itself? More of the same... or rather, more of the same things that made the series great and less of the problems that made X6 and X7 terrible. Yes folks, Mega Man X8 is actually a good game, and thank god, it feels so long since I played a good X game.Capcom has apparently given up on taking these action platformers into 3D and you won't find any of it here, unless of course you're on a set track in a couple of the boring levels. Mega Man X8 sticks to what the series knows and while playing it safe makes a decent game, doesn't make a lot of effort to experiment. Although as we learned from X7, if you're going to implement something half assed or badly, you might as well not implement it at all. While X8 is among the good X games, it is probably on most fans bottoms of that list. For what it's worth though Capcom touted this game as the last of Sigma... but then they quit making X games so that tells you what happened to the creativity there.
New Features
- New Characters Pallette and Layer. Apparently their artist was staring at his photoshop GUI when he came up with the names...
- A hit counter has been added to keep track of how many enemies you hit consecutively without getting hit yourself. This, in combination with a few other mechanics affects your hunter ranking.
- Heart Tanks and Reploid Rescues are gone. The upgrade system from X7 has been carried over and tweaked so that you'll use metal, the in game currency, to pay for your upgrades. Luckily this time you can power up each character all the way... though it may take multiple playthroughs.
- The two character team has returned in this game, and now you can execute a Double Attack with them that wipes out all smaller enemies and takes a good chunk off of the bosses. You'll also get to choose a mission navigator between Alia, Pallette and Layer, more on that later.
Story
Not much has changed since X7. Axl became a full fledged hunter, the world started building a space elevator to colonize the moon, and the cast got better voice acing.... Well I guess the space elevator is something significant.
So the space elevator is called "The Jakob Project" and is being built by reploids for mankind.
One day one of the cars on the elevator flies off and crashes into the ground. X arrives on the scene first and spots Sigma getting out of the wreckage... but not just Sigma, a whole lotta Sigmas! X is just about ready to fight when a Reploid named Lumine explains that these reploids all have a copy chip, like the one Axl has, but it's improved to the point where the new generation reploids that have them can copy the form of any reploid they possess data of, and one of those reploids they have data of is Sigma, whose frame they used to avoid damage in the crash. Luckily the new reploids are immune to any viruses so copying Sigma won't cause them to go Maverick. Don't worry about the ominous camera angles and lighting, I'm positive this isn't any foreshadowing what so ever.
Well just at that moment a bunch of mechlanoids go Maverick at nearby Galapagos Point. X, Zero and Axl head down to investigate and find... Vile? Aren't you supposed to be scrap metal? Vile laughs and has kidnapped Lumine in order to take over the Orbital Elevator. The hunters return to base to find out that 8 of the new generation copy reploids have gone Maverick and started tearing up sites related to the the Orbital Elevator. Since this contradicts what Lumine just told X about being immune to the maverick virus the hunters start doing investigations on these mavericks in addition to taking them out.Alia discovers that all the Mavericks are carrying Sigma's personality and not only do the Mavericks not seem to be under his control be seem to "be him." Axl on the other hand has not gone Maverick because he is a prototype and his copy chip is weaker and doesn't contain Sigma's DNA. Eventually Sigma reveals himself as the one behind the rebellion and says "Long time no see, X" again. Does he say that in just about every fucking game? It's like his catchphrase. They end up chasing him down to the Moon where Sigma explains that all the new generation reploids are his children since they contain his DNA in the copy chip and he'll be able to regenerate forever and blah blah blah the hunters take him down.
Then Lumine shows up and says Sigma is dead for good now and that the new generation reploids never went maverick, they made a conscientious decision to rebel. I.E "We new generation reploids can go Maverick at will!" Alright... kind of an odd way to put it. Lumine says he'll (yes it's male I guess) usher in a new age for the evolution of reploids by killing all the humans and obsolete reploid models. While he's cackling, Axl shoots him. Axl is a lot more tolerable this game, thumbs up for that one.
Anyway in a real twist, Sigma is indeed not the final boss and Lumine is. Take him out and he
goes on about how they have no idea what's coming and they can't stop it and then his chassis cracks and a big black tentacle thing smacks Axl upside his head and breaks his crystal. X says he's damaged but he'll survive. Zero seems glad and wonders if Sigma is really dead and if he'll ever have to fight again (maybe and no), and X is worried about what Lumine said, but Zero reassures him that they kick ass. What they don't see however is a strange purple ominous glow in Axl's broken crystal. Hmm, just what the hell is that all about?We then get an epilogue about how the Copy Chips ceased production for a while then people said fuck it and started them back up thus making the epilogue entirely pointless.
What's up with Axl? Did the purple glow contain maybe the Maverick Virus? Something else? Well the answer to these questions might never be answered because this was the last X game in the series to be made in the last 5 years. Great Capcom, just quit the series just as you make the annoying character suddenly have something interesting happen. This is especially great as Axl is never mentioned again in the entire series except for what could possibly just be a red herring in ZX Advent.
So the X series now stands on a cliff hanger with a few possible routes to explore in sequels. X9 will probably be made some day, but Inafune says it's on hold right now. Don't fret though, it's not anywhere near the same boat as Legends 3 is.
Aesthetics
I guess technically the this game is the highest end in graphics that the franchise has ever gotten, making use of fully rendered 3D models and cutscenes.... but... I dunno, the characters look weird, really flat faces and the texture work isn't that good either. The rendered cutscenes though show some understanding of cinematography noticable from the foreshadowing lighting and camera angles on Lumine for instance.
Character design is much better over all, at least for the mavericks. I mean... yeah there is a character named Optic Sunflower... You know what, I rescind my previous statement. I think Pallette and Layer look really strange for my tastes... a bit too anime in my opinion but that's really subjective nitpicking and you might even like their design. Alia got a redesign herself and she looks alright, oh and now you get the nice option to finally shut her up for good!
The stages themselves are kinda bland to look at. I mean, the first stage looks pretty good despite X6 telling us all the worlds ecosystems were totally fucked up and people were living underground... I guess it got better? The rest of the stages though just seem pretty deviod of any interesting aesthetic features or designs. Compare this game to Zero or Battle Network or ZX, or even the PSX games. Those games just make better use of their screen's canvas I think.This game doesn't look bad by any means, I just don't think Capcom put as much effort into the visuals of this game as they could have. I know they have modelers, texture artists and concept people capable of doing much more, this is the same company that pushed out Resident Evil and Devil May Cry after all.
Sound
If you're someone that thinks the X game's soundtracks got too much into the metal genre, thi
s game is going to support your position quite a bit. Just about every track on this game has a guitar wailing away, whether accompanying your descent into a volcano, tip toeing through a power plant or riding a hover bike through the city, there will be a guitar.That said, at least the PS2 is capable of producing the sounds much better than it's predecessors, and for what it's worth the game features over 50 tracks and there are some good tracks, but this game is about run of the mill as far as Mega Man music is concerned.
The Ocean Group returns for the voice acting and gives decent voice acting performances all around, although I am really getting sick of Sigma pretty much spouting out the same stupid lines over and over. Not that the voice actor did a bad job, this is a writing complaint. "Long time no see X!" Yes, I know you say the same fucking thing every game, fuck. Overall though this is the best acting Job the X series has ever gotten... though Lumine sounds like a woman, although as my understanding goes this is supposed to be intentional, but wow is it weird to here them keep referring to Lumine as a male.Design
The best way to sum this game up is better than X6 and X7, but not quite as good as most of the other games. Really, mediocre would have been a huge step up for this game, but there was some ambition here that kept it from stopping at mediocre. What we have here is a game that is mostly good with a few boring or annoying stages.
For your good stages you've got Optic Sunflowers gauntlet of mini games, Bamboo
Pandamonium's ride armor stage, and Gravity Antonion's fun but incredibly difficult stage where you manipulate the gravity of the room to shift around boxes and spike positions.But then you have your boring stages. Gigabolt Man-O-War's stage is a boring rail shooter as is Avalanche Yeti... they made two of those fucking annoying ride a vehicle and shoot shit levels. My hate for these types of levels has been noted through out the series. Then you've got stages like Burn Rooster where the hit detection on the spikes is so fucking finicky coming into this stage without the Prickle Barrier isn't recommended.
Bosses are fun, but have this annoying mechanic where for a limited time in the fight they are invincible while they unleash a desperate attack that all you can do is dodge. This pops up regardless if you have the bosses weakness or even if you use the Giga Attack from X's Ultimate armor, it'll reduce the boss to one hit point and you'll still have to wait through this sequence. It didn't bother me initially but has gotten more annoying as I replay the game.
Speaking of armor upgrades, everyone's got one this time, even Axl has a hidden one you can pick up. Power Up's in this game work differently than the other ones though. From now on you collect metals in each stage and buy the power ups. Each character has their own set of upgrades you can buy and they keep track of what percentage of upgrades you have on the character, although some of these items need to be first collected in the stages to unlock them first. While it is possible to upgrade everyone in one game, it's certainly not practical (without cheating) as metals come really really really slowly. The good news is the game saves your character progression through playthroughs so you can set goals for yourself each time you replay it.
While you're going through with the actual game though you'll only be able to take a couple of characters and the levels are suited to different characters. X has his charge shot and armor upgrades, Zero his Z-Saber melee attacks and different weapons and double jump, and Axl has rapid fire and a hover move. You'll need all three of them to collect all the items, and quite a number of them are rather obtusely hidden, such as certain areas where you need to use X's charged Crystal Wall ability to grab items out of the ground... damn it Capcom, I thought we learned our lesson about arbitrary item placement when we fixed Rush Search in Mega Man and Bass! Others require you to use Axl's A-Trans ability, which is once again 90% useless, although at least some of the animations associated with it are kinda funny.
As far as difficulty goes this is one of the tougher games in the series. It's not full of stupid overwhelming bull shit like X6, nor is the game as broken as X7. Sure, Burn Rooster's still a cock (pun intended) but what helps this game immensely in the difficulty department is that because you'll always be collecting metals as your playing, the game will continually get easier and easier as you upgrade your character. All the games are like this, but X8 doesn't require you to find anything hidden to do it. If you're persistent enough, you'll eventually reach a point where the upgrades have made the game beatable for you and that's a good way to bring in new players 8 games in.
Playability
You should have no trouble picking this one up. Only two stages are particularly annoying and it's because of spike placement. Watch out for Gravity Antonion's and Burn Rooster's stages. You'll probably want Zero for these stages as he is the most maneuverable.
Extras
- Boss Order: It's been awhile since I've had to collect items in this game, but my boss order after doing all that is Earthrock Trilobyte, Gigabolt Man-O-War, Avalanche Yeti, Burn Rooster, Bamboo Pandamonium, Dark Mantis, Gravity Antonion and then Optic Sunflower.
- Having trouble S-ranking Optic Sunflower's stage for some of the items you can collect? Beat Dark Mantis so Zero has the Rasetsusen and then buy the Durga Glaive. It's reach combined with Zero's speed will wipe out just about all the minigames.
- Although AAA ranking the stages doesn't have any tangible benefits it can still be satisfying to do. Bring Axl along to help you do this as his rapid fire can boost the combo meter to astronomical heights against certain enemies.
- Collecting Metals can be a pain after you've played the game so many times. If you want an easier time with it, buy an Energy Refill for your E-tank when you have less than 50 metals. The counter will fuck up and next time you collect a metal the counter will go to 999,999 metals.
Mega Man X8 actually has some decent ambition in it to put itself at a much higher standard than X7, and I think anyone can appreciate that. Still, it's not as good as the past games and the Zero series blows this game away. Still this entry adds hope for continuing the series... that is if Capcom hadn't shelved it for now. We got one more X game left, and it's a remake, but it's been a while now and with Mega Man 9's success, I wouldn't be surprised to see X9 soon.
Playthroughs
You loathe it, I play it - Megaman X8 by Kung-Fu Jesus
Speed Run by Patrik 'Cremator' Salonen, and 100% speed run by Chris 'Satoryu' Kirk
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