Rock Man X6 is where I'd been told the series really started to feel the pains of the absence of the original team, and it along with X7 were games I'd really been looking forward to in terms of seeing for myself just how bad they were. What awaited me was something I'm not sure I could've expected, at least not in this form, as it's both a game that greatly frustrated me as well as one I ultimately enjoyed more than I thought I would. It took me around 8 hours to complete the Japanese version of the game (with my in-game play time clock around 4 hours).
X6's story ret-cons the ending of X5's story quite heavily, as X5 was originally intended to be the end of the storyline while the Rock Man Zero games were its tacit continuation. However, for the most part, that really doesn't matter. Of course Sigma is back, but this the reploid scientist Gate is unwittingly aiding in his revival. It all ends up to the whole usual "stop the super reploid fascist while cursing the need to continue this fight" song and dance that the series has become very familiar with by now. It's accompanied, however, by a return to having voiced cutscenes, though not animated cutscenes, and that's extra nice as (for convoluted reasons I find difficult to care about) Zero is back again, and his reunion with X is really sweet. It's a story that does what it needs to, as basically every X game's story does. The most important part of the story, in regards to the gameplay at least, is in regards to the new Nightmare Virus that's ravaging the globe. It's both driving reploids mad in the same way that the Sigma Virus did, but it's also causing observable phenomena that ranges from a phantom Zero taking pot shots at you, to fiery meteors raining down from the sky, to (by far the worst) stages plagued with darkness save for a couple of rotating spotlights that illuminate your view. These nightmare effects only affect stages when they're glowing red (which can be reset by visiting and exiting another stage) or upon a return to a stage, and they make some stages damn near unplayable with how vexing and difficult they make things (particular the darkness one). They're by and large a not very creative and quite vindictive way of making the game harder than it needs to be while not actually adding that much in the way of design, so in a way I kinda have to respect just how clever a design solution that is, albeit for a design choice that categorically makes the game a worse experience to play. And that sort of "clever yet definitely bad" design plagues a lot of this game. The stages are for the most part fine, although the bosses are pretty easy once again. However you still get the errant stage, such as the one with the junk crushers, that are brutally hard for a normal non-fortress stage, and the fortress stages themselves are really brutal at times in ways that feel ridiculous. You can mitigate the difficulty by collecting pieces of the two sets of special armor found in this game or by using Zero (who must be rescued via a semi-randomly occurring event at certain secret locations in certain maps), but that presents its own problems outside of those pieces often being very hard to collect due to how difficult those nightmare effects make returning to past stages. Like in X5, you need to collect health upgrades and parts to augment your abilities beyond just the new armors, but there's a new twist added to that that's technically an improvement but adds its own new slew of significant problems to the mix. One nice thing is that the boss level system has been cut back to be no longer dynamic but more of a signifier of how tough a given boss is compared to others, and honestly even calling it a "system" isn't terribly appropriate compared to calling it a simple aesthetic choice. Now, the parts you can equip between missions are found spread among the 16 injured reploids that are found in each of the 8 base stages, with certain reploids holding certain ones. Many of them hold nothing but an extra life for your trouble, but some do hold those special upgrades, and it's often worth going out of your way to look for them and try to rescue them (I rescued all but two or three during my own playthrough, myself). They're not often evilly hidden, but they're an extra thing to look out for either your first time or on return trips to a stage, granted that does mean that for some you'll need to brave those awful nightmare effects for some of the more well hidden ones. However, not all is happy in Reploid Rescue Land. First of all is that they're under threat quite often by special nightmare bot enemies, who will permanently kill a reploid should they touch it, and you'll have to load a save and retry the stage in order to get another chance at rescuing them. While most of the most important reploids holding upgrades aren't in mortal peril (you actually NEED the very well hidden jump upgrade to beat the game as X, but that one is perfectly safe from harm), some are, and those parts they're holding can be lost forever if you aren't quick enough to save them. Granted most parts aren't that useful and only a handful can be equipped at a time, but still, it sucks to lose stuff like that because you didn't know a reploid who needed such quick action was upcoming in the stage (and some are VERY tough to rescue from death simply by design of the stage). Additionally, these nightmare bots also contribute to the Hunter Rank system this game has. Abandoning the more speedrun-style grading system from X5, the Hunter Rank in X6 is determined entirely by the amount of Nightmare Souls you collect from these fallen special enemies, and you'll need a LOT of them if you want max rank. The thing is that max rank actually matters quite a bit, as how many of those findable parts you can equip at one time is determined by that rank, and you're gonna need to grind a LOT if you wanna equip more than two at a time (which is plenty, but three or four is certainly preferred). This is even MORE of a problem when you consider that X and Zero don't actually share Hunter Ranks, so you'll need to grind with BOTH if you want either to be usable. This is even MORE Of a problem when you consider that in addition to the health upgrades found in stages, extra health and max weapon energy upgrades are also given by rescued reploids, and those are ALSO exclusive to the character who picks them up, so if you've been using X the whole game, Zero is going to be damn near useless even IF you put in the time to get him to a respectable (let alone max) Hunter Rank, and that's extra sucky considering some of the harder platforming (as mentioned earlier) and boss encounters are far easier with Zero than with X, that is if the right character happens to be upgraded accordingly. I briefly mentioned the bosses earlier, but I need to go into a bit more of that now because it's a point worth elaborating on because holy heck does the game deserve it. In yet another weirdly self-inflicted wound, one of the game's best bosses is the first fight against a new rival robot called High Max, but he's only found in a secret boss room. However, not only are these secret boss rooms easy to stumble into unintentionally, but High Max can actually only be hurt by certain special weapons, making it very possible that you'll stumble into him while looking for Zero but not have any of the special weapons that can hurt him yet, so you just have to game over and pick another stage (or another path through that stage) instead. This is also combined with his second fight, and the stage leading up to it, being BRUTAL in their difficulty, and all of the fortress fights in general are some really not fun levels of challenge in the level of endurance they demand from the player. This game's bosses are split between brutally hard and pitifully easy with only two or three bosses in between, and it's a problem that's pretty bad even for a later Rock Man X game. Really one of the only good features of the game is the presentation, which has nicely given a step up since X5 with the addition of the animated stills for cutscenes and VA since that game. Though the story isn't that important, it's still competently done and entertaining for what it is. This game also continues the trend of later X games in making continues effectively the same as extra lives, with this game having a really forgivingly implemented checkpoint system that counterbalances a lot of the more mean design choices in a way to make them tolerable. They even cut down on all of those mid-mission calls from home base by making them optional, which is another nice change. The music is also pretty good, with the end credits song in particular being such a bop that I actually got it to listen to on my MP3 player X3 Verdict: Not Recommended. I'll fully admit that, despite all of the trials and tribulation this game put me through, I genuinely like this game better than X5. It's definitely not a better game, but it's just such a fascinatingly flawed and dynamic experience that it has utterly captivated my attention in a way that X5 could just never hope to do. It's definitely a game most people won't enjoy, and for very good reasons, but it's a badly executed game that I regardless enjoyed a fair bit, and although I can't really recommend it, I think X6 will always hold a weirdly warm place in my heart for just what a horrible mess it is XD
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AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
April 2024
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