Mega Man X5

Mega Man X5 was designed to be the final game of the Mega Man X series altogether. And it really had potential. There's more of an effort to differentiate this game from previous entries in the X series, with the darkest plot yet, a higher emphasis on collecting upgrades (one of the most fun aspects of the X series in general), and a countdown system compelling you not to exit out of levels without completing them too many times, or else face armageddon...sort of like Majora's Mask, which released the same year, just without the time loop. You also even start with either badass armor for X or the ability to shoot regular projectiles in edition to Zero's sword.

Sadly, Capcom dropped the ball on Mega Man X's grand finale. For one thing, the emphasis on story makes it a more interesting game than X3, but its insistence on shoving Alia in your face is an unbelievable detriment. Fi from Skyward Sword has nothing on this truly annoying character, who gives mostly obvious and unnecessary advice at the beginning of and multiple times during the course of a stage. There are a scant few pieces of useful advice (such as telling you to duck in the darker areas of the lava level to escape the lava flow) but for the most part, her little hints--which totally pause the game every time--amount to "tips" like "you can destroy this door-like structure" or "you can grab onto these ropes". Things like this are obvious to anyone who's played a game in this series before, and that's who this game is made for, right? After all, it was supposed to be the big epic grand finale...if only they'd actually stopped here.

There are a couple other annoyances as well. The aforementioned time system, while making the game unique, limits the amount of experimentation you can get away with in figuring out the boss order. Experimenting with boss weaknesses has been a main draw of the Mega Man franchise as a whole since the very first game, so this is a big problem. The developers must have realized this, since the bosses are easier than ever before to defeat without their weaknesses. The fully charged version of the Crescent Shot (Grizzly Slash's weapon) seems to make quick work of all the main bosses, and is no slouch in the levels either, especially since it hardly takes up any ammunition and forms a highly damaging shield around X. This is a decidedly different approach to boss design than even the X series is known for, but I'm not so sure it paid off.

The biggest problem, though, is the level design. Barring the fact that the levels just don't feel nearly as fun to play as the ones in X1, X4, or even X2, there's just a rushed feel to them. This is best exemplified in how there are some insane difficulty spikes. The worst example is probably the initial portion of Squid Adler's stage. The motorbike sections of Mega Man 8 and X4 were easily the most difficult sections of those games, but this one's bike level makes those look like a cakewalk. It is almost impossible, but one of the most infuriating aspects is in the very first couple seconds of the level; it throws an instant death pit at you before the "READY" text even leaves the screen! That's right, you can die from not jumping fast enough before the game has fully acknowledged that the level has started. It would be bad enough that you can die so soon after the level loads in if the aforementioned "READY" weren't in big letters directly in the center of the screen, blocking your view of the action at the most crucial moment. True to the ridiculousness of these difficulty spikes, the rest of the stage is perfectly doable, leaving me baffled at the point of having such a difficult part in an otherwise mundane stage. Mattrex's stage as a whole was similarly infuriating, though the part where you hide from the lava was a pretty fun little challenge, I'll admit. Most of the levels aside from these are pretty easy, and some of them I was able to complete in just one life.

Adding to this rushed feel, the game contains no anime cutscenes. What, X4 could have them, but not the "final" game in the series? I know the voice acting in the English dubs of these games was so terrible that I should be grateful I didn't have to hear anymore of it, but it still shows a lowered production value when the cutscenes went from being well-animated FMVs to pretty much a bunch of pictures. I mean, Zero flies a shuttle into a space colony and fails to destroy it, causing it to hit the Earth causing massive damage to the population. And we see barely any of it. Like, really? Isn't that a pretty huge deal? These events have no weight whatsoever with this sloppy, rushed, barely-existent presentation. Oh, but they can give Alia plenty of dialogue, including the exact same multiple lines explaining how the equipment system (and boss weapon system--really? after this many games?) works.

Now it's not all bad, and indeed my rating is representative of an okay game. The graphics and music are still as fantastic as you'd expect from this series, and usually the game competently executes the Mega Man X gameplay style, albeit not in its most frenetic or memorable form. And I really do appreciate the sense of finality the game tries to impart so hard. The X vs. Zero fight is a great example of this sort of thing. I didn't notice any bad glitches either.

But while the game has some great ideas, for the most part it feels less inspired at best, and outright rushed out the door at worst. It needed more heart put into it, and more importantly, more time. It's too bad that this game didn't realize its full potential. But hey, it could've been worse.. It could've been like the MMX games that came next.

X5 is really the first major decline in the X series. Yeah X2 and 3 were pretty bland and forgettable but 5 is just so boring and generic that I forgot most of the game by the time I beat it. The bosses, the level design, the music, everything about this game is just mediocre. It also has annoying frustrating platforming segments. Really not much to say other than its boring, forgettable, and feels bland. Sure it gives you the option to play as Zero from the start but that doesn't matter when the design of this game is too boring.