"Now it's time for X8, the worst 7/10 you'll ever play" - PKMudkipz.
Yeah, that's about how I'd describe it, even if my score is half a star higher.
Mega Man X8: Paradise Lost (It's the only Mega Man X game with a subtitle, so I'm bringing it up cuz I think it's interesting) is the return to form that came way too late for the franchise.
After X6 and X7 (and arguably X5 if you didn't like that game) besmirched the X series' reputation, X8 was made as a kind of apology for the past 3 to 4 years of failures.
To put it in perspective, X5 came out in 2000, X6 came out in 2001, then in 2003 we got X7, and this game only came a year after that in 2004. I cannot begin to fathom how exhausted the dev team for this series was, if they were the same ones making all of the games.
X8 though compared to X7 is like night and day. The control is quick and snappy, nothing feels sluggish or slow. 3D sections are limited to Ride Chaser stuff, which I will get back to later I really want to talk about those.
They also fixed problems I had with certain characters, for one, the voice acting is much better than X7. X doesn't sound like a literal robot anymore, and Axl's voice isn't the most grating noise on the planet.
They also worked to make Axl and X more distinct from one another gameplay wise. Axl has different weapons from X now, most of which don't seem to consume ammo. He can actually aim now, the auto aim from X7 is nowhere to be seen. He can also hold onto walls and rain fire onto enemies from there. His Copy Shot was also improved and it doesn't take an eternity to kill enemies with it, and the Copy Shot is actually more useful for item collection and upgrades.
This game transformed Axl from my least favorite X character to play as, into my favorite X character to play as because of his now diverse action set.
The others are also not slouches, Zero gets multiple weapons for usage in combat that you can unlock. My favorite is the D-Glaive because of its sheer range and how it makes his Rasetsusen technique (the one where he spins in midair) incredibly devastating.
X of course gets two sets of armor once again, but like in X7, you can utilize the individual parts right away without having to collect everything, giving you the individual benefits from the start. This also allows you to do the thing I brought up in my X5 review, being the mixing and matching of armor pieces for your preferred playstyle.
I primarily used the Icarus Armor because X's Giga Crush is incredibly helpful for taking down bosses, and his charged attack is just a massive fuck you laser, which rips enemies to shreds. I tried the Hermes Armor but the X Drive is considerably less efficient for me personally. Plus, the Icarus Armor gives X this nice red color, and red is my favorite color so it's just a bonus.
I can't really speak for the Special Weapons for this game, because since X6, I've just gotten so used to just using the buster (or rather the Nova Strike in that game) because from what I can tell, the Special Weapons in X6 and X7 kind of blow. The Buster/Axl's A-Bullets are all incredibly effective, and when it comes to Zero, the technique I mentioned earlier is easily the best, along with his regular combos.
I did try the Blast Launcher from Axl, and it was damn effective. Maybe I'll try Weakness order when I replay this game eventually.
The story was interesting if nothing else. The humans want to migrate to to the moon after having to deal with the multitude of Maverick Wars that have taken place, and this requires the use of a new generation of Reploids, all of which have the same copy ability as Axl.
At one point, the elevator, simply called the Jakob Elevator, and the beginning of much of the religious symbolism this game has, suffers a malfunction and one of the carts on it flies off and crashes. X is of course the first person on the scene, and calls for help, until suddenly Sigma exits the cart... and then suddenly a bunch of Sigmas exit. X is, reasonably, scared shitless until the Sigmas transform into regular reploids, with a purple haired pretty boy named Lumine appearing to explain the situation.
Lumine is the director the Jakob Project, and a New Gen Reploid like the others. They transformed into Sigma because his model is very durable, which sets off many red flags for me personally, but X ultimately just accepts it without pressing for more info.
Then while going through... Noah's Park... This shit writes itself. While going through Noah's Park to deal with Maverick Mechanaloids, the Maverick Hunters encounter a once again revived Vile, who looks incredibly like Boba Fett now, finally completing his design arc from X1 to now.
They treat Vile like he's a major recurring threat, but the last time he appeared was 5 games ago. Kind of makes me wonder why he wasn't in X5 honestly, Dynamo was kind of just there, and his reappearance in X6 didn't make much sense either. You could probably replace Dynamo with Vile in those games and it wouldn't really change much.
Anyways, Vile kidnaps Lumine, and then suddenly 8 New Gen Reploids go Maverick. This is apparently not supposed to be possible given how the New Gen Reploids are immune to the viruses that have turned others into Mavericks.
Over the course of the game however, it is figured out that Sigma's DNA is within all of the copy chips. Axl is luckily excluded due to being a prototype, but what this ultimately means is that all New Gen Reploids can go Maverick at will.
Technically I thought that that was kind of how it always was, with exception to like, X3 and X5, but it's whatever.
After all 8 Mavericks are defeated, the Hunters go to the Moon to confront Sigma who is clearly involved. Ultimately however, it turns out that Lumine was pulling the strings all along, and he eventually turns into a giant robotic archangel who must be destroyed.
The incident shakes X, but he is comforted by Zero who reassures him that they will always have to fight to defend everyone, thus ending X8's story.
Comparatively speaking, this is probably the best X story since X4 (the dub is really what hurts that game, from what I've heard the X4 story is considered relatively ok.) It brings up a lot of interesting questions concerning Axl and the New Gen Reploids, and slowly watching the characters piece together what's really going on is engaging.
Back onto the gameplay though, now I have some complaints.
Level Design in this game is only slightly better than X6. This game has almost the same level of spike obsessions as that one, and it is very egregious.
Once again, I have to admit that I hate spikes as a video game obstacle. They're just beginners traps that screw the player over for not already knowing the level design, and instead of actually being a genuine challenge for the player, they're little more than a fake difficulty spike.
The only levels that don't have spikes in them are the Ride Chaser levels... which have two realms of quality.
Central White is ok, if not a little annoying for the miniboss taking a lot of time, but Dynasty is easily the worst level in the game hands down.
It's the only part of the game that controls like ass, feels like you're flying through fucking Coruscant with the amount of sign posts and shit you'll be careening into, it's a fucking mess. The devs seem to know that too because they didn't lock any hidden items or anything behind the stage.
Other stages of note though go to Inferno, the worst regular level of the game, because not only does it have 3 separate autoscrolling segments that can result in instant death, but it is also littered with spikes.
Booster Forest also sucks because the process of unlocking shit in that level all relies on bringing the one ride armor the game gives you to the end of the stage. I hate when games lock items behind gimmick mechanics, so this part just pisses me off. Also has a fuck ton of spikes so that's a bonus.
And of course, the Final Level is also a spike obsessed mess that gets on my nerves, I'd be more willing to give it a pass for having spikes if it wasn't for two things. The fact that X6 ruined Spikes in Final Levels for me, and the fact that the Retry System in this game has been completely ruined.
Since at least X5 (or maybe X4, it's been a hot minute since I've played that one), when you would game over, the game would just let you start from your last checkpoint. This is kind of what mitigated the shittiness of the level/boss design from X6 to X7.
This is not the case in X8. If you run out of retries, you are forced to go back to the R&D Lab and pick the stage and start over. By default you only get 2 retries, and you have to buy more to get a max of 5, and if any of those bought ones go away, you have to buy them again. It just feels like an unnecessary and honestly dickish change given that the Level Design ain't that much improved from X6.
Then there's the Metal System. I'm mixed on this because while it fixes problems that were created by the X5-X7 era of Mega Man, it also just doesn't feel 100% like the best decision to make.
First of all, Heart Tanks no longer exist. You buy health upgrades for all of the characters in the R&D Lab. While I appreciate this feature, it could have just been simpler to keep the Heart Tanks but make it so that it raises the health of the entire party. That way the exploration for those upgrades would feel more earned. It's more of a minor complaint since the exploration for items is still there, but this is a solution for a problem that didn't need to exist in the first place.
Secondly, certain upgrades can only be found. This includes Zero's weapons and stuff. This isn't a bad thing, except in Booster Forest where almost all of that shit is locked behind utilizing the Ride Armor. Trying to get the items in Booster Forest is ten times more difficult than the Final Boss of the game, and not in a fun way. Even the smallest mistake will result in your run being restarted, and it fucking sucks.
Back onto the good side of things, I like the Double Attack, which allows the two characters (they kept that mechanic from X7) to do a massive attack on an enemy or boss for big damage. I actually like the Dual Character system in general in this game, as many of the problems it had from X7 have been mitigated. Here, if one of your characters dies, instead of losing a life, you are simply switched to the other character, and if you raise your Double Attack meter enough, the other character will be revived.
You also have a health system that works similarly to the Mother series, where it slowly goes down but can be recovered if you switch characters. It's honestly a very neat system.
All in all, Mega Man X8 couldn't make up for the failings of its predecessors, but here's hoping that maybe someday it will get the sequel it rightfully deserves.
This was definitely still the worst 8/10 I've ever played though.
Yeah, that's about how I'd describe it, even if my score is half a star higher.
Mega Man X8: Paradise Lost (It's the only Mega Man X game with a subtitle, so I'm bringing it up cuz I think it's interesting) is the return to form that came way too late for the franchise.
After X6 and X7 (and arguably X5 if you didn't like that game) besmirched the X series' reputation, X8 was made as a kind of apology for the past 3 to 4 years of failures.
To put it in perspective, X5 came out in 2000, X6 came out in 2001, then in 2003 we got X7, and this game only came a year after that in 2004. I cannot begin to fathom how exhausted the dev team for this series was, if they were the same ones making all of the games.
X8 though compared to X7 is like night and day. The control is quick and snappy, nothing feels sluggish or slow. 3D sections are limited to Ride Chaser stuff, which I will get back to later I really want to talk about those.
They also fixed problems I had with certain characters, for one, the voice acting is much better than X7. X doesn't sound like a literal robot anymore, and Axl's voice isn't the most grating noise on the planet.
They also worked to make Axl and X more distinct from one another gameplay wise. Axl has different weapons from X now, most of which don't seem to consume ammo. He can actually aim now, the auto aim from X7 is nowhere to be seen. He can also hold onto walls and rain fire onto enemies from there. His Copy Shot was also improved and it doesn't take an eternity to kill enemies with it, and the Copy Shot is actually more useful for item collection and upgrades.
This game transformed Axl from my least favorite X character to play as, into my favorite X character to play as because of his now diverse action set.
The others are also not slouches, Zero gets multiple weapons for usage in combat that you can unlock. My favorite is the D-Glaive because of its sheer range and how it makes his Rasetsusen technique (the one where he spins in midair) incredibly devastating.
X of course gets two sets of armor once again, but like in X7, you can utilize the individual parts right away without having to collect everything, giving you the individual benefits from the start. This also allows you to do the thing I brought up in my X5 review, being the mixing and matching of armor pieces for your preferred playstyle.
I primarily used the Icarus Armor because X's Giga Crush is incredibly helpful for taking down bosses, and his charged attack is just a massive fuck you laser, which rips enemies to shreds. I tried the Hermes Armor but the X Drive is considerably less efficient for me personally. Plus, the Icarus Armor gives X this nice red color, and red is my favorite color so it's just a bonus.
I can't really speak for the Special Weapons for this game, because since X6, I've just gotten so used to just using the buster (or rather the Nova Strike in that game) because from what I can tell, the Special Weapons in X6 and X7 kind of blow. The Buster/Axl's A-Bullets are all incredibly effective, and when it comes to Zero, the technique I mentioned earlier is easily the best, along with his regular combos.
I did try the Blast Launcher from Axl, and it was damn effective. Maybe I'll try Weakness order when I replay this game eventually.
The story was interesting if nothing else. The humans want to migrate to to the moon after having to deal with the multitude of Maverick Wars that have taken place, and this requires the use of a new generation of Reploids, all of which have the same copy ability as Axl.
At one point, the elevator, simply called the Jakob Elevator, and the beginning of much of the religious symbolism this game has, suffers a malfunction and one of the carts on it flies off and crashes. X is of course the first person on the scene, and calls for help, until suddenly Sigma exits the cart... and then suddenly a bunch of Sigmas exit. X is, reasonably, scared shitless until the Sigmas transform into regular reploids, with a purple haired pretty boy named Lumine appearing to explain the situation.
Lumine is the director the Jakob Project, and a New Gen Reploid like the others. They transformed into Sigma because his model is very durable, which sets off many red flags for me personally, but X ultimately just accepts it without pressing for more info.
Then while going through... Noah's Park... This shit writes itself. While going through Noah's Park to deal with Maverick Mechanaloids, the Maverick Hunters encounter a once again revived Vile, who looks incredibly like Boba Fett now, finally completing his design arc from X1 to now.
They treat Vile like he's a major recurring threat, but the last time he appeared was 5 games ago. Kind of makes me wonder why he wasn't in X5 honestly, Dynamo was kind of just there, and his reappearance in X6 didn't make much sense either. You could probably replace Dynamo with Vile in those games and it wouldn't really change much.
Anyways, Vile kidnaps Lumine, and then suddenly 8 New Gen Reploids go Maverick. This is apparently not supposed to be possible given how the New Gen Reploids are immune to the viruses that have turned others into Mavericks.
Over the course of the game however, it is figured out that Sigma's DNA is within all of the copy chips. Axl is luckily excluded due to being a prototype, but what this ultimately means is that all New Gen Reploids can go Maverick at will.
Technically I thought that that was kind of how it always was, with exception to like, X3 and X5, but it's whatever.
After all 8 Mavericks are defeated, the Hunters go to the Moon to confront Sigma who is clearly involved. Ultimately however, it turns out that Lumine was pulling the strings all along, and he eventually turns into a giant robotic archangel who must be destroyed.
The incident shakes X, but he is comforted by Zero who reassures him that they will always have to fight to defend everyone, thus ending X8's story.
Comparatively speaking, this is probably the best X story since X4 (the dub is really what hurts that game, from what I've heard the X4 story is considered relatively ok.) It brings up a lot of interesting questions concerning Axl and the New Gen Reploids, and slowly watching the characters piece together what's really going on is engaging.
Back onto the gameplay though, now I have some complaints.
Level Design in this game is only slightly better than X6. This game has almost the same level of spike obsessions as that one, and it is very egregious.
Once again, I have to admit that I hate spikes as a video game obstacle. They're just beginners traps that screw the player over for not already knowing the level design, and instead of actually being a genuine challenge for the player, they're little more than a fake difficulty spike.
The only levels that don't have spikes in them are the Ride Chaser levels... which have two realms of quality.
Central White is ok, if not a little annoying for the miniboss taking a lot of time, but Dynasty is easily the worst level in the game hands down.
It's the only part of the game that controls like ass, feels like you're flying through fucking Coruscant with the amount of sign posts and shit you'll be careening into, it's a fucking mess. The devs seem to know that too because they didn't lock any hidden items or anything behind the stage.
Other stages of note though go to Inferno, the worst regular level of the game, because not only does it have 3 separate autoscrolling segments that can result in instant death, but it is also littered with spikes.
Booster Forest also sucks because the process of unlocking shit in that level all relies on bringing the one ride armor the game gives you to the end of the stage. I hate when games lock items behind gimmick mechanics, so this part just pisses me off. Also has a fuck ton of spikes so that's a bonus.
And of course, the Final Level is also a spike obsessed mess that gets on my nerves, I'd be more willing to give it a pass for having spikes if it wasn't for two things. The fact that X6 ruined Spikes in Final Levels for me, and the fact that the Retry System in this game has been completely ruined.
Since at least X5 (or maybe X4, it's been a hot minute since I've played that one), when you would game over, the game would just let you start from your last checkpoint. This is kind of what mitigated the shittiness of the level/boss design from X6 to X7.
This is not the case in X8. If you run out of retries, you are forced to go back to the R&D Lab and pick the stage and start over. By default you only get 2 retries, and you have to buy more to get a max of 5, and if any of those bought ones go away, you have to buy them again. It just feels like an unnecessary and honestly dickish change given that the Level Design ain't that much improved from X6.
Then there's the Metal System. I'm mixed on this because while it fixes problems that were created by the X5-X7 era of Mega Man, it also just doesn't feel 100% like the best decision to make.
First of all, Heart Tanks no longer exist. You buy health upgrades for all of the characters in the R&D Lab. While I appreciate this feature, it could have just been simpler to keep the Heart Tanks but make it so that it raises the health of the entire party. That way the exploration for those upgrades would feel more earned. It's more of a minor complaint since the exploration for items is still there, but this is a solution for a problem that didn't need to exist in the first place.
Secondly, certain upgrades can only be found. This includes Zero's weapons and stuff. This isn't a bad thing, except in Booster Forest where almost all of that shit is locked behind utilizing the Ride Armor. Trying to get the items in Booster Forest is ten times more difficult than the Final Boss of the game, and not in a fun way. Even the smallest mistake will result in your run being restarted, and it fucking sucks.
Back onto the good side of things, I like the Double Attack, which allows the two characters (they kept that mechanic from X7) to do a massive attack on an enemy or boss for big damage. I actually like the Dual Character system in general in this game, as many of the problems it had from X7 have been mitigated. Here, if one of your characters dies, instead of losing a life, you are simply switched to the other character, and if you raise your Double Attack meter enough, the other character will be revived.
You also have a health system that works similarly to the Mother series, where it slowly goes down but can be recovered if you switch characters. It's honestly a very neat system.
All in all, Mega Man X8 couldn't make up for the failings of its predecessors, but here's hoping that maybe someday it will get the sequel it rightfully deserves.
This was definitely still the worst 8/10 I've ever played though.