20XX is a Mega Man X love letter set to the tone of a rogue-lite. As a huge fan of the Mega Man X series (particularly X1-X4) I was super excited to try this game out. As you can see by the star rating it was much more of a mixed bag than I was hoping to find. Before I get to the negatives I would like to give it its flowers.
As I said 20XX is a lover letter to Mega Man X and if there is one thing that they nailed it is the buttery smooth gameplay that feels just like the SNES trilogy. The first time you play the game it truly feels like you're playing an old school X game and it feels great. They give you two characters to play with which for all intents and purposes are just X and Zero with both being equally fun to play as. Unlike in most Mega Man games you can't just pick the best route by matching weaknesses of bosses to decide who to fight next. Meaning most of the time you won't have the optimal weapon to take down the boss of the level. (The theory of this is awesome the practice however will be talked about in the next paragraph.) This game also follows in Mega Mans footsteps with an amazing sound track that the series was well known for. While these positive are really strong positives it wasn't enough to make up for the negatives.
The first thing I will bring up is the second half of the bosses weaknesses I mentioned earlier. As I said, in theory it is awesome as it theoretically should make you have to work hard against bosses you don't have the best weapons to inflict additional damage upon. However, in practice, the bosses in this game are so laughably easy that there is legitimately no reason to even waste your time figuring out which bosses are weak to what. Just using the basic shots you will probably never find yourself in trouble against any boss. Speaking of easy, before I had any permanent upgrades or upgrades you can earn to show up during you run, I made it to the final level easily going through the 8 regular levels. Now that I have the upgrades it's actually hard to die before the final level. Unfortunately, once you reach the final level they flip that on its head. The enemies are not the problem but instead it throws 500 bullshit poorly placed traps at you that you have to have great timing on or you will get hit. Then the game doubles down on the bullshit as the traps are set in the sky while making jumps. You have a few frames of invincibility once you are hit so if you get hit and then fall into a pit it only counts as one damage. However, in the final level they place the traps just high enough so that your frames end right before you hit the pit causing double the damage for no reason. I don't mind a challenge but its infuriating to go through 30 minutes of easy levels only to get a randomized set of traps bull shit you to death. I say random because it is a rogue lite so the stages do change. However, for the first 8 stages they change so slightly that you almost never really notice any difference. This makes the game go from a joy for the first two hours to a slog every time after that.
20XX had so much potential but I feel like they bit off more than they could chew, leaving you with a game that feels underwhelming and begs you to only play it for a few hours. I've heard 30XX is better so maybe I will give it a try but as for 20XX I can't say I recommend this.
As I said 20XX is a lover letter to Mega Man X and if there is one thing that they nailed it is the buttery smooth gameplay that feels just like the SNES trilogy. The first time you play the game it truly feels like you're playing an old school X game and it feels great. They give you two characters to play with which for all intents and purposes are just X and Zero with both being equally fun to play as. Unlike in most Mega Man games you can't just pick the best route by matching weaknesses of bosses to decide who to fight next. Meaning most of the time you won't have the optimal weapon to take down the boss of the level. (The theory of this is awesome the practice however will be talked about in the next paragraph.) This game also follows in Mega Mans footsteps with an amazing sound track that the series was well known for. While these positive are really strong positives it wasn't enough to make up for the negatives.
The first thing I will bring up is the second half of the bosses weaknesses I mentioned earlier. As I said, in theory it is awesome as it theoretically should make you have to work hard against bosses you don't have the best weapons to inflict additional damage upon. However, in practice, the bosses in this game are so laughably easy that there is legitimately no reason to even waste your time figuring out which bosses are weak to what. Just using the basic shots you will probably never find yourself in trouble against any boss. Speaking of easy, before I had any permanent upgrades or upgrades you can earn to show up during you run, I made it to the final level easily going through the 8 regular levels. Now that I have the upgrades it's actually hard to die before the final level. Unfortunately, once you reach the final level they flip that on its head. The enemies are not the problem but instead it throws 500 bullshit poorly placed traps at you that you have to have great timing on or you will get hit. Then the game doubles down on the bullshit as the traps are set in the sky while making jumps. You have a few frames of invincibility once you are hit so if you get hit and then fall into a pit it only counts as one damage. However, in the final level they place the traps just high enough so that your frames end right before you hit the pit causing double the damage for no reason. I don't mind a challenge but its infuriating to go through 30 minutes of easy levels only to get a randomized set of traps bull shit you to death. I say random because it is a rogue lite so the stages do change. However, for the first 8 stages they change so slightly that you almost never really notice any difference. This makes the game go from a joy for the first two hours to a slog every time after that.
20XX had so much potential but I feel like they bit off more than they could chew, leaving you with a game that feels underwhelming and begs you to only play it for a few hours. I've heard 30XX is better so maybe I will give it a try but as for 20XX I can't say I recommend this.