It's new to me: Mega Man X4

The series' transition from 16- to 32-bit platforms has its high and low points.

This column is “It’s new to me,” in which I’ll play a game I’ve never played before — of which there are still many despite my habits — and then write up my thoughts on the title, hopefully while doing existing fans justice. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

Mega Man X made its name on the SNES, but the series persisted beyond its 16-bit roots and ended up on 32-bit systems in the middle of the 90s. The first one released exclusively for 32-bit platforms — the Playstation, Sega Saturn, and Windows — was Mega Man X4, and it brought on a total visual overhaul for the spin-off series. Unlike the 32-bit ports of X3, which were basically just the 16-bit games but with some extra bells and whistles enabled by the more powerful platforms, Mega Man X4 was built from the ground up with those capabilities in mind.

Familiar characters like the titular Mega Man X, Zero, and Sigma have been completely redrawn, and their sprites made much larger. The version of X that had been relegated to cutscenes and promotional art in prior titles now shows up in X4, basically, with the huge lower legs of his armor present because X’s sprite has been stretched out, for lack of a better descriptor, and doesn’t look unbalanced because of the change to his size. The backgrounds (and sometimes foregrounds, ahead of the playing field) are now loaded with large moving objects, all full of detail that wasn’t possible to this same degree on the SNES. Capcom also took some swings with the level settings, making each locale feel kind of uniquely set and even sometimes play differently because of where they are: part of what makes these settings work is that the background art is in motion and detailed, which makes the levels feel alive rather than static. It all makes the idea of X showing up in the middle of a space battle or arriving at a space port more believable, because there’s an active space battle happening not just to X but all around him as well. And the enormous sprites of some of the game’s enemies are just incredible, too, and help add to the idea that X is kind of just a little guy as far as unstoppable killing machines are concerned.

Another change is in the gameplay itself. The first is minor, maybe, in that there’s no longer a password system, but instead you save and load. Convenient, sure, but if you were ever a person who liked to look up the various passwords and give the game a go with different loadouts, you can’t do that here, so that’s worth knowing at least. The second is the big one, and much of your enjoyment of X4 might hinge on it: X is not the only playable character, as Zero is now selectable from the start. And while the stages and bosses are the same, the dialogue is different for each of them, and the gameplay is essentially an inversion. X’s whole deal is primarily ranged attacks, and often charged ones. You have to display some patience to get the right shot in to maximize enemy damage and minimize how much of it you take yourself, but the range of X’s arsenal allows for this: getting in close isn’t a good idea if you want to avoid taking damage and be able to fill those energy tanks with excess health packs. Zero, though, is equipped with a sword, which means he has to get right in there: you still need to be careful and pick your spots, but even popcorn enemies require you to get right in there most of the time in order to defeat them.

What’s a shame is that Capcom clearly struggled in creating a balance between having these two playable characters. Mega Man X4 is fun, don’t get me wrong, but X’s campaign is far too easy, to the point that the armor upgrades and even some of the health pickups are basically unnecessary in order to clear the vast majority of the game. Once again, as in X3, you don’t need to use the robot master powers X wins in battle very much outside of while taking on the boss enemies that are weak to them. It’s not until — spoiler for a 24-year-old game that isn’t plot-forward — the battle against Double that things ramp up on the difficulty front, and then Sigma, of course, is a nightmare mostly because it’s a final boss battle against Sigma that takes place over multiple segments. Even Sigma, though, isn’t overly challenging (for him). He’s just far more of a challenge than anything else the game put in front of you before then.

That’s X’s campaign, however. Life is just generally more difficult for Zero, given how close he has to be to cause damage, and how he can’t necessarily treat the robot masters the same way X does. As X, you equip the ability that’s going to cause a given robot master to have a bad day, and you fire it from a safe distance, watch them be stunned, then shift to the other side of the screen to do the same thing there. You can get through these boss fights without taking damage without being an expert who has played the game again and again to get to that point… as X. It’s not quite the same cakewalk with Zero and his sword.

Which by itself is fine, because it makes Zero’s campaign the hard mode. It just feels like X’s run is the easy mode instead of a “normal” setting in this example. It doesn’t help that the real struggle for Capcom was in making the platforming interesting. The levels themselves are wonderful to look at, vibrant and alive, clearly taking advantage of the power that the Saturn, Playstation, and Windows possessed in comparison to the SNES. Everything is just so straightforward, though: there isn’t nearly the exploration that existed in previous series entries, and while there’s verticality and multiple paths on occasion, they mostly serve to highlight how lacking some of the other stages are, both in length and in complexity.

The real miss there is that Capcom was in a position to make these levels diabolical, because they introduced a midpoint checkpoint system that’s so forgiving that it plays a not insignificant role in the game’s relative ease. If you run out of lives, you don’t restart from the beginning of the stage if you’ve made it to the second section of the level, but instead start from there. Which means you might get a game over but find yourself just a minute or two away from the robot master. And whenever you die, your weapon stock completely refills: no more worrying about making the perfect shot and rationing the power supply you have, which again, just makes the boss fights even easier for X.

Given this checkpoint and how easy it is to get back in the swing of things after a defeat, it’s a shame that Capcom didn’t go harder on the stage design, as it would have been comforting to know you can commit to exploring and experimenting and not lose a ton of progress if you fail. Instead, we get a situation where, if you fall in a hole a couple too many times over the course of the game, you get sent back a distance that can be measured in seconds, depending on the stage.

“But Marc,” you say. “Mega Man X is also an easy game, and you didn’t ding it for that.” That’s true, but Mega Man X’s stage design is superior to that of X4, its platforming far more challenging, its weapons more fun to use outside of fights against the robot masters, etc. It’s easy compared to the original Mega Man games, but that doesn’t make it an easy game in general. Mega Man X4, at least during X’s campaign, is easy, no qualifiers necessary, in a way that’s detrimental to the experience, as it lacks some of the depth that made the X games so intriguing and enjoyable in the first place. Whereas X3 introduced some armor upgrades that changed X’s movement abilities and therefore Capcom’s approach to level design to account for this new mobility, X4’s floating is just a power you can use if you feel like it most of the time, rather than a secret that needs to be both learned and mastered in order to get by, or to unlock even further secrets scattered around.

With all of that being said, this is still a good game! You can just see some of the diminishing returns of the series coming, hinted at in various design problems that make it clear that, even with the additional power of 32-bit platforms and the delightfully overhauled graphics and art design, Capcom maybe didn’t have as many wonderful new ideas for Mega Man games as they did a few years prior. It all makes sense that this would be the case, given the sheer volume of Mega Man that was released between the original series debut and X4 in 1997, but it’s still sad to recognize it happening as early in the X series as 4.

There’s enough other stuff here to keep the experience enjoyable, at least. The story is a bit convoluted, or at least, not localized particularly well, so that it becomes a bit tough sometimes to understand just why X and Zero are fighting this army that, in the opening cutscene, clearly didn’t align themselves with Sigma when presented with the opportunity. It’s actually as straightforward as anything else in the game, it’s just not particularly well explained in the game’s dialogue. And while you maybe don’t come to Mega Man games for their stories, in one that has dialogue before every boss fight and in between chapters, that has fully voiced, animated cutscenes, you at least want what you’re seeing to make sense. And also maybe for Capcom to pick a voice actor that doesn’t make you think of the phrase, “Mega ‘Not Yet A Man’ X” when you hear them speak. Maybe someday X will find a puberty upgrade in a capsule left behind by Dr. Light, but X4 was not that day.

It’s just a little jarring to hear someone who has put down rebellions and left behind a trail of the dead four games in length sound like a little kid while saying, “I’ve got to get serious!” when they start to run low on health. I don’t need him to sound like a grizzled, crusty vet of multiple wars or anything, just maybe not like like he’s about to say “Don’t have a cow, man” in Bart Simpson’s voice when facing down evil.

Anyway! Zero’s particular story angle is, like his run in general, better than X’s in his own game, and his voice actor feels more appropriate, as well. X4 is a good Mega Man X game overall, in no small part due to Zero’s whole deal — it’s still before the territory where these games lack basically any defenders, we’ll get there eventually — but there are people who love it and think it’s the very best of the X titles, so it’s worth remembering that this is just one person’s opinion on the matter. Maybe you appreciate what it does do well more than me, or prefer this style of Mega Man X to what came before just generally speaking. For me, though, the level design and gameplay aren’t as satisfying as they should be, the level of challenge too low, and while Zero’s up close and personal style fixes the latter issue, it doesn’t change the fact that the former isn’t something a sword can fix. A good game, but not a top-shelf Mega Man experience.

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