Review: Mega Man X 2

Title: Mega Man X 2
Release Date: December 1994 (Japan), January 1995 (US)
Original Platform: Super Famicom/Super Nintendo

Mega Man X 2 was released in December 1994, almost exactly a year after its predecessor. I can’t help but feel that this may have influenced the final product.

What I mean is that I don’t think there was any way for the dev. team to know what people ultimately liked or didn’t like about X1. The Internet was in its infancy in 1994. Feedback had to spread through word of mouth. On top of that, they likely got started on X2 as soon as the first game was on shelves.

My theory is that since it was impossible to tell what people did or didn’t like, the development team went out of their way to ensure that X2 was not a rehash of X1, as a way to hedge their bets. This is understandable if true, but also risky. Change without vision or direction can have unpredictable consequences. They can make the experience better, worse, different, not different, more cohesive, or less.

Weirdly enough, in the case of X2, the changes make the game extremely forgettable. Also less enjoyable, less focused, and less difficult, but you may very well forget even these negative qualities a few months after playing¹.

As an example of the game’s philosophy of “change for the sake of it”, the Armor Upgrades are all different than the ones in X1, but none of them really justify their existence. You have the ability to dash by default in this game, so the Leg Armor upgrade simply lets you dash in middair. It’s a nifty trick, but the level design doesn’t really force you to master it. The Chest Armor upgrade boosts your defense and gives you access to a super move that is only really super in some cases.

By far the worst of the lot is the Helmet Armor upgrade. It fires off a radar of sorts that will seek out the location of secrets in each stage. Sounds like a useful tool to have, and it is - but only because the developers use this as an excuse to place powerups in all sorts of weird, unexpected locations. Some are are actually hidden behind normal looking walls where you would never think to look. The only way to find them all is to scan every inch of every stage, which is no fun at all². It feels like an attempt at artificially padding the length by forcing the player to waste their time.

In this modern age, where the Helmet Upgrade is unnecessary, the problem with the Armor Upgrades is that they all end up being kind of useless, which in turn makes them extremely forgettable.

We can find another example in the boss design. Many of the bosses in X2 have some sort of twist or gimmick to them. At least three of them take place in a non-standard boss chamber. Among these battles are a few that are extremely fun and engaging, as good or better as any fight in X1. Others feel like they’re specifically designed to be unreasonably difficult without the boss’ weapon weakness. These bosses have attacks and/or attack patterns that are abnormally difficult to dodge, which makes it that much harder to even get a shot in on them. Even if you do have their weakness, it may not be as potent as you might think. You don’t really conquer most of these boss fights. You endure them. And when you’re done, you want to erase them from your mind.

This might be tolerable if the bosses coughed up cool weapons. They don’t. Many of the weapons are unorthodox and obtuse. One of them works differently in different stages, and has a special ability that only works in specific locations in each stage. Out of all eight, only one is a classic “straight-shot” projectile. I found that more often than not, the weapons were really only useful either to defeat a boss, or to access a secret. This makes the lot of them, well, forgettable.

Having bad weapons is frustrating enough on its own, but it is compounded by the fact that the standard X-Buster is extremely effective in X2. You don’t really need to switch between weapons in order to efficiently cut a path through enemies. Just charge up the Buster, and you should be able to one-shot most non-boss enemies. It’s like the designers knew the weapons were trash, so they found a way to compensate - and as a result there’s no need to memorize level design or enemy patterns. That means you can - wait for it - forget them.

X2 attempts to flex some bigger storytelling chops than X1. It doesn’t work out in its favor. The story is messy, with lots of logic gaps. It never stops to explain or justify itself, and by the end it leaves you with more questions than answers. I get what they were trying to do, but I don’t think they pull it off. To be fair, this may be the one part of the game that isn’t forgettable.

Mega Man X 2 works well enough in the moment. After all, it is still a Mega Man game, and it doesn’t entirely flip the script from its predecessor. But all of the tweaks and changes add up to nothing. I mean that literally - it creates an experience that means nothing to me, and creates no memories. It just … is

At least it has a killer soundtrack. Wait, does it?

Let’s see here. There is that one track …. it goes like …… hmmmmm. I can’t remember.

Oh no, it’s already happening. I can’t remember a darn thing already!