Mega Man X6 (PS1)
-2 Story: Three weeks after the events of X5—assuming you got the ending where the Enigma fails to destroy the falling space colony, but Zero's shuttle succeeds—the Earth is a mess. Gate, a Reploid scientist, discovers a remnant of Zero in the wreckage of the Eurasia colony...and, of course, it drives him mad. Another victim of the Sigma Virus, Gate begins plotting a hostile takeover of what's left of the Earth. If we stopped right there, this would be a familiar but perfectly acceptable excuse to go blow up robots. Unfortunately, X6 loses itself with too many characters and too few coherent explanations for everything that happens. In a series known for always having a clear villain supported by one or two unwitting pawns or loyal servants, we suddenly have Gate, Isoc, High Max, Dynamo, and Sigma vying for the role of main antagonist. On top of this, you've got significant story development devoted to X, Zero, and Alia, with Signas and Douglas tagging along. There are so many different backstories and motivations flying around that you almost need a flowchart to keep track of it all. The poorly written dialogue doesn't help—at best, the typographical errors and awkward phrasing comically disrupt the serious atmosphere; at worst, the non sequiturs and presumable translation mishaps make the story incomprehensible. If you can cut through the confusion to get to the heart of the story, X6 is actually an intriguing tale of an underappreciated genius bringing his friends back from the dead to create a world where the most elite Reploids reign. The problem is that the story raises far more questions than it answers. Zero magically repaired himself after being utterly trashed at the end of X5, Reploid DNA is suddenly way more complicated than it was in Xtreme 2, Reploids themselves are now fully indistinguishable from humans (in the "we forgot they're actually robots" way, not in the "encourage you to reflect on what it means to be human" way), Isoc basically leaves the story by way of a plot hole, and Dr. Light's preprogrammed hologram is suddenly interacting with the heroes like it's actually Dr. Light in the capsule. What's up with all that?
+0 Graphics: Fluid and detailed animations, good-quality cutscene art, robust backgrounds, and nice but unremarkable foregrounds put X6 visually on par with its predecessors. However, the pre-rendered 3D elements (eg, the background in the intro stage) don't always blend seamlessly with the 2D art, and one or two stages are visually too busy for their own good (eg, Gate's laboratory). Most of the Nightmare Phenomena are obtrusive to the point where the game starts looking unprofessionally messy in their presence. When the game looks good, it looks great, but just as often there are mismatched elements that take away from it all.
+2 Music: This is the third game in a row with one of my all-time favorite Mega Man soundtracks. Characterized by a mix of wailing guitars and energetically atmospheric electronica, the soundtrack here is sweeping, frenetic, and introspective at all the right times. There are a few memorable deviations from the norm, such as the awesomely creepy final stage theme, as well as a couple nostalgia trips (namely, Gate's laboratory and the final boss) that fit rather well. I'm normally not a fan of J-rock in my Mega Man, but the ending song is surprisingly catchy...though the intro song just sounds loud, meandering, and a little whiny to me (plus it's distracting to have a song with lyrics over top of a cutscene with story-critical text to read), but I'm willing to let that one slide.
+0 Sound Effects: I don't mind Japanese dialogue with English subtitles when I'm watching anime (in fact, I prefer it), but man is it disruptive in static cutscenes. Instead of the English text enhancing my appreciation of the original Japanese, the Japanese dialogue draws my focus away from reading the English text, which—in the absence of animation—is almost entirely responsible for conveying the meaning of the scene. I would much prefer either an English dub or no voice acting at all, though the acting itself (as far as I can tell) seems adequately interesting and dynamic. I still think it's unnecessary for X and Zero to shout as much as they do during normal gameplay, but I'm fine with the shouting being left untranslated. Otherwise, X6 sounds more or less like the last two games.
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Overall Score: X (+Y merits, -Z flaws)
+0 Graphics: Fluid and detailed animations, good-quality cutscene art, robust backgrounds, and nice but unremarkable foregrounds put X6 visually on par with its predecessors. However, the pre-rendered 3D elements (eg, the background in the intro stage) don't always blend seamlessly with the 2D art, and one or two stages are visually too busy for their own good (eg, Gate's laboratory). Most of the Nightmare Phenomena are obtrusive to the point where the game starts looking unprofessionally messy in their presence. When the game looks good, it looks great, but just as often there are mismatched elements that take away from it all.
+2 Music: This is the third game in a row with one of my all-time favorite Mega Man soundtracks. Characterized by a mix of wailing guitars and energetically atmospheric electronica, the soundtrack here is sweeping, frenetic, and introspective at all the right times. There are a few memorable deviations from the norm, such as the awesomely creepy final stage theme, as well as a couple nostalgia trips (namely, Gate's laboratory and the final boss) that fit rather well. I'm normally not a fan of J-rock in my Mega Man, but the ending song is surprisingly catchy...though the intro song just sounds loud, meandering, and a little whiny to me (plus it's distracting to have a song with lyrics over top of a cutscene with story-critical text to read), but I'm willing to let that one slide.
+0 Sound Effects: I don't mind Japanese dialogue with English subtitles when I'm watching anime (in fact, I prefer it), but man is it disruptive in static cutscenes. Instead of the English text enhancing my appreciation of the original Japanese, the Japanese dialogue draws my focus away from reading the English text, which—in the absence of animation—is almost entirely responsible for conveying the meaning of the scene. I would much prefer either an English dub or no voice acting at all, though the acting itself (as far as I can tell) seems adequately interesting and dynamic. I still think it's unnecessary for X and Zero to shout as much as they do during normal gameplay, but I'm fine with the shouting being left untranslated. Otherwise, X6 sounds more or less like the last two games.
Control:
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Bosses:
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Items/Upgrades/Support Utilities:
Ending:
Replay Value:
Polish:
Extras/Easter Eggs:
Novelty:
Overall Score: X (+Y merits, -Z flaws)
Mega Man X7 (PS2)
-1 Story: A group of robots known as Red Alert has always lived on the outskirts of the law, but suddenly they've changed and become outright criminals. Axl, a member of Red Alert with the ability to copy the form and abilities of other robots, has a crisis of conscience and abandons the group, seeking help from the Maverick Hunters and asking (nagging, really) to join their ranks. Red, the leader of Red Alert (naturally), contacts the Maverick Hunters with a deal: If they can defeat the Mavericks that Red is about to let loose, then they can keep Axl. Of course, it turns out that Sigma has been manipulating Red (and by extension, Red Alert) all along, promising ever-greater power. X, who has grown tired of fighting and wants to seek a peaceful solution, actively resists getting involved for half the game, leaving Zero and Axl to have plenty of Guy Time between adventures. On the surface, the story does a good job of focusing on character development and expanding the Mega Man universe beyond "X and Zero fight bad guys, and also they have a Maverick Hunter base." However, there's a disconnect between character actions and motivations—X has changed dramatically from a justice-driven hero who fights out of necessity to a whiny wimp who yells at everyone, but then he's suddenly back on the front lines halfway through the game, fighting for the convoluted reason of "keeping" Axl when was vehemently opposing his request to join the Maverick Hunters just a couple cutscenes ago! There's no sense of a gradual buildup to the major events of the game; characters change their dispositions at the drop of a helmet and don't always act on what they seem to be thinking (Red, for example, fluctuates between unwilling pawn and eager servant, yet the final confrontation with him appears to be driven solely by his expectation that the heroes want a fight, despite them showing no outward hostility toward him). There's also a lot of padding in the dialogue; characters talk a great deal but don't really say all that much.
+1 Graphics: X's transition to the 3-D realm is quite smooth, as far as visuals go. The cel-shaded art style fits nicely and keeps the graphics from feeling too dated; the animated cutscenes are pretty fluid, though the color generally feels washed-out; the "talking head" stillframe cutscenes are well-illustrated and emotive; character models are easily distinguishable from one another, even if some of the details get lost when the camera is zoomed out as far as it usually is. Locations are varied, but certain sections get a little dull with repetitive surfaces as far as the eye can see (most notably the tunnels in Vanishing Gungaroo's stage, the platforms surrounded by lava in Flame Hyenard's stage, and most of the Crimson Palace interior prior to the boss rematches). The only real problem is that your health and weapon energy bars are very difficult to read at a glance—the weapon energy bar is illegibly skinny, and both bars are decorated with a color gradient that changes as the bar is reduced, set against a transparent background instead of a solid black one, making it more difficult than necessary to gauge whether you're looking at your health or a colorful wall that's bleeding through.
+1 Music: There's a great balance of seriousness and optimism in the music that gives the soundtrack an excellent texture. Most of the short-looping cutscene tunes are unremarkable, but there's both weight and energy to many of the stage tunes, from the tense breakout theme of Axl's part of the intro stage to the cautiously adventuresome Crimson Palace infiltration theme. The eerie music of the boss rematch teleporters is uniquely creepy, the stage select themes in this game are among my favorites in the entire franchise. I'd settle for catchier melodies with one or two of the stages and boss battle tunes, but overall the music does a fine job of upholding the proud X series tradition of complexity and dynamism.
-2 Sound Effects: You know what? The vast majority of the game doesn't deserve such a low rating. Nothing stands out as overwhelmingly fun or unique, but practically every sound effect in the game does its job well and unobtrusively. But then there's Flame Hyenard. He screams when he attacks. Screams. "BURN IT TO THE GROUND!!!" And this is not a sound that accompanies a rare special attack. This is every. Single. Attack. A never-ending string of screaming "BURN IT TO THE GROUND!!!" This is the only time in the entire Mega Man franchise where I have had to mute the game in order to preserve my sanity. On top of that, the voice acting is once again lacking: X's delivery is flatter than the final stage of Street Fighter X Mega Man; Signas and Alia are passable but uninspiring; I really like Red's voice, but the performance is inconsistent; Axl's youthful enthusiasm comes off as whiny most of the time, though that's more a fault of the dialogue than the acting. Sigma's good and menacing, though, and Zero is sufficiently cooler-than-you. Voice acting during combat is a little obnoxious for the other bosses who are not Flame Hyenard (Ride Boarski's "YOU PUNK!" chant, for example), but the voices are perfectly suited to the characters, and Tornado Tonion is delightfully ridiculous. ("Gahahahah! Welcome to my silly, silly stage!" I love it.) Still, Flame Hyenard ruins it for everyone.
-1 Control: If you're not treating X7 like a fast-paced action game, the control is just about perfect. Movement and combat are very responsive, and the menu screens are easy to navigate. If you expect to play X7 like any other X game, however, you're bound to run into a slew of problems. Trying to quickly nudge yourself forward through timing-critical sections sometimes results in your careful nudging being interpreted as a double-tap to dash. The auto-targeting system is extremely inadequate against fast-moving enemies, Flame Hyenard in particular (oh joy, make the battle last even longer 'cuz I keep missing), and there's no way to disable it so you can just fire in the direction you're facing. X's charge shot frequently disappears altogether, like you never tried to charge up at all, when attempting to fire on an enemy while in motion. The Ride Chaser is utterly uncontrollable at high speeds. Wall-jumping has gone from a universal ability to a gimmick that only works in a couple places, and it's disconcerting that there's no obvious rationale for why wall-jumping works on one surface (or part of a surface) but not another. While the menu screens are easy to navigate when taking them slowly, the yes/no prompts (such as, "Save your game?") are too numerous and always positioned on "no" by default, as though the developers expected you to make a mistake every time you tried to make a choice; for anybody used to mashing the confirmation button to speed through menu screens, slowing down to pick the right option multiple times is endlessly frustrating. Perhaps worst of all, there is no way to speed through the dialogue, aside from skipping the between-stage cutscenes altogether; this is especially painful when you have to sit through the same prolonged banter every time you retry a boss fight.
-2 Stages: For starters, the pacing of the game is entirely off. Ride Boarski's stage is supposed to be a fast-paced romp on the Ride Chaser, but the only way to succeed (without excessive luck and skill) is to take it as slowly as possible. There's a lurching momentum to most of the 3-D sections; areas are so unnecessarily large in places that it takes as long to get to the next action-packed challenge as it does to overcome it. Fair and solidly challenging boss battles quickly become tedious because of the bosses' outrageously oversized health bars—it takes two, three, even four times longer than usual to defeat these bosses, but there's not enough variation in the combat to justify the extra time required to fight them. Stage lengths are also wildly inconsistent; Ride Boarski shouldn't take more than 6-7 minutes; Tornado Tonion's closer to 11-12 minutes, Soldier Stonekong can last more like 20 minutes, and the whole Crimson Palace demands at least an hour! Fortunately, continuing after a Game Over only sets you back to the most recent loading point, so you don't need to replay entire stages if you fail. Still, replaying stages to search for any power-ups and Reploids you might have missed is a tiring process without a walkthrough, especially if you're going for 100% completion and need to reset the game multiple times to rescue that one stupid Reploid that's 10 minutes into Wind Crowrang's stage before that stupid wall-climbing enemy shoots him. And that's to say nothing of the unmanageable camera positioning on the flip side of Snipe Anteator's stage, or the frequent blind corners leading to damage or death in the Palace Road stage, or the utterly repetitive boulder-dodging and wolf-fighting challenges that comprise most of the Crimson Palace stage before the boss fights. Individual challenges here and there can be fun, but it's not until you know what you're doing and have collected an appreciable number of power-ups that the game stops being oppressively difficult long enough to become enjoyable. Even then, your allocation of permanent upgrades to X, Axl, and Zero can make the game much easier or nearly unbeatable, depending on how things are distributed. What hurts the game most, though, is the inconsistent pacing: not only does X7 feel like a slog compared to previous installments, but the challenges don't feel cohesive when the action is so stop-and-go.
+1 Bosses: X7 features a well-rounded cast of bosses with more sensible names than in the last two installments. Tornado Tonion (okay, bad idea to follow up my "sensible names" sentiment with a mention of Tornado Tonion) is the over-the-top comic relief boss with predictable but fair attacks; Soldier Stonekong is a respectable warrior with a unique circular arena that requires some different strategy than usual; Splash Warfly has the element of surprise but a clear pattern; Snipe Anteator is a wise, knowledgeable Reploid you almost regret having to fight, and his unique cylindrical arena puts an interesting spin (literally) on the projectile-heavy battle; Ride Boarski is a short-tempered speed demon whose various gimmicks in the battle arena pose the real threat; Wind Crowrang has a few new tricks but is otherwise your standard bird boss; Vanishing Gungaroo has two distinctly different forms, the latter being one of the more tiresome fights in the game; and Flame Hyenard is a bundle of good ideas that are all executed incredibly poorly. There's a satisfying amount of novelty and diversity in the personalities, visual designs, and attack patterns of these bosses; more than anything else, it's the obscenely large health bars and the fact that it's all too easy to enter these battles under-prepared that wreck the fun of fighting these Mavericks, but they themselves can't be held accountable for that.
-1 Special Weapons: The main problem with the weapons in this game is that there's too much to keep track of. For X, special weapons are the same as always: equip and fire. Axl has almost the same weapons as X, but there are some minor differences and he can't charge them up; also, he's got his more-complicated-than-necessary A-Trans ability. Zero mostly gains new moves like usual, but a few weapons need to be equipped and change his basic attack patterns (along the lines of the weapons in the Zero series). Most weapons are worth using at least once or twice outside of boss battles; remembering which attacks you have at your disposal is generally more challenging than actually finding a use for them. Circle Blaze, Splash Laser, Volt Tornado, and the boringly named Explosion pack a nice punch; Sniper Missile and Wind Cutter are effective but unimpressive when compared to other homing and boomerang weapons in the series; Moving Wheel doesn't do nearly enough moving to be helpful against any moving targets (and trying to aim it quickly in 3-D mode is almost a lost cause); Gaea Shield seems to be there for decoration most of the time, because I'm struggling to think of more than one occasion where it's absorbed or deflected anything for me. Zero has an acceptable assortment of weapons—Hieijin gives him a ranged attack; Raijinshou allows him to deal continuous damage and reach enemies above him; everything else has its moments somewhere or other. Oh, and did I mention X has his standard Giga Crash that damages everything around him? As if all that weren't enough, Axl's A-Trans ability lets you turn into any enemy in the game. Or just copy one of their abilities. Or absorb their energy to improve one of your abilities. Or...nothing at all. It depends on the enemy. Ability gain is inconsistent, and it's awkward to use a different button than usual to slowly charge up a shot that does basically no damage to the enemy you're trying to mimic—like so much else in the game, A-Trans is a great idea, but poorly executed.
+2 Items/Upgrades/Support Utilities: Extra lives, health and weapon refills, two Life Sub Tanks, a Weapon Sub Tank, and a host of permanent upgrades from which to choose—increased damage with each shot, an extra saber combo for Zero, a longer period of invulnerability after taking a hit, etc.—offer more than enough to give you an edge. X's Glide Armor happily returns to the mentality of the earlier games, where each part grants you an immediate improvement without needing to assemble the whole suit first. The Head Part is as uninspiring as usual, attracting certain power-ups to you from a distance, but the Body Part gives you better defense and unlocks the Giga Crash attack; the Arm Parts allow your charged X-Buster to wreak some serious havoc, and the Foot Parts let you slowly glide through the air as you fall. With the right combination of upgrades, the heroes become a serious force to be reckoned with, and the playing field becomes almost level enough that the gameplay is enjoyable at times.
+1 Ending: Inexplicably back inside the palace instead of, like, outer space, or wherever the final battle took place, our three heroes race for the exit. The apparently unstoppable Sigma appears again, and a brief and futile scuffle concludes with Axl getting punched into a wall. Just when X and Zero are about to attack Sigma, Red shows up to make the situation look far more desperate. Sigma begins to draw additional power from Red...and gets blasted out a window when Red turns on him!! Turns out it was Axl in disguise, using his A-Trans ability. Unquestionably my favorite bait-and-switch in the entire franchise. The heroes leave, and then the rest of the ending depends on who your lead character was for the final battle. For X, there's a scene where X, Signas, and Alia discuss Axl's (sloppy) performance trying to be an unofficial Maverick Hunter; X is just being a petulant brat at this point, refusing to accept that the fighting needs to continue until Capcom gets tired of making sequels, and Signas politely calls him out on it. For Axl, the scene is similar in concept, except it takes place between him and X while on a mission—Axl makes a mistake because X messed up, and X gets on Axl's case for it; basically, X spends the whole cutscene yelling at people and feeling bad about himself. For Zero, there's an unnecessary digression into dream territory—Zero pictures X standing on a pile of...something (Rubble? Bodies?)...babbling on about destroying the Mavericks, but then Zero wakes up and runs off on a mission. I realize this is supposed to be ominous possible foreshadowing, but it's neither shocking enough nor concrete enough to leave a satisfying impact. The other two alternate endings offer a better sense of closure, but it's irritating that X has learned nothing from this adventure and is perhaps more emo by the end of it. The shared ending with Sigma, however, is a fun reminder that sometimes a simple action sequence with a twist is all you need to close out a Mega Man game.
+2 Replay Value: With three distinctly different playable characters, multiple difficulty modes, multiple endings, dozens of optional Reploids to rescue, various Sub Tanks and Heart Tanks to collect, the pieces of X's armor to assemble, permanent upgrades that can be allotted differently in each playthrough, multiple paths in some stages, full-blown freedom of exploration in some of the larger areas, the variety that comes from having your choice of eight stages from the get-go, and a New Game+ feature that allows you to start a new game with whatever upgrades you had after beating the game on a previous playthrough, X7 has a tremendous amount of replay value. Assuming you want to replay the game.
-1 Polish: On a graphical level, the game is nicely polished. Aside from one or two walls that show a bit of graphical tearing (presumably from two surfaces accidentally overlapping), everything looks clean and professional. I'd love to say the same about the sound, but it's a massive oversight to let so many of the heroes and bosses obnoxiously repeat the same voice acting clip every time they perform a certain routine action (Flame Hyenard being the poster child here). A lot of what I said about the controls and challenges are a reflection of the level of polish—restarting only as far back as the last load point after a Game Over being one of the more thoughtful and positive examples (especially in the interminable final stage); inconsistent wall-kicking and constantly fighting with the yes/no prompts on the menu screen being among the more negative examples. Being forced to rewatch the same cutscenes after dying and never being able to skip or at least speed through any of them makes some of the most frustrating challenges even more frustrating when you have to wait so long to get back to the action. The level of polish rises and falls depending on what aspect of the game you're looking at—the more sterile, technical stuff works just fine, but a few simple control and gameplay issues that seriously should've been addressed in the testing phase hurt the fun factor.
+0 Extras/Easter Eggs: The New Game+ feature is a welcome inclusion, but frankly, it should be possible to save more of those Reploids and get more of those upgrades without needing to start the game over in the first place.
+2 Novelty: The shift to full 3-D for both the graphics and the gameplay is a huge change from the previous games. On top of that, there's a new playable character, a new villain, and plenty of challenges that bear little more than a passing resemblance to things we've seen before in the series. Tricking out the heroes with permanent upgrades has been done before, but rarely has each upgrade made such a game-changing impact, and rarely has so much strategy been required to make the most of the few upgrades you're allowed. Boss fights are also more involved than ever before, with the layout of each arena contributing to the challenge in a meaningful way. Also, one of the Mavericks is based on a made-up vegetable (TORNADO TONION!), so that's a series first.
Overall Score: +2 (+10 merits, -8 flaws)
+1 Graphics: X's transition to the 3-D realm is quite smooth, as far as visuals go. The cel-shaded art style fits nicely and keeps the graphics from feeling too dated; the animated cutscenes are pretty fluid, though the color generally feels washed-out; the "talking head" stillframe cutscenes are well-illustrated and emotive; character models are easily distinguishable from one another, even if some of the details get lost when the camera is zoomed out as far as it usually is. Locations are varied, but certain sections get a little dull with repetitive surfaces as far as the eye can see (most notably the tunnels in Vanishing Gungaroo's stage, the platforms surrounded by lava in Flame Hyenard's stage, and most of the Crimson Palace interior prior to the boss rematches). The only real problem is that your health and weapon energy bars are very difficult to read at a glance—the weapon energy bar is illegibly skinny, and both bars are decorated with a color gradient that changes as the bar is reduced, set against a transparent background instead of a solid black one, making it more difficult than necessary to gauge whether you're looking at your health or a colorful wall that's bleeding through.
+1 Music: There's a great balance of seriousness and optimism in the music that gives the soundtrack an excellent texture. Most of the short-looping cutscene tunes are unremarkable, but there's both weight and energy to many of the stage tunes, from the tense breakout theme of Axl's part of the intro stage to the cautiously adventuresome Crimson Palace infiltration theme. The eerie music of the boss rematch teleporters is uniquely creepy, the stage select themes in this game are among my favorites in the entire franchise. I'd settle for catchier melodies with one or two of the stages and boss battle tunes, but overall the music does a fine job of upholding the proud X series tradition of complexity and dynamism.
-2 Sound Effects: You know what? The vast majority of the game doesn't deserve such a low rating. Nothing stands out as overwhelmingly fun or unique, but practically every sound effect in the game does its job well and unobtrusively. But then there's Flame Hyenard. He screams when he attacks. Screams. "BURN IT TO THE GROUND!!!" And this is not a sound that accompanies a rare special attack. This is every. Single. Attack. A never-ending string of screaming "BURN IT TO THE GROUND!!!" This is the only time in the entire Mega Man franchise where I have had to mute the game in order to preserve my sanity. On top of that, the voice acting is once again lacking: X's delivery is flatter than the final stage of Street Fighter X Mega Man; Signas and Alia are passable but uninspiring; I really like Red's voice, but the performance is inconsistent; Axl's youthful enthusiasm comes off as whiny most of the time, though that's more a fault of the dialogue than the acting. Sigma's good and menacing, though, and Zero is sufficiently cooler-than-you. Voice acting during combat is a little obnoxious for the other bosses who are not Flame Hyenard (Ride Boarski's "YOU PUNK!" chant, for example), but the voices are perfectly suited to the characters, and Tornado Tonion is delightfully ridiculous. ("Gahahahah! Welcome to my silly, silly stage!" I love it.) Still, Flame Hyenard ruins it for everyone.
-1 Control: If you're not treating X7 like a fast-paced action game, the control is just about perfect. Movement and combat are very responsive, and the menu screens are easy to navigate. If you expect to play X7 like any other X game, however, you're bound to run into a slew of problems. Trying to quickly nudge yourself forward through timing-critical sections sometimes results in your careful nudging being interpreted as a double-tap to dash. The auto-targeting system is extremely inadequate against fast-moving enemies, Flame Hyenard in particular (oh joy, make the battle last even longer 'cuz I keep missing), and there's no way to disable it so you can just fire in the direction you're facing. X's charge shot frequently disappears altogether, like you never tried to charge up at all, when attempting to fire on an enemy while in motion. The Ride Chaser is utterly uncontrollable at high speeds. Wall-jumping has gone from a universal ability to a gimmick that only works in a couple places, and it's disconcerting that there's no obvious rationale for why wall-jumping works on one surface (or part of a surface) but not another. While the menu screens are easy to navigate when taking them slowly, the yes/no prompts (such as, "Save your game?") are too numerous and always positioned on "no" by default, as though the developers expected you to make a mistake every time you tried to make a choice; for anybody used to mashing the confirmation button to speed through menu screens, slowing down to pick the right option multiple times is endlessly frustrating. Perhaps worst of all, there is no way to speed through the dialogue, aside from skipping the between-stage cutscenes altogether; this is especially painful when you have to sit through the same prolonged banter every time you retry a boss fight.
-2 Stages: For starters, the pacing of the game is entirely off. Ride Boarski's stage is supposed to be a fast-paced romp on the Ride Chaser, but the only way to succeed (without excessive luck and skill) is to take it as slowly as possible. There's a lurching momentum to most of the 3-D sections; areas are so unnecessarily large in places that it takes as long to get to the next action-packed challenge as it does to overcome it. Fair and solidly challenging boss battles quickly become tedious because of the bosses' outrageously oversized health bars—it takes two, three, even four times longer than usual to defeat these bosses, but there's not enough variation in the combat to justify the extra time required to fight them. Stage lengths are also wildly inconsistent; Ride Boarski shouldn't take more than 6-7 minutes; Tornado Tonion's closer to 11-12 minutes, Soldier Stonekong can last more like 20 minutes, and the whole Crimson Palace demands at least an hour! Fortunately, continuing after a Game Over only sets you back to the most recent loading point, so you don't need to replay entire stages if you fail. Still, replaying stages to search for any power-ups and Reploids you might have missed is a tiring process without a walkthrough, especially if you're going for 100% completion and need to reset the game multiple times to rescue that one stupid Reploid that's 10 minutes into Wind Crowrang's stage before that stupid wall-climbing enemy shoots him. And that's to say nothing of the unmanageable camera positioning on the flip side of Snipe Anteator's stage, or the frequent blind corners leading to damage or death in the Palace Road stage, or the utterly repetitive boulder-dodging and wolf-fighting challenges that comprise most of the Crimson Palace stage before the boss fights. Individual challenges here and there can be fun, but it's not until you know what you're doing and have collected an appreciable number of power-ups that the game stops being oppressively difficult long enough to become enjoyable. Even then, your allocation of permanent upgrades to X, Axl, and Zero can make the game much easier or nearly unbeatable, depending on how things are distributed. What hurts the game most, though, is the inconsistent pacing: not only does X7 feel like a slog compared to previous installments, but the challenges don't feel cohesive when the action is so stop-and-go.
+1 Bosses: X7 features a well-rounded cast of bosses with more sensible names than in the last two installments. Tornado Tonion (okay, bad idea to follow up my "sensible names" sentiment with a mention of Tornado Tonion) is the over-the-top comic relief boss with predictable but fair attacks; Soldier Stonekong is a respectable warrior with a unique circular arena that requires some different strategy than usual; Splash Warfly has the element of surprise but a clear pattern; Snipe Anteator is a wise, knowledgeable Reploid you almost regret having to fight, and his unique cylindrical arena puts an interesting spin (literally) on the projectile-heavy battle; Ride Boarski is a short-tempered speed demon whose various gimmicks in the battle arena pose the real threat; Wind Crowrang has a few new tricks but is otherwise your standard bird boss; Vanishing Gungaroo has two distinctly different forms, the latter being one of the more tiresome fights in the game; and Flame Hyenard is a bundle of good ideas that are all executed incredibly poorly. There's a satisfying amount of novelty and diversity in the personalities, visual designs, and attack patterns of these bosses; more than anything else, it's the obscenely large health bars and the fact that it's all too easy to enter these battles under-prepared that wreck the fun of fighting these Mavericks, but they themselves can't be held accountable for that.
-1 Special Weapons: The main problem with the weapons in this game is that there's too much to keep track of. For X, special weapons are the same as always: equip and fire. Axl has almost the same weapons as X, but there are some minor differences and he can't charge them up; also, he's got his more-complicated-than-necessary A-Trans ability. Zero mostly gains new moves like usual, but a few weapons need to be equipped and change his basic attack patterns (along the lines of the weapons in the Zero series). Most weapons are worth using at least once or twice outside of boss battles; remembering which attacks you have at your disposal is generally more challenging than actually finding a use for them. Circle Blaze, Splash Laser, Volt Tornado, and the boringly named Explosion pack a nice punch; Sniper Missile and Wind Cutter are effective but unimpressive when compared to other homing and boomerang weapons in the series; Moving Wheel doesn't do nearly enough moving to be helpful against any moving targets (and trying to aim it quickly in 3-D mode is almost a lost cause); Gaea Shield seems to be there for decoration most of the time, because I'm struggling to think of more than one occasion where it's absorbed or deflected anything for me. Zero has an acceptable assortment of weapons—Hieijin gives him a ranged attack; Raijinshou allows him to deal continuous damage and reach enemies above him; everything else has its moments somewhere or other. Oh, and did I mention X has his standard Giga Crash that damages everything around him? As if all that weren't enough, Axl's A-Trans ability lets you turn into any enemy in the game. Or just copy one of their abilities. Or absorb their energy to improve one of your abilities. Or...nothing at all. It depends on the enemy. Ability gain is inconsistent, and it's awkward to use a different button than usual to slowly charge up a shot that does basically no damage to the enemy you're trying to mimic—like so much else in the game, A-Trans is a great idea, but poorly executed.
+2 Items/Upgrades/Support Utilities: Extra lives, health and weapon refills, two Life Sub Tanks, a Weapon Sub Tank, and a host of permanent upgrades from which to choose—increased damage with each shot, an extra saber combo for Zero, a longer period of invulnerability after taking a hit, etc.—offer more than enough to give you an edge. X's Glide Armor happily returns to the mentality of the earlier games, where each part grants you an immediate improvement without needing to assemble the whole suit first. The Head Part is as uninspiring as usual, attracting certain power-ups to you from a distance, but the Body Part gives you better defense and unlocks the Giga Crash attack; the Arm Parts allow your charged X-Buster to wreak some serious havoc, and the Foot Parts let you slowly glide through the air as you fall. With the right combination of upgrades, the heroes become a serious force to be reckoned with, and the playing field becomes almost level enough that the gameplay is enjoyable at times.
+1 Ending: Inexplicably back inside the palace instead of, like, outer space, or wherever the final battle took place, our three heroes race for the exit. The apparently unstoppable Sigma appears again, and a brief and futile scuffle concludes with Axl getting punched into a wall. Just when X and Zero are about to attack Sigma, Red shows up to make the situation look far more desperate. Sigma begins to draw additional power from Red...and gets blasted out a window when Red turns on him!! Turns out it was Axl in disguise, using his A-Trans ability. Unquestionably my favorite bait-and-switch in the entire franchise. The heroes leave, and then the rest of the ending depends on who your lead character was for the final battle. For X, there's a scene where X, Signas, and Alia discuss Axl's (sloppy) performance trying to be an unofficial Maverick Hunter; X is just being a petulant brat at this point, refusing to accept that the fighting needs to continue until Capcom gets tired of making sequels, and Signas politely calls him out on it. For Axl, the scene is similar in concept, except it takes place between him and X while on a mission—Axl makes a mistake because X messed up, and X gets on Axl's case for it; basically, X spends the whole cutscene yelling at people and feeling bad about himself. For Zero, there's an unnecessary digression into dream territory—Zero pictures X standing on a pile of...something (Rubble? Bodies?)...babbling on about destroying the Mavericks, but then Zero wakes up and runs off on a mission. I realize this is supposed to be ominous possible foreshadowing, but it's neither shocking enough nor concrete enough to leave a satisfying impact. The other two alternate endings offer a better sense of closure, but it's irritating that X has learned nothing from this adventure and is perhaps more emo by the end of it. The shared ending with Sigma, however, is a fun reminder that sometimes a simple action sequence with a twist is all you need to close out a Mega Man game.
+2 Replay Value: With three distinctly different playable characters, multiple difficulty modes, multiple endings, dozens of optional Reploids to rescue, various Sub Tanks and Heart Tanks to collect, the pieces of X's armor to assemble, permanent upgrades that can be allotted differently in each playthrough, multiple paths in some stages, full-blown freedom of exploration in some of the larger areas, the variety that comes from having your choice of eight stages from the get-go, and a New Game+ feature that allows you to start a new game with whatever upgrades you had after beating the game on a previous playthrough, X7 has a tremendous amount of replay value. Assuming you want to replay the game.
-1 Polish: On a graphical level, the game is nicely polished. Aside from one or two walls that show a bit of graphical tearing (presumably from two surfaces accidentally overlapping), everything looks clean and professional. I'd love to say the same about the sound, but it's a massive oversight to let so many of the heroes and bosses obnoxiously repeat the same voice acting clip every time they perform a certain routine action (Flame Hyenard being the poster child here). A lot of what I said about the controls and challenges are a reflection of the level of polish—restarting only as far back as the last load point after a Game Over being one of the more thoughtful and positive examples (especially in the interminable final stage); inconsistent wall-kicking and constantly fighting with the yes/no prompts on the menu screen being among the more negative examples. Being forced to rewatch the same cutscenes after dying and never being able to skip or at least speed through any of them makes some of the most frustrating challenges even more frustrating when you have to wait so long to get back to the action. The level of polish rises and falls depending on what aspect of the game you're looking at—the more sterile, technical stuff works just fine, but a few simple control and gameplay issues that seriously should've been addressed in the testing phase hurt the fun factor.
+0 Extras/Easter Eggs: The New Game+ feature is a welcome inclusion, but frankly, it should be possible to save more of those Reploids and get more of those upgrades without needing to start the game over in the first place.
+2 Novelty: The shift to full 3-D for both the graphics and the gameplay is a huge change from the previous games. On top of that, there's a new playable character, a new villain, and plenty of challenges that bear little more than a passing resemblance to things we've seen before in the series. Tricking out the heroes with permanent upgrades has been done before, but rarely has each upgrade made such a game-changing impact, and rarely has so much strategy been required to make the most of the few upgrades you're allowed. Boss fights are also more involved than ever before, with the layout of each arena contributing to the challenge in a meaningful way. Also, one of the Mavericks is based on a made-up vegetable (TORNADO TONION!), so that's a series first.
Overall Score: +2 (+10 merits, -8 flaws)
Mega Man X8 (PS2)
-2 Story: Humans are fed up with constant Maverick uprisings, so they build an elevator to the moon. (A) "Elevator to the moon" is one of the few sci-fi/semi-plausible future technologies that I think is outright dumb; (B) escaping from Reploids by using Reploids to build your escape route is also dumb. Lumine, the new-generation Reploid who's in charge of the project, gets kidnapped by...um, Vile, who was destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed again, and hasn't even been mentioned since X3, yet everyone treats him like he's been here the whole time. X, Zero, and Axl set out to rescue Lumine, stop random Mavericks from sabotaging the moon elevator, and unravel the mystery of how new-generation Reploids supposedly immune to the Sigma Virus are going Maverick. It should go without saying that Sigma is involved and Lumine is in on the whole thing, given that looking evil is Lumine's sole character trait. Moon elevator aside, the basic premise is acceptable, and the Copy Chip mystery is interesting enough, but there's never any explanation for the villains' motivations, and frankly, the heroes don't care. There's a lot of talk about bringing about a new world, but it's never made clear what that actually means. "The development of space" is pretty vague, too. Basically every conversation between one of the heroes and one of the bosses amounts to either "You're a Maverick!" "Am I really a Maverick?" or "Wouldn't you like to hear about my sinister plan?" "Nope. Time to die!" It's one thing to leave things unexplained and unresolved, but X8 goes out of its way to not tell the player anything that would give the game any depth.
+1 Graphics: Everything positive I said about X7 still applies here, and most of the negative things I said have been fixed. The health bar is not only legible again, but it's finally returned to the pre-X4 style where you can count exactly how many units of damage you've taken. Backgrounds are full of interesting details, from burning furnaces to entire portions of the stage off in the distance, and the few stages with repetitive features are too action-packed to give you much time to notice. On the downside, the cel-shaded cutscenes still look washed-out, and there's a lot of important fine detail that gets lost when the camera is zoomed out to its usual distance. I'm still not sure what the main enemies in Avalanche Yeti's stage are supposed to be, and I didn't notice until almost the end of my first playthrough that all the Mavericks transform into some sort of regular humanoid (Sigma, maybe?) when defeated. More importantly, the special patches of floor where Crystal Wall can pull up a special item are practically invisible. Trying to discern some faint markings on a floor you're viewing almost completely from the side is not easy, especially if you don't know to look for them. The perspective causes problems with some of the platforming as well; for example, there's a bit of an optical illusion with the spike-covered rooms leading to the final boss, and it makes an appropriately tricky challenge a little harder than it should be. I'm also not thrilled about how X's armor upgrades don't change color to match the special weapon you've currently selected, making it that much easier to have no idea what weapon you're using.
+0 Music: I'm not sure if this is more a criticism of the music or the sound effects, but I've never heard a Mega Man soundtrack get so buried under all the action—this is the first game in the series where I've ever had to adjust the audio balance in the options menu to hear the music at all. Of course, part of the problem is that so much of the music is backgroundy to a fault. The instrument set is exactly what we've come to expect over the last several games, but the melodies are meandering and sometimes difficult to pin down. Now, the music for stage selection, intermission, Noah's Park, Gravity Antonion, Optic Sunflower, and Dark Mantis (which is appropriately minimalistic) fit right in with the rest of the series, but they're about the only ones that stand out. The rest are nice enough, but they're lacking in strong melodies and instrumental complexity. I will say that I appreciate the way some of the same notes are deliberately threaded through multiple themes—part of what makes X4's soundtrack so memorable—but I don't find them to be that catchy. Unfortunately, there's one major misfire in the bunch that's composed well but sticks out in a bad way: the incongruously solemn and depressing depressing save and load screen. Even the heartbreaking Game Over music from Mega Man & Bass doesn't make me want to cry that badly, and that inappropriate tonal shift sucks all the euphoria out of saving your hard-fought progress after a thrilling victory.
+0 Sound Effects: X8 is very noisy, to the point where sound effects get lost amidst other sound effects. It's probably more realistic that there's a lot of ambient noise, and that any action of any magnitude makes a sound, but I usually can't hear the bosses' exclamations (or, as mentioned above, the music) over everything that's going on. Plus, Axl doesn't need to keep shouting "Take that!" when laying down continuous fire. Individually, the sound effects are very clean and professional, but they don't sound like much of anything when blaring all at once. The voice acting is acceptable; Sigma and Vile don't sound menacing or villainous enough, Lumine is grating, and Axl's intonation occasionally misses the right emphasis for his lines, but X and the Mavericks are fine, and I like Zero (despite the lines he's given, which make him sound a little less intelligent than usual). My favorites are the navigators, who offer solid performances that give us a better sense of personality than their dialogue alone does--a refreshing change for a franchise that tends to use voice acting more out of modern obligation than because of what it adds to the experience.
+1 Control: As always, I could do without a separate button to fire your special weapons, but the controls are configurable and responsive. Zero's button combos are simple and intuitive, Axl's hover ability is easy to manage, and X still controls well after his various mobility-affecting upgrades. Menu navigation is straightforward, and cutscenes can be rapidly advanced or skipped altogether. The Ride Armors are a bit sluggish, though, and it's painful to continuously mash the attack button throughout Gigabolt Man-O-War's stage (nevermind that X, Zero, and Axl should have the same diversity of attacks that they do in Avalanche Yeti's stage).
-2 Stages: Let's set aside the intro stage, which features a beautiful and thorough learning curve that elevates it above every intro stage since X1's. Every other stage bears the marks of amateur game design. Stages are defined by a single gimmick, and survival hinges on endurance against repetitive challenges or rote memorization of deathtraps that blindside you on your first attempt. How many times do you fend off hordes of enemies before moving on to the next screen? How many sections are one straight line of the same challenge over and over? How often are you railroaded along without being given time to size up a situation, work out a strategy, and practice? And that's to say nothing about the truly appalling requirements for acquiring some of the upgrades. Sure, let's replay all of Avalanche Yeti's overlong stage two or three times to get all the hidden upgrades right before the boss chamber, assuming you've got the right characters and weapons to get them in the first place. Right, it's perfectly reasonable to get to the bottom of a vertical area covered in spikes, capture the A-Trans ability of a random flying enemy, somehow make your way all the way back to the top, and fly delicately into a hole in the wall (that looks like random decoration) between more spikes that will kill you if you're not absolutely perfect, assuming you haven't run out of A-Trans energy yet, to get an upgrade chip that you'll need to leave this stage to purchase, only to return again to almost the exact same location to uncover another secret using this new upgrade. Portions of stages are genuinely fun, and I have no problem with most of the gimmicks on an individual basis, but almost everything that doesn't suddenly kill you takes too long to become challenging and overstays its welcome once it gets there. Give me more stages like Gravity Antonion's, but without an overly harsh spike block miniboss so far from a checkpoint, and never EVER give me Gigabolt Man-O-War's stage EVER AGAIN.
+2 Bosses: Fortunately, suffering through any given stage is worth it for the battle at the end. X8 has some truly superb variety in its boss fights: both the bosses and the chambers where you fight them come in all shapes and sizes, and the fighting always takes full advantage of the space provided. You've got shifting level geography with Burn Rooster, Optic Sunflower, and Earthrock Trilobite; modified physics with Gravity Antonion; a frenzy of projectiles with Bamboo Pandamonium; little minions with Gigabolt Man-O-War; a Drill Man-esque game of hide-and-seek with Avalanche Yeti; and straight-up melee mayhem with Dark Mantis. The crab boss of the intro stage offers both a fair challenge and training on a valuable skill; Vile's various incarnations are reminiscent of some of the fights with him, Bit, Byte, and the X-Hunters in X1-3; Copy Sigma is a standard fight with the unique twist of having barely anywhere safe to stay put; real Sigma is a creative evolution of the first-form Sigma fights from X1-5; and Lumine brings a sort of Mega Man Zero/ZX style of boss fight to the table, with a slew of different attacks, big transformations, and a new set of rules to play by. Think of any Mega Man boss fight you've ever enjoyed, and some element of what makes that fight great is probably captured here.
+2 Special Weapons: Fun and versatile weapons go a long way in compensating for the level design. While not every weapon is a winner (Shining Ray's usefulness is limited by its slowness and restriction to being fired from the ground, for instance, and Zero's arsenal feels like a collection of secret gag weapons that accidentally got included as main weapons), the sheer number and variety of options cater to practically every playstyle. X's weapons range from underwhelming (Shadow Runner) to very useful (Drift Diamond); Zero has an intuitive and comprehensive move set that works well in most any situation; and Axl's guns are powerful enough to make short work of almost anything, though I wouldn't mind a few more weapons that aren't "rapid-fire projectile in a straight line" or "short-range stream." You also get some creative interactions with the environment when using these weapons, whether it's digging up power-ups with Crystal Wall or powering up a generator with one of Gigabolt Man-O-War's offerings. A-Trans, while limited in the number of foes it can copy, finally proves that it can be useful when executed well.
+2 Items/Upgrades/Support Utilities: So many choices, and practically all of them useful! Everything you've come to expect is accounted for: protection from spikes, longer saber combos for Zero, more weapon energy, and so forth, plus mix-'n'-match armor parts for X that reinvigorate the upgrade mechanic. Do you prefer a faster charge shot or a headbutt that damages enemies? How about a continuous laser or a spread shot? Keeping all the parts from the same set together gives you a Giga Attack unique to that armor, so there's incentive to both collect everything and try out different combinations to see what works best for your playstyle.
+0 Ending: Lumine, defeated, begins to crack (literally; he's already figuratively cracked). Axl, stupidly, draws closer to Lumine, then gets his head crystal shattered by tentacles that burst out of Lumine's chest. Zero and X intervene, report in to Alia, and bring the mostly unconscious Axl back down the long elevator to Earth. Depending on your character selection, there's some different dialogue. X once again questions his own actions (please, man, commit to being a hero or leave the Maverick Hunters already; this wishy-washiness is killing me), and Zero catches whatever it is that X has and contemplates not needing to fight anymore...but then turns around and gives X a pep talk encouraging him to keep fighting Mavericks and even his own destiny. A text-only tag following the ensuing credits tells us that "those in power" discontinued the use of copy chips and canceled the production of all new-generation Reploids...but because nobody learns from history and "the development of space" is sooooo important, that decision is overturned a few years later. Because regular Reploids who just follow orders and don't try to murder you are underqualified to develop space. An optimistic little scribbled note from Dr. Light ('memba him?) appears, making us feel bad that humans and robots are not currently living in harmony. Lasty, a tag after the tag shows Axl's broken head crystal sparkling ominously from within, followed by a pictureless discussion between Alia, X, and Axl about how Axl's totally gonna turn Maverick, too, which Axl energetically denies. Although the ending brings the story to an acceptable conclusion, and the actiony bits and elevator sequence are pretty, the ending flagrantly sets things up for a sequel...and in doing so, kind of undermines any sense of accomplishment you might have had. "Nobody learns from their mistakes, we can never have peace, and it's the hero's destiny to turn evil eventually" is not a very friendly pat on the back for beating the game.
+1 Replay Value: Between three different playable characters (technically six), the different dialogue you get with each of them (as well as with the Navigator you select for each mission), the mix-and-match armor parts, the addition of the Intermission stages, the numerous meaningful upgrades you can find and purchase, and the wide selection of weapons (especially for Zero), there's always something new to see. The stages, unfortunately, are very linear; the vehicle stages don't allow much wiggle room as far as strategy is concerned, and the likes of Burn Rooster and Earthrock Trilobyte herd you along with gimmicks that give you neither the time nor the space to be all that creative.
-1 Polish: On the surface, X8 looks and sounds perfectly fine, handles perfectly well, and addresses several of X7's shortcomings. Pick it apart a little, and it quickly becomes apparent that attention to detail is not one of the game's strong suits. There's the way that Vile is treated like he's been a regular character all along, even though his appearance should be a total shock. X's upgraded armor parts don't change color to let you know what special weapon you have equipped. Upgrade placement throughout the stages is frequently inconsiderate (as ranted about above), and the price tags on several of the upgrades are outrageous—I spent hours grinding for metals, even playing through the game a second time with New Game +, and I still only was able to afford maybe 65% of what's available. I understand wanting to stretch out the replay value by making a few things unattainable on a first playthrough, but this is just excessive. And Gigabolt Man-o-War's stage single-handedly (single-tentacledly?) causes this category to lose a point for its unforgivable player-unfriendliness, throwing you into the action with no explanation whatsoever of the victory and loss conditions, and forcing you to continuously mash the attack button for the entire duration of the stage because there is no differentiation between the different playable characters' abilities. I will say that being able to choose your Navigator (or shut them off entirely) is a welcome change, transforming one of the series' most detested mechanics into the customizable hint system it should have been all along.
+2 Extras/Easter Eggs: It's rare enough to have multiple female characters in a Mega Man game, but to be able to play as them? Awesome. Even though Alia, Layer, and Palette are, for all intents and purposes, reskins of X, Zero, and Axl, respectively, there's something immensely satisfying about sending your Navigators into the fray. Equipping Zero with progressively more ridiculous weapons is a hoot—the ones that are effective are great, and even the ones that aren't very effective are still worth having for the comedic value of watching Zero stand on one leg and swat projectiles with paper fans. Unlocking Intermission levels as you go is a great way to ease the burden of grinding for metals (though the stages still aren't lucrative enough to counterbalance the more disproportionate item costs). Lastly, running into Cut Man is a wonderful and completely unexpected throwback. X8 excels in making its bonus material all about being fun, something the later X games start to sight of in the midst of trying to be angsty and innovative.
+2 Novelty: The story introduces many new characters, and I can count on one hand the number of Mega Man games where the main villain of the series is demoted to a secondary boss fight. Extra lives are replaced with Retry Chips, and the whole shop system is sufficiently different in its mix of one-use, permanent, general, and character-specific upgrades, many of which have never been seen before in the series. Getting to play as anyone other than the usual heroes is refreshing, let alone as the trio of Navigators, who already add a pleasant layer (no pun intended) of complexity with the revamped hint system. The Intermission stages are a nice new break from the regular stages; Axl's A-Trans ability finally works the way it's supposed to; and most of the stage gimmicks are innovative twists on the familiar, or else altogether unique.
Overall Score: +8 (+13 merits, -5 flaws)
+1 Graphics: Everything positive I said about X7 still applies here, and most of the negative things I said have been fixed. The health bar is not only legible again, but it's finally returned to the pre-X4 style where you can count exactly how many units of damage you've taken. Backgrounds are full of interesting details, from burning furnaces to entire portions of the stage off in the distance, and the few stages with repetitive features are too action-packed to give you much time to notice. On the downside, the cel-shaded cutscenes still look washed-out, and there's a lot of important fine detail that gets lost when the camera is zoomed out to its usual distance. I'm still not sure what the main enemies in Avalanche Yeti's stage are supposed to be, and I didn't notice until almost the end of my first playthrough that all the Mavericks transform into some sort of regular humanoid (Sigma, maybe?) when defeated. More importantly, the special patches of floor where Crystal Wall can pull up a special item are practically invisible. Trying to discern some faint markings on a floor you're viewing almost completely from the side is not easy, especially if you don't know to look for them. The perspective causes problems with some of the platforming as well; for example, there's a bit of an optical illusion with the spike-covered rooms leading to the final boss, and it makes an appropriately tricky challenge a little harder than it should be. I'm also not thrilled about how X's armor upgrades don't change color to match the special weapon you've currently selected, making it that much easier to have no idea what weapon you're using.
+0 Music: I'm not sure if this is more a criticism of the music or the sound effects, but I've never heard a Mega Man soundtrack get so buried under all the action—this is the first game in the series where I've ever had to adjust the audio balance in the options menu to hear the music at all. Of course, part of the problem is that so much of the music is backgroundy to a fault. The instrument set is exactly what we've come to expect over the last several games, but the melodies are meandering and sometimes difficult to pin down. Now, the music for stage selection, intermission, Noah's Park, Gravity Antonion, Optic Sunflower, and Dark Mantis (which is appropriately minimalistic) fit right in with the rest of the series, but they're about the only ones that stand out. The rest are nice enough, but they're lacking in strong melodies and instrumental complexity. I will say that I appreciate the way some of the same notes are deliberately threaded through multiple themes—part of what makes X4's soundtrack so memorable—but I don't find them to be that catchy. Unfortunately, there's one major misfire in the bunch that's composed well but sticks out in a bad way: the incongruously solemn and depressing depressing save and load screen. Even the heartbreaking Game Over music from Mega Man & Bass doesn't make me want to cry that badly, and that inappropriate tonal shift sucks all the euphoria out of saving your hard-fought progress after a thrilling victory.
+0 Sound Effects: X8 is very noisy, to the point where sound effects get lost amidst other sound effects. It's probably more realistic that there's a lot of ambient noise, and that any action of any magnitude makes a sound, but I usually can't hear the bosses' exclamations (or, as mentioned above, the music) over everything that's going on. Plus, Axl doesn't need to keep shouting "Take that!" when laying down continuous fire. Individually, the sound effects are very clean and professional, but they don't sound like much of anything when blaring all at once. The voice acting is acceptable; Sigma and Vile don't sound menacing or villainous enough, Lumine is grating, and Axl's intonation occasionally misses the right emphasis for his lines, but X and the Mavericks are fine, and I like Zero (despite the lines he's given, which make him sound a little less intelligent than usual). My favorites are the navigators, who offer solid performances that give us a better sense of personality than their dialogue alone does--a refreshing change for a franchise that tends to use voice acting more out of modern obligation than because of what it adds to the experience.
+1 Control: As always, I could do without a separate button to fire your special weapons, but the controls are configurable and responsive. Zero's button combos are simple and intuitive, Axl's hover ability is easy to manage, and X still controls well after his various mobility-affecting upgrades. Menu navigation is straightforward, and cutscenes can be rapidly advanced or skipped altogether. The Ride Armors are a bit sluggish, though, and it's painful to continuously mash the attack button throughout Gigabolt Man-O-War's stage (nevermind that X, Zero, and Axl should have the same diversity of attacks that they do in Avalanche Yeti's stage).
-2 Stages: Let's set aside the intro stage, which features a beautiful and thorough learning curve that elevates it above every intro stage since X1's. Every other stage bears the marks of amateur game design. Stages are defined by a single gimmick, and survival hinges on endurance against repetitive challenges or rote memorization of deathtraps that blindside you on your first attempt. How many times do you fend off hordes of enemies before moving on to the next screen? How many sections are one straight line of the same challenge over and over? How often are you railroaded along without being given time to size up a situation, work out a strategy, and practice? And that's to say nothing about the truly appalling requirements for acquiring some of the upgrades. Sure, let's replay all of Avalanche Yeti's overlong stage two or three times to get all the hidden upgrades right before the boss chamber, assuming you've got the right characters and weapons to get them in the first place. Right, it's perfectly reasonable to get to the bottom of a vertical area covered in spikes, capture the A-Trans ability of a random flying enemy, somehow make your way all the way back to the top, and fly delicately into a hole in the wall (that looks like random decoration) between more spikes that will kill you if you're not absolutely perfect, assuming you haven't run out of A-Trans energy yet, to get an upgrade chip that you'll need to leave this stage to purchase, only to return again to almost the exact same location to uncover another secret using this new upgrade. Portions of stages are genuinely fun, and I have no problem with most of the gimmicks on an individual basis, but almost everything that doesn't suddenly kill you takes too long to become challenging and overstays its welcome once it gets there. Give me more stages like Gravity Antonion's, but without an overly harsh spike block miniboss so far from a checkpoint, and never EVER give me Gigabolt Man-O-War's stage EVER AGAIN.
+2 Bosses: Fortunately, suffering through any given stage is worth it for the battle at the end. X8 has some truly superb variety in its boss fights: both the bosses and the chambers where you fight them come in all shapes and sizes, and the fighting always takes full advantage of the space provided. You've got shifting level geography with Burn Rooster, Optic Sunflower, and Earthrock Trilobite; modified physics with Gravity Antonion; a frenzy of projectiles with Bamboo Pandamonium; little minions with Gigabolt Man-O-War; a Drill Man-esque game of hide-and-seek with Avalanche Yeti; and straight-up melee mayhem with Dark Mantis. The crab boss of the intro stage offers both a fair challenge and training on a valuable skill; Vile's various incarnations are reminiscent of some of the fights with him, Bit, Byte, and the X-Hunters in X1-3; Copy Sigma is a standard fight with the unique twist of having barely anywhere safe to stay put; real Sigma is a creative evolution of the first-form Sigma fights from X1-5; and Lumine brings a sort of Mega Man Zero/ZX style of boss fight to the table, with a slew of different attacks, big transformations, and a new set of rules to play by. Think of any Mega Man boss fight you've ever enjoyed, and some element of what makes that fight great is probably captured here.
+2 Special Weapons: Fun and versatile weapons go a long way in compensating for the level design. While not every weapon is a winner (Shining Ray's usefulness is limited by its slowness and restriction to being fired from the ground, for instance, and Zero's arsenal feels like a collection of secret gag weapons that accidentally got included as main weapons), the sheer number and variety of options cater to practically every playstyle. X's weapons range from underwhelming (Shadow Runner) to very useful (Drift Diamond); Zero has an intuitive and comprehensive move set that works well in most any situation; and Axl's guns are powerful enough to make short work of almost anything, though I wouldn't mind a few more weapons that aren't "rapid-fire projectile in a straight line" or "short-range stream." You also get some creative interactions with the environment when using these weapons, whether it's digging up power-ups with Crystal Wall or powering up a generator with one of Gigabolt Man-O-War's offerings. A-Trans, while limited in the number of foes it can copy, finally proves that it can be useful when executed well.
+2 Items/Upgrades/Support Utilities: So many choices, and practically all of them useful! Everything you've come to expect is accounted for: protection from spikes, longer saber combos for Zero, more weapon energy, and so forth, plus mix-'n'-match armor parts for X that reinvigorate the upgrade mechanic. Do you prefer a faster charge shot or a headbutt that damages enemies? How about a continuous laser or a spread shot? Keeping all the parts from the same set together gives you a Giga Attack unique to that armor, so there's incentive to both collect everything and try out different combinations to see what works best for your playstyle.
+0 Ending: Lumine, defeated, begins to crack (literally; he's already figuratively cracked). Axl, stupidly, draws closer to Lumine, then gets his head crystal shattered by tentacles that burst out of Lumine's chest. Zero and X intervene, report in to Alia, and bring the mostly unconscious Axl back down the long elevator to Earth. Depending on your character selection, there's some different dialogue. X once again questions his own actions (please, man, commit to being a hero or leave the Maverick Hunters already; this wishy-washiness is killing me), and Zero catches whatever it is that X has and contemplates not needing to fight anymore...but then turns around and gives X a pep talk encouraging him to keep fighting Mavericks and even his own destiny. A text-only tag following the ensuing credits tells us that "those in power" discontinued the use of copy chips and canceled the production of all new-generation Reploids...but because nobody learns from history and "the development of space" is sooooo important, that decision is overturned a few years later. Because regular Reploids who just follow orders and don't try to murder you are underqualified to develop space. An optimistic little scribbled note from Dr. Light ('memba him?) appears, making us feel bad that humans and robots are not currently living in harmony. Lasty, a tag after the tag shows Axl's broken head crystal sparkling ominously from within, followed by a pictureless discussion between Alia, X, and Axl about how Axl's totally gonna turn Maverick, too, which Axl energetically denies. Although the ending brings the story to an acceptable conclusion, and the actiony bits and elevator sequence are pretty, the ending flagrantly sets things up for a sequel...and in doing so, kind of undermines any sense of accomplishment you might have had. "Nobody learns from their mistakes, we can never have peace, and it's the hero's destiny to turn evil eventually" is not a very friendly pat on the back for beating the game.
+1 Replay Value: Between three different playable characters (technically six), the different dialogue you get with each of them (as well as with the Navigator you select for each mission), the mix-and-match armor parts, the addition of the Intermission stages, the numerous meaningful upgrades you can find and purchase, and the wide selection of weapons (especially for Zero), there's always something new to see. The stages, unfortunately, are very linear; the vehicle stages don't allow much wiggle room as far as strategy is concerned, and the likes of Burn Rooster and Earthrock Trilobyte herd you along with gimmicks that give you neither the time nor the space to be all that creative.
-1 Polish: On the surface, X8 looks and sounds perfectly fine, handles perfectly well, and addresses several of X7's shortcomings. Pick it apart a little, and it quickly becomes apparent that attention to detail is not one of the game's strong suits. There's the way that Vile is treated like he's been a regular character all along, even though his appearance should be a total shock. X's upgraded armor parts don't change color to let you know what special weapon you have equipped. Upgrade placement throughout the stages is frequently inconsiderate (as ranted about above), and the price tags on several of the upgrades are outrageous—I spent hours grinding for metals, even playing through the game a second time with New Game +, and I still only was able to afford maybe 65% of what's available. I understand wanting to stretch out the replay value by making a few things unattainable on a first playthrough, but this is just excessive. And Gigabolt Man-o-War's stage single-handedly (single-tentacledly?) causes this category to lose a point for its unforgivable player-unfriendliness, throwing you into the action with no explanation whatsoever of the victory and loss conditions, and forcing you to continuously mash the attack button for the entire duration of the stage because there is no differentiation between the different playable characters' abilities. I will say that being able to choose your Navigator (or shut them off entirely) is a welcome change, transforming one of the series' most detested mechanics into the customizable hint system it should have been all along.
+2 Extras/Easter Eggs: It's rare enough to have multiple female characters in a Mega Man game, but to be able to play as them? Awesome. Even though Alia, Layer, and Palette are, for all intents and purposes, reskins of X, Zero, and Axl, respectively, there's something immensely satisfying about sending your Navigators into the fray. Equipping Zero with progressively more ridiculous weapons is a hoot—the ones that are effective are great, and even the ones that aren't very effective are still worth having for the comedic value of watching Zero stand on one leg and swat projectiles with paper fans. Unlocking Intermission levels as you go is a great way to ease the burden of grinding for metals (though the stages still aren't lucrative enough to counterbalance the more disproportionate item costs). Lastly, running into Cut Man is a wonderful and completely unexpected throwback. X8 excels in making its bonus material all about being fun, something the later X games start to sight of in the midst of trying to be angsty and innovative.
+2 Novelty: The story introduces many new characters, and I can count on one hand the number of Mega Man games where the main villain of the series is demoted to a secondary boss fight. Extra lives are replaced with Retry Chips, and the whole shop system is sufficiently different in its mix of one-use, permanent, general, and character-specific upgrades, many of which have never been seen before in the series. Getting to play as anyone other than the usual heroes is refreshing, let alone as the trio of Navigators, who already add a pleasant layer (no pun intended) of complexity with the revamped hint system. The Intermission stages are a nice new break from the regular stages; Axl's A-Trans ability finally works the way it's supposed to; and most of the stage gimmicks are innovative twists on the familiar, or else altogether unique.
Overall Score: +8 (+13 merits, -5 flaws)
Mega Man X: Command Mission (GC)
+1 Story: On an artificial island where a technologically valuable substance known as Force Metal is mined and processed, a Maverick rebellion has broken out. X, Zero, and a Maverick Hunter named Shadow are dispatched to a place on the island called Giga City to stop Epsilon, the leader of the rebellion, and bring order to the island. As X and his team investigate and battle the rebellion, secrets are uncovered, alliances are made and broken, and questions of loyalty and friendship are raised. Some of the dialogue is a little mundane or goofy, and some of the character motivations are questionable (that big plot twist after you think you've beaten the game feels incredibly forced), but there's enough plot and character development to keep things interesting for the duration. The extended or complete absence of familiar characters in the game might make it difficult for some players to become invested in the story, but talking with random townspeople and getting to know the large cast of new characters is worthwhile: By the time you're done playing Command Mission, the X universe will feel so much larger and more complex than just two or three heroes, their support staff back at the base, and a few dozen pretty locations where they've fought Sigma and his goons. Command Mission puts a face to the people you've been trying to save the whole series, and it shows that the Maverick Hunters are just one small part of this big world.
+2 Graphics: 3-D graphics are back, and they look better than ever. The cel-shaded character models are crisp and clean; textures are sharp; locations, while repetitive, are highly detailed and structurally intricate; and the varied special effects (falling snow, big explosions, glowy teleportation, etc.) are pretty cool. There's also a fair amount of attention paid to light and shadow, which helps enhance the atmosphere and (semi-cartoony) realism.
+1 Music: The most unfortunate shortcoming of the soundtrack is that many of the tunes are far too short, looping after only about 60, 45, even 15 seconds. For some tracks, this quick repetition works surprisingly well; the music creates a certain kind of atmosphere once it gets into an unobtrusive groove. For other tracks, it's just a bit of a disappointment. For one or two tracks, though, the repetition is almost unbearable: the second regular battle theme, for example—which, bizarrely, permanently replaces the first regular battle theme at some arbitrary point 2/3 of the way through the game—has all of eight measures containing unique notes (so, maybe 16 seconds or so), yet the tune lasts for around 45 seconds before it loops...and the music is a kaleidoscopic cacophony that's better suited to a brief escape sequence. DUN DUN DAA DAA DA DAA DAA, DAA DA DA DAA DAA, DA DA DA...! Bleugh. To its credit, the melodies and instrumentation of almost the entire soundtrack are fitting for each situation and sound lovely, with a good mix of high-energy, mysterious, serious, and lighthearted tunes...but it's a shame that most of them are so short.
+1 Sound Effects: A wide array of blips and bleeps keeps menu navigation interesting and pleasant, while hearty sounds of explosions, electricity, cannon fire, etc. keep combat engaging. Voice acting is generally better than usual; real emotion shines through at times and obnoxious voices are kept to a minimum, though some of the combat catch-phrases get a little tiresome after several hundred battles. Unfortunately, the dash sound effect is a little too sharp and indiscreet for something you'll be hearing continuously for almost the entire duration of the game outside of battles, cutscenes, and menu screens...unless you'd prefer to walk everywhere?
+1 Control: Intuitive menus and straightforward combat (with a few customizable buttons, even!) make for a very smooth experience. Zero's action trigger is a little touchy, but otherwise, inputting button combos and spinning the control stick around in circles work well for the special attacks, too. Within the realm of the game, the control is great, if not close to perfect. Outside the realm of the game, Command Mission will wreck your controller if you're not careful. I'm not sure whether the average controller is designed to withstand the amount of abuse the average player will dish out by utilizing special attacks on a regular basis. After a certain point, I decided to save my button-mashing for the battles where it really mattered, and eventually I started using a turbo controller instead. It's not really the game's fault that controllers aren't indestructible, but at the same time, I don't think a regular controller would survive more than two or three normal playthroughs of this game without suffering some sort of noticeable decline in functionality.
+1 Missions: It's easy for a 30+ hour game to run out of ways to keep the gameplay interesting, but Command Mission gives the player enough freedom to make his or her own decisions about how to keep things fresh when the mid/late-game repetition begins to kick in. Even if the main game starts to drag on, there are plenty of Force Metal recipes to unlock, Action Triggers to improve, Challenges to complete, artwork to find, and figurines to collect, not to mention plenty of people who say different things (many of them helpful) if you talk to them at different times. Each location has its own distinct layout and, in many cases, gimmick—Gaudile Laboratory is a series of long corridors with floor sensors that trip the alarm if you stand on them too long; Vanallia Desert is a vast, open space with sandstorms that diminish visibility; Grave Ruins Base is a labyrinth with doors that can only be opened when all the security locks in an area are temporarily disabled; etc. Some areas are too labyrinthine for their own good, and some gimmicks get tiresome after a while, though. Preons and Metalls of various sorts make up a large portion of the enemy roster, and there are some palette-swapped foes with slightly better abilities later on, but there are still several dozen different enemies to fight, and generally there's a good mix of them in each location. Status ailments, temporary ability drain, counterattacks, calling for help, different types of attacks that do more or less damage depending on the target, and automatic health regeneration give the combat more complexity than just mashing the attack button (though that often works, too). There's definitely room for improvement, but there's very little that actually needs it.
+1 Bosses: The Rebellion is filled with colorful, memorable characters with varied personalities, looks, and combat styles. Wild Jango is a fairly standard MMX boss in terms of disposition and design, with some cool electrical attacks; Silver Horn is a cruel and impressively oversized powerhouse with some neat water attacks; ridiculous and amusingly self-aware mad scientist Dr. Psyche packs a great surprise (A second form! And he's not even a final boss!) and is one of my favorite Mavericks in the series; Mach Jentra is a noble leader with an endless army of Preons to add some flavor to the battle; Incentas is the obligatory elemental-switching RPG boss, but with a unique look and fun little hoppy dance; Botos is another one of my favorites, adding more comic relief with his silly moves and dialogue; the loyal Ferham is a rare example of a female foe in the series, with an interesting choice of weapon (a whip) considering she's designed to fly; lastly, the honorable Scarface (while the name is somewhat lacking in novelty) puts up a good fight and helps to flesh out the Rebellion's cause perhaps better than anyone else. All around, a solid cast of villains. However, a couple of the optional bosses require excessively specific tactics and preparation to defeat—I can't begin to articulate how angry I got at being cheerfully murdered by the accursed Rafflesian despite being able to wipe the floor with every other enemy.
+2 Weapons: From the Virus Missile to the Kitty Gloves to Axl's DNA Change, the weapons and special attacks are varied, powerful, and just plain fun. Each character has a signature main weapon—Zero uses sabers; Massimo uses halberds; Spider uses playing cards; etc.—and each type of weapon comes in many different flavors. Sometimes a weapon is a straight-up improvement from whatever you're currently using; sometimes it's a tradeoff, improving certain stats while lowering others, or offering a lower boost to your stats in order to balance out an additional special ability, such as inflicting a status ailment on the target or boosting the Zenny you gain. It's nice that each weapon has a distinctly different look, too, which helps keep the battlefield visually interesting over the course of such a long game. The sub-weapons are equally varied and cool to watch, and there's a lot of strategy that can go into the distribution and usage of them (I'm especially fond of equipping everyone with at least one Energy Capture for running around outside of boss fights, to minimize my reliance on Sub Tanks). Likewise, the Action Triggers add an element of variety and strategy to the game that both keeps things fresh and brings some serious power to your battles. Granted, some of them are a bit gimmicky—if you don't like poker or slot machines, for instance, you might find the Action Triggers tiresome—but even the laziest button-mashers and clumsiest executors of button combos can benefit from these special abilities, albeit not as greatly as those who've mastered the art of these completely-unrelated-to-the-RPG-genre minigames. Overall, there's enough diversity in the weapons for practically anyone to find something to like, but never so much diversity that it's impossible to decide what to use.
+2 Items/Upgrades/Support Utilities: Command Mission offers a fairly typical assortment of recovery, support, and offensive items—an antidote to each kind of status ailment, temporary and permanent stat boosts, one-use elemental damage, and so on. What's interesting is the way health recovery is handled: instead of healing potions or their equivalent, the game has you recover energy from your Sub Tank, which can be refilled and also increased in capacity as you collect Tank Parts. The main attraction of this category, however, is Force Metal. In lieu of the armor and shields that dominate the equipment screens of most RPGs, these refinable, equippable items provide additional defense and so much more. Not unlike the accessories you'll find in games like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI, Force Metal grants a variety of abilities to the user, ranging from increased speed to elemental resistance to automatic health recovery (and that's to say nothing of the more exotic abilities, such as increased EXP gain and a one-time auto-revive after being knocked out). Force Metal can also be refined, if you've got the right ingredients and have unlocked the recipe by accomplishing various tasks, such as escaping from a certain number of battles or inflicting a certain number of hits in a Final Strike. This adds a new layer of complexity to the scavenger hunt mentality that the X series usually follows when distributing its upgrades. The hazardous nature of Force Metal adds even more complexity to the mix: the more powerful the Force Metal, the more it corrupts the character equipping it. Force Metal that's too strong for a character to handle begins to impair his or her combat abilities, resulting in possible penalties during each encounter. Between balancing your Force Metal layout to avoid going over your limit (if you want to play it safe) and the sheer amount of variety in the kinds of abilities you can gain, there's a satisfying amount of character customization to be found in the Force Metal system alone.
+0 Ending: Defeated and critically wounded, General Redips has one last ideological chat with X before expiring. It's the same "You're a Maverick!" "Am I really a Maverick?" rhetoric we've been hearing all game, which is a shame because no one on either side of the conflict seems to have learned much of anything from their experiences. Well, except Ferham, who's learned the plot device of self-sacrifice to elicit an emotional reaction from the player. As the remains of the battlefield plummet to Earth, Ferham apologizes for what happened, X forgives her, and she gently tosses herself off the platform with the last of the Supra-Force Metal, prompting yet another Mega Man character to scream over the pointless sacrifice of a woman. As everything begins to burn up in reentry, X, Zero, and Axl jump through a nearby hatch and take shelter as they wait for impact. Meanwhile, Ferham blows up. From the ruins on the planet surface, Nana looks up to see Ferham's fireworks display. X shoots his way out of the sealed hatch, and he and Axl climb up into the sunlight as Zero stands there looking pretty for a calendar shoot that's presumably going on just outside of our view. The camera pans out to show that the three of them are stranded in the middle of the ocean. Terrific. While the vistas and special effects here are quite nice, the ending lacks a sense of real resolution. Yes, the heroes survived, but is anybody going to rescue them? Was it really necessary for Ferham to explode? What of Chief R, Professor Gaudille, the countless citizens of Giga City, and ALL OF YOUR OTHER TEAMMATES? What happens to them? At least we get a sense of that with some of the optional dialogue before entering the final area of the game, but there's still a sizable information void here. I don't think I'd mind so much if this were your standard Mega Man game that could be completed in an hour or two, but as the culmination of dozens upon dozens of hours of gameplay, it leaves something to be desired, regardless of how pretty Zero looks. I mean, how pretty the visuals are.
+2 Replay Value: With the high level of character customizability, the freedom to switch out party members at any time, level design that offers plenty of exploration and alternate routes, Action Triggers to improve, the Deployment system, Force Metal recipes, Challenges, optional bosses, rare items to steal, loads of people to talk to, figurines, posters, and everything else you can find to fill up your Sky Room, there's plenty to come back for, and there's plenty to keep the game fresh on repeat playthroughs.
+1 Polish: For the most part, the game reflects a great deal of thoroughness and thoughtfulness on the part of the developers. The game is largely player-friendly thanks to straightforward controls and menu screens, clear feedback about status and objectives, ways to increase enemy item drop rates, and plentiful information about characters and enemies and equipment that's easy to locate and read. On a technical level, almost everything runs smoothly and works beautifully. Almost everything. I've had the game crash on me too many times for it to be a fluke—most frustratingly, after 30 minutes in the Eternal Forest, where there are no save points. I've also got a few quibbles about the requirements for a few Force Metal recipes that are unnecessarily inconvenient, if not downright unreasonable. Some of the locations really are too repetitive for their own good, too, and there are ways these places could've been dressed up to at least fool the player into thinking they're more diverse than they really are (the progressively dimmer lighting on the way to fight Ninetails is a great example of how something simple can liven up a dull, samey hallway). Additionally, a handful of items and upgrades show up way too late in the game to get any worthwhile mileage out of them. The game really is very polished, but the few shortcomings stand out fairly strongly.
+2 Extras/Easter Eggs: Not only is there a great deal of optional (and arguably hidden) content, but the vast majority of it is worthwhile. I would've preferred it if the Sky Room showcased your collection better, having the figurines openly on display on shelves all over the room, or the music track you've selected continue to play after you leave the selection screen, but sound test junkies and aesthetics aficionados should still appreciate all there is to see and hear. Aside from the collectibles, there's the option to review text explanations of the story so far and watch cutscenes you've seen...and there's a fun little Easter Egg of sorts where Preon Nurses will surrender to you if they're the last enemy standing at the end of a battle, thanking you by healing your party if you let them go. Hooking up your GBA via link cable to unlock a treasure hunt is incredibly gimmicky, but surprisingly fun.
+2 Novelty: A huge cast of brand-new characters, an X game where Sigma isn't the bad guy for a change, a diverse roster of enemies we've never seen, scads of unique weapons and special attacks, oodles of extras beyond the regular upgrades for your characters, GBA link cable compatibility...the switch from platformer to RPG would've been enough novelty for one game, but Command Mission goes all out.
Overall Score: +19 (+19 merits, -0 flaws)
+2 Graphics: 3-D graphics are back, and they look better than ever. The cel-shaded character models are crisp and clean; textures are sharp; locations, while repetitive, are highly detailed and structurally intricate; and the varied special effects (falling snow, big explosions, glowy teleportation, etc.) are pretty cool. There's also a fair amount of attention paid to light and shadow, which helps enhance the atmosphere and (semi-cartoony) realism.
+1 Music: The most unfortunate shortcoming of the soundtrack is that many of the tunes are far too short, looping after only about 60, 45, even 15 seconds. For some tracks, this quick repetition works surprisingly well; the music creates a certain kind of atmosphere once it gets into an unobtrusive groove. For other tracks, it's just a bit of a disappointment. For one or two tracks, though, the repetition is almost unbearable: the second regular battle theme, for example—which, bizarrely, permanently replaces the first regular battle theme at some arbitrary point 2/3 of the way through the game—has all of eight measures containing unique notes (so, maybe 16 seconds or so), yet the tune lasts for around 45 seconds before it loops...and the music is a kaleidoscopic cacophony that's better suited to a brief escape sequence. DUN DUN DAA DAA DA DAA DAA, DAA DA DA DAA DAA, DA DA DA...! Bleugh. To its credit, the melodies and instrumentation of almost the entire soundtrack are fitting for each situation and sound lovely, with a good mix of high-energy, mysterious, serious, and lighthearted tunes...but it's a shame that most of them are so short.
+1 Sound Effects: A wide array of blips and bleeps keeps menu navigation interesting and pleasant, while hearty sounds of explosions, electricity, cannon fire, etc. keep combat engaging. Voice acting is generally better than usual; real emotion shines through at times and obnoxious voices are kept to a minimum, though some of the combat catch-phrases get a little tiresome after several hundred battles. Unfortunately, the dash sound effect is a little too sharp and indiscreet for something you'll be hearing continuously for almost the entire duration of the game outside of battles, cutscenes, and menu screens...unless you'd prefer to walk everywhere?
+1 Control: Intuitive menus and straightforward combat (with a few customizable buttons, even!) make for a very smooth experience. Zero's action trigger is a little touchy, but otherwise, inputting button combos and spinning the control stick around in circles work well for the special attacks, too. Within the realm of the game, the control is great, if not close to perfect. Outside the realm of the game, Command Mission will wreck your controller if you're not careful. I'm not sure whether the average controller is designed to withstand the amount of abuse the average player will dish out by utilizing special attacks on a regular basis. After a certain point, I decided to save my button-mashing for the battles where it really mattered, and eventually I started using a turbo controller instead. It's not really the game's fault that controllers aren't indestructible, but at the same time, I don't think a regular controller would survive more than two or three normal playthroughs of this game without suffering some sort of noticeable decline in functionality.
+1 Missions: It's easy for a 30+ hour game to run out of ways to keep the gameplay interesting, but Command Mission gives the player enough freedom to make his or her own decisions about how to keep things fresh when the mid/late-game repetition begins to kick in. Even if the main game starts to drag on, there are plenty of Force Metal recipes to unlock, Action Triggers to improve, Challenges to complete, artwork to find, and figurines to collect, not to mention plenty of people who say different things (many of them helpful) if you talk to them at different times. Each location has its own distinct layout and, in many cases, gimmick—Gaudile Laboratory is a series of long corridors with floor sensors that trip the alarm if you stand on them too long; Vanallia Desert is a vast, open space with sandstorms that diminish visibility; Grave Ruins Base is a labyrinth with doors that can only be opened when all the security locks in an area are temporarily disabled; etc. Some areas are too labyrinthine for their own good, and some gimmicks get tiresome after a while, though. Preons and Metalls of various sorts make up a large portion of the enemy roster, and there are some palette-swapped foes with slightly better abilities later on, but there are still several dozen different enemies to fight, and generally there's a good mix of them in each location. Status ailments, temporary ability drain, counterattacks, calling for help, different types of attacks that do more or less damage depending on the target, and automatic health regeneration give the combat more complexity than just mashing the attack button (though that often works, too). There's definitely room for improvement, but there's very little that actually needs it.
+1 Bosses: The Rebellion is filled with colorful, memorable characters with varied personalities, looks, and combat styles. Wild Jango is a fairly standard MMX boss in terms of disposition and design, with some cool electrical attacks; Silver Horn is a cruel and impressively oversized powerhouse with some neat water attacks; ridiculous and amusingly self-aware mad scientist Dr. Psyche packs a great surprise (A second form! And he's not even a final boss!) and is one of my favorite Mavericks in the series; Mach Jentra is a noble leader with an endless army of Preons to add some flavor to the battle; Incentas is the obligatory elemental-switching RPG boss, but with a unique look and fun little hoppy dance; Botos is another one of my favorites, adding more comic relief with his silly moves and dialogue; the loyal Ferham is a rare example of a female foe in the series, with an interesting choice of weapon (a whip) considering she's designed to fly; lastly, the honorable Scarface (while the name is somewhat lacking in novelty) puts up a good fight and helps to flesh out the Rebellion's cause perhaps better than anyone else. All around, a solid cast of villains. However, a couple of the optional bosses require excessively specific tactics and preparation to defeat—I can't begin to articulate how angry I got at being cheerfully murdered by the accursed Rafflesian despite being able to wipe the floor with every other enemy.
+2 Weapons: From the Virus Missile to the Kitty Gloves to Axl's DNA Change, the weapons and special attacks are varied, powerful, and just plain fun. Each character has a signature main weapon—Zero uses sabers; Massimo uses halberds; Spider uses playing cards; etc.—and each type of weapon comes in many different flavors. Sometimes a weapon is a straight-up improvement from whatever you're currently using; sometimes it's a tradeoff, improving certain stats while lowering others, or offering a lower boost to your stats in order to balance out an additional special ability, such as inflicting a status ailment on the target or boosting the Zenny you gain. It's nice that each weapon has a distinctly different look, too, which helps keep the battlefield visually interesting over the course of such a long game. The sub-weapons are equally varied and cool to watch, and there's a lot of strategy that can go into the distribution and usage of them (I'm especially fond of equipping everyone with at least one Energy Capture for running around outside of boss fights, to minimize my reliance on Sub Tanks). Likewise, the Action Triggers add an element of variety and strategy to the game that both keeps things fresh and brings some serious power to your battles. Granted, some of them are a bit gimmicky—if you don't like poker or slot machines, for instance, you might find the Action Triggers tiresome—but even the laziest button-mashers and clumsiest executors of button combos can benefit from these special abilities, albeit not as greatly as those who've mastered the art of these completely-unrelated-to-the-RPG-genre minigames. Overall, there's enough diversity in the weapons for practically anyone to find something to like, but never so much diversity that it's impossible to decide what to use.
+2 Items/Upgrades/Support Utilities: Command Mission offers a fairly typical assortment of recovery, support, and offensive items—an antidote to each kind of status ailment, temporary and permanent stat boosts, one-use elemental damage, and so on. What's interesting is the way health recovery is handled: instead of healing potions or their equivalent, the game has you recover energy from your Sub Tank, which can be refilled and also increased in capacity as you collect Tank Parts. The main attraction of this category, however, is Force Metal. In lieu of the armor and shields that dominate the equipment screens of most RPGs, these refinable, equippable items provide additional defense and so much more. Not unlike the accessories you'll find in games like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI, Force Metal grants a variety of abilities to the user, ranging from increased speed to elemental resistance to automatic health recovery (and that's to say nothing of the more exotic abilities, such as increased EXP gain and a one-time auto-revive after being knocked out). Force Metal can also be refined, if you've got the right ingredients and have unlocked the recipe by accomplishing various tasks, such as escaping from a certain number of battles or inflicting a certain number of hits in a Final Strike. This adds a new layer of complexity to the scavenger hunt mentality that the X series usually follows when distributing its upgrades. The hazardous nature of Force Metal adds even more complexity to the mix: the more powerful the Force Metal, the more it corrupts the character equipping it. Force Metal that's too strong for a character to handle begins to impair his or her combat abilities, resulting in possible penalties during each encounter. Between balancing your Force Metal layout to avoid going over your limit (if you want to play it safe) and the sheer amount of variety in the kinds of abilities you can gain, there's a satisfying amount of character customization to be found in the Force Metal system alone.
+0 Ending: Defeated and critically wounded, General Redips has one last ideological chat with X before expiring. It's the same "You're a Maverick!" "Am I really a Maverick?" rhetoric we've been hearing all game, which is a shame because no one on either side of the conflict seems to have learned much of anything from their experiences. Well, except Ferham, who's learned the plot device of self-sacrifice to elicit an emotional reaction from the player. As the remains of the battlefield plummet to Earth, Ferham apologizes for what happened, X forgives her, and she gently tosses herself off the platform with the last of the Supra-Force Metal, prompting yet another Mega Man character to scream over the pointless sacrifice of a woman. As everything begins to burn up in reentry, X, Zero, and Axl jump through a nearby hatch and take shelter as they wait for impact. Meanwhile, Ferham blows up. From the ruins on the planet surface, Nana looks up to see Ferham's fireworks display. X shoots his way out of the sealed hatch, and he and Axl climb up into the sunlight as Zero stands there looking pretty for a calendar shoot that's presumably going on just outside of our view. The camera pans out to show that the three of them are stranded in the middle of the ocean. Terrific. While the vistas and special effects here are quite nice, the ending lacks a sense of real resolution. Yes, the heroes survived, but is anybody going to rescue them? Was it really necessary for Ferham to explode? What of Chief R, Professor Gaudille, the countless citizens of Giga City, and ALL OF YOUR OTHER TEAMMATES? What happens to them? At least we get a sense of that with some of the optional dialogue before entering the final area of the game, but there's still a sizable information void here. I don't think I'd mind so much if this were your standard Mega Man game that could be completed in an hour or two, but as the culmination of dozens upon dozens of hours of gameplay, it leaves something to be desired, regardless of how pretty Zero looks. I mean, how pretty the visuals are.
+2 Replay Value: With the high level of character customizability, the freedom to switch out party members at any time, level design that offers plenty of exploration and alternate routes, Action Triggers to improve, the Deployment system, Force Metal recipes, Challenges, optional bosses, rare items to steal, loads of people to talk to, figurines, posters, and everything else you can find to fill up your Sky Room, there's plenty to come back for, and there's plenty to keep the game fresh on repeat playthroughs.
+1 Polish: For the most part, the game reflects a great deal of thoroughness and thoughtfulness on the part of the developers. The game is largely player-friendly thanks to straightforward controls and menu screens, clear feedback about status and objectives, ways to increase enemy item drop rates, and plentiful information about characters and enemies and equipment that's easy to locate and read. On a technical level, almost everything runs smoothly and works beautifully. Almost everything. I've had the game crash on me too many times for it to be a fluke—most frustratingly, after 30 minutes in the Eternal Forest, where there are no save points. I've also got a few quibbles about the requirements for a few Force Metal recipes that are unnecessarily inconvenient, if not downright unreasonable. Some of the locations really are too repetitive for their own good, too, and there are ways these places could've been dressed up to at least fool the player into thinking they're more diverse than they really are (the progressively dimmer lighting on the way to fight Ninetails is a great example of how something simple can liven up a dull, samey hallway). Additionally, a handful of items and upgrades show up way too late in the game to get any worthwhile mileage out of them. The game really is very polished, but the few shortcomings stand out fairly strongly.
+2 Extras/Easter Eggs: Not only is there a great deal of optional (and arguably hidden) content, but the vast majority of it is worthwhile. I would've preferred it if the Sky Room showcased your collection better, having the figurines openly on display on shelves all over the room, or the music track you've selected continue to play after you leave the selection screen, but sound test junkies and aesthetics aficionados should still appreciate all there is to see and hear. Aside from the collectibles, there's the option to review text explanations of the story so far and watch cutscenes you've seen...and there's a fun little Easter Egg of sorts where Preon Nurses will surrender to you if they're the last enemy standing at the end of a battle, thanking you by healing your party if you let them go. Hooking up your GBA via link cable to unlock a treasure hunt is incredibly gimmicky, but surprisingly fun.
+2 Novelty: A huge cast of brand-new characters, an X game where Sigma isn't the bad guy for a change, a diverse roster of enemies we've never seen, scads of unique weapons and special attacks, oodles of extras beyond the regular upgrades for your characters, GBA link cable compatibility...the switch from platformer to RPG would've been enough novelty for one game, but Command Mission goes all out.
Overall Score: +19 (+19 merits, -0 flaws)
