UPDATE: Due to rules and popular request, I have decided to eliminate the SPOILERS. Honestly, I like this 20 year-old game so much that I felt the need to explain everything this game has to offer like the fanboy I am. Then again, I should know better than to do this, and I should allow new players to discover this game for themselves. I apologize for breaking the rules and for disappointing/angering some of you. Now, on to the review!

INTRO:

Of course, I shouldn't get to reviewing games at all until I start reviewing my favorite game of all time, Mega Man X. This is, without a doubt, the greatest Mega Man game ever made for two reasons: control and level design. The control feels about the same as the already excellent classic Mega Man games, but with the addition of wall-jumping and dashing, the controls are better than ever! Also, the level design supports these features in their entirety, as they offer slopes and wall that would be impossible to traverse in the NES games. Not only those, but whatever little story there is to the game is magnified by how it is told in-game, and how the player actually feels involved in every step!

People like to say that RPGs like Final Fantasy III and Chrono Trigger are their favorite games ever, and while they are perfect games for their genre, they are not necessarily for everybody, especially children who don't bother to read text. Mega Man X, on the other hand, doesn't require reading to enjoy the game (except maybe the title screen) and can be enjoyed by anybody. I mean who can deny that shooting things in a cartoon-looking game is fun? Kids practically fantasize being the hero that shoots stuff, even in this day and age. And this game fulfills their fantasy perfectly. For everybody else, this is a well-designed action video game that belongs in your SNES collection right alongside Final Fantasy III, Chrono Trigger, and Super Castlevania IV.

GRAPHICS:

It may not have CG graphics rendered as 2D sprites like Donkey Kong Country has, but the graphics are colorful yet shaded darkly enough to have a more edgy tone than previous Mega Man games. In fact, it has more of an anime style than the more bubbly games of the past, and that is what makes Mega Man X, among other things, stand out as its own game in the Mega Man series. It certainly helps that there are also effects like parallax scrolling and transparency. Also, the character sprites do seem to have a natural depth to them, so it makes me wonder why this wasn't remade in 3D for the Nintendo 3DS already!

More importantly, the graphics are so well-made that they actually translate to the gameplay rather than just being visual candy. There are moments like fighting the bumble-bee mid-boss in the intro stage, where after you defeat it you have to look at subtle visual clues in order to climb up a wall all by yourself. There are also neat touches like being able to cut off an elephant boss's trunk with a certain weapon. It's moments like these that make Mega Man X so special that it's worth playing at least 10 times!

SOUND:

As a new Mega Man game on the Super Nintendo, it had to take advantage of the Sony sound chip that the system offers, and my goodness does it do a good job of taking advantage of it! Right from the title screen, you will know that this game means business with its rock instruments mixed with some violins! Oddly, this is the one of the only Mega Man games that bother to mix the two kinds of instruments together in order to add variety to the music. You even hear techno music in one stage, and I don't remember almost any other Mega Man game that has that.

Adding to the excellent variety of music is the excellent sound design...well, for a Super Nintendo game, anyway. Shooting your weapon and hearing that pea bullet are satisfying from the get-go, and charging that weapon is satisfying and not annoying every time! It would be nice to hear more ambiance in the environments, but considering that this is Super Nintendo and not WiiU, and considering that the music is excellent, it doesn't really matter!

ADDICTIVENESS:

Even when I lost a lot in my first playthroughs of the game, I just had to keep playing it in order to win! The game is designed well enough that not only does it deserve to be beaten, but it also deserves to be cherished, speed-runned, analyzed, whatever. Like a lot of other Mega Man fans, I managed to beat it about 10 times already, and I try to play this game at least once a year just for the sake of it. It's that good! A few other games manages to be this replayable while still being shorter than the average modern game, and that's why I think Mega Man X is the best game ever! (Actually, I wish the game is longer, but beggars can't be choosers, I guess.)

Other than the excellent level design, which I can explain in detail later, the major reason why this game is replayable is in the way the character progresses. Each of the levels is multi-tiered, and if the player explores enough then he or she can find upgrades for the character that make this challenging game a little bit easier to play without being too easy. Upon the second playthrough, though, the player can decide whether to make the game more challenging for him or herself through speedrunning by foregoing these upgrades! That's when the player notices the sheer depth of the level design, as if the developers actually playtested each level to see if both non-skilled and highly skilled players can complete those levels under those conditions! Excellent job!

STORY:

Unfortunately, in order to grasp what exactly is going on, you need the manual. When I was a kid, I kinda thought I was the bad guy, and I was shooting robots that were trying to stop me from trashing the place. After all, the intro sequence at the end warns us that the main character needs to be tested for 30 years before he can be trusted! When I first encountered the character named Zero, I thought that character was a girl--that character was brightly red, had a long, blond ponytail, and smiled a lot. Hell, even if Zero was a girl, the moment when I encounter this character is amazing, as it shows that I need to be as good as the best in order to overcome challenges--a.k.a. I need to get stronger to win, which is what this entire game is about, and it shows through it's multi-tiered levels.

But as a kid who just got the game without the manual, how was I supposed to know about the Maverick Wars, or that the final boss Sigma used to be a good guy until the formerly evil Zero was defeated by his hands? How was I supposed to know that there is a Dr. Cain, not just a Dr. Light? How was I supposed to know that even the bosses I fought also used to be good? But the good thing about this is that unlike modern games, I can actually use my imagination! I can make up my own story, to an extent, as I play this game (which allowed me to make my own crappy comic book about what I thought was the story of this game). And at the very least, the theme of getting stronger is demonstrated well enough right from the end of the intro stage all the way to the end of the game. This kind of story is inspired by role-playing games on consoles, and it's all boiled down to one smaller kind of game, leaving little confusion in the process. (I'm looking at you, Final Fantasy!)

But I'm probably confusing some of you here, so I should explain some of the plot here. Anyway, the game is about Mega Man X, a Reploid (humanoid robot) who can shoot to defeat infected robots called Mavericks. He has to defeat the newly-made leader of the Mavericks called Sigma, but in the beginning, Mega Man X (or X as others call him) is too weak to defeat Sigma's minion called Vile, so Zero has to help him. Zero then tells X that he needs to get stronger by defeating 8 other Mavericks and obtain their powers. ("You may even become as strong as I am", says Zero.) A simple story that's told well enough given the lack of background information, as mentioned before.

DEPTH:

While the game is certainly not long and could use a lot more levels in my opinion (though 13 challenging levels is more than enough for most people these days), the depth of the level design is so great that it doesn't really matter anyway! From the intro stage, you can easily learn all of the mechanics of the game without any tutorials that pop up and annoy you, as the intro stage intuitively teaches the player things like shooting, wall-jumping, and even shooting in the air. Modern game developers should look at this game and take notes as they try to design their games, because this game has some of the most intuitively design levels in video games. Adding even more depth is one of my favorite features, which I'll explain here: let's say there is a snow level and a fire level. If you play the fire level first, then it will look obviously fiery, but if you finish the snow level first, then the fire level will then look like it's covered in snow!!! That way, the player can more easily reach that one upgrade in that corner that has lava on the ground! HOW COOL IS THAT!?!?!?!?

When you defeat a boss, then like in any Mega Man game, you obtain the weapon from that boss. What is unique about the Mega Man series
is in its "rock-paper-scissors" type of gameplay with the bosses having weaknesses to certain weapons from other bosses. I believe that only some of the smaller enemies have obvious weaknesses from boss weapons, or at the very least it's advantageous to use certain weapons in certain situations over, say, the main weapon, but moments like this are somewhat sparse compared to Mega Man 2.

As for Mega Man X, itself, the unique mechanic it has that distinguishes it from other Mega Man games is the ability to obtain armor upgrades by exploring hard-to-reach places. Armor upgrades include Heart Tanks--which give you more maximum health--Sub Tanks--which work like the consumable Energy Tanks but can be refilled by collecting Energy Pellets when your health is already full--and pieces of new armor such as the mandatory Dash Boots. This new mechanic is actually inspired by role-playing games at the time, because Capcom believed that it needed to appeal to people who liked role-playing games while cutting a lot of the crud that bogs them down, such as farming for experience points, going through unnecessarily long dungeons, and even the slow pacing. While I don't think it would turn their heads away those games--after all, I did mention earlier that Final Fantasy III and Chrono Trigger were perfect role-playing games, if not perfect games, for there are only perfect games (plural), not the perfect game--it certainly adds complexity and depth to a game series that needed a fresh change for the Super Nintendo. Not to mention, you can even try to beat the game with as few upgrades as possible. I dare you to try, and it's still a well-designed game despite the greater difficulty. Speaking of which...


DIFFICULTY:

So not only do you have an intro stage and can select any of the other 8 main levels in any order, but you also have to beat 4 more incredibly challenging stages afterward and beat those bosses! Playing this as a kid, I died numerous times (though not as much as when I played Super Meat Boy), but that only gives me the determination to continue playing this game...you know, after a break. Actually, it took me about 8 years to beat this game once, but then the game becomes much easier to replay since the game is easy enough to master.

For the people who played Mega Man games before this, though, you might find Mega Man X to be either incredibly easy compared to other games due to the improved controls, or incredibly harder due to the tougher enemies and more varied level design. Yeah, I did play other Mega Man games after this, and they seem much harder to me, so I will rate the difficulty somewhere between high and average here.


OVERALL:

An amazing game by the once-amazing Capcom, and arguably the best Mega Man game since Mega Man 2. Play this game. Play it again. Record yourself playing it. Make your friends play it and watch them die a million times. Bug Capcom to make Mega Man X9 and not ruin it. Make sure they don't George Lucas this franchise...actually, Capcom already did........PLAY IT!!!

Foodperson : one thing of advice maybe you could have put less SPOILER things because that did boost your word count a little so if you could edit out some of those it would be great.  okay your review was really awesome you put really great points in there you made it nice and detailed and very descriptive so you got an A+ on this review good job you should make more like these

This is not exactly a review. This is more of a review/game guide together. That is a little iffy. Maybe you should take out the spoiler thing as that is not allowed to boost word count.

I loved reading this one. It was long, but I didn't mind it at all.

Sorry about the comments before; they're a little sore about the word "spoiler" repeating a few times, but what is it... a few words? It's a little silly considering what you've done with the review. (And review reading isn't "for everybody, especially children who don't bother to read text" )

Perhaps the spoiler section -could- be moved to a game guide thread. Just because those type of helpful hints would be better placed there. I'll check on it with the review boss.

Eirinn : what do you think?

Regardless, I loved reading the review; you successfully made it interesting with both your fantastic writing and interesting anecdotes.

I can't wait to see more =)

Great job!

You even got me wanting to check it out now.

Very impressive first review indeed. I have nothing to add as advice. Keep on reviewing and developing your style.

I do need to tell you two things though: First, spoilers aren't allowed in the reviews forum, sorry. : Please try to avoid any spoilers next time.
Second, I noticed that you added some color to the name mega man at one point in the review. Html tags aren't allowed in the reviews forum either, so please try not to do that in future reviews. Thanks.

Anyway, as I said: great work here. Hopefully you keep on writing reviews. I look forward to seeing your future work!

Foodperson : Spoilers are not allowed. But this was awesome for a first review. Some grammar issues tough. I agree with eirinn. My first review was in the 100 words lol.

I do Beileve that this is the greatest mega man game. Very nice review, organized and detailed in every aspect. I hope to see more of ur reviews