How often do I review games for the original PlayStation? I know I’ve reviewed some of the classic Final Fantasy games and they were on it. But outside of them I don’t think I’ve touched it much. That’s primarily due to ease of access to the games. I can get plenty of SNES and other Nintendo based games of late thanks to the Switch but, since I myself don’t have a PlayStation, I need to play them through my PS2 and hunt down the old games blah blah… BUT remember how I reviewed Megaman X3, that game was on the Megaman X Collection 1 with 3 other games, so it’s time to look to the final game on that collection, the one some people view as the definitive Megaman X game.

First up, Yes, we all know about the English dub. This was the early days of spoken audio in video games and they were all bad. Money wasn’t really given to people for it, yes it’s bad that’s clear, but then so were practically all those in games at the time. Was Metal Gear Solid the first one to actually try?

Since this is the first Megaman X game on the PlayStation (and the best one… they drop in quality and keep dropping after this, X8 started to get better at least, the graphical improvement is instantly right there to view. But it’s more than just that, first thing you do in game is pick which character to play as, X or Zero.

If you play as X it’s very much mechanically like all the previous games, sure a few more bells and whistles a few new abilities. But it’s the same – get armour and other abilities while playing through the levels and new weapons by beating bosses that are good against other bosses, and also help get those power ups.

Playing as Zero on the other hand, is sadly pretty much the hard mode. While his base roster of abilities is superior to that of X making getting through the levels easier. His melee focused attacks and, rather than get new weapons by beating bosses, getting new attacks instead, that only a few are elemental… means tackling bosses is considerably harder, to the point the last one is an absolute pain. Also he lacks proper upgrades outside of the health improvements so X by the end is blasting through bosses and doing far more damage from afar while Zero is having to do lots of dodging only to get a tiny bit of damage in now and then.

BUT there is a good reason to play through both stories. While they both handle the same crisis, namely that the all reploid military organization called Repliforce has seemingly gone maverik, the bosses interact with each character differently. Zero gets more dialogue with Repliforce aligned bosses while X gets more out of the Maverick bosses, so playing through both you find out far more. From Zero you hear more about what Repliforce were actually doing and from X you learn more about how the Mavericks and their leader (who’s obviously Sigma) set both them and the hunters up. There are some minor boss changes with X and Zero at some moments facing bosses the other didn’t, but that’s minor.

The game lacks a big uber upgrade like the last 3 games had but did include a cheat to unlock an ULTIMATE ARMOUR for X that’s a souped up version of the completed armour you get in the game normally. Zero has a similar code to get black Zero, but it doesn’t change his stats in any way, it’s just him in black rather than red.

The game is widely praised by the Megaman community as one of the best and most memorable thanks to the Repliforce plot and solid gameplay. It’s also the start of the point that if you haven’t figured out Zero was made by Wily, they really hit you hard with that fact, never directly saying it but there are 2 cutscenes that heavily show it. The time for subtlety is gone.

It’s sad that the X games go downhill after this. Mechanical choices of 5 cause issues and 6 is just bad… and then there’s 7…..

But don’t let that cause you to miss an enjoyable game. Those that enjoyed the first 3 X games can now see what a hardware upgrade can do to the franchise.

Rating: 🎮🎮🎮🎮🎮