Megaman X Legacy Collection 1 & 2 (Xbox One)

Powah Dunk | August 10, 2018 | Review | No Comments

The past few years Capcom released the Megaman Legacy Collection, chronicling the 10 main “original” Megaman titles, when this happened people started asking “X Collection when?”. Well Capcom stepped up and have released Megaman X Legacy Collection vol 1 & 2, is X gone give it ya? Read on to find out.

Megaman X Legacy Collection Vol.1 and 2 are made up of X1 to X4 then X5 to X8, to newcomers this may seem like a decent offering, but to fans of the X series the weak link is already very apparent.

I don’t know the reasons behind splitting the collection into two parts, money, memory space, who knows?, the only problem with this is that the quality of the X series started to drop with X5, which makes Vol.2 a much harder sell than Vol1.

Vol.1 chronicles X’s tale from his debut with Megaman X through to Megaman X4, X1 being the original and often considered the best of the X Series, X2 is also thought of in high regard and personally I enjoy X2 a little more than X1. X3 is still a fantastic title, debut of playable Zero but not quite hitting the lofty heights of the first two. X4 despite some horrid voice work I would say rubs shoulders with X1 and 2, fully playable Zero, some fantastic level design and some fantastic sprite work due to the power of the PSX.

Vol.2 follows on with the saga from X5 to X8, X5 being a strange beast of a game, ALOT more story than previous titles, multiple endings, once again a little more story than the original trio but over all it’s a fairly solid title, it’s here Keiji Inafune wanted to end the X series and lead it onto the Megaman Zero series.

This brings us to Megaman X6, here the waters start to get quite murky. Still an enjoyable title but has some really random difficulty spikes, plotholes the story of the X series and just comes off rather uninspired and rushed. X7 is up next, the jump from Psone to PS2 and one of the worst titles in the MegaMan franchise full stop.

On launching X7 you’ll be greeted to newcomer Axl, with his child like voice and phoned in voice acting. Floaty controls with a strange lock on system and terrible 3D sections which play like they are all under water. Once the intro stage is polished off you start the usual task of taking down the rogue Maverick bosses as either Axl or Zero, yes in Megaman X7, X isn’t initially playable. Infact unless you go out of the way to rescue quite a high amount of civilians you either won’t be playing as him or unlocking him very late in game, likely long after you’ve put this hot mess down.

Wrapping up Vol.2 is Megaman X8, the direct apology for X7, gone are the floaty controls and horrid 3D section, instead you have quite a serviceable 2.5d action platformer with marginally better voice acting and level design. X8 was the pleasant surprise of the package for me as I hadn’t played it before due to still reeling off the bad taste of X7 all those years ago.

That my friends is all she wrote in terms of titles included, it’s a shame Mission Command was overlooked but not surprising as it was a spin off. Fortunately these collections come with a plethora of goodies for MegaFans & newcomers alike.

First off is the gallery which corresponds to which ever collection you’re on, it complies artwork, trailers and even images and descriptions of stuff such as Models, playing cards and all the lovely extras like that. It also comes with the “Day of Sigma” OVA which originally came with the Megaman X Maverick Hunter on PSP and is well worth a watch.

The next big addition is the X Challenge mode, it’s a boss rush with a difference!, that difference being it’s against two bosses at the same time from any of the Mavericks in the collection, Vol.2 only has a few different ones as there are no bosses from X7 or X8.

The mode features a new armour for X which is a nice offering but it just looks like a pallet tweak of the Fourth Armour. This mode ranges from insane amounts of fun to balding levels of hair pulling stress. I found on some of the battles I’d figure out some kind of pattern where as later ones seemed to be a case of take the damage and pray to Capcom.

It’s not all gold though, gone are the save states of the previous collections, instead we have “Rookie Hunter Mode”. The new mode is easy mode to quite an extreme, more for people without the time or dedication to learning enemy patterns or suffer through X6.

The collections are both fantastic for Megaman X fans though obviously favour swings with Collection 1. The new Boss rush mode is a fantastic addition and the gallery has some sweet extras. If you can only buy 1 I’d say go for Vol.1, there is still plenty of fun to find in Vol.2, it just comes with some quite harsh lows.