Mega Man X4 is a game I had some trouble coming up with an arbitrary review for, mainly because what I had to say about the game wasn't exactly unique compared to what nearly everyone else says about this game. The visuals are spectacular, the action was even more frantic and fast paced than the previous 3 X games (especially helped by the fact that if you hold the dash button down while jumping, you can now continuously do long dash jumps which adds a huge amount of flow to moment to moment gameplay), the weapons in this game are back to being fun to use compared to the nothingburger assortment of weapons X3 gave us, I still wouldn't say all of them are winners but a vast majority definitely are. The level design still isn't as platforming centric as X1 but it gets the job done well enough I suppose, Magma Dragoon's stage being one of my personal favorites, and the upgrades X can get to his armor are pretty crazy.
Then we have Zero. Zero takes what would already be a solid X game and cranks it up to 11. We've gone from X3 giving us a Zero that's a carbon copy of X but with more health, no special weapons, and a charge attack that at stage 3 had an admittedly pretty op sword attack, to a Zero that specializes only in close ranged sword based combat. Zero is so much fun to use it should be illegal, he's just as fast and acrobatic as X, but his sword dealing with small fry and even tearing though chunky enemies with ease, trying to simultaneously maintain your speed while doing so is amazing. You do have to essentially play the same game twice (though Zero does have some unique boss encounters and unique cutscenes) but Zero is so much fun to play as that this becomes a non issue. He doesn't get X's armor upgrades but his special weapons come in the form of extra techniques he can input, like a double jump, rising flame strike attack, downward ice stab, a dash attack, etc. Admittedly Zero struggles with a lot of boss fights in ways that X doesn't, so he's not strictly "superior" to X or anything, though admittedly some boss fights I actually found easier to deal with as Zero compared to X, mainly the final Sigma fight.
Don't really have much to say on the story though it's admittedly pretty stupid. The game has fully animated cutscenes which all look great, but the voice acting is genuinely horrendous and memed into oblivion at this point so I won't really add onto the dogpile much (though I am very disappointed in you colonel). I liked that the game showcased Zero's origin and his original creator though, was a nice touch.
It's a fun super fast paced game. I like fun super fast paced games. It was inevitable that I would really enjoy myself with this one I suppose.
Then we have Zero. Zero takes what would already be a solid X game and cranks it up to 11. We've gone from X3 giving us a Zero that's a carbon copy of X but with more health, no special weapons, and a charge attack that at stage 3 had an admittedly pretty op sword attack, to a Zero that specializes only in close ranged sword based combat. Zero is so much fun to use it should be illegal, he's just as fast and acrobatic as X, but his sword dealing with small fry and even tearing though chunky enemies with ease, trying to simultaneously maintain your speed while doing so is amazing. You do have to essentially play the same game twice (though Zero does have some unique boss encounters and unique cutscenes) but Zero is so much fun to play as that this becomes a non issue. He doesn't get X's armor upgrades but his special weapons come in the form of extra techniques he can input, like a double jump, rising flame strike attack, downward ice stab, a dash attack, etc. Admittedly Zero struggles with a lot of boss fights in ways that X doesn't, so he's not strictly "superior" to X or anything, though admittedly some boss fights I actually found easier to deal with as Zero compared to X, mainly the final Sigma fight.
Don't really have much to say on the story though it's admittedly pretty stupid. The game has fully animated cutscenes which all look great, but the voice acting is genuinely horrendous and memed into oblivion at this point so I won't really add onto the dogpile much (though I am very disappointed in you colonel). I liked that the game showcased Zero's origin and his original creator though, was a nice touch.
It's a fun super fast paced game. I like fun super fast paced games. It was inevitable that I would really enjoy myself with this one I suppose.