Originally designed as the end of the X series, 'X5' now hides new armors behind a full set requirement, X and Zero can be used whenever desired, and the music is as good as ever. Unfortunately, bosses become punishment sponges towards the end of the game, some stage gimmicks actively hurt the overall experience of some levels, I never fully grasped how the upgrade system was supposed to work, and if you can find it, the Ultimate Armor breaks the game in half. The story is good and there's a great sense of finality in it but this is kind of a messy sequel surrounding a solid core experience.

Completed using Mega Man X Legacy Collection 2 on Switch. Playing as X, I collected all Heart Containers, Tanks, and individual Armor Parts as well as the Ultimate Armor. Unlike the previous X games, I played this one almost exclusively in Rookie Hunter Mode to deal with all the bullshit, and rarely turned it off.

When playing good games, I dread seeing the credits roll, and with unremarkable games, I feel fairly indifferent about reaching the end. Throughout a majority of Mega Man X5, I actively anticipated taking down the final boss not for the sense of accomplishment, but for the sense of relief, because this game was just not fun for me. Allow me to break down why:

First off: the armor upgrade system, once a revolutionary feature that set Mega Man X apart from the classic series, has been completely ruined. There are two prominent suits, the Falcon Armor and the Gaea Armor, and each of them have four parts to be retrieved by X. But unlike with past MMX entries, these parts are useless on their own, and their abilities can only be utilized once their respective suits are completed. And if you thought simply running through the eight Maverick stages would be enough, think again, because finding and reaching these parts involves revisiting stages, some even multiple times. Between the headaches of collecting all the energy orbs in Volt Kraken's stage or the Flash Laser puzzle in Dark Necrobat's stage, these upgrades felt like more trouble than they were worth. And no, you can't skip the Falcon Armor parts in favor of the Gaea Armor, because you need to be able to fly in order to reach the latter. Did I mention the Gaea Armor prevents you from using your Special Weapons? Or that the game doesn't allow swapping suits mid-stage? Brilliant, Capcom, just brilliant.

The developers didn't seem to understand what made the past games' level design fun, either. We've got leisurely auto-scrolling sections in Tidal Whale's stage, the worst Ride Armor segment yet in Burn Dinorex's stage, and the bullshit Time Bombs in Spiral Pegasus's stage that are designed to throw you off the first time around. Right when you think they finally found a cool stage mechanic to implement, they screw it up; the gravity reversal segment in Dark Necrobat's stage could've been a cool callback to Mega Man 5, but by some miracle, they somehow made it lame. And if things weren't bad enough, they thought it would be a good idea to revisit the Yellow Devil boss and Quick Man insta-death lasers during the Zero Space stages, both equally notorious and representative of the classic series' lowest points. Why??? I'm just as baffled as you are.

Finally, to top off this review, we've got the miscellaneous problems that detracted from my experience:

- Alia interrupting gameplay every 5 seconds to tell me something I would've easily figured out myself (not to mention her re-explaining how boss weaknesses work at the end of every stage)
- Eurasia's countdown to crashing into Earth actively discouraging me from trying a different stage when I was struggling with a specific one (fuck Volt Kraken's bike segment and its armor part)
- the bosses becoming complete pushovers with their weaknesses while still taking forever to take down (this is even worse during the rematches)
- story-related outcomes relying on chance that I tried my best to influence, but ultimately played out however they pleased, and made no attempt to reward me for my exhaustive efforts

People point to Keiji Inafune's absence from the development of Mega Man X6 as an explanation for the series' decline, but if you ask me, the games were heading in a downwards spiral regardless of his involvement. It would've been a shame had this been the last entry of the series, but Capcom did us one better; instead of ending on a high note with X4, they continued on with more sequels and obliterated the series' reputation by X7. I really, really hope the eighth entry is a step up from here, because Mega Man X5 was a supreme disappointment.

X, you can't dare to fight me. Your big heart. That is your kindness and your weakness. I'm okay... trust me.

This was my childhood Mega Man X game, and, unfortunately, I cannot stand it. Inconsistent difficulty that hovers between grueling and piss-easy, one of the worst sets of levels of any of these games, a baffling slate of boss weapons, grating music, far too many collectibles, and a countdown system that I’m still not sure I understand. It looks nice and plays pretty well, but that’s a pretty low bar for Mega Man. Miserable.

Es un juego que intento dar cierre a la saga X, y aunque pienso que en historia lo logra decentemente, en los demás aspectos se queda muy corto.

Empezando con el diseño de niveles, en este juego estos en general no se sienten dinámicos como en juegos anteriores, ya que, o te frenan el ritmo en partes en las que debes esperar, como el nivel de Dark Dizzy o The Skiver, o te meten mecánicas tediosas, como el nivel de Squid Adler. Sin mencionar que con la introducción de Aila, estos niveles se volverán incluso peores, ya que está te interrumpirá para decirte que debes hacer en cada sección, perdiendo no solo ritmo, si no que llevando de la mano al jugador de forma molesta.

El juego además, introduce novedades con respecto a juegos anteriores, las más relevantes son el sistema de partes, el sistema de horas y el poder usar varias armaduras en una misma partida.

Con respecto a las partes, estas serán entregadas 2 horas después de que completes una misión. Este sistema tiene varios problemas, en primera, si quieres tener todas las partes posibles (8 por partida) estás obligado a bajar bastante el contador de horas, haciendo que el jugador tenga que gastar bastante tiempo muerto antes de si quiera plantearse elegir un nivel. En segunda, el juego te dará a elegir una de 2 partes, pero este no te dice cuáles son estas o que es lo que hacen, haciendo que básicamente sea un ejercicio de suerte. Y en tercera, estas no son entregadas inmediatamente de que el jugador las gane, si no que 2 horas después, haciendo que, o pierdas otras 2 horas, o no la utilices hasta después. Además de esto, la vida o la energía que elijas subir, ya sea, al terminar un nivel, como encontrando corazones, no se compartirán entre los 2 personajes, haciendo que debas jugar con los 2 si o si, si deseas tenerlos equilibrados.

En cuanto a las armaduras, como concepto se oye como una idea interesante, pero la ejecución fue cuestionable. Lo que sucede, es que, el juego no te permite utilizar una armadura hasta que hayas encontrado todas las partes, haciendo a que gran parte del juego solo tengas la armadura de X (Si es que tuviste suerte de elegirlo a él en el principio, claro está), además de hacer más doloroso el backtracking, ya que varios objetos requieren de están. Esto puede llevar a que tengas que repetir hasta tres veces un mismo nivel si es que quieres tener todos los objetos.

Ya por último, el sistema de horas está ejecutando del asco. El juego te pide que derrotes a 4 Mavericks para mejorar un cañón para destruir la colonia Eurasia, esto necesario para sacar el verdadero final; el pequeñísimo problema, es que el cañón actúa con RNG, haciendo de que el jugador no tenga ningún tipo de control sobre esto. Sin mencionar, de que, por motivos de historia, te pueden quitar a un personaje por el resto del juego, obligandote así a jugar con el otro personaje.

Así que en conclusión, el juego es malo, y es una lastima, ya que siento de que este juego albergaba un gran potencial, además de que hay varios detalles que hacen denotar a este juego como el final de una saga muy importante como lo es la X. Lamentablemente, las cosas negativas empañan completamente todo lo bueno que tiene el juego.

"Realmente Megaman X5 é um jogo que não tem uma execução grandiosa assim como Megaman X4, mas como disse ele agrada o fã, mas depende, e no meu caso me agradou bastante, eu me diverti e fiquei curioso para saber mais e mais do game. Meu vertido… Deus que me perdoe… INJUSTIÇADO PELA SOCIEDADE, Claramente um jogo com seus defeitos e um fator replay destruído pela visual novel do game, mas ainda assim é Megaman X, saia batendo e geral, derrote um careca ao som de músicas super bem feitas, com artes maravilhosas e fases que são decentes (menos a fase da baleia, vai tomar no cu Tidal Whale). Megaman X5 vai estar sempre no meu coração."
-Arthur em Agosto de 2023

Hoje em dia entendo o pq esse jogo é meio meh msm, continuo gostando dele, mas sei la, por eu ter feito uma run mto rápida não achei tão gostoso de jogar dnv...

I had originally planned to stop after X4, as I'd heard the series takes a pretty significant dip in quality after X4 (once the original team had largely left Capcom to form Inti Creates), but I'd heard that X5 was just "not quite as good X4", so i decided to give it a shot. I think it's a bit more than just "not quite as good X4", but that's what the rest of the review is for ^^;. It took me about 4 hours (game playtime given at a little over 2 hours though) to get everything in the game.

At least attempting to continue on from X4's foray into more serious stories, a rampaging Sigma virus has caused the space colony Eurasia to begin to fall to the Earth. If it does, it'll wipe out most life, so it's up to X and the Maverick Hunters to pull off a last minute plan to save the world with the little time they have left. This was originally planned to be the last of the X games, as Mega Man Zero would continue on from one of this game's various endings, and while it's hardly something the quality of writing in X4, it's not absolute trash. However, what it really isn't is conducive to a quality game design, as that "last minute plan" only as some dozen or so hours in-universe to work, and that reflects directly onto your game time.

There are two potential plans to stop the Eurasia. One of them is to blow it up with a giant cannon, and the other is to send someone on a new suicide mission to initiate its self destruct sequence using a space shuttle. Both of these plans require parts to increase their chances of success, and both halves of the game's 8 Mavericks hold the four parts required to get each to their maximum chance of success. Now you only have some 14 or so times you can actually return to the stage select screen before your 14 hours are up and the Eurasia crashes, giving you a game over, so these things' chances of success are actually dictated by RNG as to how if they'll happen to work or not, and that goes for having only some of the parts or even all of the parts. Though the chance is very small, it is completely possible to get all eight parts and do everything else right and STILL have both the cannon and the shuttle fail, making for a quite irritating gameplay experience.

Now one innovation this game brings to the table that the later X games would all use to some degree is the idea of boss levels. As you fail to kill bosses (or just tick down the clock), bosses' levels will go up and they'll have more max HP when you fight them. It's an interesting idea, but all it really adds up to is the by and large quite poor and far too easy boss fights (or in the case of most all the final stages, miserably and unfairly difficult) take even longer than they already do. This is all made even worse by the fact that you're heavily incentivized to kill them at a higher level to acquire parts to upgrade your characters.

Now these parts aren't parts like X's armor parts. While both Zero and X are playable in this game (and can even be swapped between in the same playthrough, by selecting a different one at the start of the stage), X still gets armor parts in this game, and you can select armor sets just like you select the different characters when you're selecting a mission. These parts are parts you can equip into Zero and X as well as into X's different armor configurations in ways that give significant passive bonuses, and depending on the suit or character you can equip anywhere between 2 and 4 parts (with one suit unable to have any parts at all).

The big stinker about these parts is that you only get them if the boss you're fighting is level 8 or above, and that's impacted not only by how much time has passed but also by your hunter rank, which is dictated by how long you took to beat the stage, how FEW enemies you killed (as few as possible is best), and how much damage you took. But the icing on the crap cake with these is that you're given a choice of two parts at the end, each coming with a maximum HP or maximum special weapon bonus, but you aren't even told what each part does! You're left to either do trial and error or use a guide to see which if either part is even worth getting, and that's on top of the health upgrades hiding in each stage as well as the not four but eight hidden armor parts for X's two sets of special armor (the Falcon Armor of the two being hilariously awesome as it allows you to basically fly).

However, weird and bad parts system aside, the biggest reason I just didn't really gel with X5 is that it just isn't very interesting one way or the other. The stage design is largely more annoying that anything else, and even then it's more so just forgettably easy at that, and the same goes for just about every Maverick boss fight. Then that's contrasted with the awful Sigma stage bosses, but then even Sigma himself is really weirdly easy after how tough X4's was. The stages themselves are also punctuated with never ending calls from base to you to tell you far too much about the very simple obstacle you're about to face. Now wanting to give the player a heads up is one thing, but there are so many stages where the stage opens with a comms call warning you about an obstacle, followed less than a minute later by a second call warning you you're about to interact with that same obstacle, that they get so tedious you end up ignoring all of them. They're so dry and uninteresting that it feels like I'm playing a late 2000's Nintendo game with just how insistent the game is at holding your hand, and the Japanese version of the game is apparently even worse in this regard as it apparently makes these useless conversations EVEN longer.

The presentation is also really subpar considering how X4 was. That isn't just on account of the writing, which is definitely more boring (despite a fairly flat supporting cast who don't all die at the end for once), but it is immediately obvious that X5 had a FAR lower budget than X4 did. Completely gone are the animated cutscenes, and it's to the point where this game doesn't even have VA for any of the dialogue. It's all just drawn stills with text underneath, and while that isn't in itself awful, it's a pretty big step down from the blockbuster presentation that X4 had. The one saving grace is that X5 has by and large a pretty solid musical score.


Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. This is certainly, on a mechanical level, one of the more competent post-X4 games, but it's both so aggressively "fine" and such a step down in quality compared to what had come before that it's one of my less enjoyed entries. The time limit mechanic does stop being relevant once you blow up the Eurasia (you can revisit stages as much as you want after that), but it's still just not actually good design. It's a pretty sub-par action game that also just wasn't really spectacularly bad or weird enough to leave much of an impression for me, so it's one of my least liked entries in the franchise.

Special shoutout to my friend DogStrong for walking me through the best route to get all eight special parts, as I wouldn't've had as fun a time as I ended up having with this game without them ^w^

MMX5 marks the "ending" of the X series. Or... at least it should have. But weirdly enough this one seems to have less budget than X4, and not only that but Inafune pretty much cleansed his hands of this project and moved to other ones, leaving a secondary team to having to deal with finishing a series that in theory he started.
So, how does it fare?
This game tries to be heavier in lore than any of the previous X games. Since there's no animated cutscenes in this one, what we get instead are a bunch of dialogue boxes and a somewhat annoying sound to acompany the typing. In one hand, the story is quite simple but the way they go around to explain the events is weird to say the very least. What's the reasoning behind Dynamo destroying Eurasia so it causes a total destruction of the Earth if it drops? Who the hell knows. How did Sigma infect the entire planet with a virus by being destroyed on a statue-sized body? Who the hell knows!
Honestly, the idea of this game feels like a custom D&D one-shot session where your party has to figure out a way to stop the end of the world, while the DM says that "Hey, you can use this cannon to try and destroy that. You can shoot it without any upgrades and it will probably miss, OR you can get all the upgrades and still probably miss, but your character will get stronger!" And to be quite frank, I dig the concept of a time limit. What I don't dig is how even if you do everything absolutely right, the Shuttle still has a small chance to just fail and you go to the Bad Ending route, making you lose Zero in the process. 10 year old me figured that one out the worst way possible. Naturally, the exact opposite can happen and you actually destroy the colony with the cannon, basically allowing you to skip 4 stages! Which... also flabbergasted 10 year old me back then.
Replaying this in the Xtreme difficulty made me notice that even without the enemy drops (and increased enemy presence in the stages), this game is still somewhat easy. It took me some good two hours to beat X4, but this one just took one.
Also, while i dig the concept of the Level System for the bosses, in execution it leaves a LOT to be desired. Locking certain upgrades behind not only the level they are (which is connected to the time remaining before the colony collides) is really frustrating, specially since the game doesn't tell you which part you will get by picking more health or more energy for your weapons.
And if I have to talk about the level design for a bit... some of the levels feel like plainly X4 levels that were scrapped or slightly reworked. The one stage where you use the bike and you can just immediately die is so screwed up for instance.
Still... while it feels like I complained a lot, this is still one of my absolutely favorite games of the franchise.
The team truly tried doing a replayable game where you can get multiple routes and outcomes, and while it's a bit janky, it makes for an enjoyable experience, specially seeing the different outcomes. Hell, the dialogue some of the bosses have if you let the world be destroyed is absolutely sad and dark. Alternatively, seeing some of them getting gradually corrupted over their dialogue is also really screwed up. And then there's the bat boss, who just says SQUEAK WHO CARES and I absolutely giggle everytime I see that dialogue.
On one hand, it's a bit sad that the armor system on this one was swapped for the "two armors, but you cannot use them incomplete", but on the other hand doing the stages as normal armor X is one of my favorite things to do, as it makes the game a biiit more harder to play around (unless you are using the parts upgrades, but still).
The soundtrack in this one, while not as great as X4's, still has some amazing tracks (Sigma Stage 2 is CRAZY), and I do like the way the game sounds, too. Using the japanese voices from X4 instead of the english ones is a very deserving upgrade.
Still, while this one is a 5/5 for 10 year old me, current me understands what makes a great game BE great. In my heart this one is still my favorite, but in terms of quality? Not quite, and I wished they worked on this one just a little bit more.
Naturally, if you do want to play this one outside of the Legacy Collections, I cannot reccomend enough the Improvement Mod that fans made for this one. It polishes that game to such a way it becomes one of the better PS1 Mega Man titles.

I'm not a fan of this one. Its just so slow. I prefer playing as X in this one. His special weapons are all pretty fun. Most of them are pretty powerful and useful. Zero's techniques are just not that fun to do. Zero rips through bosses at record speed. They don't stand a chance. X takes more time because you have to charge his shots. The bosses are all super easy. The stages are also super easy. There's just so much waiting around in a lot of them. Its really dull. At least the music is good. The collectibles weren't very fun to get because you have to replay the slow stages a lot. It really feels like this game loves to waste time. Collecting the armors was whatever too. I prefer the Fourth Armor over both the Falcon and Gaea Armor anyways. The boss rush was annoying because they have so much health. The Sigma stages were fine. I do like the Ultimate Armor. The Nova Strike is fun to use. Overall, not a fan of this one. The pace is too slow for my liking.

If you squeeze this lemon hard enough, you will find the razor blades within it.

In the scope of a single playthrough, 2000’s Mega Man X 5 is a Fine game. It’s Fine. It doesn’t live up to the game that came right before it (and it definitely doesn’t live up to the first Mega Man X), but it is Fine. It’s playable and feels decent in the hands and there’s some good music, and there’s things to collect and you can switch between X and Zero whenever you want, it’s Fine. These are all things that would entice me if I read them on the back of the game’s box. It’s Fine.

Something interesting (or irritating) about the game is the “time limit” it gives you. In the story, there’s a space colony that’s about to collide with the earth, and the world’s only hope is a massive cannon that hasn’t been used in years. You have 16 in-game “hours” to make the upgrade the Enigma Cannon and increase its chances of destroying the space colony. Four of the eight bosses in the game have those upgrades, and an “hour” will pass when you leave Maverick Hunter HQ and return from the level, so you have to be deliberate with where you go. The other four Mavericks have parts to upgrade a space shuttle to collide with the colony in the event the cannon fails. Actually, I should take back what I said, not all of the bosses are technically Mavericks. They just have the item and X or Zero asks nicely for it and a lot of the time the boss challenges them to a fight because it’ll be fun, or it’s the way the world works. It’s a funny way to wedge conflict into the situation, but it makes X especially look all to eager to get in a fight, when if you have played any other Mega Man X game, you’d know he wants the fighting to end. Regardless, the time limit is a novelty that I personally find interesting.

The mild character assassination of X could be due to a lot of things, but a lot of fingers point to the localization team. It happened with Mega Man 7, why not Mega Man X 5? I won’t spend too much time complaining about it though, because I feel like there’s too many unsavory people using bad localization as fuel for their grifts, and they might see this and think I’m a mark or something. All I’ll say is if my girlfriend changed the names of a bunch of video game characters to names of the members of my favorite band, and it shipped nationwide, I’d make sure her feet never touched the ground lmao. What a flex. Need me a freak like that.

But anyway.

So you beat the game, and it was Fine, but you only beat it as one of the two playable characters. So you start a new file and now things are different. Instead of a portion of the colony being destroyed, the Enigma Cannon only grazes it. And then the space shuttle does minimal damage, the space colony crashes into Earth and Zero becomes a Maverick. Now you can no longer play as him. Hopefully this wasn’t your playthrough where you invested hearts and upgrades into him.

Despite how it feels to me, Mega Man X 5 only has three endings. A good ending for X and Zero (assuming everything went well and Zero did not go Maverick) and a bad ending for X (assuming Zero went Maverick). The amount of variables in the middle of the game makes it feel like it’s twice as big and involved as it really is. The cannon could fail but the shuttle succeeds, and vice versa. It becomes intimidating and annoying.

Well, if you just play it once it isn’t so bad. It’s a regular Mega Man X game with a slight twist. It’s Fine.

But you might be like me and you like Mega Man X. As simple as they are, you care about the characters and want to know the few lines of text that happens to them. And in order to do that, you have to play the game at least three times. And playing this game three times is where the pain sets in.

The Pain in question:

-Volt Kraken’s stage is excessively long and can kill you in the first few seconds if you blink at the wrong time.
-Tidal Whale’s autoscroller stage takes forever, and lining up the Goo Shaver shot to get the Falcon Armor body program is really tedious and one mistake could have you resetting, to prevent using up an hour of in-game time.
-You have to beat Tidal Whale and come back again to use Goo Shaver to get the Falcon Armor body program, which uses up an extra hour of in-game time.
-It’s called Goo Shaver.
-The Falcon Armor doesn’t charge Special Weapons.
-The Gaea Armor doesn’t even let you use Special Weapons.
-The Gaea Armor is terrible.
-There are life upgrades that can only be gotten with the useless Gaea Armor, which means Zero can’t get those upgrades.
-Shadow Devil is a stupefyingly hard challenge out of no where and then the game does not match that difficulty anywhere afterwards.
-The final boss alludes to Dr. Wily from the Classic series still being alive, but the game provides no concrete proof of this.

I know this pain all too well, because in order to get every medal in the Mega Man X Legacy Collection 2, I had to play this game countless times. I forgot how many times I’ve beaten it. I just remember how painful and annoying the game can be. I remember the razor blades in the lemon.

I don’t think you should play Mega Man X 5, but as one in a series that depressingly, gradually gets worse, it’s not the worst one in the bunch. A Mega Man X fan should play this the one time and then look up the other endings online. Save yourself the trouble.

This one is weird man.

While it does feel like a step-down from X4 in some regards (definitely stages cause some of them were just obtuse). the bosses and amazing music helped make it an enjoyable experience. There were some gameplay mechanics that felt and looked questionable on paper, but ultimately it didn't really detract from my experience.

Can't deny that having your ending dependent on RNG is dumb though.