Welcome to the 5th topic in the 'Rate and Discuss' series! This topic is about the Falcon Armor, an upgrade that gives X quite a lift!
The Falcon Armor debuted in Megaman X5, where the new capsule system was introduced. X (or Zero) now had to find all of the armor parts before he could use them, and there were now 2 armors instead of the usual one. The Falcon Armor was the first one X could find (outside of the Fourth Armor that you start with) , as you needed Falcon to get Gaea's parts.
Anywho, the Falcon Armor's main gimmick was that it could actually fly, which was a large step above the usual air-dashing. You were actually invincible (mostly) during flight; only certain projectiles could hit you, such as those rather annoying waves Sigma insists on chucking at you. You could actually take advantage of this to a rather large extent, particularly during Skiver's dash routine. It actually did minor damage to enemies too, which was pretty interesting. You weren't going to actually kill anything important with the minor damage you got, but it was something.
Interestingly enough, you couldn't actually charge weapons with this armor, but the head part gave you a larger supply of ammo to work with. The Buster Part was pretty useful here; the charged shot had laser-like capabilities and actually pierced through anything it hit, including walls. This was pretty useful for those irritating shielded enemies in the Zero Virus Stages. Lastly, the Body Part did the usual routine of having the damage X took, but also gave him a Giga Attack as well. The Giga Attack caused charged shots to vertically fly through the screen, hitting whatever happened to be there. Not particularly good or bad, I honestly didn't find much of a use for it, personally.
The armor was pretty useful overall in X5, particularly with the Speedster attached. It was pretty solid in terms of enemies and bosses; not as powerful as Gaea, but still able to hold it's own rather easily.
Come X6, X started out with a degraded version of this armor. It lost it's unique flight ability in exchange for an air-dash that did minor damage and offered very little protection. I guess it's nice if you can't avoid Wolfang's Ice Burst on your own, but otherwise it's just your standard air-dash. The armor could actually charge weapons now, which was nice to have from the start. The buster shot did get nerfed, however. It no longer had it's old piercing abilities, and was now nothing more than a very skinny charged shot. The Giga Attack remained the same, although it did get a flashy background to accompany it.
X6's Falcon Armor was pretty useful as far as armors go. While it lost a big chunk of it's mobility, it's charged shot was arguably more useful than Blade's, which counts for something. It really had no gimmicks, but was pretty solid overall. The Falcon Armor gets a perfect 10 for the X5 variation, and an 8/10 for the X6 version.
Post your opinions/ratings/thoughts here!