Mega Man X Legacy Collection 2

Genre: Compilation / Action-Platformer

Players: 1, Online Leaderboards

.

Review:

(Note: This collection is included in the physical collection Mega Man X Legacy Collection 1 + 2, along with Mega Man X Legacy Collection.)

Mega Man X Legacy Collection 2 is a collection of the second set of four Mega Man X games, originally released on the Sony PlayStation and PlayStation 2. A spin-off/successor series to the original Mega Man series, these games are all Action-Platformers with the same basic premise as the original Mega Man games – you are a peacekeeping robot (called a “reploid”) out to take on eight various enemy robots, each with their own elemental theme and thematically-appropriate stage to traverse before you can reach them. Upon defeating one of them, you’ll get a version of their weapon that you can swap to, with a large part of the strategy of these games being learning which order to play the game’s stages, since each robot is weak to one of the others’ weapons. Upon defeating them, you’ll challenge a final gauntlet of difficult stages and bosses before taking on the mastermind behind the threat (usually the treacherous reploid Sigma).

The Mega Man X series departs from the original Mega Man games in a few distinct ways. Firstly, players have a lot more mobility in these games, with a wall-jump and a dash move that make traversal much easier and more fluid. To take advantage of this, the game’s stages are somewhat less linear than those in the Mega Man games, with secrets hidden throughout them, including vital enhancements and upgrades for your character. As such, fully exploring the game’s levels is a huge part of these games, and any time you gain an ability that gives you new mobility options, you’ll be encouraged to ask yourself where you can use it to reach new areas. While these games don’t have the large interconnected world of a Metroidvania, there’s certainly a hint of those elements present here.

After the fourth game in the series, it’s generally agreed that the Mega Man X games took a severe nosedive in quality. The fifth game was originally intended to be the end of the series by series creator Keiji Inafune, transitioning into the subsequent Mega Man Zero series. However, Capcom kept insisting on bringing the franchise back without seeming to really understand why it worked so well in the first place. This is particularly noticeable in Mega Man X7, generally seen as the worst game in the series. In any case, here’s how I feel each of the games in this series fares now:

Game	Genre	# of Players	Grade
Mega Man X5	Action-Platformer	1	C
tl;dr While all the hallmarks of the Mega Man X series are still here, they’re buried under a pile of frustrations. Players can now only re-play levels a limited number of times, severely restricting the exploration the series is known for. Armor upgrades do nothing unless you collect all of them. The game keeps stopping you to read more of its terrible story… there’s a decent game buried under here, but there’s so much bloat and tedium you need to dig through to get to it that it’s hard to appreciate it.
Mega Man X6	Action-Platformer	1	C-
tl;dr This game thankfully does away with the previous game’s time limit, but it still bears many of the same problems that one had. On top of that, this game has some of the worst level design of the entire franchise, with stages absolutely filled with relentless enemies. While the previous game was a good game buried under a pile of frustrations, I can’t even really say there’s a good game here.
Mega Man X7	Action-Platformer / Third-Person Shooter	1	D
tl;dr The series’ controversial first steps into the world of 3D are a baffling collection of questionable choices. Much of the series’ signature exploration-heavy gameplay is gone here, replaced with terrible Third-Person Shooter corridor sections to accompany the mediocre 2D Action-Platformer areas. This game even replaces series protagonist X with annoying new character Axl for much of the game. If it wasn’t for the presence of Zero and X, this would be unrecognizable as a Mega Man X game.
Mega Man X8	Action-Platformer	1	B-
tl;dr This game has a lot of rough edges, but it’s actually a fairly decent Action-Platformer, even if the level layout here feels nothing like a Mega Man X game. On the bright side, this game makes good use of the character-swapping mechanic introduced in Mega Man X7, and all three playable characters feel like they’re contributing something worthwhile here. It’s still nowhere near as good as the earlier games in the series, but it’s worth playing, which puts it above the three games that preceded it.

Like I said, these four games represent a huge drop in quality from the first four, and even the best game in the group, Mega Man X8, still isn’t as good as any of the games in the first collection. Strangely, Capcom is asking the same price for this collection, $20, as the previous one, despite this drop in quality. And the frustrating thing is there are numerous games that could have been added to this collection to make it a more valuable proposition, such as the RPG Mega Man X Command Mission, the handheld Mega Man Xtreme games, or the PSP remake of the first game, Mega Man Maverick Hunter X. But no, instead of going for quantity over quality, Capcom expects you to fork over $20 for what are arguably the four worst games of any Mega Man series.

Thankfully, there’s more to this collection than just the games themselves, although some of the bonus content here will give those who have the first collection some serious deja vu. Firstly, players have multiple display settings. There’s no rewind feature or save states like in the original Mega Man Legacy Collection, but there are game saves in between levels and a “Rookie Hunter Mode” for an easier game difficulty.

Beyond this, the game offers plenty of support content in the game’s menus, although it’s questionable just how much value it brings to the table this time. This collection brings back the X-Challenge mode that has players taking on two bosses from the series at once, competing for the best times on leaderboards, although the majority of the bosses here are from the games in the first Mega Man X Legacy Collection. There’s also a full music select menu (although I would argue that none of this collection’s music is very noteworthy), and a huge museum of production art and concept art (but no box art or manual art), and original trailers for the games.

And because this collection has largely copy-pasted much of its bonus content, it also includes the same The Day of Σ half hour anime that was included in the first collection. While I was extremely impressed with this content’s inclusion in the first collection, here it is a bizarre and unnecessary feature needlessly taking up space in your memory – since anyone with any sense who has this collection undoubtedly also owns the first Mega Man X Legacy Collection, there’s not really any reason to toss this in again except out of laziness or to try to inflate the value of this package… something that would have been much better accomplished by including some of the games I mentioned above.

I should also mention that if you’re looking to buy the physical version of Mega Man X Legacy Collection 1+2, be warned that playing Mega Man X Legacy Collection 2 requires a digital download, so bear that in mind when deciding which version of the game to get.

In short, the Mega Man X Legacy Collection 2 is a mess of leftovers – it features the worst games in the Mega Man X series, and arguably four of the worst games in any Mega Man franchise. On top of this, it has a lot of the same bonus content we already got in the first Mega Man X Legacy Collection, making it far less enticing. And yet, despite the lower quality and repeated content, Capcom is charging the same price for this collection, which is just absurd. I might say that this is a collection that will only appeal to completionists, but a completionist will be disappointed at the missing games I pointed to above. In short, I’m not sure who this game was intended for, beyond die-hard series fans who will buy anything with the Mega Man name slapped on it.

tl;dr – Mega Man X Legacy Collection 2 is a collection of the second set of four games in this series of Action-Platformers. These are the worst games in the series, and four of the worst games in any Mega Man series, and while there’s a healthy amount of bonus content here, a lot of it is the same bonus content already included in the first, and far superior, Mega Man X Legacy Collection. In short, this is a collection only for the most die hard of Mega Man fans.

Grade: C-

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}