As I write this review with the relatively mild headache caused by me facepalming for around 2 hours straight last night while playing this, I feel like I've escaped from some form of torture.
Mega Man X is one of my favorite games, a fun short romp of a 2D Run & Gun Platformer with great music, great level design, and a decent challenge for the first playthrough.
How do we go from that to something like this?
Well, I was going to say "the lack of Keiji Inafune's involvement", but considering Mighty No. 9 is a thing, I'm not willing enough to wager that that was the reason.
Though the fact that he apologized for this game's very existence is telling.
Either way, we end up with what I currently think is the single worst Mega Man X, actually fuck it, the single worst Mega Man game to ever exist.
The story is nothing to write home about, it's a very uninteresting story about another scientist, Gate, getting infected by the Zero Virus from the last game. He goes crazy, creates an entity called "The Nightmare", and sends 8 Reploid Investigators whom he created to look into it. If that first part sounds familiar, that's because that's literally the plot of Mega Man X3.
Gate was apparently a scientist alongside Alia back in what I would assume were their university days or some shit, but he was ridiculed for his methods and eventually removed I think.
There's not much to go off of there because the game, both being terribly translated as well as vague, keeps me from understanding what actually went on.
But that does not compare to the gameplay, which in an homage to the very first Mega Man, is host to the most bullshit designed levels I have ever seen. Every single stage has some sort of gimmick that makes it completely unplayable unless you have suit upgrades or a particular weapon, with the only exception being Commander Yammarks stage.
Blaze Heatnix's stage has you fighting 4 separate donut things, one of which is literally impossible to defeat unless you have Infinity Majinion's weapon or Metal Shark Player's.
Metal Shark Player's stage is just a ridiculously long and played out instant kill fest, that also has spikes for literally no reason than dickish design.
Infinity Majinion's stage while not the worst, is just lazily designed, there's nothing interesting except the giant robot shooting things at you, platforming wise it's one of the most dull stages I've ever experienced.
Shield Sheldon's stage has an annoying laser puzzle gimmick that extends its time by a large margin, Blizzard Wolfang's stage is riddled with fucking avalanches, Rainy Turtloid's stage gimmick is literally just constant damage.
All of these are of course made worse due to the impact of the Nightmare. Y'see, the Nightmare is like the stage effects of the first X game... except they don't benefit you at all, and the game doesn't really clarify when they're on or not. Do not be fooled, the Red coloring doesn't actually clarify shit because even if you go to a non Red colored stage, the Nightmare will still be in effect. So what was the point of the color. I have no idea, it doesn't make a difference.
The Nightmare just adds more shitty gimmicks to a game with shoddily designed levels. From flaming meteors to metal boxes and bug robots. It's just a cavalcade of unnecessary additions that make the game harder for no reason.
The worst blight to me however, are the final stages. The first final stage is literally impossible to even start unless you have specific upgrade chips (or Suits) because the jackass who designed this thought that putting a bunch of spike walls that are too tall to jump over normally was a good idea.
The rest of the final stages follow suit with this ridiculous spike-obsessive design.
For the record, I hate spikes as a video game obstacle. They are, in my honest opinion, the laziest designed obstacle in all of games to create a sense of difficulty. Instant kill obstacles all fall in the trap of feeling cheap and this game is just loaded with that. Every death to the overload of spikes in this game just feels like a fucking fluke. Like, how the hell is anyone supposed to deal with this.
I could go on and on about how the bosses in the game suck, how Gate is the worst Mega Man boss ever conceived, how bringing back Zero and Sigma feels super fucking stupid, go more indepth on how stupid the Rescue and Chip systems are, but that would require me to care enough to want to keep going on and on about this until the heat death of the universe.
Mega Man X6 is the video game equivalent of a punch to the face, and I can still feel my jaw being left wide open in complete disbelief.
I knew the game would be bad, I knew it would be this awful thing, BUT IT STILL LEFT ME DISAPPOINTED!
Don't play this game, don't waste your time on this. The original Mega Man X is right there, play it instead, or X2, X4, or X5.
Just, don't waste your time like I did.
Mega Man X is one of my favorite games, a fun short romp of a 2D Run & Gun Platformer with great music, great level design, and a decent challenge for the first playthrough.
How do we go from that to something like this?
Well, I was going to say "the lack of Keiji Inafune's involvement", but considering Mighty No. 9 is a thing, I'm not willing enough to wager that that was the reason.
Though the fact that he apologized for this game's very existence is telling.
Either way, we end up with what I currently think is the single worst Mega Man X, actually fuck it, the single worst Mega Man game to ever exist.
The story is nothing to write home about, it's a very uninteresting story about another scientist, Gate, getting infected by the Zero Virus from the last game. He goes crazy, creates an entity called "The Nightmare", and sends 8 Reploid Investigators whom he created to look into it. If that first part sounds familiar, that's because that's literally the plot of Mega Man X3.
Gate was apparently a scientist alongside Alia back in what I would assume were their university days or some shit, but he was ridiculed for his methods and eventually removed I think.
There's not much to go off of there because the game, both being terribly translated as well as vague, keeps me from understanding what actually went on.
But that does not compare to the gameplay, which in an homage to the very first Mega Man, is host to the most bullshit designed levels I have ever seen. Every single stage has some sort of gimmick that makes it completely unplayable unless you have suit upgrades or a particular weapon, with the only exception being Commander Yammarks stage.
Blaze Heatnix's stage has you fighting 4 separate donut things, one of which is literally impossible to defeat unless you have Infinity Majinion's weapon or Metal Shark Player's.
Metal Shark Player's stage is just a ridiculously long and played out instant kill fest, that also has spikes for literally no reason than dickish design.
Infinity Majinion's stage while not the worst, is just lazily designed, there's nothing interesting except the giant robot shooting things at you, platforming wise it's one of the most dull stages I've ever experienced.
Shield Sheldon's stage has an annoying laser puzzle gimmick that extends its time by a large margin, Blizzard Wolfang's stage is riddled with fucking avalanches, Rainy Turtloid's stage gimmick is literally just constant damage.
All of these are of course made worse due to the impact of the Nightmare. Y'see, the Nightmare is like the stage effects of the first X game... except they don't benefit you at all, and the game doesn't really clarify when they're on or not. Do not be fooled, the Red coloring doesn't actually clarify shit because even if you go to a non Red colored stage, the Nightmare will still be in effect. So what was the point of the color. I have no idea, it doesn't make a difference.
The Nightmare just adds more shitty gimmicks to a game with shoddily designed levels. From flaming meteors to metal boxes and bug robots. It's just a cavalcade of unnecessary additions that make the game harder for no reason.
The worst blight to me however, are the final stages. The first final stage is literally impossible to even start unless you have specific upgrade chips (or Suits) because the jackass who designed this thought that putting a bunch of spike walls that are too tall to jump over normally was a good idea.
The rest of the final stages follow suit with this ridiculous spike-obsessive design.
For the record, I hate spikes as a video game obstacle. They are, in my honest opinion, the laziest designed obstacle in all of games to create a sense of difficulty. Instant kill obstacles all fall in the trap of feeling cheap and this game is just loaded with that. Every death to the overload of spikes in this game just feels like a fucking fluke. Like, how the hell is anyone supposed to deal with this.
I could go on and on about how the bosses in the game suck, how Gate is the worst Mega Man boss ever conceived, how bringing back Zero and Sigma feels super fucking stupid, go more indepth on how stupid the Rescue and Chip systems are, but that would require me to care enough to want to keep going on and on about this until the heat death of the universe.
Mega Man X6 is the video game equivalent of a punch to the face, and I can still feel my jaw being left wide open in complete disbelief.
I knew the game would be bad, I knew it would be this awful thing, BUT IT STILL LEFT ME DISAPPOINTED!
Don't play this game, don't waste your time on this. The original Mega Man X is right there, play it instead, or X2, X4, or X5.
Just, don't waste your time like I did.