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.
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.