Dash forward with X

Recently I started playing the Mega Man X Collection and went halfway through it up to Mega Man X3 (hereafter referred to as X3 and so on).

X1 is pretty great. I almost don't know what else to say about it. A beginning of a new series, not quite revolutionary but polished, well designed and fun. For me there's a strong amount amount of nostalgia with it, especially the very beginning on the highway. I'm not going in depth on it, but if that's what you want check out this video by Egoraptor on Sequelitis. He really gets into the fine details of approaching how it was designed. The maneuverability of X is always what my mind latches onto when I consider the game alongside the classic series. I thought the PSP remake, Mega Man Maverick Hunter X, was very well done. Vile, in particular, could not have been handled better. It would have been nice if Capcom had continued remaking the games in this fashion.

After thinking about it for awhile, I'd have to say I wouldn't consider X2 to really be an improvement on X1. Sure, air dashing is cool and a few other little things are nice to have in the mix too like the Cx4 chip graphic capabilities. What I'm getting at here is X2's relatively equal to X1 but with different levels, music, bosses, story and weapons. It's more of the same, which is to say it's more of the same awesome, and to me that's still awesome. One criticism I've had of many game reviewers over the years is the speed and harshness they will come down on a game, particularly a sequel to a game they otherwise liked, for no other reason than it doesn't do something amazingly different. I can understand the idea of wanting to see gaming evolve, but it's no reason by itself to be extra critical of a game. Note that I'm speaking in general here, not about critical reaction to X2 specifically. The thought simply occurred to me, as it likely will again.

Right up there with air dashing is also the buster upgrade that lets X use two charged shots. One minor complaint I have is that I didn't find any of the special weapons useful at all outside of using them against a boss to exploit a weakness or to access certain items hidden in the stages. In comparison some of the X1 special weapons were particularly useful to pull out against enemies in multiple situations, but in X2 I tend to use double charge shots almost exclusively.

X3 is perhaps the game between X1 and X6 I have probably had the least amount of contact with, because until the PS2 collection I never owned a version of it. I know I rented it once around the time it came out and thoroughly went through it (though I probably didn't know about the Z saber trick then). One negative to the version on the collection I ended up owning is it's the PS1 version of the game, meaning it has animated cut scenes the SNES version didn't have and the music has been remixed. Unfortunately, the music was remixed very badly. While the sound capabilities of the SNES are certainly dated, there's plenty of good music from its games that still sound good as is the case with X1 and X2. The PS1 version of X3 I have though has reduced most of the music to annoying noise and was so bad for one or two levels I turned the sound down so I wouldn't have to hear it, but that's the fault of the PS1 version and not the original. X3 music on the SNES is comparable to the earlier entries in quality.

Other than music, I would say X3 feels like a slightly weaker entry than X1 or X2, but that's not to say it's not good. I would pin the reason for this on the stages, which don't seem quite as fun to me as its predecessors'. The eight mavericks are a good bunch though and I like how most of them can still put up a bit of a fight even if you're exploiting their weaknesses, unlike X2's. The confrontation with Sigma in X3 is epic in my mind. To me it feels like the ultimate showdown between X and Sigma at his absolute strongest. Sure, they fight again but besides Sigma never seeming quite 100 percent again, the following games all seem to have something going on that offsets his importance.

I don't think I'll be getting to X4 or beyond at the moment, but I'll share a few thoughts on those. X4 is notable for probably having the highest production value for a game in the series relative to its time, although Capcom could certainly have improved on the English voice acting. It's one of the best when it comes to gameplay. X4 also introduced Zero being fully playable, a feature I certainly enjoyed. For reasons I don't entirely remember, I recall being annoyed with a few things from X5. It is notable for having what I consider X's best armor, the Falcon Armor, and story lines built up through most of the series finally have their payoff. X6 seemed to do its best to mess up that payoff to the detriment of the Mega Man Zero series, but I don't recall anything bad about the gameplay. The battle with Sigma is oddly enough one of my favorites, but beyond that there's one compliment I can pay the game: it's not X7. Unfortunately, X7 is what it is, which is a mess. Axl was probably the only decent thing to come from it. I have never played X8, but it sounds like it's worth a try someday.

Some content in this post is being used under the fair use exception of copyright law. Mega Man X is copyright of Capcom.