Topic: Why does everyone hate Mega Man X6?

[Treleus]

You realize that's EXACTLY what the point of the armor system was in X1, right?

Err, absolutely not? They're honest-to-god powerups, not stat boosts. They gave you abilities that usually came with unique visual components as well as tangible abilities. They were also the only choice besides going armorless. Interestingly enough, you can actually clear Mega Man X without even dashing.

In X6, oddly enough, your buster shot is the full and sole "practical" reason that anyone would ever use unarmored X over Falcon X.  It's larger and it actually has better piercing abilities; Capcom over-nerfed Falcon's shot to the point where any enemy whatsoever will stop it dead in its tracks.

It also looks better. I think the Fourth Armor is the first time I started to think that X looked better without an armor. The best looking one is the Max Armor.

[Flame]

On X3's ride armors: They were "keepable" and had lifebars, and were summonable, but the fact is, they just were not implemented well. Only about 2 sections really utilize them fully. And even then it's only for about 3 seconds before you have to drop it to keep going on foot.

Almost every other X game has done Ride Armor's better, simply because they are part of the stage design, and are optional. They are things you come across, and can use. X3 however, while still optional, GIVES them to you to keep, like a power up, and Summon whenever you find the appropriate area to do so, and yet they have the same amount of utility they did in X1 and X2, and no more. They dont actually give you any obstacles or environmental bits for you to utilize the armors potential fully. They dont adapt the stages to them at all. At their worst they are for Item hunting. At their best, they are used for all of 20 seconds.

X4 and X5 actually come to mind most when thinking about Ride Armor's done well.

Err, absolutely not? They're honest-to-god powerups, not stat boosts.

Inafune:
"We were working on this at a time when RPG's were exploding in the market. The whole idea of experience points and additional powers according to your character's level was becoming mainstream. Then there was Mega Man, which was still a more of a classical representation of the action game gnere. I started to feel that mega Man was not shining as brightly in this light. That's why we wanted to bring in more power ups. As far as weapons were concerned, Mega Man always had the 'get new weapons by defeating enemies' system going, so we wanted to add another form of powering up. This train of thought led us to the armor parts that enhance your character."

Mega Man X Complete Works, page 7, The X1 Armor art section.

It also looks better. I think the Fourth Armor is the first time I started to think that X looked better without an armor. The best looking one is the Max Armor.

I have no idea what this "Max Armor" you are talking about is, but I think you mean the X3 armor. I love it's design too, something about it just looks plain awesome. But the sprite itself for it was dreadful. The armor design simply outgrew the sprite style. I do love myself the X4 armor though. It's more- like the rest of X4- the last game that has that sort of classic X1-3 "feel" to it. X5 and 6 instead tried to use motifs for their armors. Falcon, Art Deco, Samurai, Ninja... The Glide armor seems more like an attempt at copying the Blade Armor, and just doesnt feel like it works design wise, and the Neutral Armor is just a bad design. Good ideas, (the bright lights whos colors represent which version of the Armor is being used was nice) but the design itself is not too great. especially the stupid collar.

[Hypershell]

On X3's ride armors: They were "keepable" and had lifebars, and were summonable, but the fact is, they just were not implemented well. Only about 2 sections really utilize them fully. And even then it's only for about 3 seconds before you have to drop it to keep going on foot.

Almost every other X game has done Ride Armor's better, simply because they are part of the stage design, and are optional. They are things you come across, and can use. X3 however, while still optional, GIVES them to you to keep, like a power up, and Summon whenever you find the appropriate area to do so, and yet they have the same amount of utility they did in X1 and X2, and no more. They dont actually give you any obstacles or environmental bits for you to utilize the armors potential fully. They dont adapt the stages to them at all. At their worst they are for Item hunting. At their best, they are used for all of 20 seconds.

One thing about X3's Ride Armors that irks me a bit is how utterly redundant the Kangaroo is.  I love it, it looks positively awesome, but for practicality's sake it is useless.

I have no idea what this "Max Armor" you are talking about is, but I think you mean the X3 armor. I love it's design too, something about it just looks plain awesome. But the sprite itself for it was dreadful. The armor design simply outgrew the sprite style. I do love myself the X4 armor though. It's more- like the rest of X4- the last game that has that sort of classic X1-3 "feel" to it. X5 and 6 instead tried to use motifs for their armors. Falcon, Art Deco, Samurai, Ninja... The Glide armor seems more like an attempt at copying the Blade Armor, and just doesnt feel like it works design wise, and the Neutral Armor is just a bad design. Good ideas, (the bright lights whos colors represent which version of the Armor is being used was nice) but the design itself is not too great. especially the stupid collar.

Dammit, Flame, how do you keep reading my mind?

Well, anyways, the term "Max Armor" comes from X3 toy packaging, though it is believed to be simply the Japanese equivalent to "full armor" (Used to refer to X1, X2, and X4 armors in MMXOCW).  The confusion comes from the fact that the X3 armor is the only "unnamed" armor to appear in Bandai's Mega Armor Series.

And oi, X8's collar...  I don't think I've ever seen such a transparent attempt to cover a Mega Man artist's laziness in my life (we can't see X's mouth = we don't have to do armored expressions).  Yoshikawa had no business staying in the art director's chair after allowing a stunt like that.

[Flame]

Lol, I know where Max Armor comes from. I was being smart.

[Treleus]

On X3's ride armors: They were "keepable" and had lifebars, and were summonable, but the fact is, they just were not implemented well. Only about 2 sections really utilize them fully. And even then it's only for about 3 seconds before you have to drop it to keep going on foot.

Almost every other X game has done Ride Armor's better, simply because they are part of the stage design, and are optional. They are things you come across, and can use. X3 however, while still optional, GIVES them to you to keep, like a power up, and Summon whenever you find the appropriate area to do so, and yet they have the same amount of utility they did in X1 and X2, and no more. They dont actually give you any obstacles or environmental bits for you to utilize the armors potential fully. They dont adapt the stages to them at all. At their worst they are for Item hunting. At their best, they are used for all of 20 seconds.

X4 and X5 actually come to mind most when thinking about Ride Armor's done well.

Technically, the Frog Armor was part of Toxic Seahorse's stage, but nobody likes that one, so it doesn't count (right?). The same could be said of the Chimera or the Kangaroo armors in Blizzard Buffalo's stage, where you use them to destroy the ice blocks to get to the life-up. The Hawk Armor is arguably the most useless ride armor in the game, but lemme tell you, I would've loved that Ride Armor in Crystal Snail's stage; and even though the Armor Chips were useless compared to the Gold Armor, the Hawk Armor was the best choice to get at the one in Blast Hornet's stage.

They're partly for item-hunting mostly, sure, but I never considered that a bad thing in X3 of all games. At least the items you have to find in that game are distinguishable, few, and simply distinct; or they were a Light Capsule, which were a real treat half the time. You don't need to rescue a random Reploid to get them or lose them to one of the many ubiquitous Nightmares floating around. Besides that, it's just fun to bash or blow stuff up with the armors even though they're confined to a limited space. This is literally the same condition that previous Ride Armors are confined to: about 10 percent of the entire stage they're in. Why is X3 criticized for this when it not only does the same thing, but even gives you choices between different Ride Armors, after having gone through the effort of finding them? They might not be the best use of Ride Armors, but they were the most fun and expansive use of them by far.

Ultimately, both the Ride Armors and the Parts systems have potential, but I argue that the Ride Armors are demonstrably more iconic to Mega Man X and part of what made that series fun from the start. The Parts system was nice, but better implemented in games like Mega Man 7 and 8. In X5 & X6 they become too complicated in an effort to be like RPGs, which is not what Mega Man X ever needed as an action game. If they wanted to make Mega Man X into an RPG, they should've just went ahead and made Mega Man X Command Mission well in advance of when it was actually made.

Ironically, didn't Inafune dislike Command Mission? Saying something like it wasn't a direction Mega Man X should've gone in?

Inafune:
"We were working on this at a time when RPG's were exploding in the market. The whole idea of experience points and additional powers according to your character's level was becoming mainstream. Then there was Mega Man, which was still a more of a classical representation of the action game gnere. I started to feel that mega Man was not shining as brightly in this light. That's why we wanted to bring in more power ups. As far as weapons were concerned, Mega Man always had the 'get new weapons by defeating enemies' system going, so we wanted to add another form of powering up. This train of thought led us to the armor parts that enhance your character."

Mega Man X Complete Works, page 7, The X1 Armor art section.

If the armors were inspired by RPGs of the time, that's great. But it's still a far cry from adopting hardcore RPG conventions like buying, selling, and finding equipment that changes your "base stats" a little bit. The armors don't raise X's hit points (those are confined to eight different powerups which fit better with an action platformer than an RPG) or his attack points or [parasitic bomb] like that. They change the way he functions in an action sidescroller: giving him a buster attack that looks and behaves differently than what he had before, the ability to dash, and the ability to bash things with his head. You just don't look at a game like Mega Man X and think, "Oh yeah, that's kinda like an RPG." It's still very much an action game. Any similarities it might have with an actual RPG are superficial at best and blatantly dubious at worst.

I have no idea what this "Max Armor" you are talking about is, but I think you mean the X3 armor. I love it's design too, something about it just looks plain awesome. But the sprite itself for it was dreadful. The armor design simply outgrew the sprite style.

I'd chalk it up to lack of initiative. If they could dramatically change Zero's basic sprite from game to game (and they've done so; the only exception is from X4 to X5), then they could've done a little more work with X's sprite as well.

[Flame]

Hawk Ride Armor is in MY eyes, one of the best. And it is terribly underused. Again, they give you these walking tanks with their own lifebars and the ability to one shot enemies, you can summon them in stages, any one of them you like- and then the extent of it's usefulness is breaking ice blocks to a heart tank, something that could just as easily have been relegated to a special weapon. That's not good implementation.

When the game hands me something like those Ride Armors, I would expect them to be for something other than item hunting. I would expect the stages to be factored in.

Understandably however, it would have been nearly impossible to adapt the stages to the Ride Armors when there are different types with different abilites. Outside of alternate pathways, they couldnt have adapted one area to all of them.

That's the kind of Ride Armor utilization I like.

Meanwhile, every other X game that has a Ride Armor segment, adapts the stage to it, or at least makes it the most convenient way to traverse the stage. I think only X2 seems to have an X3 like problem with it's ride armor, particularly in the Dino Tank, But then again, at least it gives you some beefier enemies to fight with it, while X3 just has it's tiny little grunts.

It's why I love the Eagle Ride Armor so damn much. It was not only an improvement on what Hawk offered, but it was actually utilized in it's respective segments since it had that indefinite flight. The final stages even utilized the split paths concept, and made a Ride Armorless area, and a bottomless pit area traversable with the Eagle.

And X5 had an entire alternate pathway at the start of the second area of Mattrex's stage based around going THROUGH the lava with the Raiden Armor, as opposed to over it, which would instead net you a miniboss chase and battle.

The armors don't raise X's hit points

They decrease the amount he loses though.
And Heart Tanks DO.

they may not be as RPG as Symphony of the Night or Command Mission, but for the time, they were by the team, considered RPG elements. The idea that you would get more items as you grew stronger. Whether you like it or not, they were there solely to introduce an RPG-like concept into the franchise.

[Treleus]

How did stages from X1 "factor them in"? They were just plopped there for their own sake, and they lasted about 20 seconds too. You never even got to fight Vile with one of them, which would've been awesome. The only way they were factored into the stage was by having enemy operators standing around to fight you in them until you showed up, which was actually absent from X3, so point against it. It's significant, but still pretty minor, considering you could just repel and destroy them with your own weapons anyway.

So yeah, item hunting is pretty much the only other thing you would use the Ride Armors for aside from just busting people up.

Adapting X3's levels to each Ride Armor would not have been impossible. Everyone complains about there being too much empty space in X3, so a good use of all that space could've been obstacles or secrets best suited to a given Ride Armor. Mind you, they shouldn't be required, but merely helpful and fun to use. X3 could've been the series' inaugural foray into nonlinear-ish Metroidvania type gameplay where the levels were a little more open-ended and the Ride Armors were a little more varied and even more useful than before. Unfortunately, that didn't happen.

The chest part of the armor does decrease damage, but it only does it once. The heart tanks do increase health like in RPGs, but they were meshed so well with the exploration aspect of an action sidescroller like MMX that they were effectively just powerups. I see the similarity to RPG powerups, but I don't agree it should get any more complicated than that. Both the armors and the Heart Tanks may have been inspired by RPG conventions, but they became simple, fixed action-game staples to the MMX games: nothing more, and nothing less. MMX is more like Metroid than it is like Breath of Fire or Final Fantasy. If anything, I think MMX should be going in that direction.

[Flame]

but it only does it once

Chest pieces decrease damage taken, and convert it to Giga attack energy. That means every hit you take.

Both the armors and the Heart Tanks may have been inspired by RPG conventions, but they became simple, fixed action-game staples to the MMX games: nothing more, and nothing less.

Noone's arguing that. We were just stating, that they were introduced solely to introduce an RPG kind of element of "growing stronger", when you mentioned that Power up parts are a step in "RPGing up the action". Armor poarts were exactly that, and the Power up parts from Xtreme 2 onwards are just another extension of that. In fact, I would say they are an extension of the X3 chip system, and they do it far better. I could use your argument for the Armors and Heart tanks for those as well. They are just power ups, and add replayability to the game.

[Treleus]

Chest pieces decrease damage taken, and convert it to Giga attack energy. That means every hit you take.

I meant the percent of damage reduced stayed fixed. It didn't level-up with experience or anything like that, and that was the only armor in the game you could get.

Noone's arguing that. We were just stating, that they were introduced solely to introduce an RPG kind of element of "growing stronger", when you mentioned that Power up parts are a step in "RPGing up the action". Armor poarts were exactly that, and the Power up parts from Xtreme 2 onwards are just another extension of that. In fact, I would say they are an extension of the X3 chip system, and they do it far better. I could use your argument for the Armors and Heart tanks for those as well. They are just power ups, and add replayability to the game.

The armor parts were more substantial than the individual parts system, though. I agree that they do add an RPG-like element to the gameplay, and I don't have a problem with that, but it's in a more dramatic way than in the more minimalistically RPG-ish parts system. With the parts, you have some that give you a +1 to attack power or attack speed, or one that gives you a (very) temporary buster overdrive, or one that slightly extends your saber length. It's a level of customization that I think does too little and spreads itself too thin across several parts you salvage from random Reploids in each stage. The armor parts and even the heart/sub tanks do more by themselves or together than the parts do, and they're more fun to find. Basically, I feel the same way about the parts system that I do about the multiple forms in ZX or ZXA: too much customization.

I don't really mind having new items or powerups to collect, but the way X5 and X6 implemented them were too minimal and not very fun to find at all. They didn't mesh as well with the action gameplay of MMX as the armors, Ride armors, and heart tanks did.

[Sigma Zero X]

On X3's ride armors: They were "keepable" and had lifebars, and were summonable, but the fact is, they just were not implemented well. Only about 2 sections really utilize them fully. And even then it's only for about 3 seconds before you have to drop it to keep going on foot.

Almost every other X game has done Ride Armor's better, simply because they are part of the stage design, and are optional. They are things you come across, and can use. X3 however, while still optional, GIVES them to you to keep, like a power up, and Summon whenever you find the appropriate area to do so, and yet they have the same amount of utility they did in X1 and X2, and no more. They dont actually give you any obstacles or environmental bits for you to utilize the armors potential fully. They dont adapt the stages to them at all. At their worst they are for Item hunting. At their best, they are used for all of 20 seconds.

X4 and X5 actually come to mind most when thinking about Ride Armor's done well.

Inafune:
"We were working on this at a time when RPG's were exploding in the market. The whole idea of experience points and additional powers according to your character's level was becoming mainstream. Then there was Mega Man, which was still a more of a classical representation of the action game gnere. I started to feel that mega Man was not shining as brightly in this light. That's why we wanted to bring in more power ups. As far as weapons were concerned, Mega Man always had the 'get new weapons by defeating enemies' system going, so we wanted to add another form of powering up. This train of thought led us to the armor parts that enhance your character."

Mega Man X Complete Works, page 7, The X1 Armor art section.
I have no idea what this "Max Armor" you are talking about is, but I think you mean the X3 armor. I love it's design too, something about it just looks plain awesome. But the sprite itself for it was dreadful. The armor design simply outgrew the sprite style. I do love myself the X4 armor though. It's more- like the rest of X4- the last game that has that sort of classic X1-3 "feel" to it. X5 and 6 instead tried to use motifs for their armors. Falcon, Art Deco, Samurai, Ninja... The Glide armor seems more like an attempt at copying the Blade Armor, and just doesnt feel like it works design wise, and the Neutral Armor is just a bad design. Good ideas, (the bright lights whos colors represent which version of the Armor is being used was nice) but the design itself is not too great. especially the stupid collar.

I actually liked the Neutral Armor.  The white shoes look cool and the armor abilities rock.  However, I will admit that although the Neutral Armor is my favorite armor in design and probably function, it could have been better.  The black line streaks on the white shoes has got to go. 

Come to think of it, something tells me that the designers really wanted X to look like Casshern without being a direct rip off in design.  If they wanted X to really be more similar to Casshern, they should have done the following things:

1.  The black streaks on the white shoes must be moved to the leg guards if they want to keep it.  The shoes must be completely white and the black streaks should be present on the leg guards to show more similarities to Casshern's boots. 

2.  The collar needs to be moved behind X's neck.  If the designers wanted a mouth guard for X, they should have made the mouth guard similar to the Shadow Armor's.  This time, the Neutral Armor could have the mouth guard open and close at X's will when necessary.

Now if only Tatsunoko and Capcom could have X and Casshern team up and/or fight each other or something. 

[Flame]

Well again, what bothers me MOST about the Neutral Armor, is the collar. Without it, I probably wouldnt have any issue with the rest of the design. I personally would consider it a bit lacking, but it makes up for it by the interesting gimmick of Red and blue lights for each Armor variation.

[Karasai♪]

Speaking of Casshern and Neutral Armor, look at the first concept of Mega Man X

[Ladd Spencer]

Popped collar = Edgy

I love it.

[Irregular Ass-R-Us]

I don't hate X6 at all in fact personally i liked it more than X5 and a tiny bit more of X4. It had:
*Amazing Soundtrack.
*High Difficulty ( I love really hard games )
*Good/Ok Story for me.
*The Shadow Armor and Blade Armor are quite cool.
*I liked The bosses.
*Zero was improved more game play-wise.
*It had a better feel for me overall.

What i didn't like:
*I didn't like the levels.
*Gate.
*High Max.

So really i actually like X6.
 

[Mirby]

Ahem.

Check the last post date, dude.

It was almost an entire year ago.

[Protoman Blues]

And it was on topic and used more than one word, so it's perfectly fine.

[Mirby]

My bad. Forget I said anything then.

*slinks under the trash compactors in Metal Shark Player's stage...*

[xemiroth]

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[xemiroth]

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