Holy fuck.
Been forever since I played a Remedy Game, and it's been a couple years since my first playthrough of Alan Wake 1 as well. Decided to try this one out to see what I would get and...
Yeah, if there's a high-quality Twin Peaks ripoff out there, this one is absolutely that one. And boy I'm glad it exists, because the concepts and ideas this game has make the first game look so small in contrast.
I love the live action segments and the mixture of visuals, specially when playing as Alan. Saga's gameplay feels closer to how Alan played in the first game, with the very welcoming dodge button and weapon upgrade system to it.
I love how you can just explore the area around Bright Falls too, and the small fetch quests of finding the lunchboxes, nursery rhymes and stashes hidden around the map.
Welp, if I have to deduct half a star over anything... is just how this just won't run on a low-end laptop at ALL. I can see why it doesn't run, this motherfucker has a fuckton of post-processing happening in your face almost 24/7. If this ever releases on game pass or if I get a console in the near future, I am definitely replaying it.
Overall, the madmen at Remedy know how to make a high quality game that's absolutely weird from beginning to end. I am definitely replaying their stuff in the coming weeks as well. :)

MMX5 marks the "ending" of the X series. Or... at least it should have. But weirdly enough this one seems to have less budget than X4, and not only that but Inafune pretty much cleansed his hands of this project and moved to other ones, leaving a secondary team to having to deal with finishing a series that in theory he started.
So, how does it fare?
This game tries to be heavier in lore than any of the previous X games. Since there's no animated cutscenes in this one, what we get instead are a bunch of dialogue boxes and a somewhat annoying sound to acompany the typing. In one hand, the story is quite simple but the way they go around to explain the events is weird to say the very least. What's the reasoning behind Dynamo destroying Eurasia so it causes a total destruction of the Earth if it drops? Who the hell knows. How did Sigma infect the entire planet with a virus by being destroyed on a statue-sized body? Who the hell knows!
Honestly, the idea of this game feels like a custom D&D one-shot session where your party has to figure out a way to stop the end of the world, while the DM says that "Hey, you can use this cannon to try and destroy that. You can shoot it without any upgrades and it will probably miss, OR you can get all the upgrades and still probably miss, but your character will get stronger!" And to be quite frank, I dig the concept of a time limit. What I don't dig is how even if you do everything absolutely right, the Shuttle still has a small chance to just fail and you go to the Bad Ending route, making you lose Zero in the process. 10 year old me figured that one out the worst way possible. Naturally, the exact opposite can happen and you actually destroy the colony with the cannon, basically allowing you to skip 4 stages! Which... also flabbergasted 10 year old me back then.
Replaying this in the Xtreme difficulty made me notice that even without the enemy drops (and increased enemy presence in the stages), this game is still somewhat easy. It took me some good two hours to beat X4, but this one just took one.
Also, while i dig the concept of the Level System for the bosses, in execution it leaves a LOT to be desired. Locking certain upgrades behind not only the level they are (which is connected to the time remaining before the colony collides) is really frustrating, specially since the game doesn't tell you which part you will get by picking more health or more energy for your weapons.
And if I have to talk about the level design for a bit... some of the levels feel like plainly X4 levels that were scrapped or slightly reworked. The one stage where you use the bike and you can just immediately die is so screwed up for instance.
Still... while it feels like I complained a lot, this is still one of my absolutely favorite games of the franchise.
The team truly tried doing a replayable game where you can get multiple routes and outcomes, and while it's a bit janky, it makes for an enjoyable experience, specially seeing the different outcomes. Hell, the dialogue some of the bosses have if you let the world be destroyed is absolutely sad and dark. Alternatively, seeing some of them getting gradually corrupted over their dialogue is also really screwed up. And then there's the bat boss, who just says SQUEAK WHO CARES and I absolutely giggle everytime I see that dialogue.
On one hand, it's a bit sad that the armor system on this one was swapped for the "two armors, but you cannot use them incomplete", but on the other hand doing the stages as normal armor X is one of my favorite things to do, as it makes the game a biiit more harder to play around (unless you are using the parts upgrades, but still).
The soundtrack in this one, while not as great as X4's, still has some amazing tracks (Sigma Stage 2 is CRAZY), and I do like the way the game sounds, too. Using the japanese voices from X4 instead of the english ones is a very deserving upgrade.
Still, while this one is a 5/5 for 10 year old me, current me understands what makes a great game BE great. In my heart this one is still my favorite, but in terms of quality? Not quite, and I wished they worked on this one just a little bit more.
Naturally, if you do want to play this one outside of the Legacy Collections, I cannot reccomend enough the Improvement Mod that fans made for this one. It polishes that game to such a way it becomes one of the better PS1 Mega Man titles.

Disclaimer: Played this with the Undub + Script revision hack.
One of the strongest PS1 titles, and one of the best MMX games.
High quality level design that does not get old at all, nice bosses (though most of them have that Spark Mandrill weakness thing), and some of the greatest tracks by Toshihiko Horiyama.
The story in this game is... rather simple, at times it really feels like it was abridged from a manga/anime as some of the character's decisions feel a bit... unfinished (to be frank, since dialogue is not a priority I see why they did as they did. The X4 manga does give more detail on why the Maverick Hunters had more evidence to back up their "Repliforce caused this attack", as well), but it's still coherent enough.
If you never played a MMX game, this is the one I'd recommend. Great replay value, gameplay as X is as consistent as ever and having Zero as the full-melee class here works amazingly.
(01/05/2024 Edit: Replayed the original version. Holy moly the english dub is bad lmao)

While not my favorite PS1 Mega Man game, this one was quite a lot of fun to revisit!
The level design isn't as good as previous titles, but the game compensates that a lot with presentation, soundtrack and visuals for the 32-bit console.
Naturally, the biggest issue when it comes to MM at this time is the voice acting. Which is a crying shame, considering how pretty the animations of this period were for both this and X4.
The plot in this one is a bit... out of this world, pun somewhat intended. Are they telling me there's a robot who roams space looking for "Evil Energy" and they just plainly refuse to elaborate on who Duo and what the Evil Energy actually is?
This being said, I really dig Duo's design, and I found the Bass boss fight to be quite enjoyable too!
Also, can't believe I pretty much nailed both of the board stages on first try this time around. The freaking "Jump Jump!" were the bane of my existence some good 20 years ago....