Alright so before we begin I admit that while this is my second playthrough, the last one was on the Gamecube collection and this one is on the Switch collection meaning it does not have the proper Guns 'n' Roses names. This is bullshit and a blight upon the experience, and I continue to live in the world of Grizzly Slash and Mattrex and Dark Dizzy and of course, Duff McWhalen, forevermore, amen.

I'm definitely not In Step with most of the fans when it comes to Megaman and X in particular. I remember this one being very poorly regarded, but I don't actually know why and I think it's pretty good! I like it more than X4 but less than the part of X4 where Zero has his hilarious breakdown because come on that's iconic. I think this mainly comes down to it being incredibly, comically easy. Very easy to get the sicko armor that flies with invincibility and honestly it's not hard without that either. Since I'm going way out of order, I'm coming back to this after X7 and it contrasts particularly well with that game, which is extremely frustrating. I love X7 as a hot mess but I'm not going to go back and play around with it, whereas I actually do want to do that with X5.

And there's a good REASON to do so! The game's time limit, while not adding much tension to the process of completing levels per se, filters down into a series of upgrades, both the kind that you can equip and passive health/weapon energy boosters. The system is completely opaque, but if you start messing around and making different choices than you can end up with different options available to you, and they weren't afraid to give you some really powerful ones. This is on top of having different character/armor options in the first place. It just feels like you're racing towards and end point and having to make choices instead of indulging in a big wide-open buffet like normal Megaman, even though you still really kinda are because the time limit is fake. The worst thing that could even happen is getting locked into a bad ending which is actually more detialed than the good one anyway.

Speaking of which, I think trying to really talk about the plot of this game would require me to understand what the fuck is going on in Megaman X. Since my third eye remains decidedly closed, I just think about how it was supposed to go into Megaman Zero. It was supposed to be an ending. I can see some of the plot threads there, but I wonder which ending was really meant to be the one. Both? Does it matter? What got changed in the plot of those four games to make it fit? Why do I care when none of it makes even a single iota of sense? These are all mysteries, their answers lost to time. I'm probably more interested in the creative process than the plot. But still! There's a whole funny man named Dynamo who has nothing to do with anything in this game! Was he gonna show up in MMZ? Probably not!!!

For sure, I have no thesis statement for Megaman X5 aside from hey, I like a dumb simple Megaman X. A few of the levels in this are clunkers, but there's also enough to make it feel like they were experimenting with this one while still keeping within the formula. That's probably the platonic ideal the franchise game. Everything else I didn't talk about here is just kinda little tiny annoying bullshit like oooooh the hitboxes are a little wonky who cares