Capcom celebrates Mega Man's 15th anniversary with a new mainline entry, and what fans got was dogshit. Mega Man X7 is one of the more notorious examples of converting the series' 2D routes into the newfound world of the third dimension. It takes everything that I love about the core of Mega Man X and slaps me across the face with its pisspoor execution as a way to "freshen up the series."

When you first start the game, you're introduced to a new character, Axl. He was a member of the Maverick Hunter team named Red Alert before abandoning the group entirely after witnessing the changes that were happening around him. He is equipped with a pistol capable of rapid-fire shots and can hover in the air for a few seconds by holding the jump button. After the first part of the opening stage, Zero returns because Capcom cannot help themselves by fucking up the timeline once again. Zero sucks in X7; his saber speeds are slow and sluggish, and he swings his sword like a fly swatter, and his spin attack is like a poor man's version of a Beyblade. This is just a bizarre way to open up a Mega Man X game because you play as the titular X from the start as opposed to the previous entries, but we learn why that is after clearing the intro stage. I'm gonna skip the story this time because nothing is interesting about the plot in all honesty. X has stepped down from being a Maverick Hunter and instead becomes a supporting role for the Hunter Base after having second thoughts about fighting and violence. X has been through a lot, I get that, and it could've worked in the story somewhat, but all it did was made X into a whiny bitch. This is an awful way to treat the main protagonist of a long-running series, as he's been pushed to the sidelines in favor of the new loud and cocky character.

To unlock X, you have to rescue 64/128 Reploids scattered throughout all the Maverick stages which is a minimum of 4-5 stages you have to play through in order to play as him. Oh yeah, the Reploid hostage system returns in X7, and instead of Nightmare Viruses killing and hostage, anyone can kill a hostage this time with one measly hit. Unlike X6, they are placed in easy-to-reach locations, so my experience in searching for these things wasn't as cumbersome as before. The one stage I had trouble with was Tornado Tonion's stage, as the level is entirely straightforward. Still, you have to be cautious of your surroundings because there's a giant robot in the center of the tower and there's a chance it'll hit the hostages. This task was frustrating, but I did find a good strategy if you're trying to save all of the Reploids. What you need to do is to drain your lives to get a Game Over, and what this does is you have the option to save your game, and if you're unsure about saving the others and don't want to risk resetting the game, overwrite your save data and all of the Reploids you'd save, no matter if you clear a stage or not, they'll be on the list. Anyway, once you unlock X, he's genuinely the best character in the entire game. He plays similarly to Axl but his charge shot does crazy damage and was easily my go-to for the rest of my playthrough. Just make sure you're saving most of the heart tanks if you want to play as him because if you're not careful, Axl and Zero would've obtained all of the items, so be cautious with that. It just feels weird unlocking the main protagonist even though his name is on the freaking title.

So the main gimmick this time around is going 3D, well, sort of. There are certain sections where the playing field is in 3D, but some have strictly 2D areas. I guess to compensate for things, there's the auto lock-on mechanic, which was a staple for early 2000s games at the time. This was a radical change to how it was formerly played at the sacrifice of challenge that Mega Man is known for; all you need them to do is mindlessly shoot, and the enemies you encounter in a 3D section, you can just walk or dash around them. They're no longer a problem to be solved, they're a minor inconvenience that does nothing to engage the player. The camera is atrocious as I've never experienced a camera that is so against the player; the fight with Red is a perfect example of this. The battle wouldn't have been too bad if the camera wasn't moving around a lot setting me up for failure. The stages themselves are not that engaging either; they're all drab to look at visually, and this can be said with the game's visuals themselves, they don't look pleasing to the eyes at all. Sure, the graphics are a bit cleaner in the Legacy Collection, but the visuals haven't aged well.

Mega Man games are usually known for their rockin' soundtracks, and surely, a game such as Mega Man X7 has a soundtrack that is on par with the rest, right? Well, I'm sorry to say it, but I found X7's soundtrack to be underwhelming. It's not terrible, but most of the songs were mediocre and unmemorable, and I only liked three songs out of the entire album. I like the use of the guitar in Vanishing Gungaroo's stage, the Boss theme is pretty good, and the best song in the whole game for me was Code Crush, the Japanese opening theme. I've listened to this song so many times now that this is considered a Top 10 for me when it comes to ranking the Mega Man X music; otherwise, I didn't have much of an attachment to the rest sadly.

I do like to say one positive thing about the game, and that is the swap mechanic. You can pick two characters before you jump into the stage and you can freely switch between them on the fly. This is a nice needed change because we already know they are a fighting team and this mechanic displays why they are, as each character has their unique advantages like X's charge shot, Zero's double jump, and Axl's hover and copy abilities. Another positive thing I can say about X7 is the Armor upgrades; not the parts themselves, but the restrictions from X5 and X6 were finally lifted, Thank God. The only armor set this time is the Glide Armor, and the most beneficial part is the leg parts that let you glide in the air; the rest were just underwhelming.

X7 retains all the fundamental stuff you see in the past games; the vehicles, the Armor Parts, the same gameplay structure, it's got all that. But here's my main issue with Mega Man X7, it's so painfully slow and monotonous. Dear God, if you want to play this game, please play it on the Legacy Collection because I heard the PS2 version has long load times, but even so, there are an obnoxious amount of load screens. To add insult to injury, there are so many tutorials explaining everything. Mega Man X5 had this issue, but X7 feels like it paved the way for forced tutorialization in modern gaming. For Christ's sake, they have a tutorial for selecting a stage and characters and all it does is impede the pacing. The most egregious example of this is the explanation of how chips work. Alia explains how these chips give special abilities, every single time you obtain one, and it doesn't matter if you're like halfway into the game, she'll repeat the same thing over and over. The enemies have so much health it's ridiculous. Remember the copy abilities I mentioned earlier for Axl? You need to use the copy shot as the last hit to obtain the core, and it's more so guesswork to know how many shots till an enemy is down. The copy ability is an interesting concept in theory if it was utilized more. The special weapons are useless against Mavericks as they drain easily and take pitiful damage. It is so much faster and easier to shoot either rapid-fire or a charge shot, but even so, these fights last a few minutes.

The voice acting is some of the worst in the Mega Man franchise. Say what you want about X4's English dub, but at least it earned its reputation by being "so bad it's good" which was typically common in the 90s, and I cannot help but love it thanks to it. X7 has an actual English voice cast, but the direction ended up being bad in an unendearing way. X is a whiny bitch in this game, and he sounds like a whiny bitch; Zero's attempt at sounding cool is to have a voice as deep as possible, and Axl's voice sounds loud and obnoxious (like how they intend him to be). The Mavericks spout out the same one-liners every few seconds as that wasn't annoying enough, and then we have some broken ones like Flame fucking Hyenard. After hearing his voice, I rather burn myself to the ground; his voice does something to a person.

Mega Man X7 is the worst Mega Man game I've ever played. It has interesting ideas of moving the series into the next generation but was poorly executed. Even with its positives, it does little to alleviate my problems, and I think the game would've worked best if it stuck to its 2D routes or have a different production studio to handle the project. X6 is a broken mess, but it's a fun broken mess that I can enjoy even with its faults; X7 was a slog to play through from start to finish, and when a game bores me is a game that fails me, and X7 falls into that category. If you want to learn more about the development of this game, I highly recommend Matt McMuscles's video about this trainwreck.

https://youtu.be/wlIIwgQmVIU

Now if you excuse me, I'm going to listen to some more Code Crush.

https://youtu.be/fJXJStIzTxE

Considering this is a hentai RPG maker game it has 1000x better than it has any right to be. I could not possibly put into words just how good the story and the characters are. This is probably one of the best jrpgs of all time easily, and its a shame most people will never even play it. Oh well, if you read this, I hope you decide to play it, because its worth it. You might start playing and think the game is full of tropes and horny pandering for perverts but trust me when I say I think you will be pleasantly surprised by just how wrong you are, just like I was. Never has a game had such an emotional impact on me.

very rare that I start and finish an entire game in the same day/nearly the same sitting. one of the best games I've ever played in terms of raw game feel, the movement just feels tight responsive and perfect. the grappling hook is awesome, killing enemies just to grab their corpse and throw them at other enemies never fails to be satisfying, and the movement with it is really cool albeit limited by so many rooms having spiked roofs or no roofs at all. god tier game, auto recommend to literally everyone interested

Very few games can get a whole-hearted recommendation from me based on game-feel alone. This is one of those games. It takes so many things I love about Mega Man and applies in your face melee action and incredibly satisfying grappling hook mechanics on top of it. I enjoyed the characters too, as well as the little bits of world-building NPCs give you after defeating a boss, the whole experience is great with only little nitpicks that I don't particularly care enough to hold against it. Will definitely be replaying soon

This is it. This is the worst game of all time. There is not a single game in existence that simultaneously is the most boring but also the most frustrating piece of shit ever. The level design is garbage, with only a single stage even being bearable (and even THAT SINGLE STAGE being ruined by the WORST GIMMICK IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY named the Nightmare virus). The story is convoluted dogshit, with it not only ruining the perfect ending X5 created, but also having some of the most laughable translation errors of all time that make the story even more unbearable (not like the original story is much better). Did I mention how FRUSTRATING this game is to play? There is genuinely so much to say about how horrible this game and its stages are, but I have to keep myself short.

To summarise, this piece of trash makes Mega Man X7 look like Jesus Christ. X7 doesn't deserve its bad rep when this is literally the game right before it. I'd play Sonic 06 50 times while being waterboarded before I'll ever touch this infestation of a game again. Capcom, you are lucky this game's OST is as good as it is, else I would've personally traveled overseas to beat the shit out of you for ever thinking about creating this game.

Sets aside a lot of what was unique about the first game in favor of a more conventional world, progression structure and sense of setting. Levels themselves are often more mechanically distinctive and visually complex, but the game as a whole lacks a strong sense of identity and plays like something of a kaizo take on the X series. The story's largely carried by the presence of repeated, dead-serious use of the phrase "baby elf".

Borges, describing Kafka, says that great authors make their own antecedents, and the way the recurring bosses in this game are written with more of a psychosexual fixation on Zero confirms for me that the series is a premonition of Revengeance.