I keep a handy list of games I’ve beaten to encourage me to always keep playing new ones. I was looking through it a while ago and made the discovery that Mega Man X2 was nowhere on it, although X1 and X3 were. This was incredibly messed up as I had always considered X2 to be my favorite of the Mega Man X games on the SNES. That was all the motivation I needed. I’m not sure what order I originally played the X games in, as I never found any as a kid and didn’t get to play them until the Anniversary Collection, but they were all at least in a close proximity.

Mega Man X2‘s storyline is significant in that it would cement how all the other games in the series “create” their plot as it’s exactly the same as everything that follows. New Maverick leaders come out of nowhere to wreak havoc now that Sigma has been destroyed for good but wait he hasn’t because Sigma’s been alive all this time somehow or if he wasn’t they’d resurrect him or something and also Zero is dead except he’s not because you bring him back so he can die again in the next game and this entire cycle repeats for as long as the Mega Man X series exists and the developers continue to not care about the series lore whatsoever.

It’s certainly not a big deal for me, but I’m routinely frustrated at how extremely little they try with the scenarios for these games, especially if they’re going to have the bland story interrupt in cutscenes now and again. Portraits from X1 are gone which is a pointless step back and they looked nice. Anyway, Mega Man story, who cares, had to mention it somewhere.

Similar to the story, X2 adds essentially nothing to the Mega Man X formula. If you’re a Capcom fan you’re used to this by now, but it only hurts a little less each time. In X2 three Mavericks known as the X Hunters will randomly spawn in three stages each time you enter the stage selection screen. Their boss rooms are hidden in secret routes, and killing each one nets you a piece of Zero’s destroyed body, allowing you to eventually resurrect him so he can fulfill his job of making the story a micrometer more interesting. He also lets you skip the second-to-last boss, but it’s a good fight that almost seems like a punishment to lose. In any case, these fights basically don’t matter since they can be avoided completely, but they are fun and it’s always cooler to fight special Mavericks instead of the usual cyborg animals.

If you can truly count it as an addition Capcom included their custom Cx4 chip that allowed them to make basic wireframe models. This is barely used and incredibly ’90s in a bad way that makes the enemies made out of them (two?) look cheap and archaic. It’s not really worth mentioning, but when you’re struggling to talk about unique things to Mega Man X2, you gotta.

With all that said, natural differences from the first game arise when it comes to level design even if they’re subconscious and not necessarily intended. Playing X1 with a friend as I played X2 on my own, I felt X2 had a much higher enemy count and more stage-specific obstacles than X1.

This certainly makes it the more challenging game by a noticeable margin, but sometimes this higher enemy count comes at a cost. X2 feels like it has more stopping and waiting than X1, which hurts a series that’s more fun the faster-paced it is (as possibly opposed to the classic series).

All the enemies that cling to walls are particularly annoying. Crystal Snail’s stage is the worst example of this with his jewel robots that clutter tunnels up and also fire lasers that ricochet off them. Enemies like this are very simple to take care of but routinely time consuming and boring compared to tougher enemies, and sometimes I simply plow through them and take damage because it’s not worth waiting to avoid taking a little sliver of damage.

More stage obstacles can be great too, and I like about half of them and don’t care about the others. One that was pretty cool is the enemy that flies ahead and tries to pull a wall together as you jump up it. This emphasizes platforming instead of dodging, something the first game could’ve used a bit more of, and it’s tense as you know you’re on a time limit. It also requires use of the dash for speed, which more platforming in X2 should’ve now that it’s available from the start (this at least is a good idea and should’ve been what X1 did too).

Magna Centipede’s stage has a searchlight gimmick where you need to go behind certain walls and dash in time to avoid searchlights lest you’re spotted and attacked. I like this obstacle too, but there’s little of it, the punishment for being caught is small, and because of that and the fact there’s also a very slight waiting to it you can be compelled as before to just zoom past it because it’s negligible.

The next obstacle in his stage involves waiting for blocks on an automatic path to move so you aren’t crushed by them. This is more waiting and the parts where you have to move and avoid them at the same time are also few and pretty easy. Though I like the idea of more enemies and obstacles, sometimes X2‘s are mildly annoying and I wish I was playing X1 where I didn’t have to bother with them.

A great addition of X2 and certainly the only one that really matters is the boot upgrade giving you a new air dash. X can now dash in mid-air if he didn’t dash before jumping, allowing more ways to get around and dodge. It feels very natural to use and has a lot of spots where the player will use it instinctually. The air dash feels like it completes the dash mechanic and I’m glad it eventually stayed with the series.

I also feel X2 is a little more colorful than the first game and looks better overall, which is nice. There seem to be less stages set in vague factories, but I’m too lazy to check that. X’s helmet upgrade in X2 is cool as hell and I think this is my favorite ultimate armor look for him in the entire series. The music is a bit worse overall, a lot of tunes that sound good while you’re in the stage but don’t stick afterwards. The opening stage theme is one of those that does stick, and I also like Wire Sponge’s theme and Bubble Crab’s theme (but prefer X5‘s remake of it).

Geez, what is there to say? It’s Mega Man X, and it’s one of the best ones despite some mild annoyances. Dashing is cool, blasting robots is cool, techno music is cool, the level of challenge is cool. It’s cool. If you like Mega Man, you’re gonna like this game. If you don’t like this game, you’re wrong. If you don’t think it’s one of the better X games you’re also wrong. I’m not even sure what a Mega Man review is good for since you either like pretty much all of them or none.

An even older review. 10/3/2012 08:55:43 AM

With Mega Man X being a great success at updating the original series and getting very good reception, everyone at Capcom offices was probably relieved to realize they could finally return to doing what they did best: milking the fuck out of the same game series until the milk had dried out and the series was left in the baking sun to die. Luckily for game fans, this was when Capcom still put good effort into their games and although it may have been easy to call X2 a rehash for the most part, it’s a very welcome one. The first game was short after all, and every fan wanted more of that. And that’s just what they got.

X2 uses the same engine as the first game. You go through eight new stages, collect new power-ups including even cooler looking armor, and yadda yadda. If you want to see my opinion on the gameplay of the X series, read my write-up of X1. There’s very few additions here in terms of gameplay. The plot is even more involved than X1, which doesn’t really matter because it’s still pretty uninteresting. The game uses the Ride Armor more often, that giant walking mech you can ride in which sucks because it’s clunky and slow which is exactly what the X games aren’t and shouldn’t be.

It may sound like I’m ripping on the game, but I’m not because those things really don’t matter at all. There are three new characters who call themselves the X Hunters, who are optional bosses that randomly spawn in each of the stages. You can go out of your way and fight them, and if you beat all three you get to see the game’s true ending, making this the first X game to feature optional quests that would impact the game.

In addition to the regular power-ups these bonus bosses add more exploration to the game which is always good. One thing that’s a real bitch is that these bosses go away if you kill too many boss Mavericks. There’s nothing that hints at that happening, so once it does happen, you’re fucked. You can’t go back. This is like the one time in a video game passwords might actually do someone a favor over a saved game.

The stages more or less match the quality of the first game’s, with Wire Sponge and Wheel Gator’s stages being personal favorites. Ride Ostrich’s stage where you ride a motorbike for parts of it is kinda cool and matches the fast pace of the usual gameplay even though it’s auto-scrolling, so that’s good. In general there are more stage obstacles this time around, those things I said were general absent from the X series and featured more often in the original series.

Various unique stage gimmicks that make stages more memorable. One gimmick that’s really easy to overlook is that in Wire Sponge’s stage, there is a glass orb you can break in stages that makes it start raining. This changes the environment, but you can also hit it with some sub-weapons to change the weather even further. It’s an odd amount of detail for something that really isn’t that necessary or beneficial, but a nice idea.

The music is great again, and you can get the Shoryuken from Street Fighter this time around as a secret weapon, even though it’s not as easy to use as the Hadoken (maybe for the better). Overall, this is basically more of the same as X1, with the bonus bosses and stage gimmicks just barely edging it out for me and making it the superior game, in my opinion. Not much else to comment on, so I’m moving on.