Welcome to the 7th topic in the 'Rate and Discuss' series. This topic is about a Ride Armor that really lives up to it's name, the
Eagle!
The Eagle Ride Armor made it's first (and only) appearance in Megaman X4. It was available in 2 stages; Storm Owl (Part 1) and Final Weapon (after defeating Double/Iris). It pretty much had the same basic appearance as Raiden did, with a few differences here and there; it was blue in color (instead of pink), with two rather large wings behind it, and it also had a rather large buster on it's left arm.
True to it's name, the Eagle had very advanced aerial capabilities. It was capable of both an air-dash and a hover, like X's foot part, but the abilities here were much more advanced. The Eagle's hover was infinite, and it even lasted if you were to get hit, although you would lose a little altitude. This was particularly useful when you simply wanted to fly over minor enemies below, or over a pit. The air-dash was pretty nice as well; it traveled farther than X/Zero's and was surprisingly quick despite the bulk of the armor. This was a pretty decent way to get around, and was particularly useful when you didn't want to find yourself roasted by one of Storm Owl's ships.
The Eagle wasn't without a good offense, as it had plenty of power to back itself up. The standard attack of the armor was to fire moderately sized pink shots. These were pretty handy on their own, but the real beauty of this armor was the charged shot. It fired 3 homing plasma shots that more or less tore through any enemy. They were pretty accurate in terms of homing; if there were no enemies on screen, the shots would simply spin around a bit before flying off, as if they were just waiting for something else to show up. You could even charge and fire the shot while hovering, which gave you a considerable amount of power from the air.
Overall, the Eagle was a pretty solid Ride Armor, IMO one of the best in the series. A couple of the Ride Armors had given X aerial capabilities before (Hawk and Rabbit), but the Eagle felt a lot more fleshed out overall. It's a shame you weren't able to bring this thing into battle against a Maverick like you could with Raiden, would've been a blast. I'd have to give the Eagle a perfect
10!
Post your opinions/ratings/thoughts here!
Previous installments:
Vacuum ArmFalcon ArmorHyper ShellArrow ShotBlade ArmShining Laser