(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.
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.
2 Comments
@kirbb yep that's very unfortunate, especially when X8 redeems him HARD in both character development and as a playable character
kirbb
6 months ago