing fucking Russian roulette with how death tends to be regarded in the mainstream, these days.
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