Can sequelitis be a bad thing?

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Offline Waifu

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on: April 02, 2010, 06:39:43 PM
I enjoy playing games a lot especially when they come up with a sequel that is better than the original but can too many sequels and prequels be a bad thing? I am a Mega Man fan as much as anyone on this forum but the quality on some games leave a lot to be desired although your mileage may vary this. I know the adage, "If it ain't broke don't fix it" but at the same I was kind of expecting more for my buck and even some sort of deviation from the norm. Some are just plain terrible in a lot places that could had been avoided if they paid more attention to the game itself but they are human and video game business is still business. Can having too many sequels going on every year be bad especially if thew quality is stagnate?



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Reply #1 on: April 02, 2010, 06:53:17 PM
Legend of Zelda and Kingdom Hearts, while both are popular franchises, thier continuity's quite.. akward. They have a prequel series, a sub-series, a spinoff series, a sequel to the first game, a trilogy to a saga, a card game, and whatnot.

It can really be messy to put these events in proper order. IDK.

Next we have Sonic, Mega Man, and Mario. Thier continuities are almost basically daily life of a superhero. Defeat the bad guy, and save the city/get the girl in the end. simple, but can be extremely tiring afterawhile, that's when we get sub-series and spinoffs every now and then.

For many others, it depends.  :\

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Reply #2 on: April 02, 2010, 07:25:23 PM
Don't forget the "Final" Fantasies that have different stories and characters with each sequel.

Some of the characters show up in later games as cameos.
The games also have side-stories with different lead characters.
And then there's Dissidia where one lead character from each game fights one main villain from each game.

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Offline Alice in Entropy

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Reply #3 on: April 02, 2010, 07:29:44 PM
Can an abundance of sequels be a bad thing? Yes. Yes, it can. Easily. Is it always a bad thing? No, not necessarily.



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Reply #4 on: April 02, 2010, 07:38:51 PM
Yes, my uncle died from this.



Offline Black Mage J

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Reply #5 on: April 02, 2010, 07:41:55 PM
It depends if you totally whore out the franchise (Mario Party)
Or if you take your time to perfectly craft a good game (Nothing comes to mind, Street Fighter maybe?)
Or if you do a little of both (Final Fantasy)



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Reply #6 on: April 02, 2010, 07:51:52 PM
It depends if you totally whore out the franchise (Mario Party)

But I need new minigames where I have to input a specific command the fastest.  Also, I've become so good at pressing the A button repeatedly that we need to start giving people more bonus stars for sucking.



Offline Dexter Dexter

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Reply #7 on: April 02, 2010, 08:00:09 PM
The Matrix trilogy started out good, but went downhill when Revolutions came out.

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Offline Alice in Entropy

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Reply #8 on: April 02, 2010, 08:04:54 PM
The Matrix trilogy started out good, but went downhill when Revolutions came out.

YMMV, I liked the whole trilogy.



Offline Dexter Dexter

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Reply #9 on: April 02, 2010, 08:08:41 PM
By the way, that was the general reception of the trilogy. I never saw Reloaded, and I only saw part of Revolutions.

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Offline Tickle Buffalo

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Reply #10 on: April 02, 2010, 08:10:57 PM
Can asking too many stupid questions be a bad thing?



Offline HyperSonicEXE

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Reply #11 on: April 02, 2010, 09:37:51 PM
The important thing that must be done with sequels is to have largely the same mechanics and settings of the last game, but change the atmosphere and add some change-ups to the player's tools and surroundings. For example:

Mega Man -> Mega Man 2
LoZ: Ocarina of Time -> LoZ: Majora's Mask
Sonic 1 -> Sonic 2
Super Mario Galaxy -> Super Mario Galaxy 2
TMNT 3: TMP -> TMNT 4: TIT

Now then, you also have the other side of that spectrum where horribly shallow or written stories, confusing player feedback, rushed developers and deadlines, or having too many "visionaries" over a project as cooks spoiling a broth, or added gimmicks (RIDE CHASERS...) and elements ruin an otherwise good game, case in point:

Starfox 64 -> Starfox Assault
Mega Man X5 -> Mega Man X6
Sonic Adventure 2 -> Sonic Heroes
Mega Man Battle Network 3 -> Mega Man Battle Network 4
Mario Party 2 -> Mario Party 3 (and on), same holds for the Mario Kart series



Offline commandycan

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Reply #12 on: April 02, 2010, 10:06:43 PM
Kojima can't make a Metal Gear 3 because it is an old franchise and consumers will not be familiar with it. In result, the game is instead called Metal Gear Solid. Now that Kojima has a successful brand this new title must stay so that consumers know they are getting a reliable product!

Thus Raiden is born (bad thing).

I'm willing to let go because of MGS3, but the opinion still stands.



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Reply #13 on: April 02, 2010, 10:22:35 PM
Mega Man X5 -> Mega Man X6

X5 and X6 utterly convinced me that there is no true guarantee of relating development time with quality of the product, as the latter is obviously more rushed (boss sprites) and yet is still far more fun and generally better thought out.  No matter what complaints one may draw against the Nightmare System, it does not compare to the most ass-backwards power-up, armor, and ranking setups that I can possibly imagine, Zero's legendary boss AI stupidity, and one of the most pointless character deaths imaginable (Let's kill him in a BOSS EXPLOSION. *facepalm*).

It really depends.  There are obvious instances where a tight time limit is detrimental (read: Sonic), but all the dev time in the world doesn't do jack if the crew doesn't pay attention to what they're doing.

So yeah, it can be bad or good.  But to go with the "Star Fox Assault" mention above, I frankly think that more flight games NEED to see some sequelitis.  Every time somebody takes a good fighter pilot out for an on-foot adventure, it's a recipe for disaster.  If it wasn't for the TIE Bomber I'd probably never look at Star Wars Rebel Strike's single-player mode again.

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Offline HyperSonicEXE

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Reply #14 on: April 02, 2010, 11:17:37 PM

X5 and X6 utterly convinced me that there is no true guarantee of relating development time with quality of the product, as the latter is obviously more rushed (boss sprites) and yet is still far more fun and generally better thought out.  No matter what complaints one may draw against the Nightmare System, it does not compare to the most ass-backwards power-up, armor, and ranking setups that I can possibly imagine, Zero's legendary boss AI stupidity, and one of the most pointless character deaths imaginable (Let's kill him in a BOSS EXPLOSION. *facepalm*).

It really depends.  There are obvious instances where a tight time limit is detrimental (read: Sonic), but all the dev time in the world doesn't do jack if the crew doesn't pay attention to what they're doing.

So yeah, it can be bad or good.  But to go with the "Star Fox Assault" mention above, I frankly think that more flight games NEED to see some sequelitis.  Every time somebody takes a good fighter pilot out for an on-foot adventure, it's a recipe for disaster.  If it wasn't for the TIE Bomber I'd probably never look at Star Wars Rebel Strike's single-player mode again.

As for the Starfox part, there can always be an element of "trial-and-error" in game design. Most people could tell very easily of the successes of trial-and-error in the development of Team Fortress 2, and chose the art style as well as story elements and updating the game's content. Paid off massively.

But Mega Man X6 is a very sad development tale. X5 did so well, and the fans did not want to see the series end, and the company believed more profit could be obtained, so, against the will of the creators of the series, Mega Man X6 was produced and carried on an even more confusing and plotholed story from where X5 left off and was supposed to give a great series a decently-fitting end with Wily cameos and Zero becoming Maverick, not to mention Ultimate Armor Sigma. The idea was also introduced to give Zero's saber to X as an added tool for the player, which also led to the brainstorming of the Blade and Shadow armors. While useful in some instances, the Blade and Shadow armors were not flexible and useful in every situation, which added to the stress of the Parts System. The Nightmare system is largely optional, and it's true that the Reploids which have these parts are easy to rescue (did you notice?). However, figuring out what parts and armors WERE compatible with some stages became a headache for the player, especially in the Gate stages. And of course you couldn't just allow the player to switch Parts in the middle of gameplay; that's open to all sorts of untold programming abuses and glitches that would break the game. I argue that the Movement Upgrade parts could have been a separate matter, but still. There was also a need for increased flexibility when the designers wanted the Nightmare System to randomly generate stages, but that was more than likely dropped due to crushing/random programming-caused no-fault deaths and the lack of specific goal performance which would create player confusion in getting the Rescue Reploids and power-ups physically located in those stages. Then, to further complicate the entire matter, the stage layout, boss, and puzzle designs along with the general difficulty level were VERY reminiscent of a Classic Mega Man game, something that heretofore was really only seen in the end stages of X5!

There was no need to do that! Mega Man X1-5 were comparatively and relatively easy unless you restricted your arsenal! Players had a very fun time being X and Zero, two internally conflicted but refreshingly competent protagonists, that offered a flexibility not seen in many of the games of their time and certainly beats some of the games now! Compared to the instant-death traps of X6, Zero series, and ZXA where the player doesn't want it or expect it, nor can adjust for it quite like they can in the 8-Bit Mega Man classic series where patterns, jump distances, puzzles, and platforms are so much more discernible thanks to the primitive graphics!

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And...that's why I rail against hard games. Mega Man X6 and even the Zero series and ZXA are probably decent games to some and did not present insurmountable challenges, but they just aren't forgiving to the general public, or new players, or to those like me who want a powerful protagonist worthy of backing justice and don't die, to have fun playing the game and not be interrupted. Being about the journey, and not the destination. It's also about looking out for the majority of the buying public, who just want to have fun, who already have a lot of stress in their lives, and don't need more headache from those kinds of games. Which, in turn, looks out for Capcom, or whoever the developer may be, in the form of increased revenue. Just look at how some of the best-selling games or those that beat out every other entry in the series are so easy: FF7, SMRPG, KH1, TMNT 4, the list goes on. But I'm still aware of those who love these difficult challenges, and suggest the addition of a Hard/Insane mode for them. I applaud Mega Man 10 for having an Easy, Normal, and Hard mode, and owe the classic Mega Man series for a lot of my game design prowess.

It's a conservative design philosophy. And the philosophy of the Wii, which is why I welcomed it, even when the stories were bland, but because the intuitive control scheme made these games easier to handle, and fun again.

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Offline Hypershell

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Reply #15 on: April 03, 2010, 03:53:37 AM
against the will of the creators of the series

It's "creator", singular, and such comments glaze over the fact that Inafune didn't give a rat's ass about the series finale in the first place.  If some effort was put into creating a decent series ending then that would be one thing, but one turning their back on the series is quite another.  Inafune told the team to end it and, by his own admission, "had very little to do with X5."  Hell, he didn't even create the title character of the X-series.  Hayato Kaji did that.

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Mega Man X6 was produced and carried on an even more confusing and plotholed story from where X5 left off and was supposed to give a great series a decently-fitting end with Wily cameos and Zero becoming Maverick, not to mention Ultimate Armor Sigma.
Zero becoming Maverick is an alternate scenario, one unfitting with him retaining his heroic role a century or more later.  Wily cameos are highly passive and unresolved; if X5 was to be the end then Sigma's taunting leaves one hell of a loose end.  Sigma's death is poorly explained, not that future attempts did any better.  The only "finality" of the game is the fact that the co-star, Zero, is dead.  And his death is truly in vain, having accomplished nothing that one wouldn't expect a hero to actually live through.  Slapping the player in the face with that detail is the 50/50 chance that X and not Zero is standing right in front of the explosion that kills Zero.  And finally, which makes more sense, that Zero was retrieved and revived in a matter of weeks by what is likely an avatar of his creator (as X was in a matter of days by his), or that his corpse was left in a forgotten field of debris until an elf paid him a visit next century?

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While useful in some instances, the Blade and Shadow armors were not flexible and useful in every situation
Pot calling the kettle black considering the limitations of Gaia, which couldn't even dash at full speed; and Falcon, which offered no chargeable weapons and a harder to aim shot.  Furthering the point, X6's armors are more readily available, and may be collected as the player sees fit to provide decent use of either (not that Blade is all that worth it, unless you're into Mach Dashing).  In X5, this is not the case.  Gaia is completely impossible to obtain without Falcon, meaning you will not have completed it without having already visited all 8 stages (and having required to clear 3 of Falcon's stages, for necessary special weapons, so you can't even suicide your way to early armor to correct this).  And the first Zero Virus stage, your first test drive of the armor, is exactly where Gaia's limitations hurt it the most and leave you in instant death traps.  In virtually no other MegaMan game is power-up availability even an issue, by nature of the stage select system.  That X5 managed to screw it up that badly is pitiful.

Speaking of stage select, X5 really kills that aspect of the MegaMan name with the obvious intended order of Crescent-to-Rosered.  Say what you want about split weapon cycles, there are instances where it is called for.  X5 was definitely such a case.

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the stress of the Parts System.
DO NOT get me started about the stress of X5's part system.  Ask anyone who has seen me rant about it before.  It is the single most ill-conceived power up layout that any MegaMan game has ever seen, rewarding you for repeated suicide, punishing you for actually fighting, never allowing more than 50% completion, requiring repeated suicide to even reach that, and senselessly tying parts together in counter-productive combinations, particularly the character-specific ones.  The more ignorant you are as to how it works, the better.

And as far as constant game stress goes, never underestimate the value of the Select button.  Something X5's devs forgot when doing Alia.

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that's open to all sorts of untold programming abuses and glitches that would break the game
Not that it's helpful or even relevant to my argument, but Xtreme2 wants a word with you.

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There was also a need for increased flexibility when the designers wanted the Nightmare System to randomly generate stages, but that was more than likely dropped due to...
Get equipped with "translation errors."  Unless of course you still believe there's a female impersonator in Command Mission, that Xtreme2 takes place in a bathroom, that both X7 and X8 are 2-player, and that nobody realizes that X is in his office in X7.

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those like me who want a powerful protagonist worthy of backing justice
One could easily argue that X6 provides this on a level that no other entry in the series has, as the extent to which you can tank up your character once the ludicrous restrictions of X5 have been lifted is POSITIVELY MASSIVE.  X6 isn't just hard, it's rewarding, because when you've clawed your way through all the Reploid rescues and Nightmare Soul collection, you have built your character into a freaking engine of destruction; a tank that can plow through insane enemy mobs and realistically remain standing through it all without the need to memorize every bullet in the stage (compare to any Inticreates game where challenge is achieved by handicapping the player).  That's what I love so much about Gate's Lab.

I'm not saying X6 is the best way to handle the series in general, or even that it's fiscally responsible.  It is something that a "hardcore player" (I hate that label, but for lack of a better term) can appreciate, and I'm glad it happened, but it should remain a one-shot deal.  Nobody ever said that a series of Lost Levels would have kept Mario successful.

That being said, X6 corrected a great deal of X5's flaws, both in mechanics and in story.  There are definitely certain elements of it that the series could stand to revisit, most notably the philosophy of avoiding special weapons as pre-requisites for obtaining other power-ups.  Seriously, I want to smack whoever came up with charged Crystal Wall.  There's also the aesthetic appeal of mugshots that properly display your armor, something no other post-X4 game has really gotten right.

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Offline DjKlzonez

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Reply #16 on: April 03, 2010, 04:02:02 AM
tl;dr, short version please?

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Offline HyperSonicEXE

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Reply #17 on: April 03, 2010, 05:19:10 AM
It's "creator", singular, and such comments glaze over the fact that Inafune didn't give a rat's ass about the series finale in the first place.  If some effort was put into creating a decent series ending then that would be one thing, but one turning their back on the series is quite another.  Inafune told the team to end it and, by his own admission, "had very little to do with X5."  Hell, he didn't even create the title character of the X-series.  Hayato Kaji did that.

I was crediting Kaji with X and Inafune with Zero. And not just them; all the people involved in seeing the X series through over the years. But, Capcom deserves the lack of success from the latter X games, particularly after a key designer wants to end it. And also deserves all the players that left the MMX and MMZ/ZX series for leaving too many loose ends, alternate endings, and cliffhangers which is why:

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Zero becoming Maverick is an alternate scenario, one unfitting with him retaining his heroic role a century or more later.  Wily cameos are highly passive and unresolved; if X5 was to be the end then Sigma's taunting leaves one hell of a loose end.  Sigma's death is poorly explained, not that future attempts did any better.  The only "finality" of the game is the fact that the co-star, Zero, is dead.  And his death is truly in vain, having accomplished nothing that one wouldn't expect a hero to actually live through.  Slapping the player in the face with that detail is the 50/50 chance that X and not Zero is standing right in front of the explosion that kills Zero.  And finally, which makes more sense, that Zero was retrieved and revived in a matter of weeks by what is likely an avatar of his creator (as X was in a matter of days by his), or that his corpse was left in a forgotten field of debris until an elf paid him a visit next century?

Didn't seem so out of place, because it's just like Capcom to do exactly this sort of thing as seen in their Darkstalker and Street Fighter games. Only, at the time, nobody would have guessed that those alternate endings would become such an entangled web after a couple of new games and a new series (MMZ) that was completely vague about the in-between events. I don't think this will EVER get resolved, and the series and Capcom's bottom line will suffer for it.

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Pot calling the kettle black considering the limitations of Gaia, which couldn't even dash at full speed; and Falcon, which offered no chargeable weapons and a harder to aim shot.  Furthering the point, X6's armors are more readily available, and may be collected as the player sees fit to provide decent use of either (not that Blade is all that worth it, unless you're into Mach Dashing).  In X5, this is not the case.  Gaia is completely impossible to obtain without Falcon, meaning you will not have completed it without having already visited all 8 stages (and having required to clear 3 of Falcon's stages, for necessary special weapons, so you can't even suicide your way to early armor to correct this).  And the first Zero Virus stage, your first test drive of the armor, is exactly where Gaia's limitations hurt it the most and leave you in instant death traps.  In virtually no other MegaMan game is power-up availability even an issue, by nature of the stage select system.  That X5 managed to screw it up that badly is pitiful.

DO NOT get me started about the stress of X5's part system.  Ask anyone who has seen me rant about it before.  It is the single most ill-conceived power up layout that any MegaMan game has ever seen, rewarding you for repeated suicide, punishing you for actually fighting, never allowing more than 50% completion, requiring repeated suicide to even reach that, and senselessly tying parts together in counter-productive combinations, particularly the character-specific ones.  The more ignorant you are as to how it works, the better.

But Falcon did have invincible flight, which more than made up for it in the context of X5's stage layouts. And Gaia's main strengths were in good use of the Ultimate attack as well as lightning-fast full charges.

And readily available? Unless there's some kind of Part kerfunkery going on here with X's Air Dash, you pretty well can't get the Shadow Armor without the Blade Armor's Mach Dash. There are areas of X6 that the Shadow Armor can't even get through without the aid of Parts. Falcon and Gaia in X5, not so.

Parts in X5 were quite obviously a bonus as not only were they not necessary to beating the game, but also only fully obtainable by exploiting the time system. Indeed, the less you knew about it the better, because even then you only got half the Parts, something X6 did improve but in a very time-consuming way. Both games failed for not letting the player easily adjust in a stage without having to Game Over or exit or even replay a stage in order to reach certain areas.

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One could easily argue that X6 provides this on a level that no other entry in the series has, as the extent to which you can tank up your character once the ludicrous restrictions of X5 have been lifted is POSITIVELY MASSIVE.  X6 isn't just hard, it's rewarding, because when you've clawed your way through all the Reploid rescues and Nightmare Soul collection, you have built your character into a freaking engine of destruction; a tank that can plow through insane enemy mobs and realistically remain standing through it all without the need to memorize every bullet in the stage (compare to any Inticreates game where challenge is achieved by handicapping the player).  That's what I love so much about Gate's Lab.

I'm not saying X6 is the best way to handle the series in general, or even that it's fiscally responsible.  It is something that a "hardcore player" (I hate that label, but for lack of a better term) can appreciate, and I'm glad it happened, but it should remain a one-shot deal.  Nobody ever said that a series of Lost Levels would have kept Mario successful.

Can't much be considered a hard or hardcore game if you "tank" a character, at that point. Which I'll give you; I do remember a tank run of X6 and being quite powerful and I could barely see my lifebar budge; didn't get that except in X3 after the Gold Armor, which I'll get to later.

Now when you do complete X6 by limiting yourself in, say, an Unarmored Run (ala Inticreates' style which is also faulty), then it becomes worthy of that label. But I remember 100%ing it back in the day; when I had that much time on my hands and was that impressionable, it was an achievement. But really, I have a hard time approving a game that even has powerups (optional or not) for some sort of Difficulty Gold Standard. You can get through Devil May Cry and Bayonetta better than you could before after obtaining upgrades (including the Devil Trigger), so that's just not cool.

That said, we've tanked X and Zero before X6, but they were already powerful before the Parts or the extra Life and Weapon Ups after beating a high level boss (X5) or rescuing certain Reploids (X6). Their attacks had such a range and hitbox, in addition to having the mobility of dashes/air dashes/wall dashes, that they didn't need much extra save for the Weapons, Heart Tanks, and Sub (and W and Life) Tanks. Which now brings me back to the Gold Armor.

Consider each of the 4 chips a Part. Now, imagine if X3 had stages wherein you fairly well needed the Double Air Dash to get through. What then of the other 3 parts? The Gold Armor took care of that. Parts always felt like they were shoehorned in, unnecessary additions to the series that could have been better done with one single armor with all the improved mobilities (Jumper, Hyper Dash, etc.). Which is what X6 should have done given how useful, even necessary, some Parts were to X6's stage layouts.

Along with the occasional secret. The Ultimate X Armor and Dark Zero Armor are proof-positive that the developers did indeed get lazy on us. X1 had the Hadoken, X2 had the Shoryuken, X3 had the Chips, Gold Armor, and Z-Saber. X4, Ultimate and Dark. Fine. X5? Ultimate and Dark. ...what, again? X6? Ultimate and Dark. Okay, now it's just getting old.

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That being said, X6 corrected a great deal of X5's flaws, both in mechanics and in story.  There are definitely certain elements of it that the series could stand to revisit, most notably the philosophy of avoiding special weapons as pre-requisites for obtaining other power-ups.  Seriously, I want to smack whoever came up with charged Crystal Wall.  There's also the aesthetic appeal of mugshots that properly display your armor, something no other post-X4 game has really gotten right.

X6 did improve the fact that you could get all the Parts, and that it certainly polished X5's rough graphical edges (and lord were there a lot of those), but was a far cry from the usual Mega Man X experience. Of course you could argue that the X series jumped the proverbial shark back in X4 by adding Zero as playable and causing the first of the story splits, or X5 by giving X more than one armor, but X6 does it even more by adding more alternate endings on top of your alternate endings, and makes the Saber the strongest weapon in the game even so much as crippling the final boss when it had usually been about Mega Man X and the buster on his arm knowing his fate.



Offline Protoman Blues

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Reply #18 on: April 03, 2010, 06:04:16 AM
Can asking too many stupid questions be a bad thing?

Not if it makes you laugh.



Offline Bag of Magic Food

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Reply #19 on: April 03, 2010, 07:47:49 AM
Legend of Zelda and Kingdom Hearts, while both are popular franchises, thier continuity's quite.. akward. They have a prequel series, a sub-series, a spinoff series, a sequel to the first game, a trilogy to a saga, a card game, and whatnot.
Wow, Kingdom Hearts has that many games already?  I was only aware of maybe 2 or 3.  It seems like not that long ago we were all going "Whaaaaat, Mickey Mouse is in some kinda Final Fantasy world??"



Offline Blackhook

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Reply #20 on: April 03, 2010, 10:35:07 AM
The X series stopped being fun after X2, then X8 was fun again...my opinion...


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Reply #21 on: April 03, 2010, 11:26:59 AM
I have never played an X game beyond X1, Xtreme 2 and Command Mission.



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Reply #22 on: April 03, 2010, 05:13:10 PM
I'd say X4 and X6 were a lot more fun than X8...

I was crediting Kaji with X and Inafune with Zero. And not just them; all the people involved in seeing the X series through over the years.
So when did any besides Inafune express a desire to end the series at X5?  If you can't answer that, your statement is still false.

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I don't think this will EVER get resolved, and the series and Capcom's bottom line will suffer for it.
Sans Wily, which wouldn't have changed whether they ended the series at X5 or not (if anything X6 at least makes his presence more believable; Zero's creator should not have left him for dead that easily), there is very little in the X-series that was left unresolved.  Most of it is the fans simply not paying attention.

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But Falcon did have invincible flight, which more than made up for it in the context of X5's stage layouts. And Gaia's main strengths were in good use of the Ultimate attack as well as lightning-fast full charges.
No argument from me.  But Shadow's strengths of spike invulnerability and ludicrously powerful charged saber are just as valid.  Blade, I can't really defend; I honestly believe that armor was made so that if a sequel recycled past armor as X5/X6 did, they wouldn't have to water it down.

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Unless there's some kind of Part kerfunkery going on here with X's Air Dash, you pretty well can't get the Shadow Armor without the Blade Armor's Mach Dash.
That statement could not possibly be more wrong.

First of all: Zero.

Even going the X-solo route, "part kerfunkery" gets you wherever you need to go, no weapons.

You don't like parts?  Well, going X-solo and completely part-less, you need only Ice Burst and Metal Anchor (and no, I am not referring to pause physics exploiting; I don't do that).  It doesn't even require an air-dash, so you can do it unarmored if you're feeling crazy enough.

This is EXACTLY what I mean when I say that people who complain about X6's obstacles give up too easily.  The level design is far better balanced, and "impossible" obstacles far less frequent, than most people think.

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There are areas of X6 that the Shadow Armor can't even get through without the aid of Parts. Falcon and Gaia in X5, not so.
I've been over this a zillion times, air-dash is a default feature of X6 (your default character is Falcon, not unarmored, which exists solely for challenge).  You should not be sacrificing that without being aware of where it'll cause you problems.  X6 is considerably more open in structure than other games of the series, that comes with some level of responsibility for the player.  Granted an always-enabled stage exit as opposed to Start/Select would have streamlined things, but the end result is the same (outside of X Collection which axed the Use Previous Data option).

There's a reason parts in X5 are useless, because they are considerably easier to miss than any amount of Nightmare-eaten Reploids in X6.  Again, a completion rate higher than 50% of parts, and 66% of life/weapon Ups, is completely impossible within the game.  Not only that but what parts you're gaining and what part you're sacrificing during the crucial "weapons and..." choice are not in any way indicated, so it cannot be planned without previous knowledge.  There's no sense in it.  Besides getting Zero to a few otherwise impossible locations (and his lack of access is another major complaint of X5, there are a fair share of power-ups he cannot reach), the vast majority of them are not in the least useful.  Speedster/Falcon is one of the major exceptions.

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Can't much be considered a hard or hardcore game if you "tank" a character, at that point.
That's a subjective argument.  Any amount of defenses can be worn down, the level to which enemy numbers/strength make it fair or challenging is up to personal preference.  But I think most can tell you that X6's mobs are crazy enough that you can't be too lax.  Some of the boss attacks are rather powerful, too, particularly Nightmare Mother.

I should probably note at this point that I play X6 on exclusively on Xtreme mode (as I do with any other X-game with variable difficulty).  I can't vouch for damage rates on the other settings.

The definition of a "true" challenge is also HIGHLY subjective.  If you have limited yourself (BTW I have done Gate's Lab unarmored), you're pulling punches, and to me that is a fake challenge.  It says that you're only having a hard time because you're not taking your opponent seriously in the first place.  A true challenge is one which remains challenging after you have used your arsenal to its fullest extent.  Most of Inticreates games are baby simple by such a standard.  Some, such as Z2 and ZX, don't even allow such a scenario, as the game mechanics render a fully powered player against a fully powered boss completely impossible.

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that they didn't need much extra save for the Weapons, Heart Tanks, and Sub (and W and Life) Tanks.
The fact that X5 is counter-productive to this in its part layout is one of my many gripes with it.  Between the Energy/Life Ups, it's fairly obvious that Zero is in greater need of Life (lacking armor, and access to several Heart Tanks) while X is in greater need of Energy (special weapon consumption).  But their character-specific parts are more often than not tied the opposite way.

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Which is what X6 should have done given how useful, even necessary, some Parts were to X6's stage layouts.

There is no instance in which parts are necessary for Blade Armor to clear a stage.  Same holds for Ultimate, and for Zero.  Only Falcon, unarmored, and Shadow are applicable.  In other words, your default form, and whatever is less mobile than your default form.  Your default form is stuck ONLY in the beginning of the first stage of the game's final stretch, no big loss if you need to Start/Select out and grab Jumper.  Shadow, lacking one of your default abilities, is stuck only one stage later.  In the game's final stretch, there is no excuse for not being adequately equipped.  Especially not since, as you so adequately pointed out, even obtaining the Shadow Armor requires either a firm grasp of the game's physics and obstacles, or an appreciation of the Mach Dash.

The idea is that the parts allow you to counter-balance Shadow's weaknesses, something X5's Gaia really desperately needed.  In the same manner, Overdrive can compensate for its lack of special weapons, allowing you to lay the smack-down on bosses that much faster.

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Along with the occasional secret. The Ultimate X Armor and Dark Zero Armor are proof-positive that the developers did indeed get lazy on us. X1 had the Hadoken, X2 had the Shoryuken, X3 had the Chips, Gold Armor, and Z-Saber. X4, Ultimate and Dark. Fine. X5? Ultimate and Dark. ...what, again? X6? Ultimate and Dark. Okay, now it's just getting old.
To be fair, Zero is not supposed to be armored (barring whatever technical leap goes on in 22XX), so Black Zero as a recurring theme is as natural as his ground-punching.  Furthermore, even though they're visually the same, their abilities have varied title-to-title.  X4 did nothing, X5 had virus-busting, and X6 had an attack boost.

Ultimate Armor I'll give you, but at least in X6 the Ultimate Armor was actually unique compared to the game's pre-existing arsenal (even if I do find it odd that it was not given a specialty saber attack).  Not so in X4 and X5, where it is simply infinite Nova Strike (Seriously, why did X5 not start you with Stock Charge?  It'd have made so much more sense.).

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and makes the Saber the strongest weapon in the game even so much as crippling the final boss when it had usually been about Mega Man X and the buster on his arm knowing his fate.
Said quote is from before the saber existed.  Said saber is only the strongest weapon when combined with said buster (Shadow Armor).  Said buster, also allows manhandling certain bosses without even having to move (Wolfang and Sigma's first form in particular).

As for the final boss, he died three weeks ago, his weakness is to be expected.  That said, I find it refreshing to have the good guys playing offense for a change, rather than waiting patiently for Sigma to retry annihilating the planet.

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Offline Zan

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Reply #23 on: April 03, 2010, 07:12:48 PM
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Mega Man X6 and even the Zero series and ZXA are probably decent games to some and did not present insurmountable challenges, but they just aren't forgiving to the general public, or new players, or to those like me who want a powerful protagonist worthy of backing justice and don't die, to have fun playing the game and not be interrupted.

ZXA?.... How is ZXA in any way a hard game comparable to Rockman Zero's pride damaging upgrade system? ZXA follows the classical X formula of health upgrades, auto regenerates your weapons, and offers the ability to slow time over and over again. Only the final stage has cheap hazards, and at which point, you should have all the mobility to overcome it with some smarts.



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Reply #24 on: April 03, 2010, 07:36:48 PM
Wow, Kingdom Hearts has that many games already?  I was only aware of maybe 2 or 3.  It seems like not that long ago we were all going "Whaaaaat, Mickey Mouse is in some kinda Final Fantasy world??"

KH1, Chain of Memories (Sub-Game, leading to KH2), KH2,  KH: BBS (Pre-KH1, Backstory), That Cellphone game, the PSP game, KH3, and two other games (all three are in production, the aftermentioned cellphone and PSP games, along with the DS title, makes six titles released, having the TCG number six if you count it).

And that's already eight games in the franchise. The card game itself is considered "A spinoff title" since the player controls the outcome of the battle with one of the world's most trickiest card battle systems. Which in the end makes NINE (eight if you don't coun't the TCG).

Then there's also the manga re-telling of the first game that was published by Tokyopop. :P

Workshop/DA/YT/Photobucket なにかんがえてるの!?
So its about ass now huh? EVEN THE ASS HAS 'EXCEEDED'!

One mention of LEGENDS and everyone goes batshit.  :\

Yep, every time when someone mentions that game people get energized for an apparent reason whatsoever. It's like this everywhere else, trust me.

It got really messy to find my sprite and comic topic, so it's in my sig.