I mainly remember the person I played this game with, who among stories I have of them will only recite the time that he was convinced that you needed to pop the stovetop popcorn with the paper on top of the foil, and only let the smoke alarm and his furious aerobic teacher mother waking up to a smokefilled house convince him this was not the case. We played this game in that kitchen sometimes because they were that well off, to have a TV with AV hookups in the kitchen. I occasionally dream of that house. Weird kid.

It's a big mind-boggling to me when this game is labeled as a Platform Shooter when it feels just as electrifying and exhilarating as an action game.

The stage, enemy, and boss design are at their best and X, Zero, and all the weapons and techniques you acquire for both of them are so fun to control. Being able to fully control Zero in particular was such an amazing experience. They even manage to tell a pretty cool story on top of all of that. The action and stakes pile on and on and it is hard not to be drawn in by it all.

(Continued from my X3 review)

Huh, I guess they did do better.

This is my favorite X game. The core gameplay is really fun for both main characters and the stages and bosses make great use of it. The story is hilariously dumb and I've come to accept that I don't like Mega Man's PS1 spritework, but that doesn't detract much from one of the finest games in the franchise.

The last great Mega Man X game.

Much like the game itself, this review will be in two parts. I usually keep these reviews to just gameplay and presentation, as I feel the story speaks for itself, or in many cases, the story is so minimal that the narrative is actually what happens to the player and it could become more of a memoir than my thoughts on the game itself (fun to write though!). Regardless, in this case I feel like the story (or lack thereof) warrants some discussion.

As a video game, 1997’s Mega Man X 4 is nearly unmatched. X1 is definitely the more pure experience but it’s very close for me. It’s one of my all time favorites. It’s incredible in the hands; dash jumping through a level has never felt better. Its presentation is sublime; the spritework is lovely, and perfectly suits the setting. The levels are beautifully rendered, the characters have this delightful shine to them, every special effect and buster blast looks just Anime enough to match the game’s animated cutscenes. When you dash, you leave an afterimage trail of your silhouette. It’s very very cool.

The music is an excellent graduation from the original 16 bit tracks. A comfortable blend of guitar rock and synth techno, it has the Mega Man X vibe you would expect, if a little subdued and relaxed at times. The songs aren’t all catchy bangers but they’re pleasant enough. Slash Beast, Magma Dragoon, Jet Stingray, and Final Weapon are some pretty great themes though. Final Weapon definitely has that dire urgency while still sounding great. These songs have never left my mind and I will be able to hum along to them after years of not hearing them again, as though I am the Mega Manchurian Candidate.

Playing as X, you’re given about what you would expect from a Mega Man X game. The levels are simple and split into two parts and each part follows a loose theme, either through gameplay or setting. Playing on a system that allows for quick loading times makes the two part level layout almost unnoticeable in something like Magma Dragoon’s stage though. The first half of Cyber Peacock’s stage testing your quickness and rewarding you for getting through the level under a certain time to get an S rank really stands out in this series, and I like it a lot. You’re rewarded with the most broken item in the game if you’re a good enough player, but if you’re that good you might not need it.

The collectible armor parts add a new level of utility for X, especially the hover boots (which also give you an air dash), but nothing beats the previously alluded to helmet from Cyber Peacock’s stage giving you infinite special weapon energy. It feels like cheating but at the same time it’s also kind of unnecessary.

In a rare decision across the expanded Mega Man franchise at that point in time, Mega Man X 4 resets your weapon ammo whenever you die. This means that the endgame boss fights aren’t a war of attrition, but focus more on execution (this of course excludes rationing out your sub tanks). This makes unlimited ammo somewhat unnecessary as, technically, you already have unlimited ammo. This also makes the Weapon Tank unnecessary too, as you have no reason to refill ammo that hasn’t been spent.

The only situation I’ve considered where the W Tank makes sense, is the very particular situation where you’re doing an armorless (or just helmetless) playthrough and you’re at the final boss, who is weak to Soul Body: a weapon with only 8 shots. You’ll need to get 8 more Soul Body shots to finish the job somehow, right? I’m glad the option is there, though playing the game as intended and getting everything causes some redundancy.

If you ask me, the helmet should have just doubled your ammo count. Nice and simple. The W Tank would still be useless though I guess.

Anyway, X is a good and indulgent time. His voice clips are grating and annoying in English but we live in a world where you can easily play the Japanese version, which is a lot more pleasant and fitting.

It’s interesting to me that Zero’s inclusion in this game as a playable character is also pleasant and fitting because by all accounts he shouldn’t. Zero is a square peg that fits in this round hole. His mode is definitely harder than X’s, but I’m not sure if I can say it’s a capital H Hard Mode. It’s Weird Mode.

Zero doesn’t get armor upgrades, and he doesn’t get special weapons from the Mavericks like X does. Instead, he gets movement upgrades like a double jump, and also simple button input combo moves like a flaming uppercut sword slash. He only gets four elemental moves (three if you’re counting the useful ones), the rest are all passive upgrades. Because of this, the bosses share weaknesses in ways that don’t totally line up with what they’re weak to in X mode.

Magma Dragoon is weak to X’s wind based Double Cyclone and you can imagine it cooling his body, but he’s also weak to Zero’s lightning based Raijingeki, for some reason. Fire guys being weak to lightning will be a running theme with Zero in future games, and I couldn’t tell you why, but this game sets that precedent.

Since Zero gets his double jump and air dash and Z Saber upgrade from the Mavericks, and there’s no armor upgrades for him to pick up, the spots where the armor capsules are hidden for X are barren. Save for an extra life in Cyber Peacock’s stage, there’s no reason to look around, and it can be a bit confusing on a first time playthrough. Just put an extra life in all the capsule locations, simple as that.

Regardless, Zero mode is a good, if strange time. And it’s a good thing it’s a good time, because as much as this is X’s game, it’s Zero’s story.

As a story, Mega Man X 4 is a bit of a mess. The plot is important enough to the developers that they paid animators and voice actors to help tell it. It’s important enough that every boss fight is predicated with a few lines of dialogue to give these Mavericks some personality and even motivation. And yet, it’s not quite enough to really nail it. And I’m not necessarily talking about how unintentionally funny the cutscenes are in English.

SPOILERS FOR AN ANCIENT GAME BEYOND THIS POINT YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

I wasn’t initially going to go in enough depth to need a spoiler warning but it’ll be a lot easier than if I was being vague, oh well.

While X’s story is a springboard for detached musings on what it means for a group of artificial people wrongfully accused of breaking the laws of robotics, Zero’s story is a crisis of self, and the downfall of a loving family plagued by stubborn pride; brought down by hubris and love at the hands of a trusted friend who is fulfilling his bloody destiny he does not want.

It’s more personal, but at the same time, not personal enough. Zero and his friend? Lover? Coworker? Iris aren’t given enough time together enjoying each other’s company for the infamous What Am I Fighting For? scene to be dramatically effective, rather than funny. Zero has more cutscenes than X already, but maybe just one more of Zero and Iris having a tender moment or something. Some lines of dialogue. Anything.

The death? murder? manslaughter? (Robotslaughter?) of Iris and her brother Colonel at the hands of Zero, who was only following orders (lmao), is not only meaningful for Zero’s outward relationship but also his inward relationship with himself. The game begins with the ancient android Zero not dreaming of electric sheep, but his shadowy creator, who Mega Man fans will know as Dr. Wily from the Classic series. This shadow tells him his destiny is to “destroy his nemesis” (in this case being the original Mega Man but I guess any Mega Man will do) This is further compounded by a flashback to a hundred years after his creation, of Zero’s first encounter with reploids. We see the robot gore of his brutal slaughter of an entire unit of Maverick Hunters. We watch him gleefully try to rip then-Maverick Hunter Commander Sigma’s head off. He was built to be a monster. And now, here we are, having a blast “retiring” Mavericks bad fighting our friends. You want to think that Zero is resisting his destiny by not fighting X, but is he really?

We can’t place all the blame on Zero though, the reploid army Repliforce is run by brainless idiots who only care about pride and honor and won’t take five minutes to clear their names of a terrorist attack. I think on paper, a group of reploids are well within their rights to leave a society that will baselessly accuse them of a crime they didn’t commit, but I wouldn’t want to live in whatever nation Repliforce created.

There are much, much better stories that ponder the humanity of an artificial person and the politics that are brought about in a world with artificial people, but Mega Man X 4 is technically one of those stories, but first and foremost, it’s a fun game to play.

I’ve beaten Mega Man X 4 so many times that I have lost count. I’ve 100%-ed as both X and Zero, I’ve put in the code for the secret Ultimate Armor for X and Black Zero color swap and done a 100% playthrough with each of them. I attempted to do an armorless X playthrough but got steamrolled by the already pretty tricky final boss. Maybe I’ll come back to it again and do it right.

This game is great and I fully recommend it, with the caveat that you know what you’re getting when you go in. This game’s like a good boyfriend. It’s goofy as hell, but it will treat you right.

The 32 Bit era begins for the X series beings here with Mega Man X4! It’s a widely beloved game, with many considering it the definitive Mega Man experience. Hell, even I’m nostalgic for this game. It wasn’t my first PS1 Mega Man game, that was X5, but the production value put into this game made this game standout. The cut scenes, the voice acting, the story, Zero actually having a good and unique kit. I knew going in most of the novelty of those particular things weren’t as strong, but being able to experience the pinnacle of Mega Man games again was exciting to me.

It took me quite a bit of time to sort out my thoughts on X4. When I did my first two playthroughs of X4, first as Zero and then X, I was left feeling pretty tepid towards the game. I had fun, I enjoyed my time. But when I finally came here on Backlogged to type out my thoughts and post my review on X4, I just couldn’t find the words to accurately describe how I felt to fill out a review. Just a few middling thoughts that sounded much like my other Mega Man reviews. I didn’t want to just come at X4 half baked, giving general “I feel” statements like my last few, the legacy of X4 feels like it deserves more than that.

So I did the only sane thing and did two more playthroughs as the duo, recorded the footage and took notes to really get nuanced about my thoughts. And then I did two more playthroughs after that. And after all that I have a lot of thoughts about X4. Uh, hope you enjoy?

We’ll start with Zero, my preference is with him and honestly I think the game shines the most when playing as Zero. There’s definitely more of a challenge in going through the Maverick stages, but to that same effect it’s that much more satisfying clearing stages as Zero, especially when you do so efficiently and with low or no damage. Boss fights too feel a little more tense with Zero than his blue counterpart, for the most part anyway (Jet Stingray can suck a dick). There’s a decidedly fun level of player expression with Zero that ages well and shines throughout his kit in this all future installments. Zero is, to me at least, where X4 shines the most and when the highest highs hit.

Before I touch on the little baby beep boop, X, I wanna talk about the level design in the Maverick stages, and where the low points for both Zero and X4 start. The level design in X4 is...fine. There’s a few stages where everything feels really really clean and coherent and fun to go through almost every time, like the Bio Lab and Cyberspace. But for the most part, this game is painfully simple. Both in a lack of cool moments and setpieces in individual stages and the challenge of the levels themselves. The culprit behind this, I believe, is the fact this is Zero’s introduction as a playable character, and with a vastly different kit, a Beam Saber and one projectile on an ammo count from a boss, means Zero has to approach stage and enemy encounters a lot differently than X. This also leaves him hanging on some bosses, where the bosses are designed for a chracter with a gun, and not one with a sword and require either a cheese strat or godlike reactions to avoid taking damage. Dragoon and Stingray being the worse offenders of this.

And where does this leave X? Honestly with the easiest mainline Mega Man game yet. People have bemoaned the later trilogy of the NES Mega Man games for being “too easy”, but at least the level design was never compromised even if the charge shot made enemy encounters and boss fights easier. In this game there’s not really any moments I felt any challenge as playing as X, save on the last two playthroughs as X when I went no armor/no weakness run and had to learn the bosses. Which are very well designed bosses, much easier to appreciate as X. It’s a shame all of them are behind some of the most static and forgettable levels in Mega Man.

And don’t get me wrong, there’s times where I’m able to step outside myself and see where a level design piece might be interesting or challenging to newer players, like the rocks at the begining of Act 2 of Volcano. There are moments in levels I can look back on and step out of myself and see how these things are and could be challenging to new players, but it doesn’t make Jungle or Volcano any less boring to go through on repeat playthroughs. The special weapons aren’t great, only a handful of them felt like they were useful in any give situation. And there are really good bits of gameplay with X, like Cybespace 1 or Snow Base 2. But this didn’t make the challenge of X4 as a whole real or consistent. X4’s stages constantly teeter on boring more often, and while the linearity works on some stages like Military Train where you’re tearing through a military supply and feel like a cool-ass Hunter, it can also hurt in stages like Air Fleet where it just feels like a tedious slog.

All said, X4 feels Mixed. A fantastic debut for Zero that stumbles due to having to compromise for X, and a bland X game that’s that way because of Zero’s debut. And I’m critical, but this game’s still a great play through. It’s a Capcom Mega Man game in the 90s it’s gonna be at least a B-. And X4’s a solid...B+. I think there’s better Mega Man experiences, but X4’s just got this aura around it that just feels classic, and I understand why it’s so beloved. The animated cutscnes for this are still the closest thing we have to a Mega Man X anime, despite being a story and franchise you could tell the team wanted to tell stories with. And while X4’s story is...campy at best and falls apart under any scrutiny, it’s still a fun and again, being able to see more of the Mega Man universe is always appreciated. Us Mega Man fans take whatever Capcom dripfeeds us with worldbuilding and lore.

You’re gonna be hard pressed to find a better Action Platformer on the PSX, and even though I’m harsher than most it’s a good game. I think there’s definitely more complete and fun Mega Man experiences out there, but this still a must play for Mega Man fans.

This was a game I had originally just bought on PS1 to play before I ended up buying the X collections on Switch. I had heard it was the best of the series, even better than X1, so I figured it must be worth playing for sure with how good X1 is. I got to the end of X's route before getting stuck at the final boss and then thoroughly distracted by playing through the entire classic Mega Man series, so I just restarted it from the beginning on the Switch when I got the collection XD. I played through both routes in the Japanese version of the game, and together they took me about 6 hours in total.

X4 actually tries to bring something a bit different to the table in terms of story for once, and is very much a first entry in the more complicated and character-focused stories that this team would go on to do with the Mega Man Zero games once they went off to make Inti Creates. Though Sigma is still the final boss at the end, he actually isn't the main arbiter of the plot. Instead, Repliforce, an army of reploids created to protect humanity, decide to rebel to make their own nation of only reploids. They're branded as Mavericks, and lacking any ability via their programming to back down or surrender, immediately plunge the planet into war as the Maverick Hunters try to take down this new massive threat to humanity. While it isn't a super feat of writing, the concept of a group who literally cannot back down from the fight they're waging is certainly a far more interesting one than basically every other X game offers.

It's complete with animated and voice acted cutscenes as well as a good deal of VA for the normal text as well. This is the first entry in the series on the PS1, and they really flex that extra memory space's power with this game. The Japanese dub is excellent, and while the cutscenes themselves as well as the story aren't exactly a super present thing through the course of the game (they're largely just at the beginning and end), it's a huge step forward for the series that they land pretty gracefully considering that Rock Man had really only ever paid lip service to a larger story before this.

Something really excellent that this game does, first and foremost, is split the game between its two characters. No longer is Zero just some special power-up you only get to use one time. He's a fully fleshed out character with his own personal move set, and he and X even have quite different perspectives on the game's narrative, with X's being more traditionally Mega Man and Zero's dealing much more with his own identity crisis (the very one that the Mega Man Zero games spend their entire course exploring more in full). Each character even gets radically different abilities from defeating the eight Mavericks in the game. While X can find hidden armor capsules (complete with two different options for upgraded mega buster fire) and gets new special weapons for defeating the Mavericks, Zero gets genuinely new moves. Some of these take the form of elemental attacks that can take advantage of bosses weaknesses, but others are just movement upgrades like a double jump that increase his mobility to make him better at fighting everything. Almost none of Zero's abilities even cost weapon energy. Both characters are fleshed out really well and they give really different play experiences playing either, and it's very very worth playing through the game as each of them to get the best parts of how both play.

The game overall is polished super well. The bosses are once again super fun to fight with just the mega buster, and the stages are even better than they were in X3. Thankfully, the most welcome change is a serious scaling back of the hidden collectibles and secrets from X3 back to more like they were in X1. It gives a much better gestalt experience and I never really felt like I needed to use a guide to enjoy this. I'd say Zero is a bit harder to fight with compared to X, but a lot of that just has to do with getting used to the more up close and personal playstyle he has as your main weapon is a sword instead of a gun. Sigma's final form is a bit too hard for his own good, at least compared to the difficulty of the rest of the game, but it's regardless an excellently balanced and polished experience with either character, from the stages to the story to the boss fights.

The presentation is excellent as well. As previously mentioned the story is told through very pretty animated anime cutscenes with full VA, but the gameplay is also very beautifully animated. If Capcom wanted to make a big splash with X's first adventure on PS1, they sure hit the mark dead-on, because this game even gives the later Mega Man games on PS1 a run for their money with how nice it is visually. The music is also very good, with Jet Stingray being one of my favorite songs in the whole series~.


Verdict: Highly Recommended. This is definitely the top of the Rock Man X series for me. It has a high reputation that it absolutely deserves. If you enjoyed X1 but are a bit wary of the reputation that later X games have, 4 is absolutely one you should not miss out on, since it's easily one of the best 2D action games I've played from that generation.