This post is part of a series of deep dives into Mega Man X4. In this piece, we analyze the weapons the character of X himself.

Here are the links to the rest of the deep dives:

• Story
• Bosses
• Environmental Storytelling
• Miscellaneous

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Spoiler Preface!!!

This post contains content that some may deem as spoilers. You have been warned

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I have mixed feelings about this game’s arsenal. It feels like it has the potential to be one of the best in the series with the help of some tweaks, but in terms of how they actually work, in the actual game, it is quite possibly one of the worst weapon sets in any Mega Man game. I’m not entirely sure what happened here. Did they forget playtest their own creations, or did they just not care? Why are some of the guns just worse versions of older ones from older games? Why do some of them feel so worthless?

X Buster

The X-Buster receives a number of small but collectively significant tweaks.

First, the most obvious change - a fully charged X-Buster shot is more powerful than ever before. It is disturbing how many enemies can be destroyed with one fully charged shot. Anything that isn’t dead will be with just a few uncharged followup shots. If you’re good about keeping a charged shot ready at all times (and you’re good at knowing when and where to fire it ahead of you), you can lay waste to most enemies.

Second, X4 changes the amount of time it takes to charge the Buster. It takes ever so slightly more time to get it to max charge. If you’re already an MMX veteran, you’ll probably misfire quite a few times as a result, but it’s less of a problem than you might think. You’ll hopefully adjust, but even if you don’t, it doesn’t really matter, since the game isn’t challenging enough to punish you for your mistakes.

The third and final tweak is in regards to the gun’s charge levels. In the previous games, the standard X-Buster had two charge levels, while the arm upgrade added a third level that unlocked an even stronger blast. This third charge level also unlocked the secondary fire mode on all your subweapons.

In X4, this system is simplified so that there are only two charge levels at all times. This is a good change in regards to the subweapons, since you now only need to get to a level 2 charge to use their alternate modes. For the standard X-Buster, however, the lack of a level 3 charge makes a powerful gun even more powerful. Put a pin in that for just a moment.

You want to see a nice, clear example of the power creep of this weapon? Let’s go back in time to X2, specifically to the fight with Serges. Serges likes to lay down bombs on the floor. Here’s what happens if you shoot your fully charged X-Buster at them:

One bomb down, one to go.

Now, in X4, the boss Frost Walrus has an attack that lays down a row of icicles on the ground. Let’s see what happens if we fire a fully charged shot at them:

It clears out all of them in one go.

Now, the GIF above was taken using the upgraded X-Buster, but I promise it works the same with the standard one. The X-Buster acts like an unstoppable wall of death so many times. It now works like a weapon that a 5th grader would design for their original character.

Okay, time to take out that pin and get back to the joy of only having two levels of charge. The benefit comes from the way the Arm Armor Upgrades work. Yes, that’s upgrades as a plural. X4 lets you choose between two different upgrade options. One lets you stock up to four fully charged shots in reserve, which you can then fire off immediately without the need to charge.

The second option, AKA the only real option, is the Plasma Shot, because HOLY CRAP THE PLASMA SHOT.

With the Plasma Shot, a fully charged X-Buster (and remember, “fully charged” means level 2 charge in this game) gets injected with Robot Growth Hormone. The blast itself goes from this:

To this:

But it doesn’t end there. Every time the blast makes contact with an enemy, it leaves behind a ball of plasma that hands in the air for a few seconds, continuously damaging the enemy, like this:

The plasma balls also damage anything else that happen to cross their path, like this:

The Plasma shot makes most enemy encounters non-starters, and makes every boss fight easy to beat “Buster only”.

I said in earlier posts that X4 feels like it was geared towards newer and relapsed gamers that were brought into the hobby via the 32-bit consoles and the Playstation’s “coolifacation” of the medium. I think this really shows with the design of the X-Buster. The charge time tweak wouldn’t bother any MMX newbies, and the Plasma shot turns the game into pure Power Fantasy mode.

Lightning Web

This is the weapon obtained from Web Spider. It’s … bizarre. It fires out as a small energy blast, which travels a bit before turning into a spider web. These spider webs can be used as a temporary wall that you can wall jump off of, and yes, there are multiple secret items which require you to use the web to reach them.

What’s weird about the weapon is that the web itself cannot damage enemies. They’ll just walk through it:

You might be thinking “So it doesn’t do damage? That can’t be. There has to be at least one Robot Master that is weak to it”. And you would be right. Lightning Web can be used offensively. It’s just … weird.

Firstly, you can do damage with the web, provided you are fighting Split Mushroom, who is the one boss who is weak to it. Why it works differently for him, I don’t know.

Secondly, it can also cause damage if it makes contact with a target before turning into a web…

… but the damage output is all over the place. I’ve seen it one-shot some enemies, and barely scratch others. It’s not really reliable to use it this way.

Lightning Web’s behavior is too inconsistent to be used during regular play. This is the quintessential Context Specific Subweapon.

Charged Form

The charged form of the Lightning Web creates a, well, a web of electric webs. The rules are similar; it causes damage upon activation, but once the web is complete it does nothing:

Inconsistent as always.

Soul Body

This is the weapon obtained from Split Mushroom. It creates a sort of astral projection of X that moves in front of him, which damages anyone it comes in contact with:

It’s a decent idea, but the problem with it is that it doens’t always work. Some enemies are somehow invulnerable to it:

This is not the last time we’ll encounter this problem.

Charged Form

Instead of a shadowy projection, the charged form creates an orange colored clone of X, which the player takes control of. It loses the ability to damage upon contact; instead, you can fire its X-Buster (though it cannot charge up. You’re stuck with peashooter mode only):

In my opinion, this makes the charged mode worse.

Double Cyclone

This is the weapon you get from Storm Owl. It fires two cyclones to each side:

You’ll notice that the two shots begin to arc upward at the end of the animation. This is because the shots both arc upward almost immediately after being launched.

This is yet another weapon that cannot kill certain enemies:

Charged Form

When charged up, Double Cyclone launches two long, straight tornados to each side:

It’s basically the fully charged version of Storm Eagle’s weapon in X1, moving horizontally instead of vertically. Which is fitting, I guess, considering that Storm Owl and Storm Eagle were buddies or something. Still, it seems kind of lazy to both steal the guy’s name and his weapon.

Twin Slasher

This is the weapon you get from Slash Beast.

It is basically the spread shot from Contra, with the middle bullet removed:

This of course makes it worthless. How many times are you going to encounter enemies placed below and above you? This thing needs to at least shoot up and forward, not up and down.

Okay, maybe it would not be worthless if it was powerful, but it isn’t. And I think this is another weapon which cannot kill some enemies.

Charged Form

The charged version of the Twin Slasher just creates a wave of shots:

That’s nice, but not nice enough to switch to when you have the X-Buster at the ready.

Ground Hunter

This is the weapon you get from Jet Stingray.

This is basicaly a ripoff of the Search Snake weapon from Mega Man 3. Compare:

Actually, no, it is worse. Search Snake drops to the ground quickly, while a Ground Hunter shot kinda lets gravity slowly pull it down. If you want to hit a ground target, you need to give youself some space and fire when you are at a distance. This makes it more trouble than it is worth to use.

Charged Form

It just fires straight:

I guess it’s pretty strong? Also, I don’t remember if there are enemies that are immune to it, I think there may be.

Aiming Laser

This is the weapon you get from Cyber Peacock.

It’s just easier to show you how this thing works than try to explain it:

While not seen in the GIF above, it can lock onto multiple targets and fire on them all at once.

Charged Form

Same deal, but the aiming cursor just becomes the laser itself. This means you lose the lock-on feature.

I know for certain that this weapon cannot kill some targets. I don’t remember which, but I distinctly remember being frustrated about it.

Frost Tower

This is the weapon you get from Frost Walrus.

This is the game’s obligatory shield weapon. It creates a big block of ice that surrounds X:

Except … you’re not really stuck inside it. You can walk away from it and go on your way. Of course, if you do that, you can’t shoot; as long as Frost Tower is equipped, you cannot use your X-Buster. That means that Frost Tower has two main uses:

• You activate it and stand still, allowing it to protect you. I don’t understand the purpose of this. It’s not like the game pours tons of firepower, or kamikaze-style enemies at X.
• You activate it in a location that allows it to act as a shield as you walk away. I don’t think I ever encountered a situation where I needed to do anything like this.

Charged Form

The charged form rains icy death from above. It’s such a good attack, and it is nothing like the basic shield at all.

This is one of the only weapons in the game that genuinely makes you feel empowered.

Rising Fire

This is the weapon you get from Magma Dragoon.

F*ck this weapon. No seriously, it can die in a trash fire. Except it is fire, so that probably wouldn’t do it.

This is it folks - I give you Rising Fire:

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…………..

How many times can you think of in a Mega Man game where you have an enemy directly above you? I mean, I can, but it isn’t often, and it is even less often that I need to take them out. And even if I did, I could probably move to the side a bit and use some other weapon that moves upward (even if it doesn’t move straight up).

There is exactly one time you need to use this weapon:

There are exactly two bosses who are weak to Rising Fire, and of them is more trouble than it’s worth:

This is one of the most useless weapons I can think of in any Mega Man game. I can’t believe this is not a joke.

Charged Form

Magma Dragoon was basically a robot version of Akuma from Street Fighter, so the charged form of Rising Fire is …

Just a Dragon Punch. Which means it is the same move, only with a bit of added horizontal motion.

Nova Strike

This is what you get from the Chest Armor upgrade. It’s the new version of the Giga Smash from X2. Get damaged, and it fills up the meter. When it is full, you get to launch the attack once before you have to fill it up again.

Giga Smash was a room clearing apocalypse. Nova Strike is:

I mean, it does decent damage compared to other weapons, but I wouldn’t peg it at taking out even close to a third of the health bar on a boss. You are invincible when using it, so I guess it is safe as a last ditch effort.

Conclusion

So many of these weapons are so context specific that even if the X-Buster was not as strong as it is, and even if all the weapons could damage all the enemies, I still don’t think I’d use them that often. It’s like they go out of their way to make it hard to hit anything.

But since the X-Buster is strong, and the weapons can’t damage everything, the situation becomes truly grim. I feel like I need to do the writerly equivalent of shouting:

How the hell do you make so many weapons unable to destroy so many enemy types?

Who the heck thought this was a good idea?

Maybe I’m thinking of it wrong. Maybe the problem is that the designers assumed that newbies would be too stupid to use subweapons, so they just juiced up the Buster, since they knew everyone would use it. That would make things even worse.

I don’tk know what else to say, other than to offer my suggestions on how these could have been improved: