*Review based on Mega Man X7’s release as part of Mega Man X Legacy Collection 2*

You have to give credit where it’s due, Mega Man X7 tried to change up the Mega Man X franchise. The 2003 PS2 title turned the series into a 3D third-person shooter, only on occasion going back to the side-scrolling roots of its six predecessors. But the good intentions of breaking convention amount to very little with how poor Mega Man X7’s execution is.

While Mega Man X7 does try changing the gameplay, the structure of the series remains the same: after the opening stage, beat the eight main stages in whatever order the player sees fit, beat the bosses and get their powers, then move onto the final few stages. As stated, the gameplay has switched gears to a 3D perspective for the most part, but there are other additions and changes as well, perhaps the most baffling of which being that you have to unlock Mega Man X!

That’s right, you can’t play Mega Man X7 as Mega Man X until you’ve rescued 64 Reploids (out of 128) from the eight main stages. Instead, you start the game with two characters: the returning Zero, and newcomer Axl. Zero once again uses a close-ranged laser sword and can perform a double jump, while Axl uses an arm canon like X’s and can glide for a short time.

Problems arise almost immediately. You start the opening stage as Axl, and quickly find out that he (along with X when you unlock him) automatically targets enemies. So you basically just have to spam the fire button to get past anything. A simple ‘lock-on’ button would have gone a long way in making Axl and X’s gameplay feel less mindless. Zero, meanwhile, has to be so close to enemies in order to hit them that he’ll almost always get hit himself in the process.

X7 does try its hand at doing something else original in that you can select two characters at a time, who can be switched at the press of a button. But even this is poorly executed. For starters, both characters you choose have their own health bar, but if only one of them dies, you lose a life. Then there’s the fact that there are only three characters – one of which having to be unlocked – meaning that you’ll just have the party of Zero and Axl for much of the game, and will probably just swap one of them for X once you gain access to him. And since you once again build up the characters with items gained from rescued Reploids, you’re best off just building up one of the starting characters and holding off on the other in favor of X, or just building up the two starters and ignoring X. Wouldn’t this system have been better if all three characters were there from the start? Or at the least if there were additional unlockable characters who you recruited sooner?

Speaking of rescuing Reploids, Mega Man X7 somehow didn’t learn from the mistakes of X6. Like its predecessor, it’s possible to miss your opportunity at rescuing a Reploid, which would be forgivable if not for the fact that if you miss a Reploid you don’t get another chance to rescue them in the same playthrough of the entire game! This is somehow made even worse than it was in X6. At least the last time around, you had a few seconds to act before a ‘Nightmare Virus’ took hold of a Reploid, but here, they get killed by the smallest of touches by an enemy. I am sadly not exaggerating when I say there were multiple instances in the 2D segments where a Reploid was already dying as I made it to their screen. So once again you can easily miss out on getting every item and collectible in the game, unless you feel like reloading your last save over and over again until you have every fragment of a stage memorized.

The game simply isn’t fun to play. On top of the aforementioned ability of the gun characters basically just walking through a stage and blindly shooting, and Zero’s inability to hit anything without getting hurt himself, the characters all just move way too slow. It’s a bit of irony how Mega Man X began as the more fast-paced, action-packed iteration of the Blue Bomber, but by X7, he’s reduced to moving at a snail’s pace.

Even the level design is sloppy, though I suppose in fairness, X7 at least has the excuse of the developers entering new territory and fumbling. I guess that’s more forgivable than X6 being a failure at things the developers had achieved successfully time and time again. But that still doesn’t mean the stages are any good. On the plus side, some of them are at least built around a single motif (the Ride Armor level, the motorcycle level, etc.),which helps them stand out, but once again X7’s good intentions are sullied in the ‘finished’ product. The platforming stages are unmemorable, the motorcycle level is insanely slow (?!), and the Ride Armor Stage just falls flat. There’s also a stage in which players ascend a spiraling tower, which is an interesting change of pace, but of course it has to be ruined by constantly falling buzzsaws that you can seldom avoid, and flying enemies that are just above what’s visible on screen that hit you mid-jump and send you back to a previous point of the stage. It’s a mess.

While most Mega Man games are difficult, the only challenges you’ll find out of Mega Man X7 come from the clunky controls combined with the sloppy level design and horrendous camera. I’d be more in favor of a polished game that’s a cakewalk to a game that’s tough solely out of incompetence.

Even the story aspects fall short of the already diminishing narratives of the series. The story is that X has retired from combat, as he’s “tired of fighting” (which seems contradictory to a character who was determined to protect humans from evil robots. But whatever, I guess the game needed some reason why you need to unlock the main character). With X retired, a new force rises to help the Maverick Hunters defeat evil, Red Alert. But a mysterious evil – who may or may not be Sigma (not-so-spoiler alert: it is) – has slowly corrupted eight members of Red Alert, who have become violent as a consequence. Because of their new behavior, Axl leaves Red Alert and eventually joins Zero, while the “mysterious evil” blackmails Red Alert’s leader – aptly named Red – into doing his bidding or he’ll destroy the eight members who are under his control. It’s…not very good. And it’s made all the worse by some truly awful voice acting (Axl is particularly insufferable).

The fact that Mega Man X7 is a Mega Man title with terrible soundwork might be its biggest crime. The music isn’t exactly horrible, but it’s bland and forgettable in every regard. But the sound effects… The sound effects are either non-existent (such as when collecting items, which are completely silent), or annoying soundbites that are repeated ad nauseam. The aforementioned voice acting is terrible in cinematics, but it reaches new lows during boss fights, in which your foe screams the same one or two sound clips every time they do, well, anything.

Anyone who has played Mega Man X7 knows the audial hell that is the boss fight against Flame Hyenard. This Maverick shrieks two lines: “Burn!” and “Burn to the ground!” every time he performs an action. And he makes two copies of himself which do the same. Suffice to say it’s an utter bombardment on the ears, with soundbites frequently overlapping each other. It’s so stressful that it may make Mega Man X7 the worst sounding game I’ve played since Dark Castle on the Sega Genesis.

Visually, the game of course looks dated, but considering X7 was released in the same year as such visually stunning games as The Wind Waker and Viewtiful Joe, it looked outdated even for its time. At the very least, the game boasts enough variety in colors that you can at least tell what everything is. I can’t imagine how the game would be playable if things blurred together on top of all its other issues.

Mega Man X7 is simply an appalling embarrassment on one of gaming’s most iconic franchises. Perhaps in its conception, its heart was in the right place, as it attempted to do something different for the series by doing something different. But it must have quickly fallen apart at the seams for it to end up this bad. Just about anything good you could say about it only applies in concept. Yes, Mega Man X7 tried something new, and that’s admirable. But it’s next to impossible to appreciate when the finished product feels, well, unfinished.

Or to put it another way…

BURN! BURN TO THE GROUND! BURN! BURN! BURN TO THE GROUND! BURN! BURN TO THE GROUND! BURN TO THE GROUND! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! “BURN TO THE GROUND!

 

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