Mega Man X6

Come on, you knew this was coming.  

I telegraphed this a mile away last week, but we are going to talk about the other forgotten member of the X series, Mega Man X6. I mean it can’t be all bad.  Its predecessor was a solid, if underwhelming entry into the franchise, with some fun boss fights making up for less inspired level design.  So maybe X6 was the one that put it all together?  Did it combine the great level design and soundtrack of X4 with the outstanding boss fights and more polished graphics of X5?  In a word, no.

Despite not necessarily being a “bad” game, X6 is among the worst in the entire Mega Man franchise (both old school and X games).  I would certainly say its the worst X title and if you were to bring the older games into the fray, the only one I disliked more was probably Mega Man and Bass.  Again, this isn’t some jank franchise that has been around for five years, so its a different set of standards, but if you are going to try to jump into the Mega Man series, you should definitely start elsewhere.  

The biggest issue here is the difficulty.  We talked about crazy difficulty curves in the BattleToads/Double Dragon review and once again its off the wall here.  The lousy translation/localization is also a culprit.  I know it was a problem in X5, but its just unacceptable here.  Before we go any further, lets meet our mavericks.  This time around, we do battle with:

-Commander Yanmark

-Rainy Turtloid

-Blaze Heatnix

-Shield Sheldon

-Blizzard Wolfang

-Metal Shark Player

-Infinity Mijnion

-Ground Scaravich

Ummm.....what?  This isn’t even the case of a bad joke like the whole Guns N’ Roses thing.  It’s just a function of giving literally zero attention to translating the game.  What the hell is a Mijnion? A Scaravich?  (For the record, its a flea and a dung beetle respectively) I guess you can see that you have a wolf, phoenix and shark, but Metal Shark Player?  Why?  And if you think the cutscenes or dialogue, or even the post stage recaps or in game advice Alia gives you are any better, you have another thing coming.  You know what, before we get back to the unfair difficulty, lets talk about graphics and sound.  Sometimes that can be boring, so lets try something different.  I am going to type my paragraph into Google translate, translated it to Japanese and then back to English so everyone can see what we are working with here.

Overall, graphics fine. There wasn't a big leap between this game and X5, but I think heretics are more interesting and detailed. There seems to be a lot more going on in the background, and some of the stages feature high-level details. Especially on the Infinity Mijnion stage, a huge robot sprays a certain fireball over the entire stage. Really frustrating but cool and paying attention to every detail. I think the environment here is more diverse. X5 has several stages and felt very similar, but X6 has more pace changes. It is the sound that I really think X6 has improved on its predecessor. The musical track is much more interesting, deeper and perfectly adapted to the stage. There's something for everyone, from the atmosphere of the new era of Commander Yanmark and Rainey Tartroid stages to riffs and shredders on the Blaze Heatnix stage.

And that came out better than I anticipated.  You get the idea of what I’m talking about but it doesn’t make total sense and some points are missed completely.  Anyway, back to the difficulty.  Once again, you have access to an armor from the start.  It seems like Capcom was married to that idea, because rather than have you start with only regular X and keeping the difficulty level the same, they just cranked the volume up to with cheapness.  

Metal Shark Player’s stage sees you contending with a massive trash compactor.  Think Dust Man’s stage from Mega Man 4, but programmed by Satan rather than some random Japanese guy.  The afformentioned Infinity Mijnion stage is just relentless with all the crap that it throws at you, although it becomes much easier once you realize it can be neutralized with one of your weapons.  Ground Scaravich’s stage gives you the always “fun” randomly generated areas.  Rainy Turtloid, Blizzard Wolfang and Commander Yanmark are probably the most fair stages, but even they have their cheap moments.  Shield Sheldon’s laser institute, by contrast, is short, easy and seems like a waste of time.

But oh my god, that Blaze Heatnix stage.  This thing is just relentless, one of the most busted, unfair, pain inducing torture devices ever disguised as a level in a video game.  You fight the same mini boss over and over again across a variety of terrains.  The first one is a pain, but once you get the timing for jumping over it down its beatable.  The second is easy, the third and fourth are obnoxious, but oh my god that fifth encounter is just unbearable, and not just because its the FIFTH time you are fighting the SAME ENEMY in a single stage.  This time, you are being chased up a vertical shaft while the screen autoscrolls.  The mini-boss pops up at random to bother you, while instant death lava fills up the screen.  You have to keep moving to avoid the lava, but you also have to hit the boss on its weak spots, which isn’t that easy to do.  If you reach the top before you kill it, the boss will be able to drain your health with unavoidable attacks while keeping its weak spots almost completely protected.  It’s borderline impossible without the armors and even with them it’s brutal.

All the way through, the game is without mercy.  A lot of the levels are easier as Zero, but he has to be unlocked and besides, I hate playing as Zero.  At least the difficulty is balanced, its balanced at “unfair all the damn time,” but still balanced.  And I haven’t even touched on the nightmare effects that randomly occur in some stages, making them even more difficult.  Or the fact that the powers are all pretty much useless.  I know I complained about Spark Mandrill syndrome, but here you have the opposite problem, most of the powers don’t do anything to the bosses that are weak to them (or are impossible to hit with them).  Only one power, Commander Yanmark’s, is worth using beyond one off circumstances.

The bosses themselves are pretty difficult, but probably the most balanced part of the game.  None of the bosses are particularly unfair and they provide some memorable moments.  Rainy Turtloid is huge and offers a unique challenge of having to destroy his shield before you can damage him.  Shield Sheldon has a ton of stuff flying everywhere and Blaze Heatnix fills half of his chamber with lava, forcing you to fight on his terms.  The Metal Shark Player fight is cool for no other reason than him creating recycled versions of past mavericks.  Infinity Mijnion is probably the worst, his weakness weapon does next to nothing and he just constantly fills the screen with clones of himself.  It’s probably the one spot where Zero is substantially better than X.

Again, there are some storyline elements here, but I have absolutely no idea what anyone is talking about because of the localization.  I know there is something going on with a “Zero nightmare” that you have to defeat (which, to be fair, does make sense considering the ending of X5).  You have to find and defeat Zero to get him to join you, but the whole nightmare thing just persists.  There is some random miniboss after you for some reason, there’s something about some guy name Gate, something about nightmare investigators, just a lot of stuff that may have been cool if I had any idea what was being said.  Hell, even Alia’s post mission debriefs don’t make any sense.  It’s bad to the point that it impacts the gameplay, as her in-stage advice is often rendered useless by the translation.  I will give them credit for this though, at least listening to her is optional this time around.

What it all boils down to is that this is probably the worst or second worst game in the entirety of the Mega Man series.  Not just the X series, the whole thing.  Personally, I think the only one that’s worse is Mega Man and Bass, but that’s just me.  That being said, the worst Mega Man is still better than the best other series’ can offer.  X6 is okay, fans will like it and non-fans who are into ridiculous challenge may find something here as well.  It’s not buggy or broken and is even fun at times, but its just too unbalanced and frustrating to stand out.

6/10

Play this if:

You are looking for a challenge

You are a diehard Mega Man fan

Engrish is your second language

Avoid if:

You prefer fair challenge

You were burned out on the series