Although yesterday was the final day for this,
I had beaten Mega Man X4 last week but didn't really type up a reflective post for it. I was a little busy, to be fair. I also managed to sneak in a bit of a Zero run, but boy am I rusty. I can't no-hit this thing without a fair amount of practice at the moment.
Mega Man X4 is still
one of my favourite games ever. While X4 kind of marked the beginning of the Zero era to me (with playable Zero for an entire game (I know you could play as him in X3)), I think it also marked the beginning of the subseries being incredibly narrative-driven. Voice acting, animated cutscenes, lots of text (something I generally dislike in Mega Man, but I digress), etc. gave players a chance to experience Mega Man X in ways they hadn't before. The voice acting sucked and some of the lines were cheesy as hell, don't get me wrong, but it's simply interesting that the plot became more of a focal point in X4.
As I'd mentioned before, playing as Zero and X are entirely different affairs. X is typically suited for beginners/people new to the game, since it's your standard "find upgrades, fight Mavericks, get their powers, levels are slightly harder to complete but bosses are easier, etc". Zero brings something a
bit new to the table with close-range melee combat, zipping through the levels, and bosses being slightly harder than they should be. You only get sword upgrades at the end of bosses with Zero, so it's rather difficult to take bosses down since you have to a: get up close and personal with them, and b: you don't have power taken from the other Maverick bosses to make them go down fast.
Controls in X4 are great. But controls in Mega Man games are usually great and tight. There are some exceptions, of course. Coming back to this game felt like coming back home, though. I was incredibly satisfied with how the game felt.
Level design is generally decent, and I don't really mind the two-part divisions like I did in MM8. What I truly appreciate, though, are the leap of faith sort of jumps and the timed platforming. I also appreciate the level aesthetics, the enemy sprite design, and the playable character design. Mega Man X4 is a very lovely, beautiful game. Sprite animation is top-notch, background and foreground changes and activity are very nice to look at, and there's tons of colour
everywhere. Personally, I kind of wish the X games didn't deviate from this style, but nonetheless, we don't always get what we want. Going in this direction truly made X4 a true successor to the original three games and demonstrated that yes, indeed, sprite-based platformers
can survive on the PS platform.
And, uh, well, you know what I'm going to say about the soundtrack. Mega Man music isn't shitty, not in a general sense. Even if the game isn't very good, you're still going to get a fairly decent soundtrack out of it (Xtreme / Xtreme 2 notwithstanding). X4, like the other X games, tends to knock it out of the park. On and off of GAF, I've expressed my general dislike of synth when it
isn't used correctly. X4 does it right (ex:
Slash Beast,
Cyber Peacock (with some awesome as hell bass),
Storm Owl,
Sigma (Final Form), etc.).
I also want to add that I
love the final boss in this game. It's a bit of a difficulty jump because the rest of the game is so easy, but man, I love that boss. I love how it's designed, I love that it can break you completely, and I love that it's so fast. And I kind of
like that sort of boss design in games; final bosses are supposed to be hard to me. They're supposed to be tests of attrition. This isn't
bad boss design by any means. At least, I don't think so. I
love that boss.
With that said, though, MMX4 is still an easy as heck game. I'm super-rusty at it and can't really no-hit run some of this anymore. Regardless, it's not very difficult to no-death run this game at all unless you make some stupid mistakes. X4 isn't perfect (Split Mushroom's stage can be super slow, for example; Jet Stingray's stage can be a bit irritating for first-timers, but after some practice you can get the hang of it), but it's still one of the best X games to me.
Long story short, Mega Man X4 is still the shit. Play it if you have not.
