Mega Man X7

You know, I was going to be kind to X7. I mean, I was still going to call it a bad game, yeah, but I attributed a lot of the game being bad was a harsh transition into 3D. I should mention I had only played X7 twice... a long time ago, and time tends to heal all wounds. Luckily I played this game again before reviewing it, and that reminded me JUST HOW FUCKING SHITTY THIS AWFUL GAME IS!

I was going to give this game a break and call it a failed experiment, after all sometimes innovation comes at the cost of failure, but NO! This games problems lie much deeper than that. This game is fundamentally broken, lazily designed and horribly written. I don't think any game designer aspires to make a bad game, but I'd swear effort went in to killing the X series with this game. Not only did X7 play like shit, Capcom would learn the wrong lessons with why the game didn't work, and probably killed the chances of a real 3D Mega Man game for a long fucking time.

New Features

• New Character Axl is introduced, who pretty much controls similar to X but comes with a stupid gimmick to collect a couple of items.
• Parts as you know them are gone. Now you get upgrade points when you rescue reploids.
• Like Xtreme 2, you can swap between 2 characters during play. Unlike Xtreme 2, you have this from the start and every level.
• Now in TREEEEEE-DEEEEEE!

Story

This game makes X look like such a fucking whiny bitch. I mean, X was always a pacifist but this game ramps him up into an arrogant cock about it.

"X, they're killing everyone! You gotta do something!"

"No! I'm going to brood about it and whine instead!"

Even Zero is a fucking dick, giving a pompous "whatever" like attitude towards anything. When X finally does join the fight again, Zero doesn't even give a shit.

And then their is Axl, the new guy. He's basically a dumb kid who thinks he's hot shit. Then there's Signas, the incredibly bored commander, and Alia the high pitched annoying navigator. Congratulations X7, you have made me literally hate all of the good guys with this game!

So basically X has retired from Maverick Hunting because this game decided to make him a bitch about his pacifism. I'll grant that X4-X6 tried to blur the line a bit between Maverick and Reploid fighting for... I dunno... some stupid reason or another, and they tried to make the Maverick Hunters a bit more morally ambiguous. They'd have done a better job of this if all the non-Maverick fights didn't have really fucking stupid motivations for fighting, but hey, we're complaining about X7's story now aren't we?

So yeah, X retired leaving pretty much Zero as the only hunter left. It seems weird to me that they go from a full huge force from X1 to just Zero in X7, with just about no explanation but whatever. To fill the void of Maverick Hunters, a group of Reploids takes to vigilantism calling themselves Red Alert, following the lead of the charismatic (if your sound is off) reploid Red. Red Alert goes around lawlessly taking out Mavericks with their good buddy Axl, a young reploid with a strange ability to copy reploids DNA and take on their form. God Capcom, enough with this Robot DNA shit...

Anyway, all is find and dandy until one day Axl gets concerned with Red Alert changing its methods and decides to leave the group to join the real Maverick Hunters, who you would think would love to have new recruits, but like I said in the intro, all the main characters in this game are stupid assholes. Red Alert changes its mind about Axl leaving and starts to stir a bunch of shit up with the Maverick Hunters to get him back. Red challenges them to a duel... which apparently to him a duel means sending 8 Mavericks across to globe to cause havoc.

X is like "Fuck Axl, we don't want to fight on his behalf!" but Zero goes "like they give a shit X. I'm going to go fight for the hell of it." and Axl is like "yeah!" The dialog is so stilted and awkward its hard to determine any of the characters stupid motivations beyond "HURRRR I REFUSE TO FIGHT FOR ANYTHING EVER" and "HURRR COMBAT GUD!"

As the game goes on, Axl mentions Red Alert was using his Copy ability to take DNA from Reploids to power up their force. He notes they started doing this out of no where and completely changed. Then we see a series of what I hope to god are flash backs because if they take place as the game is going on it would make no fucking sense at all, but knowing this game I wouldn't put it past them. Red is approached by, Guess Who? Sigma who begins to manipulate him and his men. He says he needs Axl to retrieve X's DNA. Red finally objects to this, but Sigma has infected his men with the Sigma Virus and forces him to comply for his men... why doesn't he just infect Red with the Virus and fuck all to his objections?

You know, I'd like to say something about Sigma. Dr. Wily is the recurring vilian of the Mega Man games, but it's done in a pretty silly way to fit the atmosphere and you kinda look forward to it during the game. In the X series on the other hand, Sigma is always a stupid after thought who just shows up at the end, and they always play up on it like it'd be a huge surprise. Sigma is a parody of himself by this point who's motivations seem to be "blarg! Bad guy!" He's so uninteresting by this point in the series that even the protagonists don't give a shit about him anymore. What does that say about the writing of this game?

Anyway, if you rescue 64 reploids, which by that point you're about half way done with the game, you unlock X and he joins the fight again. Yeah, you heard me right, you have to unlock the character who the series is named after. Ugh... fuck this game...

You know, I'm not entirely sure this game takes into account that you could theoretically beat it without unlocking X in the story. It might, but fuck if I'm going to play it again to find out, not to mention playing with Zero and Axl is a kick in the balls as it is anyway. No offense to Zero fans, but he blows in this game.

So anyway, after you beat all the mavericks, Red Alert's base shows up on the radar and Alia comments that it's "almost like they want us to find them." Blah blah blah, you fight Red, he self destructs the place, Axl screams for his fallen comrade that... he shot all up to hell? Sigma reveals himself, the cast doesn't care, Sigma starts to win after you fight him but Axl uses his transformation trick to save the day. It'd almost be cool if by this point in the game you weren't so pissed off by the horrible story, bad game play and god awful voice acting that you're just pissed you wasted so much time on this game.

You know how you can get a satisfying feeling from beating most games? Not this one... it makes you want to break the game disk.

From here we get a different cutscene depending on who delivered the final blow to Sigma. If X did it, Signas asks X to train Axl to become a hunter, but X whines about how "no one can train to be a hunter like me! It isn't possible!" God, get the fuck over yourself X.

Zero on the other hand has a dream that X is trying to shoot him for being a maverick. Either this is an attempt at some shitty foreshadowing of... you know... TWO GAMES AGO, or Zero is having some unresolved betrayal issues since X5.

Axl's ending has him begging to be a hunter and doing a lot of junk for the Hunters, but X keeps telling him that he is doing wrong by being so violent and shit. Alia tells X to cut him a break, but X is worried that he'll make the same mistakes X made. Whatever, I fucking hate this game's story.

Aesthetics

X just looks awful, both fully rendered and his hand drawn cutscene representation. The characters all have the same retarded "duuuh" expression on their face. The animation's not bad though.

The stages don't look terrible, although Tornado Tonion's stage is boring as all fuck, and they did the X1 highway again. Speaking of which, who the hell thought the X series needed a ballerina maverick onion for a boss? This is beyond the stupid character designs of previous games. Give me Charge Man and Centaur Man for Christ's sake. Shit.

On the other hand Vanishing Gungaroo is an awesome idea. A baby Kangaroo that drives a Mech version of a mother Kangaroo from it's pouch. Then it boxes you. Fantastic, the highlight of the game if any, too bad it came in this horrible game.

The other bosses are rehashes of shit you've fought before. I mean, come on, Wind Crowfang is just another carbon copy of Storm Eagle. And Sigma... where do I begin... he shoots lasers out of his crotch... yeah.

This the first game where the camera really becomes a fucking problem too. Half the time you're shooting at shit off screen and in the 3D sections your view is almost always obscured.

Sound

Everything that is wrong with the sound in this game can be said with this video. If you've played this game before, you know exactly what I'm talking about already, if you haven't... turn down your volume. We won't discuss that any further.

Every voice in this game is horrible, but especially X's. It's not as if his part isn't written to be horrible enough, but the actor has to give a terrible performance as well. He says really annoying shit when you shoot a charged shot with him as well. "STOP IT!" I hate to say it, but I prefer X4's voice over this shit.

Props to Signas for giving the most emotionless delivery of his lines ever. You know when someone says "Yeah! We'll show em what we're made of!" like a bored actor reading a bad script, it's something special. Zero's voice is so deep and ridiculous it's laughable. To be fair, the voice acting for Zero until this point hadn't exactly been stellar itself.

The sound track is sub par for the series, but passable, but one thing that confuses me is that if you look at the sound track names, X's theme is really... odd. It sounds like a techno... vomit...diarrhea? What the fuck?

Design

Levels in this game fall into 3 categories. Unplayable because they are terribly designed, unplayable because they're broken, or unplayable because they are terribly designed AND broken. Don't be so quick to blame the 3D for this games failings, the 2d levels suck ass too.

Where to begin... should we start with the really boring forest level? The annoying, repetitive radio tower? How about the horribly planned Cyberworld level that plays like an upside down maze? The completely fucking broken air force level where the players platforms can slide right out from under him without any input at all? Let's just make it easy, every level sucks, every level is unfun, and most of them are impossible to play.

In the 3d world, enemies teleport on screen to you at a really close distance. Not only does it look incredibly tacky, but half the time these assholes will spawn into you... ugh.

Next, you've got the problem with Zero. In previous games Zero's primary draw was his functionality in completing stages because his Z-Saber could take out most enemies in just a few hits. In this game, the Z-Saber been neutered. Many enemies take FOREVER to kill, Z-Saber or no, but even if you power the hell out of it, Zero just doesn't have the safety of X or Axl. Not that he's completely useless, he can reflect shots back at enemies, making him somewhat essential to Sigma's final form at least.

Since your stuck with Axl and Zero until you unlock X who, as I'll remind you, the series is named after AND he has top billing in the cast, you'll have to trade off between their styles and their health bars. Axl himself controls like a gimmicky X, using range to his advantage but lacks a charge shot. Axl kinda has his own take on the variable weapons system, getting a new gun after defeating each boss. Not that it matters, because almost all the weapons are useless, for all the characters.

The only weapon worth a damn is Tornado Tonion's and probably not by design. Having Zero use it wrecks everything's shit and it costs no energy. Using this on Flame Hyenard for instance makes that horrible fight go way shorter. As a whole, the boss fights are just boring, and the stiff controls don't help any either. X tears bosses apart, but since you don't have him to start with, you might wanna spend your time rescuing reploids to power up.

Speaking of, the parts system is gone and is replaced by an upgrade system. Essentially you rescue a reploid and he'll have on him a part. There are two reploids with parts per level. After you rescue them, at the results screen you must spend the part, no saving up for X. There are 16 parts in the game, and 12 upgrade spaces per character. Not a huge problem, but unless you go out of your way to avoid rescuing the reploids who drop the parts and rescue all the other reploids, X is essentially impossible to power up all the way. I guess this is made up for by giving X armor upgrades like all the other games. This time we get the Glide armor which allows X to... well Glide across the screen. Actually the appearance of armor upgrades don't make up for it. First of all, you have to use X to open the capsules, meaning either back tracking or careful planning. Heart tanks are distributed a bit different this game too, there are 24 of them in total. You get one in the stage, 1 for saving a reploid and 1 for beating the boss. Which ever character completes whatever action will get the heart tank. So count X out for upgrading his health too high unless you go to crazy lengths to do so, but I should point out that about 8 heart tanks is decent enough to carry any character along anyway.

Good luck if you do actually plan to hold off on rescuing some reploids though as the slightest breeze will kill them the second they appear onscreen, or hell, sometimes off screen. You need to haul ass to a reploid as soon as you see them or they will die. If the game was harder, this might be a problem getting upgrades, but more or less the difficulty comes from poor controls.

Playability

Speaking of... yes this game plays horribly. I maintain that doing a Mega Man game in 3D is possible, but not like this. The game wants to make up for the fact that you can't aim X's or Axl's weapons by giving an auto target function. The problem is, it never aims at what you want it to, and drops target way to fast. Not only that, but half the time it aims at something off camera as it is.

Let's talk about the air force level for a little bit as this level articulates everything bad about this game. First, the design of the level isn't that bad on paper. The player has to hop from jet to jet to reach the main sky-base. This would probably work great in 2D where the designers don't have to worry about programming the hit detection as well as they do the 3D sections. Not to say it can't be done in 3D, but it certain won't be done if the programmers rush the fuck out of it. In this level you'll slip and slide all over the god damned place while the platforms barely move. It's horrible, and every death I've had on this stage was a result of the game bugging out on me. FUCK THIS STAGE! It is the stage that speaks volumes about how much though went into this game.

Oh here's another joy, the camera controls are with the L2 and R2 buttons, but if you press them at the same time, you unleash X's Giga Attack. Guess how many times I've wasted that one?

Extras

• Boss order: Everything is pretty tedious until you unlock X, but Tornado Tunion and Ride Boarski are the easiest, and Snipe Anteater is the only actual hard boss. To save yourself some backtracking if you plan to get X's armor, just hold off on Wind Crowfang, Flame Hyenard, Snipe Anteater and Soldier Stonekong.
• I found in general that rapid half charge shots with X will take out the enemy quicker than the slower paced full charged shots.
• The most important upgrade is the increase in invincibility time in the special slot, followed by half Damage in the power slot. Try to get your main guys these two upgrades above everything else.

The only reason you should consider buying this game is because you want to own the entire collection and because it's dirt cheap at $5. This game isn't even fun in a so bad it's good way. It's just so bad, it's bad. It introduces Axl whom many fans hate with a passion, but trust me, he's the least of the problems with this piece of shit. This game is a rip off a dollar if you find it for that much and extols the worst things about Capcom milking the hell out of the Mega Man franchise. If you're a collector, get it and shelf it, if you want a game to play, just avoid it. Thanks to this game though, we may never see Capcom attempt a 3D Mega Man game ever again.

Playthroughs
PAL Version low% Speed run by Patrick 'Cremator' Salonen

UPDATE: Upon further review you can max out all the characters on a New Game + and you'll start with X in it. Sorry that I was initially wrong about being able to do this, but can you blame me for not wanting to replay this piece of shit?