It's hard to overstate how cool the Mega Man X games are -- maybe their legacy alone makes that evident. To my eyes, X4 is where the series really hits its stride aesthetically. The pixel art and frame animation are immaculate, polished and detailed to an extent that seldom few games attempt with pixels today. And all of that reflects in how GOOD these characters feel to play.

Having not played this since I was young, I was pretty taken aback by the story. It's...uh, well: it's about a fascist ethnonationalist force that gets completely manipulated by a greater evil. It's not even subtle! Although X4 is ~90% action game and 10% narrative, the bleakness of it all does manage to come across.

However, one thing that consistently threw me here: the difficulty is ALL over the place. In X's playthrough, most bosses are a complete joke, thanks to weapon-weaknesses. In Zero's playthrough, few bosses have weaknesses at all, forcing you to learn and nearly perfect your responses to all of their attacks. And there isn't much in the way of mercy-systems, either, since "sub-tanks" (health potions) fill up so slowly that they're barely any use.

I couldn't call it the best of the X series up to this point, but at the same time, I can't deny just how compelling its look & feel remains today. It's a flawed masterpiece.