I've been waiting on this game for quite a while. A Mega Man X fangame with Touhou characters? Sounded right up my alley. Honestly, it's quite good!

First off, don't let the name of the game fool you. Outside of the "8 stages in any order, followed by 4 castle stages" progression structure and how the game generally plays, many of the main features of the X series aren't really present here. There's only like, three different weapons here: your normal shot and its charged variants, a bomb that, when upgraded, clears bullets around you, and a barrier that takes a few hits for you and costs three bombs. No special weapons from bosses or anything. There aren't as many upgrades to explore for and collect, either. In addition to the one dropped by the boss, every stage has one hidden P item, which are used to buy upgrades in the shop. It's pretty basic; besides the obligatory health and charge time upgrades, you also have upgrades that make your bomb more useful, allow you to aim your shots, strengthen you when you're low on HP, etc. It's neat stuff, but nothing very exciting.

Although the hallmarks of the X series may come off as half-baked in this game, I didn't really mind too much; I was never THAT big on that stuff. The level and boss design is much more important to me. And I'd say that Udongein X delivers on that front. Each and every level is well-crafted, and maintains a consistent level of quality. Unlike most of the X games, there was never really a point where I was like "wow, I'm not having fun at all!" Even when I was running into the same set of spikes over and over, I could still confidently say that I was enjoying myself. A few of them even have some really fun gimmicks. Seija's stage flipping feature was nice, and Doremy's hori shmup gimmick is so much better than literally every non-traditional stage in the X series, by virtue of actually being an enjoyable experience. I do have one problem with the stages though. The enemy variety. It's not a problem in EVERY stage, to be fair, but I did get a little tired of seeing the same two fairies and kedamas everywhere.

Speaking of enemies, the bosses are a joy to fight. They were a lot closer to Mega Man Zero fights instead of X boss fights, where you have to put a little effort into learning the boss patterns to succeed. The lack of weaknesses or subtanks further prevents any brute-forcing. A few of them can feel just a TAD bit bullshit, like Seija and the final boss' dash attack (yeah, fuck that one move in particular).

All things considered, it's a pretty good game. I keep flip-flopping between 7 and 8 out of ten because while it feels a little barebones and unpolished, the core design is very solid. Don't tell anyone I said this, but it mogs the FUCK out of like, half the X series. I'd definitely recommend it if you're a fan of action platformers and Touhou. Looking forward to Konpaku Zero!

What do you get when you cross Touhou, Inti Creates, and old japanese message board memes that I've never seen before in my life? Complete fucking nonsense, that's what.

The game plays like a mix of Mega Man Zero 3 and Touhou 17.5 (which came out like a decade after this), and that's the simplest way I can put it. You can shoot, dash (which allows you to "graze" bullets, by the way), and do all sorts of kicks and special skills. Thanks to the crazy amount of mobility and attacks at your disposal, levels focus less on traditional platforming and more on using your repertoire to mow down enemies as fast (and I mean as fast) as possible.

To further encourage this playstyle (or, I suspect it would be more accurate to say that the game was built around it), there is also a sort of "chaining" mechanic that feeds into a greater scoring and ranking system, which, again, is very reminiscent of Mega Man Zero. As I mentioned before, scoring essentially revolves around blazing through levels while constantly hitting enemies hard and fast with all you've got. While actually successfully pulling this off obviously requires extensive knowledge of the game, far more than one playthrough would give, getting even a little taste of a massive combo is nonetheless exhilarating.

But beyond all that, the execution is messy as FUCK. Enemies pop in from out of nowhere and bullets fly everywhere, while you frantically dash around and mash attacks with barely an inkling of what you're doing, as you rush to find the next enemy to extend your chain, despite the fact that you know your ass is getting another D rank anyway. You'll fail attacks and run into enemies like an idiot so many times that the invincibility window will become very dear to you. Attempts to understand what's going on and formulate some sort of strategy will prove futile, and you'll instead opt to operate on pure instinct. Bosses are generally a lot more tame at least, with identifiable and reactable patterns and openings, but even then they can get incomprehensible, like with the duo boss rematches near the end. Much of this constitutes what a lesser being might call "poor game design", but I don't give a shit. This lunacy put me in the zone, and as far as I'm concerned, that makes it GOOD.

The nature of the japanese message board memes only adds to the insanity too. One minute I'm being besieged by five ketchup(?) bottles and some soy sauce, a walking squid, and a Flandre spider, and in the next, I'm fighting for my life against what appears to be Nue combined with a Magneton. Come, large tampura Iku Nagae, we shall do battle. Oh, now I'm fighting a big fat Yuyuko yukkuri in a Space Harrier-clone. It is what it is!

Look, the game is a joke, a great joke, a joke that only a specific type of person could laugh at, and a joke that even fewer could actually get. Basically, what I'm trying to say here is, it's kino.