This review contains spoilers
Hearing the game being talked about in such a negative connotation over the years, I was hesitant to even think about playing this entry in the Mega Man X series. However, truth be told, I actually didn't dislike it as much as I thought I would.
Now, don't get me wrong, I still overall didn't like playing this game, but there were many aspects of it that I thought were big improvements from the previous entry in this series. First of all, unlike X5, Alia won't interrupt your gameplay every two seconds to explain something really obvious to you; her tutorials are now optional.
The backtracking has also been improved a bit, as there aren't many sections in the stages that require a certain armor to obtain certain items, fixing the issue I had with X5 where many of the heart pieces weren't obtainable as Zero. Now, the heart pieces can be evenly distributed between the two playable characters.
I also think the gameplay is much faster here than in X5, as the two new armors in this game, the Blade and Shadow armor, feel less like gimmicks to obtain items and armor parts and more like additional tools to help you get through the stages easier. For example, the shadow armor has the ability to get across spikes, so it's really helpful in a stage like Metal Shark Player's. However, unlike X5's Gaea armor, the Shadow armor feels really fun to use and isn't slow and clunky.
There are a lot of other things I liked about X6 as well, such as the music, the ideas in its story, making parts slightly easier to obtain by having to save reploids, and some aspects that make the game so broken sometimes that it makes it more enjoyable.
That last point, however, brings me back to this: even though X6 improves a lot upon what X5 did wrong, I still think X5 is the better game. First off, many of the stages in this game just aren't fun to play. With the exception of Rainy Turtloid's stage, a pretty good level where you traverse through acid rain to try to get to each healing pod as fast as possible, all of them end up being at best kinda boring (i.e. Blizzard Wolfang's level) and at worst fucking awful (i.e. Ground Scaravich, Metal Shark Player, and especially Blaze Heatnix's abomination of a stage (WHO AT CAPCOM THOUGHT IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO HAVE TO FIGHT THE SAME DONUT-SHAPED BOSS 4 TIMES IN ONE LEVEL?!!))
The bosses in this game are also a mess. Most of them are pathetically easy because they either don't have very interesting patterns or they can easily be cheesed with Zero. (This is what I was mostly referring to earlier when I said the game is so broken sometimes that it becomes enjoyable; Zero breaks the maverick boss fights in this game due to his dash-cancelling technique, and it's honestly the most fun I had while playing this game) Some of them, however, are just straight up annoying. No better example than the last three bosses you have to fight before facing Sigma; the less said about them, the better.
There is also nightmare phenomenon, which activates randomly on the maverick's stages and makes it so random effects occur on them, such as parts of the screen becoming pitch black, a silhouette appearing at random to attack you, parts of the ground being covered in ice, and other frustrating elements. This is honestly the worst part of the game for me. It's so annoying to be playing one of the stages in this game, which most of them already weren't that good to begin with, and to have these random effects occur that make the game even worse than it already is. It gets even worse when there is such thing as the nightmare virus, an enemy that appears ad nauseam in the stages to try and either swarm the player or, worse, try to infect the reploids you need to save. And if they so happen to infect a reploid that has an item that you wanted, then GUESS WHAT?! THAT ITEM IS LOST FOREVER! AND THE ONLY WAY TO GET IT BACK IS IF YOU RESET YOUR GAME AND DEFEAT THE NIGHTMARE VIRUS BEFORE THE SAME THING HAPPENS AGAIN! WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU'RE NOT HAVING FUN?!
As for the story, I think it has a lot of good ideas, especially the one where Alia and Gate, the main villain of the game, have a relationship with each other that is shown throughout the game, but the problem is that the translation for this game is awful, probably the worst it has ever been. A lot of the lines in the english translation just don't make sense, and as a result, it leaves players like me confused as to what's happening. I recommend looking up J's Reviews's video titled "Learning to Love Mega Man X6"; it's a great video where he explains the positives of X6, and he details the story of the game better than I ever could.
If I had to describe X6 in two words, it would be "artificial difficulty". So many parts in this game feel like they're hard because the game designers didn't play test them. As a result, I can understand why so many people detest this game and even call it their least favorite game in the series. For me, though, I think the game has many things to appreciate about it, such as the improvements it made upon X5, the new armors, the ideas in its story, and other positive things I mentioned in this review. Yeah, I had to put up with a lot of bullshit, but honestly, in the end, I'm glad I played X6. It's such a broken mess of a game that I kinda respect it in a way.
Next time, however ... pray for me.
Now, don't get me wrong, I still overall didn't like playing this game, but there were many aspects of it that I thought were big improvements from the previous entry in this series. First of all, unlike X5, Alia won't interrupt your gameplay every two seconds to explain something really obvious to you; her tutorials are now optional.
The backtracking has also been improved a bit, as there aren't many sections in the stages that require a certain armor to obtain certain items, fixing the issue I had with X5 where many of the heart pieces weren't obtainable as Zero. Now, the heart pieces can be evenly distributed between the two playable characters.
I also think the gameplay is much faster here than in X5, as the two new armors in this game, the Blade and Shadow armor, feel less like gimmicks to obtain items and armor parts and more like additional tools to help you get through the stages easier. For example, the shadow armor has the ability to get across spikes, so it's really helpful in a stage like Metal Shark Player's. However, unlike X5's Gaea armor, the Shadow armor feels really fun to use and isn't slow and clunky.
There are a lot of other things I liked about X6 as well, such as the music, the ideas in its story, making parts slightly easier to obtain by having to save reploids, and some aspects that make the game so broken sometimes that it makes it more enjoyable.
That last point, however, brings me back to this: even though X6 improves a lot upon what X5 did wrong, I still think X5 is the better game. First off, many of the stages in this game just aren't fun to play. With the exception of Rainy Turtloid's stage, a pretty good level where you traverse through acid rain to try to get to each healing pod as fast as possible, all of them end up being at best kinda boring (i.e. Blizzard Wolfang's level) and at worst fucking awful (i.e. Ground Scaravich, Metal Shark Player, and especially Blaze Heatnix's abomination of a stage (WHO AT CAPCOM THOUGHT IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO HAVE TO FIGHT THE SAME DONUT-SHAPED BOSS 4 TIMES IN ONE LEVEL?!!))
The bosses in this game are also a mess. Most of them are pathetically easy because they either don't have very interesting patterns or they can easily be cheesed with Zero. (This is what I was mostly referring to earlier when I said the game is so broken sometimes that it becomes enjoyable; Zero breaks the maverick boss fights in this game due to his dash-cancelling technique, and it's honestly the most fun I had while playing this game) Some of them, however, are just straight up annoying. No better example than the last three bosses you have to fight before facing Sigma; the less said about them, the better.
There is also nightmare phenomenon, which activates randomly on the maverick's stages and makes it so random effects occur on them, such as parts of the screen becoming pitch black, a silhouette appearing at random to attack you, parts of the ground being covered in ice, and other frustrating elements. This is honestly the worst part of the game for me. It's so annoying to be playing one of the stages in this game, which most of them already weren't that good to begin with, and to have these random effects occur that make the game even worse than it already is. It gets even worse when there is such thing as the nightmare virus, an enemy that appears ad nauseam in the stages to try and either swarm the player or, worse, try to infect the reploids you need to save. And if they so happen to infect a reploid that has an item that you wanted, then GUESS WHAT?! THAT ITEM IS LOST FOREVER! AND THE ONLY WAY TO GET IT BACK IS IF YOU RESET YOUR GAME AND DEFEAT THE NIGHTMARE VIRUS BEFORE THE SAME THING HAPPENS AGAIN! WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU'RE NOT HAVING FUN?!
As for the story, I think it has a lot of good ideas, especially the one where Alia and Gate, the main villain of the game, have a relationship with each other that is shown throughout the game, but the problem is that the translation for this game is awful, probably the worst it has ever been. A lot of the lines in the english translation just don't make sense, and as a result, it leaves players like me confused as to what's happening. I recommend looking up J's Reviews's video titled "Learning to Love Mega Man X6"; it's a great video where he explains the positives of X6, and he details the story of the game better than I ever could.
If I had to describe X6 in two words, it would be "artificial difficulty". So many parts in this game feel like they're hard because the game designers didn't play test them. As a result, I can understand why so many people detest this game and even call it their least favorite game in the series. For me, though, I think the game has many things to appreciate about it, such as the improvements it made upon X5, the new armors, the ideas in its story, and other positive things I mentioned in this review. Yeah, I had to put up with a lot of bullshit, but honestly, in the end, I'm glad I played X6. It's such a broken mess of a game that I kinda respect it in a way.
Next time, however ... pray for me.