When I played MGS2 for the first time last year, I walked away from it feeling like I had played a game that was truly special and worth analyzing every little piece of. I also found myself feeling very confused as to why so much of that game was centered around chasing down a fat demolition man on roller skates.

There isn't anything as strange or blatantly time wasting as that in Mother 3, but I did still walk away from it with the same core feelings. This truly is a special game, there's nothing else like it, but I can't help but wonder if the game could've been even better with some adjustments in how the game paced out and presented its narrative.

Also unrelated to all that but this game has the top 1 door opening animation in any video game, it's so good

After playing through the Mega Man classic series, part of me was a bit worried that going back in time 25 years to start the Mega Man X games would feel like a huge step back, ultimately hampering my ability to enjoy this game for what it offered at the time rather than what I want it to offer now.

What a fool I was.

The game isn't perfect obviously. Dashing never ended up feeling quite as intuitive or satisfying for me as sliding in Mega Man classic did, and the stages can often feel like slight variations on the same 'robot factory' theme over and over again. But these small complaints are so easy to brush aside when the levels are all so fun to traverse, the boss weapons are all so fun to use, the secrets are all so satisfying to discover, and the story gets as close as a Mega Man game has come so far to actually being good.

I couldn't put this game down until I rolled credits and all I can think about now that I have is 'when will I get to replay this game already?' TL;DR: This game rules.