Skip to main content

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.

Image result for mega man x command mission

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.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ranking the Final Fantasy Commanders - Magic: The Gathering Set Preview Part 1

 Now here's something I never thought would ever happen.  I have been a fan of Magic: The Gathering for a long time. I've been a fan of Final Fantasy for just as long. Yet I never thought I would ever see a full-on MTG set based on Final Fantasy. When it was first announced, I thought this set was a joke. Honestly, it sounded like something I dreamed up when I was a kid, not an actual product that Wizards of the Coast was actually going to release. But here we are, two weeks away from the release of MTG - Final Fantasy. So now, it's time to rank some of the cards. I've talked a little bit about MTG before, but I think now is as good a time to talk about it again. Hey, I did a ranking for the Street Fighter cards, why not Final Fantasy? Well, I am going to do the same exercise once again. I am going to keep it to my most played format, commander/EDH, and rank all the new legendary creatures/potential commanders. The difference is this time, instead of eight new commander...
Post a Comment
Read more

Metal Max Returns

In recent weeks, I've been doing a lot of research into RPGs that never left Japan. I haven't covered a game that never came to the U.S. in quite a while, so I figured now is as good a time as any. There are always going to be games that get stuck in Japan or only get ported to PAL regions, whether its for financial, cultural or other reasons. But during the 5th generation, it was extremely common for games to stay on the mothership, especially when it came to RPGs. Simply put, the genre just wasn't as popular in the west and it was often not worth the time and effort to localize them. I talked a little bit about this with Sweet Home (though that stood zero chance of ever being released here) and Terranigma (which was not released in North America for more business related weirdness), but it still amazes me how many games never made their way to the West and how many of them I had never heard of until much later. When I started GOTBP, I kind of made it a point to not focus ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Alex Kidd in Miracle World

I've been skirting around it for a few years now, but its finally time to add yet another console to the list. A few years ago, I reviewed Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle, a Genesis platformer that I didn't really enjoy all that much. I talked a little bit about how Alex Kidd was Sega's mascot before Sonic became a thing and how hyped up I was to give AKITEC a try, having heard so much about the series. That was part of the reason the game fell flat for me, though poor level design and awful boss fights were more than likely the bigger culprits. What I didn't realize at the time was that much of the positive sentiment I had heard about the series had nothing to do with its lone Genesis entry. Instead, much of the positivity was focused on the various entries on Sega's third generation console, a machine that I have been looking for an excuse to play for a long time. For most North American gamers, the Genesis was the first time we interacted with Sega. Many peop...
Post a Comment
Read more