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Mega Man X Command Mission Review
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| So, Capcom decided to make another RPG, this time based on the Mega Man X series instead of forming MegaMan Battle Network. Well in my opinion, they pulled off a fairly nice game. I didn't like it as much as MegaMan Battle Networks 2 and 3, but it's a decent game. However, if you're looking for a very long RPG, I recommend Tales of Symphonia or Baten Kaitos. I cleared the game in around twelve hours, and I don't rush anything by any means. Now on to the review. Story Oh, please. Who has EVER played a Mega Man game for a story? I'm hoping nobody; if so they were probably sadly disappointed. Well, this is an RPG, so it should have a fairly decent storyline, right? Even if it's a Mega Man game. Wrong. It's not the worst story on the planet, but it's quite predictable. Basically, Mega Man and Zero are sent into a place known as Giga City to stop an evil Reploid named "Epsilon". However, I was amazed in that there is a major plot twist in the game that I never expected. (Not going into detail obviously for spoiler reasons.) Because of that, I'm giving the story a decent rating. It's by no means bad, per se; just nothing special. At all. Story Grade- 6/10 Controls Outside of battle, basically all you do is run around with the control stick and use A to talk to people or examine things. You can also use a slide move with B. In battle, though, several buttons are used. A is your main weapon, B is your menu (for items, Sub-Tanks, etc.), X and Y are "Sub-Weapons" (more on these things later), Z is, by default, for defense. (You can alter the control scheme if you like; I speak only of the default buttons.) It's actually been a while since I've played at the time of writing this review, so I may be wrong on this, but I believe R is for your "Action Trigger" (again, more on that later). It sounds complicated but there's nothing really difficult about it. They're fine, so they get a fine grade. Controls Grade- 10/10 Gameplay Since this is an RPG, the majority of your gameplay will come out of battles. I found the battle experience quite good, personally. It's not just your very basic battling system, such as: Select either "Attack," "Spell," or "Item," and do this for every character. It's much, much better than that. Before you use a main attack, you can use one or two "Sub-Weapons". These aren't as powerful as your main weapon, but they certainly add to the punch you make. However, there are things to note: If you use a Sub-Weapon, you must either defend or attack. You cannot do anything else. Also, using a Sub-Weapon takes away from what is called "WE", which stands for "Weapon Energy". (These in-game abbreviations are confusing at first. It takes a while to grasp it all.) You can equip various things to increase the amount of WE that you start with in battle. Characters regenerate a certain amount of WE each turn. Certain weapons use more WE than others, so you have to be careful in which two you choose to equip. Your main attack is self-explanatory. It takes up no energy, so there's no downside to use it. You can also certainly take off a turn from Sub-Weapons and just attack once. You can, of course, equip different weapons and Sub-Weapons. There are other commands that are usable in battle. There is a special weapon usable once you get above either 50 or 75 WE (sorry, I've forgotten this as well...), out of a possible 100 WE. This is called your Action Trigger attack. Some action triggers are pathetic and some are highly useful. Mega Man X's trigger is, as you might guess, a charged Buster shot. You can charge it up to the number of WE you had when you used the Trigger. Zero's requires that you push different button combinations shown on-screen. You can use as many attacks as you want in the time limit it gives you (which is affected, like X's, by your WE count when you used it). Once the Trigger is used, your WE depletes to 0. Additionally, you have the option to defend in battle, if the need arises or you don't desire to attack. This is used either through the Z button (default) or through the menu. This menu gives you many options. You may defend, use an item, use a Sub-Tank, or go into Hyper Mode (more info later). Items are basic. You have offensive items, which deal elemental damage (Fire, Ice, or Thunder), or healing items. It's important to note that THERE ARE NO ITEMS TO HEAL YOUR LE (Life Energy; basically, what is normally called HP). This is done through the Sub-Tanks. If you've played Mega Man X games before, you know that these are just for recharging energy. This is highly inconvenient in my opinion. Believe me, you are going to run out of Sub-Tank energy... a lot. And in quite inconvenient places. You'll live, but that requires many revival items, which are quite expensive at first. I wish they'd at least included an item to replenish Sub-Tank energy, aside from the ones you can find outside of battle occasionally. You can "slide" into items outside of battle, see. Rather, you break these crystals that they're in. Blue crystals contain normal items, red ones are key items, yellow ones contain Sub-Tank energy, and, if I remember correctly, green ones are weapons. I believe they can also represent other things though, like parts of the soundtrack available in Sound Test mode. The last thing available in the menu is Hyper Mode. This basically brings out a super-hero form of your main character, sometimes equipped with new moves and weapons. All stats are enhanced. However, your time using this mode is limited. Some characters have a higher Hyper Mode limit than others, and you can increase the number of turns it is available for with a certain item. This mode is highly useful for bosses, but a bit pointless for most random enemy encounters. Until you go get healed, back at your "base", your Hyper count will stay what it was once the battle was done (like, if you used it for two turns, and your original count was six, it'll stay at four). There is one more function you get when you have at least three characters. This is called "Final Strike". You gain this when you take out 75% of an enemy's HP without them interfering. This allows you to basically go trigger-happy on the buttons of your Gamecube controller for a few seconds. A, X, and Y all do damage. B cancels Final Strike. Basically, this does a LOAD of damage and will kill just about anything you use it on. Now then, now that we've finally explained all the functions of battle, I'll describe the battles themselves a bit. These battles are not the type where you select what you want every character to do and then watch the ensuing chaos. When it's your move, you only select what you want one character to do and you have at it. There's actually a little area on-screen that shows you who will be attacking when in the next eight turns. This also shows a LE counter for your enemies (except bosses, for whatever reason). Also, you will have many characters in the game, but only three are usable at a time. You can switch them out when and if the need arises. I actually went through most of my game with either X, Spider, and Marino, or X, Zero, and Marino. Spider is a bounty hunter of sorts and Marino's a thief with a good heart, for the record. From here, you just attack your enemy however you choose, and they hit you back. Boiled down to its base form, that's how it's played. Outside of battle, things are simple. Slide into items, examine things, and run around. I was disappointed how almost every level is just a maze or a path, though. The only exception I can think of is the outside of Vanallia Desert (not sure on spelling), where you run around in the open trying to find a building where it's just another path to follow around. It's an RPG, for crying out loud! Give us something better to do than run down paths. There are occasionally other uses for X's slide (or as I think the game calls it, "dash"), but that's only in one area where you get an upgrade to it and use it to break some rocks. It's never used again. There's one other thing you can add in this game. There are items called "Force Metal" which enhance things like your stats, available WE, or add other effects to the battle. You can only equip however many your character's "slots" allow. Some have four, three, or two slots for Force Metal. Also, there's a limit called "Erosion". If this is higher than your character can handle, something bad happens or backfires (I'm not entirely sure what since I never tried it). It's an interesting add-on to mess with. Overall, the gameplay's quite nice, but there are a few things I dislike, such as not doing much but following paths outside of battle. Gameplay Grade- 9/10 Music/Sound Effects The music in this game is techno, for the most part. Lots of techno. There was only one track I truly thought was above par; that track plays during special boss battles. The rest are okay, save for a few which I just can't stand. The soundtrack's really not all that great as a whole. The sound effects in battles are okay. They're nothing really shining/amazing or, contrarily, really annoying. I must admit that X's footsteps outside of battle do get on my nerves sometimes, and they don't really sound like what they should sound like (in my own opinion). Voice acting is at least decent, but nothing special at all. Most of the music and sound effects are bearable, but they're mainly just par. Music/Sound Effects Grade- 6/10 Graphics Graphically, the game's pretty nice. They're not the best graphics ever, but they look pretty good. The walls and such are pretty detailed, as are the characters. Suffice it to say they look like they're for a Mega Man game, if you get what I mean... I have little to say about the graphics. They aren't bad or extremely great either. Graphics Grade- 8/10 Challenge This game is pretty challenging sometimes. It's nothing very difficult at all, and it's not all that long for an RPG, but it's also not a walk in the park. There is nothing that made me scream in agony over not being able to beat a boss, but there was also no time where I could just sit back, relax, and not really pay attention. It meets a healthy median on difficulty, which is a good thing in my opinion. Challenge Grade- 9/10 Fun Factor Since there's no time where you'll be blowing steam about how you can't beat a boss, but you'll never really be bored playing the game, I'd say the fun factor is pretty high. I find it quite fun and addicting, never boring... It's a pretty fun game. Fun Factor Grade- 10/10 Replayability/Extras Replayability on this game's not that great. In my opinion, one playthrough of it is enough. If you really love it, though, you'll want to. That's the only reason you'd want or need to, though. Extras, however, are definitely in this game. There's several extra things you can do. There are some extra bosses you can fight for some other power-up abilities, and once you beat the game, you can access a secret area that contains NINE extra bosses. As you get further down you get mostly additions to the Sound Test mode and certain figurines and things from missions. Each boss there is very uncleverly named. The first one is Onetail. He's followed by Twotails. Then Threetails, and you get the picture. Each one of them has their own special ability of sorts, and they're really hard at first. Also, there is a mission deployment thing in the game. You can send broken Mechaniloids (robots) out on recon and they'll bring you items back. They can be immobilized easily out there, though, and they have different stats for abilities. You can also collect figurines of sorts based on the different chapters of the game. That's about it in terms of extras, which I believe is enough. Replayability/Extras Grade- 9/10 Pros and Cons Pros: -Excellent battle system -Lots of extras -Nice graphics -Fun... of course -Not too hard or easy Cons: -Mainly cliché story -You almost always can't do anything but follow a path, rather than exploring an open area -Not-so-great music (mostly) -Not much use to replay it unless you really love it Rent, Buy, or Leave it on the Shelf? If you're a hardcore Mega Man fan, I suggest you buy the game. If you like RPGs, give it a rent. If you're looking for a really long, extensive game, go buy Baten Kaitos or Tales of Symphonia and maybe rent this. If you don't like RPGs, you probably shouldn't buy this. And if you want an RPG that's not really long, or a game with a more exciting battle system than most games (for a turn-based one anyway), then this is right up your alley. I'd recommend at least a rent for almost everyone. Overview of Scores Story- 6/10 Controls- 10/10 Gameplay- 9/10 Music- 7/10* Sound Effects- 6/10* Graphics- 8/10 Challenge- 9/10 Fun Factor- 10/10 Replayability- 7/10* Extras- 10/10* *: Separate categories in the Overview, but are listed in the same category in the actual review. When changed into two categories from one, they are subject to slight change in some cases. TOTAL SCORE- 82/100 (or 8.2/10, which I will round down to 8/10) |