Mega Man X: Command Mission

Mega Man X: Command Mission - Part 1

I’ve finished yet another RPG, so its time to take a break from the kid’s stuff and review a game from yet another franchise I am intimately familiar with.

I am just going to come out and say it: Mega Man is the reason I play video games.  Mega Man 3 is was the single game that made me beg my parents for an NES back in the 90s.  To this day, its still one of my favorite gaming franchises and one of the few I pay attention to in the modern generation.  For a brief period, Mega Man games were the only non-RPGs I actively played.

That phase didn’t last all that long, but RPGs did become the genre I primarily focused on.  I was back to playing a bigger variety by 2004, but when I heard they were making a Mega Man RPG, I was pumped.  It wasn’t often I got excited by new games at that point, but this certainly made me take notice. I had also learned to temper my expectations for games, so while I appreciated the effort I also kind of anticipated I would come away a little disappointed.

I think tempering my expectations beforehand really went a long way in me enjoying this game.  There are a lot of very, very glaring flaws in Command Mission.  Most of these flaws come in areas that are critical for RPGs, like story, character development, and presentation.  While Mega Man had never appeared in a game like this, Capcom had certainly published RPGs before so I fail to see why more care wasn’t taken to make sure these things were up to snuff.  There were also a lot of gameplay elements that are almost universally off-putting to RPG fans, including unnecessary stealth and obstructed vision sections.  

That being said, this game fits a certain rarely targeted demographic: beginning RPG gamers.  Remember in the Quest 64 review where I talked about a lack of entry level RPGs?  I went back and started thinking about what titles would fit the criteria, which in my mind are:

1. The game is actually fun
2. Combat/menus are simple, yet allow for high level of strategy
3. More hand-holding and tutorials than standard RPGs
4. Hand-Holding/Tutorials are of good quality
5. Little or no level grinding
6. Tight difficulty curve
7. Familiar gaming elements are mixed in with RPG concepts

Want to know how many I came up with off the top of my head?  Two.  Super Mario RPG and Pokémon.  That’s it.  After this most recent play through, I can safely say I would add Command Missions to that category.  It hits on all of those categories, for better or for worse.  (For the record, Quest fails on numbers 3, 4 and 6.). Many of the aspects that I found insufferable would actually allow non-RPG players to feel more at home, as would the familiar settings and characters.  Combat is great, tutorials are detailed and the difficulty curve is appropriate.

Check back next week as I delve into the details of this flawed, yet very interesting RPG.