It's weird how these two Legacy Collections got cut into two halves, but I can say that the content of this first half is pretty good.

While I definitely feel like X1 and X4 are the strongest in this package, X2 and X3 do have a lot to enjoy about them, and for anybody who is curious about trying out the X series, I think this collection is a good place to start.
Try out Rookie Hunter Mode if you feel like these games are getting too difficult, or you just wanna experience them without having to worry too much.

I used this for the MMX marathon i'm doing right now. My last one was like 10 years ago, and replaying these games i noticed they're not as good as i remember.
X1 holds up perfectly and is still the best, but x2/3/4 are not that great. There's always some flaw that keeps them from being as good as X1. Weak levels, annyoing gimmicks, questionable soundtracks, etc. And this is the best the X Series has to offer, a masterpiece and 3 very ok but still fun games, the second collection has the bad ones.
I'll admit i prefer the classic series, during my classic marathon i found new things to appreciate including a new favorite in MM6. In my X marathon so far i'm only confirming what i already tought about the games (usually negative) or being disappointed by one i remember liking, including my original favorite X3.

So, general thoughts in terms of the collection itself.

Positives:
- Being able to play the Japanese or English release
- Automatic Saving for the SNES titles
- The inclusion of manuals for each game
- The plethora of Art, Merchandise and Marketing for each game as well as in general

Cons:
- The fact that this is two collections. I would rather pay more for every game in a single package as opposed to buying two packages.

- The Filters. If you have a CRT option, have it be an actual CRT option and not just a little bit of white noise. I'm also nto a fan of the pixel-melt the 'HD' filter offers

Now for the games themselves)

Megaman X: A masterful game with just the right level of challenge, excellent music, beautiful pixel art and fast-paced, consistently engaging gameplay. 4.5/5

Megaman X2: Not quite as good as the first game, particularly in regards to the special weapons and endgame. Still an overall positive experience. 3.5/5

Megaman X3: Ugh. Easily the worst of the SNES lineup. The ramped up difficulty for one makes this somewhat of a slog to trudge through. While the new armor chips are nice, you are punished for picking a single one by not being able to get the gold armor (WHY!?!). I could go on, but I'll leave it at that. 2.5/5

Megaman X4: Probably my favourite game on this collection! Zero is incredibly fun to control, using his abilities is a joy, and his speed is incredibly exhillerating. X is fun, don't get me wrong, but the special weapon selection isn't great (I tended to stick to Storm Owl and Slash Beast's weapons mostly). That being said, using just the X-Buster during his campaign, especially with the Arm Upgrade, is probably the most fun I've had playing as him in the entire series so far.

A must play. 4.75/5

Well after spending my time learning & beating the 4 games in this collection and moving on to X5 on the 2nd collection, all I can ask myself is what IS Zero fighting for? Oh and X3 is very rough until you find a few Heart Tanks I guess. Anyway, it's 4 masterfully crafted 2D sidescrollers all in one bundle, alongside a full-on sound test for each of the 4 games, a whole menu dedicated to presenting merchandise for this series as well as concept art for each game, and "The Day of Sigma" OVA, which outlines Sigmas descent into becoming a Maverick and ties into the start of X1 (depending on what way you look at it, this OVA may retcon a major plot point that gets established in X4, so take that as you will). So overall, what isn't there to love?

Edit after getting all 52 achievements: Absolutely get this half of the collection specifically even if you're just itching to get into this series (the 2nd half of the collection includes games which are harder to recommend to anyone besides die-hard fans, but that's for a later stage). All 4 of the games included are of very consistent quality, but as I went into depth on each of them on here after making this review, I'll just give my key rundowns on each of them;

>Mega Man X1: An absolutely fantastic way to kick off this series, taking the pre-established Mega Man formula and putting a very big twist on it to create a brand new experience compared to those games. Also introduces core foundations that the rest of this series would stay true to.

>Mega Man X2: A game that's always an absolute treat to play. The gameplay & abilities that X can find are both extremely fun, the level design is top-class and the bosses are in that exact sweet spot between easy & hard with a few of them even changing up how you go through the game which promotes replayability. Easily my favorite game in this series.

>Mega Man X3: The weakest of the 4 games here IMO, but it's still an extremely fun game nonetheless alongside having my personal favorite OST from any X game. However I think this one gets a lot of undeserved slack from people who aren't very good at the game.

>Mega Man X4: This one stands as the easiest game in this series IMO as it's rather generous with its level design and game overs, but visually speaking it's the best looking X game by a long shot. Also has some of the funnest bosses to do without weaknesses if you ask me.

Now moving on from that, also featured in this collection is the Rookie Hunter mode, intended to lower the games difficulty to help newcomers ease into the series. This "lowering the games difficulty" is the understatement of the century, as it moreso turns X into a flat-out God! Contact damage just ceases to exist, and in the PS1 games you no longer get insta-killed by spikes & falling into a pit just places you at the nearest platform. It's absolutely crazy for something that's just supposed to make the games easier.

This brings me onto my next point: the achievements (otherwise called "Hunter Medals" in this game). There's 52 achievements in total (104 in total if talking about both collections but I'll talk about that whenever I'm done with it), breaking down to 11 for each of the 4 games, 3 for the X-Challenge and 6 for miscellaneous stuff. Each of the 4 games has an achievement that involves doing a complete run through of them without ever turning on Rookie Hunter mode. Now if you've already beaten them then this should be a walk in the park but if you're NEW to the series like I was when going into this collection then it gives you an incentive to well... play the games as the developers originally intended. The achievements in the 1st collection aren't too bad for the most part, with the only really bad one being where you have to beat X3s Sigma battle without the Golden Armor which is a pretty damn hard feat to pull off, even with Zeros Saber, but besides that all of them are fairly reasonable to do without resorting to Rookie Hunter cheese.

The X-Challenge mode is also a neat little side-mode alongside the 4 games present. What it is is a mode that pits you up against a duo of various bosses from throughout X1-X6 in sections of 3 stages for 9 sections overall. Before the first stage in each section you can pick from a selection of like 8 or 9 pre-determined special weapons (each one is the weakness of any of the 6 bosses in each section, pick based on whichever of the boss you struggle with more). There are a couple of very creative boss duos here and there such as Dr Doppler and Godkarmachine, as well as some of the boss duos they pit you up against being pretty evil as well (the one against Iris and Double at the very end can feel more like a bullet hell at times). There is apparently a secret final stage that only unlocks after clearing X-Challenge on hard difficulty, so that's something I'll have to endure through at some point in order to unlock that final stage. Regardless, still a very fun mode no matter your skill level.

However, I have noticed some minor input lag from time to time, but it's nowhere near enough to make the game unplayable (keyboard with Vsync enabled) and I can still do some pretty tight sections such as that one wall climb section in Doppler Stage 1 even with it. Additionally, the SNES games can look kinda jarring as the default resolution for them in the Legacy Collection is slightly stretched from their original releases. But unless you seriously look out for them then it's something you'll barely ever notice in regular gameplay aside from Xs health bar looking kinda off.

In conclusion, a pretty damn good package all things considered that pretty regularly goes on sale on Steam at least. With 4 very fun platformers (that are additionally more accessible without emulation thanks to this collection, as their original copies are getting pretty damn expensive, ESPECIALLY with X2, X3 and X4) and a whole bunch of neat extras, I'd definitely recommend this one to anyone even just looking to get into the Mega Man X series. X-Challenge is a fun mode to at least check out once (but it probably thrives on replays once you know what each stage contains... like any Mega Man X game in existence). There are a couple of presentation issues here and there like the odd pixels in the SNES games or the small input lag but they aren't seriously gamebreaking or anything and won't ruin your experience. So again, a package that's well worth the money mostly for newer fans, but more dedicated fans will get some fun out of it as well thanks to the extras and side-modes.

Les 4 premiers Megaman sont de très bons jeux malgré leur ancienneté, mes favoris étant le 2 et le 4. Le premier a les boss avec les paterns les moins intéressant mais pose les bases pour les jeux qui suivent. Le 2 offrent les meilleurs améliorations d'armure notamment du blaster, les boss sont plus intéressant et les environnements plus détaillés, et l'ajouts des boss optionnels qui apparaissent dans les niveau rend la selection de niveau plus intéressante. Le 3 est le moins bon avec des amélioratios moins intéressantes et des dégats très élevé au début du jeu, en revanche les environnements et les boss sont très réussis. Le 4 offre un nouveau style graphique réussi et des niveau au design plus original avec des mécaniques propres à certains niveau, les améliorations sont bonnes ainsi que les boss en revanche leur faiblesse les rend tous totalement inopérant en plus de leur faire des dégats accrus ce qui est dommage.
En plus de ça tous les jeux souffrent d'un endgame plus oiu moins pénible avec toujours un boss rush et un combat en plusieurs phases contre sigma qui a une dernière phase pénible à affronter à l'exception de wolf sigma de X1.

It's MegaMan X, you know what are you going to get
1 is a masterpiece
2 is ... Odd, but ey more MegaMan x!
3 exist
4 WHAT AM I FIGHTING FOOOOOOOOR

I got this a while ago more out of “what the heck, it’s on sale why not” than anything else and only took the time to play it during the holidays. I wasn’t expecting this to be reinventing the wheel or anything but the combination of slight but noticeable input lag and no save states really just makes you feel like playing these games on an emulator or even the old PS2 collection would be better. People knock the default pixel filter being really ugly and it is but you can change it in settings to the classic look so I can’t really knock them that much for it. Overall if you’re gonna get one of the MegaMan Collections on Switch, the Battle Network one is probably the standout for me.

Where it Shines:
Music - 8/10
Level Design - 7/10
Nostalgia - 10/10

The Good:
This entire series has just some straight up amazing gameplay. The games are so fun, and especially X1 and X2 are just near flawless. The music is just chiptune metal personified and so catchy. The pixel art is also top tier and the boss design is so memorable.

The Bad:
This series largely has diminishing returns after X2. Every game just gets worse and worse, tries to do too much or just misses the mark on what made the originals good.

Summary:
In a microcosm, X1 and X2 are in my favourite games of all time. I wish the franchise could have kept it's shit together and made a complete series worth playing, but beyond those two games these really aren't worth it unless you really really really love Mega Man.

****note on my ratings:
half ⭐: hot trash garbage
⭐: below average, needs work
⭐⭐: average
⭐⭐⭐: pretty good
⭐⭐⭐⭐: excellent
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐: all time favourite
half star ratings between those mean it's slightly better or worse than stated in this list.
*

Megaman X: Legacy Collection is a collection of Megaman X-4. It includes a extra mode called X Challenge which is basically a themed dual boss battle.

I won't be reviewing the games, they'll go elsewhere. Just the collection itself

It's a good collection with horrible input lag on the SNES titles. On PC it can be fixed rather easily but I've been seeing some nasty results on consoles.

The menus are nice enough, probably not my favorites. I like the simplicity of the Megaman Legacy Collection menus. It's ok.

The content included is insane, so much stuff packed. From music, to merchandise exclusive to Japan, artwork and so much more. It's great.

X Challenge is one hell of a challenge. Specially the last battle. The most hard boss fights you will ever have in the series.

It's good but it could've been much better.