STOP POSTING ABOUT MEGAMAN X7. I’M TIRED OF SEEING IT. MY FRIENDS ON YOUTUBE SEND ME MEMES, ON DISCORD IT’S FREAKIN’ MEMES. I WAS IN A SERVER, RIGHT? AND AAAALL OF THE CHANNELS WERE MEGAMAN X7 STUFF. I-I SAW A CAMPFIRE GOING ON IN THE WOODS, I NUDGED MY GIRLFRIEND AND I SAID “REMINDS ME OF MEGAMAN X7 HAHA BURN BURN BURN BURN BURN BURN TO THE GROUND!” I FREAKIN’ LOOKED AT A TRASH CAN I SAID “MEGAMAN X7 BELONGS IN THERE”, I LOOKED AT THE FLAME SWORD FROM MEGAMAN 8, IT REMINDED ME OF THE KOMBINAT STAGE AND I WENT “FLAME SWORD? MORE LIKE FLAME HYENARD!” AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

What the flying fuck happened? I don't just mean that in reference to this game in particular, though that is also an interesting question. No, I'm moreso referring to the Mega Man X series in general. How the hell do you go from a perfectly solid, stable, and polished game to... this. No matter what you're real thoughts on Mega Man X4 are, I don't think that you can deny that it is a refined product that is worthy of it's namesake. X5 isn't quite as solid but it is still a fine game, at least in my opinion. And more importantly to this topic, it is a functioning video game that someone can enjoy within reasonable conditions.

Then, somehow, the next game immediately takes a nosedive into the toilet, down the pipes, and into the sewer. I won't go on about X6 because, well, it is still clearly in the same lines as the previous games. It's bad, don't get me wrong, but it seems like a fluke that happened due to poor management and rushed development. The core of the experience isn't completely terrible, it still shares the same base mechanics and appeal from the previous games. A really dedicated fan could find enjoyment in it.

Then, somehow, they made a game completely devoid of anything that made the original X games good. Mega Man X7 doesn't feel like a real game, it's like some made-up fakey fake joke that was made to implant the words "Burn To The Ground!" into your brain. I'm serious when I saw that this is probably one of the worst games of the century and I have no qualms saying so. I struggle to even call this a game! It's like an anti-game, like it isn't supposed to function. This is an action platformer where you don't have to platform and you can just walk past the enemies. This isn't a game! You can literally walk past all of the fucking enemies! You know how defeated enemies in Mario 64 will drop coins, thus encouraging you to fight them? This game doesn't do that! It doesn't do anything to make you want to fight enemies.

The levels in this game feel like they just took a level from a 2D Mega Man game and plopped it into 3D. That means you can literally walk past everything! Saying even that is way too generous because there is not a single thing in X7 that comes close to its predecessors. You know how platform games have you platform on things? Like, you are asked to overcome obstacles in the stage to proceed? This game doesn't have that, it DOESN'T HAVE THAT! It is a game of walking forward and doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. There is nothing, not a single thing at all X7 does well outside of maybe an alright soundtrack. What is there to enjoy about this game?????

I was planning on writing a funny review where I like make allusions to classic literature and make some profound statement on video games or whatever, but then I played the game and realized that would be literally impossible because there's no material for that in the game itself. The reason a game like this pisses me off so much is that there is no excuse for it to be garbage since there was six previous titles to pull from. X8 better be a fucking gift from god because I have no idea how any series could ever, EVER bounce back from this. And no, I'm not finishing the game and probably never will. Jesus Christ, why is this game so terrible?

This game is bad. dogshit. if i bought it for more than 2 dollars i'd feel ripped off, but i think that my opinion is more nuanced than that.

This game is so bad, so awful, you will never be able to play x7 without the expectation you're getting a bad game. it's reputation absolutely exceeds it's target audience. but i think that this is a special type of bad. not a so-bad-it's-good bad, not a genuinely unfun to play bad, something in between.

x7 had so much potential, playing it you can feel the game just barely grasping onto a solid idea, or mechanic that can be described as fun, and at extremely specific points, i had "fun". but it is just so entertaining to watch it blunder, and have all of this potential get squandered, and to see the game flop like a fish, desperate for any grip it can get on itself.

1/10. a highlight of any megaman playathon.

Despite this review being titled as a separate playthrough, this is more of an update of my original review now that I have completed the game.

Mega Man X7 is worthless. It's worthless dogshit that I pick off of my shoe when I'm walking down the sidewalk. The acting is horrific, the characters are unlikeable, the gameplay is horrendous, the controls do not remotely work properly, and even the music is bland and generic.

However, on a personal level this game is far less insulting than Mega Man X6. The obvious thing is that, this game was an attempt to make a 3D X game, which at least requires some smidgen of ambition and desire to create something fresh. Regardless of how terribly this game came out, there was at least something that the developers wanted to make that lies underneath.

Mega Man X6 on the other hand was a scummy cash grab game made without consulting one of the series' creators, Keiji Inafune, probably had a fuck ton of crunch, and is literally just a worse X4 & X5, games which I thought were either great or enjoyable respectively.

Back on to X7 though, this game just feels broken all over the place. Flame Hyenard is a good example, because not only is the audio broken, I mean this video is proof enough. It almost sounds like that one video remix of Fuuka's voice from Persona 3. But the little shit just keeps flying all over the fucking place and it's fucking ridiculous.

The 2D levels suck, the 3D levels suck, and I don't really think you need me to tell you that, since literally everyone else on this site can do that.

I just, hate how junk everything in this game feels, and it honestly makes me sad that there is only one X game after this because definitively this proves that X6 and X7 killed this franchise.

Also Axl is just, super annoying. I'm sure his voice actress is a very nice lady, but god is Axl's voice the most grating thing to hear, more so than even X's voice.

Also why does this game have a racist German stereotype that is also an onion?

(Played on PC via the X Legacy Collection. Also fair warning that I get angry a few times in this review)

X1
X2
X3
X4
X5
X6
X8
Xtreme
Xtreme 2

Out of the frying pan and into the fire. In the eyes of the overall Mega Man community, that's the best way to describe going from Mega Man X6 to this game, both of which are of entirely different extremes. In the case of X6 it's due to the extremely tight level design and poorly explained mechanics which can result in you getting soft-locked that make that game VERY punishing towards newcomers/blind players, but once you gain hindsight of what that game throws at you & figure out how to get around it then that game becomes VERY fun to play on re-visits, while this is an extreme for an entirely different reason. Anyway, it's Mega Man X7, a game with just as bad if not even worse of a reputation than what X6 has. It's a game that's been burned into the ground for well over 20 years since its initial release in 2003 for a plethora of reasons, with some even going as far as to say it's one of the worst games to ever be put out by a AAA developer. X7 is another interesting game in my case as IMO it's not as bad as everyone hypes it up to be, however that's not say it's a good game, far from it. It still stands as the single weakest Mega Man X game in my opinion with Xtreme 1 and X5 being runners up. I tried my hardest to find things to like about this game as underneath everything this game does wrong there's a game that really does try its hardest to take the Mega Man X series in an innovative new direction (post-review note: I think this entire statement was rather premature).

The big new changes that X7 brings to the table come in the gameplay. There's a LOT to discuss here so I'll get the minor new change out of the way first, that being that X can now naturally use the air dash as it's no longer tied to any armor upgrades in this game. I'm surprised it took them this long to give X a natural air dash, but better late than never I suppose. However the level design barely capitalizes on the natural air dash like how X2 & X3 did with Xs natural ground dash so instead of becoming a key feature it ends up being one that's just nice to have in the grand scheme of things. With that out of the way that then leads into one of 2 major new gameplay changes in X7: 3D environments. Yes, after 6 games X & Zero have finally learned how to move about the X-Axis in more ways than just left and right. Now you'd think that with this would come brand new abilities for X & Zero to use to adapt to the 3D space, but the devs just chose to play it safe, and so they retain all the standard abilities that they had in X6, and I do have to commend them for that, as bringing a series known for fast-paced 2D sidescrollers into the 3D space is no easy feat, so why not keep it simple and retain all the functions that players are familiar with? Anyway with this game embracing 3D that leads me into the fact that due to this, X7 has a different gameplay engine than X4-X6 alongside brand new 3D models for its assets. UNFORTUNATELY the new engine leads to gameplay/movement that's nowhere near as fun as it was in the previous X games. Everything (most notably your jumps and wall jumps) feel a LOT more clunky, and even dashes feel notably slower than before. Additionally with 3D environments also comes concerns regarding the camera, and for some ungodly reason THE CAMERA IS TIED TO WHAT WOULD USUALLY BE THE FUCKING SPECIAL WEAPON BUTTONS (on a PS2/PS4 controller for instance it's L1/R1 while special weapons are mapped to the right stick or as I used a keyboard the camera is by default the D/C keys while the special weapons have been moved to the Q/E keys). The real kicker however is that despite how you can set your own action mapping in the options, YOU CAN'T SWAP THE CAMERA/SPECIAL WEAPON CONTROLS. Why the FUCK was this still even a thing in 2003??? Other 3D games learned how to properly do camera controls even before X7, so there's ZERO excuse here. Needless to say this games camera sucks, but fortunately there's only one real instance where it becomes a genuine problem. Furthermore, the game also introduces a lock-on for X that while nice to have for the 3D sections, takes away any semblance of challenge when it comes to fighting enemies in 2D sections. The devs of previous X games knew that having a lock-on in a 2D plain would be fucking busted and so therefore it was only ever tied to certain special weapons e.g. Homing Torpedo in X1 or Aiming Laser in X4. In those previous games, you had to jump if you wanted to aim your shots at an enemy that was normally out of your reach. It's the basic fucking ideology of Mega Man combat as a whole, so by giving X a lock-on regardless of whatever weapon he has equipped just goes against the fundamentals that the franchise had been building up in the 15 years prior to X7. Then there's Zero, and good GOD what did they do to you????? Man he did NOT translate well when going from sprites to 3D models. His default saber combo is so goddamn slow and even his techniques have a hefty amount of wind up to them as well, but at least his attacks hit like a truck so that at least gives him a niche as boss fodder. That's it for the 3D discussion & the implications it brought to the table, and overall it unfortunately was NOT implemented well. The 2nd major gameplay change comes in the fact that alongside X & Zero, the new hunter Axl has joined the fray to turn the group from a duo into a TRIO. Axl controls similarly to X but without a traditional charge shot, and so to compensate he can hover in the air for a few seconds and he has a new charge shot that enables Axl to gain the abilities of some stage enemies. This is thankfully a very unique mechanic and helps to give Axl his own identity as a playable character compared to X. I have 2 main gripes with this. The first is that the level design doesn't take advantage of this NOWHERE near as much as it could, and the second is that IT'S SO GODDAMN HARD TO ACTUALLY USE. It does jack shit for damage and to even copy an enemy you must land the finishing blow on them with the copy shot, however due to the aforementioned lack of damage you're better off chipping down the enemys health with Axls regular attacks, but doing that also runs the risk of you accidentally blowing the fucker up due to stage enemies not having any sort of indicator for their HP. So you either have to do it the quick way that involves accidentally blowing the enemy up or the safe way that takes fucking ages due to the lack of damage on Axls copy shots. Pick your poison. Furthermore, some of the enemies that Axl can copy have some BEEFY health bars, in particular the boulder-chucking guys in Soldier Stonekongs stage, so you can only imagine what trying to copy those fuckers are like, but get this, YOU'RE ACTUALLY REQUIRED to copy one of those fuckers in particular to get a few reploid hostages that are chilling behind a large bed of spikes that only those enemies can safely cross. Oh yeah, reploid hostages return from X6, however the Nightmare guys aren't around in this game to corrupt them and deny you their goodies, so what did they do to compromise? THEY MADE IT SO THAT ANY ENEMY CAN DEFEAT THEM, and like in X6, the items they carry are FUCKING GONE PERMANENTLY SHOULD YOU LOSE THEM & save-scumming is the only way to remedy this. So in short, they DOUBLED DOWN on the aspect that people fucking hated about reploid hostages in X6 rather than trying to tone them back... I just.... WHY???? Did they not just listen to ANY of the criticism that people had with X6? Anyway alongside the hostages comes the return of the parts system, but it's received a bit of a tweak. Whereas in X5 & X6 they were items you could equip or unequip at any time in the stage select, they act kind of like a skill tree in X7. X, Zero & Axl all have 3 different types of part-based upgrades that are separated into rows, and the parts that reploid hostages give you don't actually have any pre-defined mechanic. Instead the mechanic they give to X/Zero/Axl is dependent on wherever they're placed at on a specific character, providing some sort of freedom if you will on how you choose to upgrade your characters. The part upgrades themselves still act similarly as to how they did in X6, providing abilities such as faster buster charging, damage reduction, faster dash speed, a more powerful Z-Saber etc. Overall it's a very unique spin on the parts mechanic and one of the few things I have to commend X7 for. Another gameplay mechanic that X7 actually does well is the return of the character swapping mechanic from Mega Man Xtreme 2. While being a neat mechanic, its true function is to give you a glorified second health bar, as the level design barely takes advantage of it unfortunately. They also fucked up Alia again as she's back to being a total fucking pace-breaker like she was in X5, arguably even worse than in that game how when you're trying to equip parts from reploid hostages she explains EVERY FUCKING TIME that reploids give you special parts, like I GET IT, you don't have to explain it to me every time. Even trying to save your game or return to the stage select feels like a chore as she asks every time if you're 100% SURE that you want to do it or not which also severely fucks with the games overall pacing. That's really it for the core gameplay changes in X7, NOT a good start for this review overall.

Next up is the level design and I quite frankly don't have much to say about this. The level design in X7 ranges from boring at best (e.g. Soldier Stonekongs stage, Splash Warflys, Ride Boarskis stage etc.) to downright frustrating at worst, most notably Flame Hyenards stage, which is split up into one VERY long 2D section and one VERY long 3D section with the only checkpoints being at the start of the 3D section and the boss. A helpful tip I found regarding it however is that the reploid hostages that are placed nearby the bombs can be easily cheesed by running away to off-screen them. The bombs will still blow up but the reploid hostages will still be intact, alleviating a LOT of the frustration that would be otherwise involved with getting them. Wind Crowrangs stage is another infamous one as the camera works against your favor in the first section where you have to platform across a fleet of planes while janky controls pose a challenge in getting that stages Life Up. I don't even have much to say about the item placement either, just that the game LOVES to hide them behind walls/platforms in the 3D sections, most notably in Splash Warflys stage and Ride Boarskis stage. I do have to give credit to Ride Boarskis stage now that I think about it as it at least tries to do something creative with the Ride Chaser by having you disarm a bunch of bombs on a track as opposed to simply going from point A to point B, but at the same time the Ride Chaser is VEEEEEERY slow which takes away a lot of the fun in using them when compared to X4 and X5s Ride Chasers. Also, some of the bombs are placed near-parallel to reploid hostages so unless you have TAS-level reflexes then it's likely going to take you multiple trips around the track to get everything. I don't have much to comment on regarding the fortress levels here either. The first level is an extremely slow autoscroller which involves a couple of blind jumps here and there while everything after that stage consists of extremely basic platforming sections. However I will say that I like what they did with the tried and true boss rush making its stage a literal graveyard as opposed to just consisting of teleporters you'd go through in the previous X games. That's the only real compliment I have to give to X7s level design, as otherwise they're some of the most forgettable levels in this series.

Then there's the item game in X7. Like with X6 there's the 8 Life Ups, 3 E-Tanks and the EX Tank, but now for the first time since X3 there's only one armor for X to find, this time being the Glide Armor. The Head piece enables nearby items to be drawn to X, the Chest piece gives X 50% damage reduction alongside knockback resistance & a Giga Attack that gets build up by taking damage, the Buster piece adds smaller homing blasts to Xs charge shot that I've barely ever noticed alongside charged special weapons and the Leg piece gives X the ability to glide through the air. This is easily one of the weakest armors that X has adorned throughout the series IMO as it barely does anything interesting, and I've barely ever noticed some of its supposed """key features""" in standard gameplay, in particular the head and buster upgrades effects. Compare it to say, X5s Falcon Armor where it spices up the armor formula by favoring mobility over combat, or X6s Shadow Armor which played with the fact that X used Zeros saber in that game by giving him a charged saber swing that hit like a TRUCK, and you'll really see just how lackluster the Glide Armor feels. I will say however that the knockback resistance REALLY helps out due to the increased prevalence of it in X7 as it can straight up lead to you getting launched into bottomless pits or any other insta kill hazard that you can't get out of due to the fact that control is taken away from you when your character gets knocked back, but most of the time it just breaks the pace and nothing more.

Going on from that is the plot, GOOD FUCKING GOD THE PLOT. Due to 6 (8 if counting the Xtreme duology) back-to-back games where he's been involved in conflicts that have seen the demises of countless humans & reploids alike, X has decided to step back from the Maverick Hunters front lines in the hopes of """finding more peaceful solutions to the fighting""", put in LOTS of quotations because well, HE DOESN'T DO ANY OF THAT, HE JUST SITS THERE AND SCREAMS "WHY MUST REPLOIDS FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT" EVERY TIME HE'S ON SCREEN. This is some HARD character assassination if I've ever seen it, as what made X such a unique protagonist is that despite his pacifist side, he still chose to engage in the conflict as he KNEW it was the only way at times, and to have him fully embrace his pacifist side is something that doesn't and will NEVER work regardless of how much effort you put into the writing of it. And BECAUSE X is now suddenly allergic to violence do you wanna know what this also means? THAT X IS AN UNLOCKABLE CHARACTER IN HIS OWN FUCKING GAME. WHY. THE. FUCK. WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS OKAY?! WHY WOULD YOU MAKE THE MAIN PROTAGONIST AN UNLOCKABLE CHARACTER IN HIS OWN GODDAMN GAME?! Anyway BECAUSE of that Zero's on his own for a portion of the game, but he enlists the help of Axl following the intro stage who has a target on his head set by the vigilante group Red Alert, who had taken to putting down Mavericks following Xs decision to step down from fighting, but because their methods of combating Mavericks gradually became more and more violent Axl fucked off from the group, but his ability to copy reploids is a key asset to Red Alert and so their leader, Red tries his hardest to get Axl back into the group. Throughout the game you get cutscenes where Red is seen talking to this guy called "The Professor" and the game doesn't even try to hide that this guy is Sigma, but fortunately he's in a much better state of mind than he was in X6, so there's that... I guess???!!!! X returns to the front lines once you either rescue 64 reploid hostages or by beating all 8 of the stage of the stage bosses, but regardless of whenever you unlock him it's WAY too late as by the point you get him Zero and Axl will both be at MUCH more powerful states due to the parts they'll have acquired throughout the game. Also as I type this I can't help but pay attention to X right in the center of the box art, so that makes me think: Like how X5/X6 tried to mimic MGS with Alias support calls that fell flat on their head, was this game trying to mimic MGS2 by tricking you into thinking you'd be playing as the main protagonist from the previous game? Because if so then that fucking fell flat on its head too as MGS2 did it in a MUCH smarter way that also didn't have character assassination involved in it. That's all I have to say about X7s plot, in general this is the WORST plot in the entire X series without question (a minor note I felt like adding on is that I like how Red is teased as having experienced the Repliforce conflict from X4 which adds in some nice continuity and also helps to further establish Red as a character. Not that it suddenly redeems X7s plot, but it's just a minor thing that I like about it).

That brings me into X7s bosses, and these are just plain forgettable. The only bosses I actually enjoyed fighting here were Wind Crowrang and Sigmas 1st form, purely for the fact that both of them are confined purely to a 2D plain and have actually engaging attacks. There was also Flame Hyenard which was more on the frustrating end due to the buggy physics involved with being on moving objects in X7 which kinda fuck with your controls. And then there's fucking Red who's the culmination of everything wrong with X7s gameplay. He's akin to Gate from X6 as like that fight, Red is fought on platforms that are suspended over a bottomless pit, and rather than slowly moving around like Gate did, Red opts to teleport from platform to platform. However your enemy in this fight is not Red, BUT RATHER THE FUCKING GODAWFUL CAMERA. I played this shit with a keyboard and to make sure I didn't blindly run into a bottomless pit I'd have to stop in place to move the camera and get a better scope of the stage, but that would result in me losing out on an opening to actually attack Red which therefore results in the fight being a total fucking slog in the end. Now that leads me into discussing the health bar of X7s bosses: I hear they have really fucking beefy health bars in the games English release but that must be a NTSC only trait, as I played the "English (UK)" version of it that's featured in the X Legacy Collection and I never thought the bosses really had large health bars as they still went down in respectable time, so therefore if you for some godforsaken reason want to play X7, then either the PAL or the Japanese releases are the way to go if you want to minimize frustration (not that it minimizes much, but still).

Now X7s presentation is a real fucking doozy. First off I'll admit that the 3D models look GREAT and do a damn good job at encapsulating the games overall art direction as they're all VERY vibrant. However they barely have any animation in the in-game cutscenes as their actions just feel devoid of life. Then there's the voice acting... which is some of THE funniest voice acting I've ever heard in my life. For the cutscenes specifically it's comparable to the atrocious voice acting found in X4, but in the bosses then it NEVER fails to make me just fucking burst into laughter with the audio editing and how many sound clips are being overlapped at once. There's the obvious example in Flame Hyenards fight but other instances such as the fights against Ride Boarski and Tornado Tonion also make me fucking lose it from all the laughing I did during those fights. There's NO way people on the dev team were able to take that shit seriously (if they even tested it at all). The original PS2 release also suffers from some HARD optimization issues that were fortunately fixed up in the X Legacy Collection, most notably frame rate chugs during boss fights alongside frequent load screens that are also on the lengthy end, so good thing the more accessible version of X7 is the one that's actually optimized... I guess...? I can give credit to the music however, as at least THAT'S consistently good throughout X7s entire run. From it, my personal shout outs include Vanishing Gungaroos theme, Tornado Tonions theme, Flame Hyenards theme, the Boss theme, the 1st Sigma theme and Signas' theme. In general, a spec of gold among an overall pile of trash.

This review was certainly amusing, as I started off by saying that X7 isn't as bad as everyone hypes it up to be (and I initially give this game a 2 star rating to boot), but after taking the time to not only replay the game but to also think about the points I'd discuss in this review and how I'd go about discussing them, I really do see just how fundamentally flawed of a game X7 is & now I really do think this game deserves the hate it gets, as despite how innovative it could have been it just falls so fucking flat on its head that even if you enjoyed X1-X6 then I really can't recommend this game unless you really want to see where the fuck it went wrong. The controls are clunky, the level design is extremely bland, the plot is irredeemable, there's mechanics from X6 that the devs made no effort at all to fix and the audio editing in the boss fights will destroy your ears if you don't think it's peak humor like I do, while the few actually positive tidbits like the music can easily be found in outside sources, therefore resulting in these aspects coming together to make what's easily the worst Mega Man X game in my eyes by a LONG SHOT. Also if this is your first time reading any of my reviews then I greatly apologize as I'm usually not as negative in any other of my reviews... but regardless, I'm glad I have this game over with, as next up is Mega Man X8 on the PS2, which as it stands is currently the last mainline Mega Man X game, so I wonder how that one truly holds up.

Wow. This game is horrible. So I got this for Christmas 2003 and was excited. I love Megaman with the X series being my favorite. Megaman in 3d? I was stoked and after a couple hours I stopped playing it. I eventually picked it up again a year. You start as Zero and the run into new character Axl who can use a copy ability to become other reploids. But that takes forever and you need to do it to find some of the collectibles. X is playable but you unlock him half way through the game. At that point though it’s not worth using him. Along your journey you’ll collect power up Chips and by that point you will have used them to power up Zero and Axl making X useless. So to make this game more bearable the trick is to not power up Axl or zero. Unlock X. Power him up and get his armor. You will absolutely wipe the floor with this game it will be a tiny bit more playable. The bosses are not interesting (with a couple being ok)and obnoxious (Flame Hyenard). The levels are boring and most of that is due to how slow your characters move. It’s not a good game at all. You can skip this and play 8 and you’d be fine. This is a terrible game. It’s buggy clunky devoid of any charge and only has a couple of good music tracks. This is not a good game.

Oh, you say Capcom made a 3D Megaman X game? Oh, that sounds pretty cool, I could fuck with that! I sure hope it isn't plagued by mindless level design, a lock-on feature that hinders you more than it helps you, unnecessary 2D sections, a significantly nerfed Zero and an X locked behind a fetchquest or until you beat all of the Mavericks which makes Axl the only viable character for most of the game, bosses that pose about as much of a threat as a fly with the sole exception being a boss with a chaotic attack pattern that constantly screams in your ear, a forgettable soundtrack and a laughable plot that all culminates into one of the worst games I'd ever played.

Fingers crossed, though.

It's normal for our critical perspectives to change over time, both personally and as a culture. For example, the introduction of the character of Raiden MetalGear in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001) was initially the subject of scorn. Now, everyone has to accept that he owns and rules, actually. Similarly, Axl Megaman was brought into our lives with 2003's seminal Megaman X7, leading to no shortage of criticism that X was not playable by default. But now, almost 20 years later, nobody remembers those critiques. We're all too busy screaming BURN! BURN TO THE GROUND! BURR-BURN! BURN TO THE GROU-BURN!

Ok so that is probably the least flattering comparison possible, right? Like just LOOK at MGS2 and LOOK at MMX7 and the fact that it came out two years later. And that's not fair because it had a 30-person team and way less of a whole budget going for it but it also shows you how this thing looked when it came out. We were not in an era where it was totally normal for the voice acting to be that hilarious, though I frankly wish that era had never ended. But the fact is: I kinda like Axl.

In this game, X has gotten tired of fighting. He does that all the time of course but this time he REALLY wants to stop. Of course I don't mean he's actually questioning his role in killing for the government he just took a desk job and whines a lot. This results in a bunch of vigilante groups forming to fight Maverick Crime because I guess X was like the only dude doing this, and Axl is some kid who defects from one because they're doing murder evilly now thanks to Sigma.

If MMX actually thought about its setting ever then this would be a good setup to really get into it. The closest thing I saw was Axl's ending where X is still giving him shit and he's like "I'm just doing what you do" and X says "yeah exactly bro."

Zero is just completely checked out the whole time. He's probably listening to music and not giving a single fuck. Love that guy.

Of course this is all pretty secondary to the real reasons people don't like X7 which is that it sucks and feels like shit to play and has a bad camera. All of this is true. The game feels kinda like the sort of thing I'd have made in Klik 'n' Play in middle school. Not on a technical level, of course, but just in terms of vibes. Everything that works feels like an exploit, be it the bats that hang around over your head so you can hit them at an awkward angle with Zero's saber, or the enemies that you really should just run past/attack from outside their AI's aggro radius. The auto lock on will frequently have you shooting at walls. None of your attacks have any weight and nothing does an appreciable amount of damage to any boss. Apparently, the IGN review of the time asserted that you should always have free control of your camera in a 3D action game. I don't agree with that, but X7 makes you fight a boss that can move all around with with a Crash Bandicoot camera so I can appreciate thinking so after playing that part. Even when you do have control over the angle, it's hard to actually track an enemy that moves quickly. In short, there is no God here.

But still, I kind of want to root for X7 you know? Because it's maligned and because there's stuff in here I like. Some great boss designs, like the gay onion and the motorcycle boar. Axl's enemy copying gimmick is a pretty fun idea that fits in well with Megaman's whole weapon stealing thing and is only held back by the fact that, like every one of the game's special moves, it's hard as fuck to use and sucks shit. Having to unlock X is actively good, both because it characterizes him as the complete noncommittal dumbass we love, and because he's really strong but will have to miss out on most of the very limited powerups. Using him is something you need to make choices and tradeoffs to account for. This game kinda has builds! The 3D gameplay does feel like a 3D version of Megaman X, even if the level design doesn't actually hold up to that promise. They wanted to have a co-op mode in this thing which didn't make it in, and that would have been cool. X7 is too late to be a "we don't know how to 3D" game really, but it still is one. Making this thing was probably really hard.

So I guess I'm giving this game 4.5 stars because it's funnier than 5. It does not actually represent a score that high in any way but I was extremely entertained the entire way through the game, always looking forward to the next weird thing. Also I can bump up its average just slightly, as if to show the world that I care. Also it's funny.

to move away from the obvious “yeah this sucks,” i do wanna highlight how there really was a genuine attempt at making a defining title in the series; i can tell the environments wanted to express its predecessor’s tropes in a more unique way, but ultimately beg to be put out of their misery when clashed with unmemorable level design and annoying hazards. i can tell the devs did try and put their all into this but with their lack of knowledge in mega man and the genre, it was inevitably going to miss its mark at least by some margin. to say this is “one of the worst games of all time” is giving X7 way too much recognition. it’s one of those games where i just kinda shrug when it’s over. it’s not offensively bad in a way where i’m left angry. i was probably way more frustrated with games like NMH2 and DmC. X7 is just, disappointing. though i still do question how it ended up like this. the dev team stated they wanted to focus on “getting 3D right,” but any person attuned to games can tell you right off the bat that everything feels off. the controls are sluggish and the inherent satisfaction of landing jumps is completely lost. i wish there was some more documentation of the actual development because it’s almost like another DMC2 situation. devs who were inexperienced with said series and only had the previous game to go off of. i noticed there was some weird fixation with trying to make the game better than X6 at minimum. hindsight is a bitch. i can’t even give X7 funny points because, while yes that one youtube clip you saw screaming BURN was funny out of context, actually playing said clip i found to be quite miserable. did the devs just not care enough to fix it? who playtested this and said ‘yeah i NEED the boss to not only try and kill me but also my eardrums too.’ most of the game is this strange sensory overload both audibly and visually. a damn shame too since the soundtrack is up there as one of my favorites in the franchise. there isn’t a whole lot to be said on X7 at this point but i do think there’s been too much said on it. seriously does not deserve the attention it so comically receives. it’s super funny apparently to talk about and recommended this game when you’re someone who hasn’t played it. it’s just simply a sad game in my eyes.

I must humbly request that Backloggd adds a 0 stars option, because this is without a doubt the single worst game I've ever played.

I've groaned through Sonic 06's absurd loadtimes. I've witnessed firsthand Action 52's hilarious masquerade as a piece of electronic entertainment. I've crept my way through Castlevania: The Adventure's busted halls. I've even just recently experienced Mega Man X6's completely unhinged, Adderall-fueled game design. None of that even vaguely compares to the embodiment of utter incompetence that Mega Man X7 is.

Nothing here works. The graphics are a special kind of ugly, like a child's crayon interpretation of Mega Man but with none of the charm. The controls are delayed and clunky, only worsened by the floaty physics, glacial speed at which the game moves and abominable collision. The music is uninspired. The obnoxious voice acting and its incessant use are a relentless assault on the player's auditory senses. The level design is bland at best, indescribably bad at worst. The bosses are all good reasons why I'm adamantly pro-choice. Even the fucking menus are dysfunctional.

Please, for the love of god, do not play this game. I know curiosity can get the best of us, but there is nothing to be gained from even acknowledging that it exists.

esse jogo é muuuuito engraçado

ele me agrada de uma forma bem unica que é dificil de explicar, mas eu gosto de jogos que parecem um brinquedinho e é isso que o X7 parece. ele te joga na fase, coloca uns bichos e ai diz pra você se virar, se diverte ai faz o que quiser. é adorável demais e eu achei o estilo de arte dele muito querido. talvez não seja um "mega man x" mas jamais na minha vida liguei pra isso.

jogar com as vozes em japonês pode ter ajudado a não me incomodar mais com o jogo porque o Axl é um personagem bem legal. X7 responde a pergunta milenar de "e se o Goku cansasse de ser psicopata e resolvesse parar de querer lutar até a morte". X finalmente percebe que ele nada mais é que um policial (maldito veste azul e tem uma sirene na testa ainda) e começa a ter uma crise ética, chegando a conclusão que tudo bem se ele só trabalhar na parte burocrática da opressão, teclando umas letrinhas (alias li um review que coloca uma perspectiva bem curiosa sobre o X ser o primeiro robo com pensamento autonomo e a conclusão dele ser só matar e matar toda vez) só que aparentemente o X era tão absurdo que ninguém mais consegue parar os Mavericks, criando um monte de grupo de vigilantes. é ai que Axl entra, sendo o jovem Naruto que a série nunca teve porque ou o X era um psicopata ou quando deixou de ser, já cansou imediatamente e não tinha fervor jovem. e por si só, achei Axl legal pra dinâmica de personagens.

também é muito engraçado que o Zero ta completamente desconexo de tudo desde o X6, visto que seu arco acaba com seu sacrifício no X5. agora ele só quer saber de trabalhar, voltar pra casa, escutar um moleque chato encher o ouvido dele de coisa e pensar na sua namorada morta.

num geral, X7 me agradou bem mais do que eu esperava. eu via streams desse jogo e parecia a pior coisa do mundo, mas percebi que é porque os chefes são meio zoados e as fraquezas não funcionam direito. uma pena também que a mecanica de copiar do Axl é simplesmente pessima de todas as formas, porque gosto da ideia. mas fora isso divertido e chill e o ultimo chefe é extremamente engraçado é a coisa menos mega man x do mundo

Wow! This game has pretty much no redeeming qualities!

Everything about the gameplay is horrible. It doesn't feel good to control; the main characters themselves are bad enough but the vehicle sections are even worse. They didn't really put any thought into how ranged weapons would work in 3D space, so they just let you lock onto enemies, even in side scrolling sections.

The intro stage is one of the worst in the series. At the end of the first 3D section there's a door that can only be unlocked after doing a weird little "puzzle" that acts as a check to see if the player understands how the lock on function works. Metroid Prime starts with a similar target practice "puzzle", and putting the two side by side just shows off how bizarre and unintuitive X7's lock-on system is by comparison. Then, in Zero's portion of the stage, there's an area where the screen won't scroll until some number of enemies are defeated, and they just spawn right on top of the player.

The cutscenes are atrocious, whether they're pre-rendered videos, text over images, or made with the in-game graphics. There's an early cutscene, right after beating the intro stage; a text box appears at the bottom of the screen as an image sets the scene. Axl is already in the image, but a second render of him is overlaid on top of the main image when he speaks. By the end of the cutscene, Axl, Signas, X, and Zero are all rendered in front of the background image, and they're all in random poses completely ignoring any context of the conversation or framing of the scene. There's a level transition where the camera just hangs on the player standing on an airship for a solid 10 seconds or so, I legitimately thought the game had bugged out. Sometimes when a cutscene uses in-game graphics, or after a boss has been defeated, the camera will just zoom into a random point in space, filling the screen with a blurry mess of blown up PS2 quality textures.

Navigating the UI in between missions is impressively frustrating. The first time you clear a stage, the game explains to you how the ranking system works, what factors control your rank; the Zero games don't do this because A: those games respect the player enough to know that someone game savvy enough to care about their rank can probably intuit how it works on their own, and B: the Zero games use a much more clear scoring system that tells you exactly how much of your percentage is affected by what factors on the scorecard itself.

Every time you want to change menus, go to the save screen, go to the level select screen, the game asks "are you sure?" and the default cursor position is always "no". When you finish the intro stage and are given the level select screen, the game gives you a lore blurb on each of the eight levels one by one. When you pick a level, the game spends time explaining how the character select screen works (it does this because the level and character screens use weird radial menus that aren't visually coherent enough for some players to immediately understand). When you switch from the level select menu to the options menu, the game explains how the options menu works.

In each main stage, you can rescue two NPCs who will give you a chip to add points to one of your characters' three skills; the game gives you a blurb about how "rescuing people can get you upgrade chips!" every time you enter the upgrade menu, even if you are upgrading twice in a row from the same level. Once again, after distributing your points, the game will ask if you're sure about your selection, and the cursor will default to "no".

Some of the levels in this game are split into as many as 4 or 5 sections, all stitched together by loading screens. Several times throughout a level, a character will ask you to hit a button prompt to receive a hint, shouting "Can you hear me? [Current player character]?" Many levels consist of copy and pasted assets, sometimes with a change in hue. Red, blue, and green airships. Orange and blue virtual reality hexagons.

The difficulty is ridiculous, and after multiple attempts at playing through the game on the standard difficulty I gave up, I finished the game on the Legacy Collection's "Rookie Hunter" mode. Most of the time it feels like your health is infinite in this mode, but I still almost died in several of the boss fights. The only time that I did die in Rookie Hunter mode was in the motor bike stage, because of the time limit. Unlike previous games bike levels, which force you into a high speed auto-scroller, in this one you need to go as slow as possible in order to not miss the tight turns you have to make to pick up all of the bombs you need to diffuse.

The voice acting is embarrassing, but that's nothing out of the ordinary for Mega Man. What is out of the ordinary is the fact that I don't remember a single song from this game's soundtrack.

Burn to the ground, Mega Man X7.

I’d like to be contrarian and tell you this game isn’t that bad because ambition and passion or something, but I can’t, because it is that bad. It’s mind bogglingly slow and cumbersome, enemies are bullet spongey as hell, the levels are so poorly thought out that you don’t even have to fight them in most cases, there’s no reason to boss route or use anything besides the buster because their abilities are all useless, it tries to really pander to nostalgia at points with a lot of X1 memorabilia, the story and especially the voice acting are a complete fucking embarrassment, I can honestly go on. The only reason I rate it one star and not half is because I kind of knew what I was getting into going in, and because I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find some minor bits of enjoyment here and there, even if most of it was ironic, at the game’s expense.

Megaman X7, from what I could gather from the general perception, seems to be constantly locked in a perpetual battle with Megaman X6 as “the worst X game ever”, it’s either X6 or X7 that people seem to despise, though most would still classify X6 as worse overall. X7 was the X franchise’s first attempt at a 3D game and…well to say that the results “could’ve been better” would be a massive understatement to put it lightly. Even for PS2 standards this game looks so ugly and unimpressive as a 3D title, it actually reminds me a lot of PS1 era games, but whereas I look upon those titles with fondness and nostalgia, the fact that X7 would somewhat fit right at home with those types of games visually despite coming out a generation later is absurd. Environments are bleak, character models are stiffly animated and rough around the edges, but to be frankly honest, the lackluster visuals are the least of this game’s issues.

Usually when I talk about games, whether it be good or bad, I want to go more in depth with why I like or dislike particular aspects of them. You can see this extensively throughout my Backloggd reviews. The problem with X7 is that not only are pretty much all the changes it makes for the worse, but it’s just so uninteresting to talk about to begin with. The movement is completely gutted, dash jumping repeatedly still works but its effectiveness has been severely lessened. Your default movement speed is horrendous and having the levels you traverse through be so big wide and empty ESPECIALLY in 3D only further accentuates this problem. You also get this combat roll maneuver that’s so tacked on and is practically worthless in terms of effectiveness. Axl is the new character introduced, he has a rapid fire shot that pumps out ok damage and a hover ability to get across certain gaps. He also has this copy ability which is so clunky to utilize and so incredibly situational that I barely used it at all. So, for starters, he can only copy enemies that are the same size as him so that alone limits the possibilities it can be used on, but even attempting to copy them is so awkward because you need to finish the kill with Axl’s copy shot so that you can utilize the DNA the enemy drops. The problem with this is enemies don’t have health bars in X7 so it’s next to impossible to tell how many shots you need to fire before you kill them with the copy shot, so what ends up happening is that you deal some damage and spam the copy shot over and over again to try and kill them with it which takes forever. And even with all that said, there’s not really any point to the copy ability. The most you’re gonna use this ability for is for upgrade fodder and nothing else. Other than trying to get upgrades using this ability I must’ve used it a grand total of once, and that was to copy a flying guy to make the beginning of Wind Crowrang’s stage a total cakewalk. Zero…good god what did they do to him. His combo game is nonsensical and clunky and he has almost no range on his sword swings, he felt so awkward to play, only compounded with the general speed issue I have. In the end I only ended up using X and Axl throughout my entire playthrough. X especially was a great option for a solid damage output.

The levels themselves are unfathomably dull. The 2D sections are a far cry from X 1 2 and 4, and the 3D sections are unnecessarily spacious and empty. Combine this with your move speed and movement options being agonizingly slow as I stated previously and levels in general take way too long to finish. Maverick bosses are somehow even worse, they take an absolute eternity to take down even with the proper special weapon, and sometimes the special weapon isn’t even really good against the boss at all. And oh yes, they LOVE to talk. A LOT. Look, Flame Hyenard’s constant “BURN TO THE GROUND BURN BURN BURN TO THE GROUND TRI FORMATION WOO WOO” talk is legendarily bad, worthy of meme status, I understand it I really do, but the others are almost as bad in this department. If I have to hear another utterance of “TRIANGLE KICK!!!” ever again I’m gonna burst a blood vessel. The camera control is a…disaster to put it lightly. Not because it’s on the shoulder buttons, I played many 3D games with a shoulder button camera, but the main problem is the angle given. Oftentimes it’s at an awkward angle, is far too close to the camera, or in many instances, both. I think by far the lowest part of the game was the Red boss fight, you have to fight a frequently invincible to damage, constantly teleporting, high health target on tiny platforms with an incredibly awkward angled slow-moving camera. And what’s more, remember that combat roll maneuver I mentioned earlier? You perform it by performing a dash immediately after a previous dash. Wanna know what’s another input for dash? Double tapping the stick forward. So oftentimes when I tried to slowly tip toe around tiny platforms, tapping the stick lightly a bunch to prepare for the inevitable next jump, the game would register this as a dash input, and when I tried to use dash afterwards unaware the game already input a dash beforehand, I would combat roll off the edge like a complete tool. Keep in mind that combat roll completely locks your controls so once you roll of the edge, it’s instant death! All that effort you put into trying to kill the boss all for nothing! It was infuriating, but to be fair that’s basically the only time I actively felt anything while playing this game other than complete boredom. Immediately after this fight is a final gauntlet followed up by probably the easiest Sigma boss fight in the entire series next to X6. The voice acting is pretty terrible too, not necessarily X4 bad but still pretty bad overall.

Overall this is an incredibly forgettable game. Despite glimpses of memeworthy elements here and there, this game largely goes in one ear and out the other. It’s not the “why is this game still going on please someone put me out of my misery” kind of boring, it’s more so the “I’m gonna forget everything about this game within the span of a week” kind of boring. I don’t really want to play either one of these extremes either way.