after i had finished megaman 7 and 8, which were the main ones i wanted to play in that series i was a little unsure of where to go next, should i go back and re-try the early games i didnt care for? or try another subseries altogether? the choice was made for me once i realized that X7 existed and that there was also a whole JRPG in megaman command mission and knowing this i went ahead and started megaman X next purely so that i could eventually get to those games. X to me is a slight step down though, at least from MM8 which so far is my favourite one by a large margin, the skill floor still feels very high and it's very difficult if you play it as was intended, though not as hard as the earlier megamans i still found it much more difficult than 7 and especially 8, thankfully the way i played, being the X collection had a mode called rookie hunter that let me essentially be invincible to damage and let me actually beat this one once it became clear i would need it, to some this might ruin the fun and the challange and yeah it did make the game easy, but that's how i like my games so i'm happy playing this way! this made it a ton more fun, i could focus a lot more on the cool art and music and it enhanced my experiance a lot, though i think traditional save states which the collection lacks would have been a nice addition as well.

i do like how it sticks to the formula of the mainline games but has enough changes to really be its own thing, the dash is super fun and the gimmick stages like the mech are really cool! you also have a lot more options for movement than the mainline games, while you still have your main weapon, the ones you collect from mavericks and your slide/jump, here you also get a wall grab which can turn into a wall slide or a jump, which i think makes the platforming a little easier, it's a welcome addition, you also have armour parts which is new, in levels you can find these, some are hidden but some are mandatory and they give you cool effects like extra health, new charge attacks and even a hadouken if you're able to find it, i loved seeking these out so much, it ads like a collectathon feeling element to it for me and it really helped get me more invested in the game. the rest of it is largly similar though in all but tone, at least for this game, i know many later ones diverge much more. it's the simple MM setup of 8 bosses that have different weaknesses and a big boss rush at the end,it's a good setup and it lasted this long for a reason, once you really get into the swing of things it's really fun taking out bosses in no time with the right weapons, though with all the upgrades you can get i feel like you actually feel a lot more powerful here than you ever did in any of the megaman games before, though it will still be difficult.

the other big change here is the tone, it's a much darker and more serious game, where i would compare the original mega man games to something like astroboy, x is closer to a shonen anime in tone, a little more edgy and serious and honestly i really like it, i think the cutsey tone of MM8 is still my favourite of the platformer ones but it works really well here, the more actiony music and serious, cooler character designs really give it a cool feel, like you're playing a shonen anime complete with a hot rival and a big bad and his underlings and the story feels more dangerous and serious than the originals, with more concern on a real plot concerning a robot uprising instead of just a little adventure for him to go on, there's even a cool little OVA in the psp version that goes more in depth with it, give it a watch!. there are still cute elements, some of the enemies are still adorable and the look of inafune's designs can still land much closer to the cuteness of the older games than a lot of contemporary shonen designs especially in how the sprites and fodder enemies look, it's a really beautiful game honestly. the backgrounds here look great, some stages like chill penguins are so cozy and nice to be in and launch octopus's stage is a top tier water level with amazing effects and a really nice vibe to it as you wander the beachy sea bed (though a more chill song would have been nice), special shoutout to the sting chamelions jungle too, it felt so dark and dangerous and i love all the mechanical trees and armoured armadillos stage for bricking the games frame rate in a really funny way, you love to see it. the sprites are super high detail and amazingly animated, it feels super high budget for the time like there was a lot of care put into how it looks and sounds. the soundtrack is also just legendary, chill penguin, armored armadillo, storm eagle, spark mandrill, hell all of the stage themes are absolute classics, the soundfont here is iconic and almost every track in the game is listenable, i also love the password screen especially (which should be playing in the background if you have autoplay music on) i'm not totally sure who composed what though, with Setsuo Yamamoto (of street fighter alpha, JOJO HOTF and some later deadrising and resident evil games), Makoto Tomozawa (of dino crisis 1&2, megaman legends, PN.03, many of the original resident evil games and even quite recently the newest SAO game), Yuki Iwai (who has worked on one of my fav osts with musashi for ps2, many a r-type game, street fighter 3 and even a few mahvel games), Yūko Takehara (who also worked on many a jojo, namely the ps2 one, four swords and even star gladiator) and Toshihiko Horiyama (of ace attourney, ghost trick and even some mega man EXE and onimusha games) it's safe to say it's a stacked lineup at the very least, could be argued to be one of the most stacked of any game.

this was also the first real gig for tokuro fujiware, while he did have a special thanks credit on mighty final fight, he would prodice this game as "professor F" and work on a few of the sequels and he was also involvd with a ton of classics like the original resident evil, the tomba series and extermination (an early swery title). x would go on to be a big hit, obviously, and have a ton of sequels and spinoffs which are the main reason i wanted to play the games, the ps1 x games seem beautiful and x7 and command mission feel like they could be my favourite ones, there's even some gameboy spinoffs that look really neat, though sadly outside of a remake for the psp, a ps2 collection which was missing the later games but did have the racing game as an unlockable and an HD collection (that was missing the gameboy games and command mission) the series has been entirely dormant outside of some cameos in things like deadrising and UMVC3, which is a shame because these characters are really cool and i'm excited to see where the series goes from here.