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.