Current Events > I'm on the final stretch of Mega Man X5. What the fuck is this *spoilers*

(+) Yeah! (+)

They brought back the instadeath lasers? Really? I only got through that shit with the Dark Hold and a weapon tank.

And at the end of the hall, there's a fucking Yellow Devil.

I know that Yellow Devils are like this classic Mega Man boss fight, but at the risk of sounding like a total heretic here - I never liked the Yellow Devil. In fact, I fucking hate the Yellow Devil.

Pattern recognition bosses are already not my cup of tea. I can get patterns down, sure, but the Yellow Devil is so annoying because it's so slow and arduous in how it moves from side to side, and it's completely invincible the entire time. You wait like 30 seconds for it to move across the screen, with you dodging projectiles the whole time, and then you get 6 seconds to do 2 shots worth of damage - and then it melts down again and moves back across the screen.

The Yellow Devil has always been a pointless waste of time, and I'm genuinely disappointed to see it come back in the X series.

I'm playing this final series of levels with regular-ass X so I can get the Ultimate Armor, so this is gonna be a pain in the ass. I can cope with a less OP X after using the Fourth Armor, but the Yellow Devil? Or the Grey Devil or Grey Goo, in this case? This sucks. Fuck the Yellow Devil, and fuck X5 for bringing it back.

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I will give them props for giving it a weakness to electricity though, in a callback to Mega Man 1.

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The "virus stages" as they're called are a pain, and an eye sore. Everything is a callback in some form. Stage 1 is based on QuickMan with the Shadow Devil as the boss. Stage 2 has elements from Sigma Stage 1 from X1, and you fight Rangda Bangda MkII (the wall face thing from X1, Sigma Stage 2). Stage 3 is mostly spikes and rope grabs. This is the only one you need to enter as plain X to get the armor. The fight against Zero is epic (because of the music). The boss rush is just tedious. and finally Sigma himself whose forms are a callback to X1 form 1, and Gamma, the final boss of MM3.

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Okay, so I enter all three stages separately. I can live with that.

God, I hate this stage.

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X5 wasnt bad at all. The next game is the one that ramps up the bullshit factor.

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Sigma's a pretty resourceful guy.

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scorpion41 posted...

X5 wasnt bad at all. The next game is the one that ramps up the bullshit factor.

For real, I hear 6 and 7 are where the series scrapes the bottom of the barrel. That doesn't make 5 any better though.

I actually like the music in X5 a fair bit, and while the level design isn't great, the graphics themselves are gorgeous. I love the rose-themed Robot Master in particular, and the flame dinosaur guy is adorable.

I wasn't the biggest fan of 4, in that there was a lot of early PS1 era jank. The background graphics were this molded 3D sort of style sometimes and I didn't really like it. X's scream upon his death was annoying, and the mid-level loading screens took me out of the game. X5 has improved those aspects. But as a whole product, X5 doesn't feel as cohesive. The balancing is fucked, the levels don't feel so fun to play, the font is barely readable and there are so many of these lame, cheap-ass text boxes to get through. X4 was challenging, but X5 feels like bullshit.

And the worst part is that this isn't even the worst game in the series. I've heard it's X6, and X7 is in its own category of badness, before X8 provides a return to form just before the franchise was put on ice indefinitely. So I know that despite my protests, this will almost certainly not be my least favourite X game.

That doesn't make X5 any better than what it is. Maybe when I do scrape the bottom of the barrel, I can come back to this game with a more favorable lens, but a worse product doesn't make a bad product any less bad.

Current MMX rating is as follows:

1 > 2 > 4 > 3 > 5

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Ive never attempted X7thats how bad it was. I saw some gameplay vids and was like no fucking thanks. Skipped straight to X8.
X6 was very playable and I beat it, but like I saidit really drives home the bullshit. I loved X4 and enjoyed X5, even though X5 felt depressing to me. It was weird.

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scorpion41 posted...

Ive never attempted X7thats how bad it was. I saw some gameplay vids and was like no fucking thanks. Skipped straight to X8.
X6 was very playable and I beat it, but like I saidit really drives home the bullshit. I loved X4 and enjoyed X5, even though X5 felt depressing to me. It was weird.

I beat X7 when the collection was released last year and despite how fucking terrible it is I honestly enjoyed the experience. Knowing full well what you're getting into makes it less miserable.

X5 has a lot of issues, X6 even more, but I still find them enjoyable for what they are too.

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X2 is the height of the series. I kinda fell off on x5 with the stupid ass vehicle stage and its Ready!? *Death* bs

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Smackems posted...

X2 is the height of the series. I kinda fell off on x5 with the stupid ass vehicle stage and its Ready!? *Death* bs

I disagree. I think X is the best.

X2 feels like an easier X which reneged on a handful of innovations the first game made for either time constraints or for the sake of adhering to the Mega Man formula. I definitely liked it, but it hammered home just how great X was and why it had garnered such a strong reaction over the years.

X2 is the second best game in the franchise so far though, for sure. At least I think so.

X5 is definitely pitching downwards though. Like I love the graphics and the music, but it feels really off. The hoverbike section that kills you right away is a prime example of that, like you said.

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The music for X5's Sigma stage fucking slaps though.

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Yellow devil isn't fun, tbqh.

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I finished the game.

X5 has a really cool Sigma boss fight imo. I love the CG they did for him at the start and end of the game - it looks fantastic. The cutscene between Zero, X and the melted Sigma was badass, even if Zero has died like three times in the series so far.

I don't get the Dr Light hologram stuff. Like someone said in the previous thread that something was up with him at the end of the game, but this raises more questions than answers. I'm hoping that either any missed plot details are available in a Zero run of the game or in future games.

I'm about to watch all of Zero's cutscenes from X4, and then I'm gonna check out the X5 TV Tropes page for any more info. Then I'll start X6 some other time.

I can't wait until Dr Light runs out of upgrades for X and tells him to plug a toaster into his legs to overclock his boost output.

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I'm not a big fan of Zero's gameplay, so I don't play as him. But pretty much all of the plot in X4 comes from Zero's storyline.

And his storyline in that game is good! Watching the cutscenes and like the in-game set-up back to back, I really liked it.

I liked how Sigma had X and Zero's pods in X5, and while it's clear what Zero's big deal is in X4 and what X5 is setting up - I mean, they've been setting up the X vs Zero dream match since the end of X2 - I'm still looking forward to the big reveal. But knowing what I do of the franchise, that's probably going to be resolved in X6, which is one of the worst-received games in the series.

I really set myself up to fail by getting invested in this series.

So yeah, my X ranking hasn't changed:

1 > 2 > 4 > 3 > 5

However - my Sigma boss fight ranking is pretty different. I'm watching through them all on YouTube, and I'll make another post with the ranking once I'm done.


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Okay, my Sigma ranking is:

2 > 1 > 5 > 4 > 3

The reason I'm ranking 5 over 4 in this regard is because I don't like the third phase in 4 - the fact that the heads can spawn on your location for an instakill annoyed the hell out of me, and the wall of spikes felt kinda cheap. The second phase was pretty good, and the first phase was okay if not a bit boring, but I didn't like the third phase.

There were some aspects of the X5 Sigma fight that probably should have been instakills, but I'm honestly kinda glad they weren't. And while the second phase is literally just a still image of a Sigma CG, I thought that the 3D Sigma looked fucking awesome and I love that the image flickered between CG and wireframe. One thing about the X games I've always enjoyed is the wireframe stuff, and having both the fairly impressive Sigma CG and wireframe image really won me over.

Like I'm not gonna front - I'm a fairly mediocre gamer, and I can be shallow when I want to be. The X5 fight was fairly easy, especially with the Ultimate Armor. I'm ranking X5's Sigma fight higher because I thought it looked cooler - the Motorhead room in X4 was cool too, but I just really dug the giant Sigma head.

Speaking of wireframe stuff - that's why X2's Sigma boss fight wins out over X1's. The first game is a masterpiece in how it's laid out, it really makes you feel like a badass as you get stronger, and that applies even up to the final boss fight. Mega Man X is an incredibly well-paced game, especially for its era.

X2 had the better Sigma boss fight. X as a whole is more cohesive, but as a standalone boss fight, the final boss just isn't as cool as the one in X2.

I loved seeing the SNES pull off wireframe animation alongside the regular 2D sprite animation, and even if it could be a bit predictable, I really fucking loved getting to fight that wireframe Sigma head. X2 was a really good game, frankly - definitely one of the best X games so far.

X3's Sigma boss fight was garbage.

The armor was cool, in a stupid over the top kind of way, but making his weakspot that small? Give me a break. And the wireframe Sigma appearance at the end looked way cheaper than it did in X2.

X3 just wasn't that good of a game, and while I thought it was incredibly stylish at its best, X5 follows in its wake. X1 is excellent, X2 is pretty good too and X4 is decent if you can get past the PS1 jank. Add the content from Zero's route, and X4 is up there with the better X games. But 3 and 5 are fairly noticeable examples of sequelitis - they don't measure up to what came before.

Though I do want to say that frankly, X4 has shades of that too. That's the point where Zero truly begins to outshine X, to the point where his story is much more fleshed out than X's is. And that's where the games got much more text-heavy, which is exacerbated by Aria in X5.

My opinion of the games is already a tangled clusterfuck, and the next game on my list is X6. God help my immortal soul.

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MMX5 is not that good. Better than those that follow it but worse than the ones that preceded it

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MrMallard posted...

My opinion of the games is already a tangled clusterfuck, and the next game on my list is X6. God help my immortal soul.

Do it on Xtreme for the true X6 experience. :3

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X6 has cool weapons and music.

That's about it.

I think I'm one of the few who prefer X2 and X3 over X.

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Biggest thing I remember about five is the GnR references, the timer, and really late game English as if they just said "fuck it! They'll understand!"

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Tag for X6 reactions!
The game actually has a lot of potential, but there are just so many flaws. The worst fire level ever, and its not even the fire that makes it terrible lol. Obnoxious weather and other affects that can randomly happen in any level. Permadeath for the robots you need to save for parts. A whole batch of bots that are impossible to locate/rescue (such as in the ice level) until you locate some obsure/helpful bot with a super useful part. And of course one of those ice bots also had a useful part for rescuing other bots.

It does have some sweet music though.

Other comments:
Yellow Devil needs to go away. He's really not all that fun to fight.

The gimmick of re-fighting every boss at the end of the game needs to go away. Or at the very least there needs to be a save point afterwards. So that if you need to take a break, or get beaten by Wily (in the classics) or Sigma that you don't need to fight them a third...fourth...fifth time.

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foxhound101 posted...

The gimmick of re-fighting every boss at the end of the game needs to go away. Or at the very least there needs to be a save point afterwards

That's why I'm such a fanboy bitch for X. You storm Sigma's castle in a series of action setpiece levels, and the deeper you get into the castle, the more bosses you fight. It's like, Sigma is throwing rebuilt Robot Master bodyguards at you in the hopes of preventing you from getting deeper into the castle, and you're just laying fucking waste to them the further in you go.

In every other game after that, it goes back to "oh hey, you're one room away from the final boss, here's a boss gauntlet".

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I too hated yellow devil. In megaman (original new) I always used that exploit with electric beam and spamming pause

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I started X6. We've got an expository opening, followed by undubbed dialogue?

"Bwah ha ha ha!! I'm going mad and it's so... liberating!!"

...Oh no. This is a cheap game.

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MrMallard posted...

...Oh no. This is a cheap game.

Allow me to be the first to regret to inform you that X6 never gets better. It never becomes a satisfying experience. No amount of exploration, armor collecting, boss defeating, or reploid rescue ever transforms X6 into a good game.

The difficulty is either baby-easy or absurdly frustrating, with no in between. Boss fights range from the most ludicrous thing you've ever seen because the pattern is for 2 year olds, or the most obnoxious set of special circumstances with pinpoint timing and accuracy ever. There are certain bosses that, if playing as Zero, are nigh-unbeatable.

X5 may be uninspired and lazy, but it at least executes the tried and true formula with competence and consistency. X6 is what happens when a game is rushed out in 8 months by the B-team with almost no quality control. Instant-death mechanics are fucking everywhere. Stupid level gimmicks wear out their welcome within 2 minutes but just keep right on going. Alternate paths are strewn about the levels with no indication that you've strayed from the main objective until you wind up fighting a boss which you literally cannot kill until special circumstances are met.

It's an absolute trash-fire of a game.

X, X2, X3, and X4 are the golden era. X5 is good but lazy, X7 is gimmicky but fun, X8 is...mediocre at best...

But X6? X6 is the only one I would call truly bad. The only redeeming quality about X6 is that the music is sometimes pretty cool. The boss fight against Gate stands out especially.

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Spoilers on the Zero front, I just started the game and he's A) dead and B) a "nightmare". Like he appears in the other games, sure, but the fact that you can play as him in X6 is a spoiler for a newcomer such as myself.

Saying that, I do appreciate you telling me that it never gets better, because I just played the acid rain stage and I'm partway through the ice stage and both of them are terrible.

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MrMallard posted...

Saying that, I do appreciate you telling me that it never gets better, because I just played the acid rain stage and I'm partway through the ice stage and both of them are terrible.

They're not even the worst regular stages, believe it or not. That goes to the junk level. It's literally just one long, unending stretch of instant-death bullshit that gets dumber and dumber as it goes.

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MrMallard posted...

Spoilers on the Zero front

And sorry about that. The weird thing is that it's not really explained, either. I didn't even register it in my mind as a spoiler because the game barely treats it as anything but bonus content.

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Gobstoppers12 posted...

Allow me to be the first to regret to inform you that X6 never gets better. It never becomes a satisfying experience. No amount of exploration, armor collecting, boss defeating, or reploid rescue ever transforms X6 into a good game.

The difficulty is either baby-easy or absurdly frustrating, with no in between. Boss fights range from the most ludicrous thing you've ever seen because the pattern is for 2 year olds, or the most obnoxious set of special circumstances with pinpoint timing and accuracy ever. There are certain bosses that, if playing as Zero, are nigh-unbeatable.

X5 may be uninspired and lazy, but it at least executes the tried and true formula with competence and consistency. X6 is what happens when a game is rushed out in 8 months by the B-team with almost no quality control. Instant-death mechanics are fucking everywhere. Stupid level gimmicks wear out their welcome within 2 minutes but just keep right on going. Alternate paths are strewn about the levels with no indication that you've strayed from the main objective until you wind up fighting a boss which you literally cannot kill until special circumstances are met.

It's an absolute trash-fire of a game.

X, X2, X3, and X4 are the golden era. X5 is good but lazy, X7 is gimmicky but fun, X8 is...mediocre at best...

But X6? X6 is the only one I would call truly bad. The only redeeming quality about X6 is that the music is sometimes pretty cool. The boss fight against Gate stands out especially.

Imagine thinking X7 was gimmicky but fun. That game is garbage that I've just started trying to play on the collection. It is AWFUL. X6 has enormous design issues, but the game is fundamentally still fun to play like X4 and X5. It sucks terribly, but X7 is just a straight up bad game in every aspect. X8 is better than X7 and is still mediocre, but X7 is absolute trash. X6 is better than it but not by much.

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Kaldrenthebold posted...

Imagine thinking X7 was gimmicky but fun. That game is garbage that I've just started trying to play on the collection. It is AWFUL. X6 has enormous design issues, but the game is fundamentally still fun to play like X4 and X5. It sucks terribly, but X7 is just a straight up bad game in every aspect. X8 is better than X7 and is still mediocre, but X7 is absolute trash. X6 is better than it but not by much.

X7 can be entertaining if you go in it knowing what you're doing but completely blind it's very painful. It still sucks ass, but it's possible to have fun; some of the level design isn't all bad. banging ost too

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I did some tower level and it was the worst thing ever. Just running to the right with some bad platforming and annoying as hell enemies. I think I stopped after that cause it was so painful.

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I'm suddenly reminded Legacy Collection X6 changed the intro music.

The OG X6 intro was the best thing about X6.

https://youtu.be/wNW5-apbE54

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Kaldrenthebold posted...

I did some tower level and it was the worst thing ever. Just running to the right with some bad platforming and annoying as hell enemies. I think I stopped after that cause it was so painful.

That's definitely one of the worst levels. X7 is also a miserable experience all around if you play as Zero, in my experience. The fun is when you know what the game is all about and you just want to screw around in a 3D environment with some enemies to kill. It's not "good" by any means, but X6 is so, so much worse. X7 has some frustrating design and bad camera angles in 3D segments, but X6 is just...horrid. It's absolutely terrible.

I bought the second half collection on Steam a while back and enjoyed X7 much, much more than X6. I had played and beaten both in the past, but tried them again recently. X7 holds up better than I expected, and X6 holds up much, much worse than I thought.

I played as Zero in X6 hoping his AoE potential would alleviate some of the bullshit enemy placements in the levels, and it helped some, but there's no cure for awful level design. What really killed the run was trying to fight the Nightmare King (the two squares with the eyes inside) as Zero on normal difficulty. It was just too annoying. I could have beaten it with enough persistence (I have done it before, back in the day) but I assessed my priorities and put the game down. I haven't gone back to it.

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X6 is a great game that gets way too much hate just because of a few insignificant design oversights and higher difficulty than usual
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MarthGoomba posted...

X6 is a great game that gets way too much hate just because of a few insignificant design oversights and higher difficulty than usual

It's not great at all. Even without the shitty insta-death level design gimmicks, the enemy placements are dumb, the random upgrade system (with the chance to permanently miss out on rescues) is horrible, and the nightmare system is just needlessly complicated.

It's not an "insignificant design oversight" when the game is just flat-out frustrating to play.

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Gobstoppers12 posted...

It's not great at all. Even without the shitty insta-death level design gimmicks, the enemy placements are dumb, the random upgrade system (with the chance to permanently miss out on rescues) is horrible, and the nightmare system is just needlessly complicated.

It's not an "insignificant design oversight" when the game is just flat-out frustrating to play.

don't bother arguing with marth, it's a waste of time

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I enjoy the level design, upgrade collection, and nightmare system. I don't find it frustrating at all.
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The ninja armor is pretty cool at least...

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MarthGoomba posted...

I enjoy the level design, upgrade collection, and nightmare system. I don't find it frustrating at all.

You do you, but I whole-heartedly disagree with your assessment.

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My most played megaman games are X>X5>X6>X2>X8. Unfortunately I never owned X4 and only played it on a emulator or I borrowed from a friend. X3 I never owned, I could have had it but the pawn shop I was at I could either get MM3,MM4,MM5 or X3 and I chose three games over one. Wish I jsut got X3 instead.

Funny thing about that story though is I wished upon a star a year ago and asked for those three games or X3. Even said in a year. Well a year later I had my choice.

As for X7, never played it hears it was terrible and never was interested in getting it. X8 I did get but in only beat it like once. Wasn't bad was just into other things at the time.

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Metal Shark Player's stage is, I think, the best designed level in the game. To this day, I'm still not sure if that says more about the stage or more about X6.

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ThePieReborn posted...

Metal Shark Player's stage is, I think, the best designed level in the game. To this day, I'm still not sure if that says more about the stage or more about X6.

you know I was about to argue against you here but thinking about the other options I think you're right. the second segment has some real bullshit made 5 times worse with a nightmare effect and a dreadful miniboss, but at least it's all easy to learn. Yammark is relatively harmless but it does have some blind jumping in to spikes. Scaravich is usually not too bad too

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TheGreatEscape posted...

you know I was about to argue against you here but thinking about the other options I think you're right. the second segment has some real bullshit made 5 times worse with a nightmare effect and a dreadful miniboss, but at least it's all easy to learn. Yammark is relatively harmless but it does have some blind jumping in to spikes. Scaravich is usually not too bad too

My perception may be a little distorted from my Xtreme playthroughs, but Scaravich's stage is a goddamned war crime on Xtreme. Just ... so much Nightmare hoopty ass bullshit.

MSP's stage is deliberate evil/dickishness, yes, but I've never felt that any failures on my part were not a matter of execution.

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Gobstoppers12 posted...

That's definitely one of the worst levels. X7 is also a miserable experience all around if you play as Zero, in my experience. The fun is when you know what the game is all about and you just want to screw around in a 3D environment with some enemies to kill. It's not "good" by any means, but X6 is so, so much worse. X7 has some frustrating design and bad camera angles in 3D segments, but X6 is just...horrid. It's absolutely terrible.

I bought the second half collection on Steam a while back and enjoyed X7 much, much more than X6. I had played and beaten both in the past, but tried them again recently. X7 holds up better than I expected, and X6 holds up much, much worse than I thought.

I played as Zero in X6 hoping his AoE potential would alleviate some of the bullshit enemy placements in the levels, and it helped some, but there's no cure for awful level design. What really killed the run was trying to fight the Nightmare King (the two squares with the eyes inside) as Zero on normal difficulty. It was just too annoying. I could have beaten it with enough persistence (I have done it before, back in the day) but I assessed my priorities and put the game down. I haven't gone back to it.

It would be my luck that I pick one of the worst levels in the game. I think I also picked Zero to play as. X8 is the two character gimmick one, right? Maybe I'll pick it up again at some point to give it a better shot. But that first opening level and the 3D segments did not instill me with any confidence.

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ThePieReborn posted...

My perception may be a little distorted from my Xtreme playthroughs, but Scaravich's stage is a goddamned war crime on Xtreme. Just ... so much Nightmare hoopty ass bullshit.

MSP's stage is deliberate evil/dickishness, yes, but I've never felt that any failures on my part were not a matter of execution.

oh yeah scaravich is a lot worse on Xtreme due to the 4 packs of nightmares being copy pasted all over the level. On normal it's mostly just a boring level with some bullshit platforming if you're unlucky and another example of an interesting idea that they completely half assed.

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