Game Title: Mega Man X Legacy Collection 2
Company: Capcom
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Digital (Code included in retail release of X Collection 1)
Battery Life (X5, x6, x7): 3.5 – 5 hours
Battery Life (X8): 2.5 – 4 hours
Download: 6.6 GB

I had opted to divide the Mega Man X Legacy Collections into separated reviews, mostly because I have never experienced post-X5 and have heard a lot of conflicting things about those games. So, to hold off the risk of having a lot of problems with the later games lowering the score far too low for the entire set of collections, I divided them in two.

I quickly found that this worry was well-founded, but here’s not the place to discuss it. Let’s get past the intro and get right to it. Here is my review of Mega Man X Legacy Collection 2 for the Nintendo Switch!

Story

The story of Mega Man X5-X8 continues the world of the X series, where Reploids try to live in peace with humans, only to mysteriously turn into violent Mavericks, requiring the Maverick Hunters to track them down and put a stop to their violence.

The individual stories of these games are very good, especially the stories of Mega Man X5 and X8. Due note that this is also where the continuity-confusion began with the X series, as X5 was meant to be the end of the X series and bridge into the Zero series, but Capcom decided to continue it, anyways, creating more and more confusion on the connection between the two sub-series.

This lead to a lot of plotholes, inconsistencies, and plot points that don’t make much sense, mostly in terms of the explanation for Zero’s return in X6, not to mention the fact that X6 had a very poorly-done plot translation to begin with.

Gameplay

Like the previous collection, this is a Collection of 4 action-based platform games, consisting of both 2D and 3D gameplay. The core Mega Man formula is the same, though, as you’ll be constantly running through environments and striking down enemies with some light exploration elements.

Keeping side-games out of this, Legacy Collection 2 contains 4 games: Mega Man X5 and X6 for the PlayStation, along with X7 and X8 for the PlayStation 2. Oddly enough, it also contains the Day of Sigma Anime Prequel in addition to the other Museum artwork, trailers, and X Challenge Mini-Game.

As with the previous collection, the Xbox One and PS4 Achievements/Trophies are built into the Switch version as Trophy Medals, so if you want the feeling of unlocking Trophies on the go, this collection has 52 different ones to unlock.

Progression in these games isn’t much different from the previous ones, but they do contain some differences. Just as the first 4 each added elements, so did these. X5 added Reploids to rescue in each stage for special customization parts. X6 added alternate routes and bosses to each of the stages as well as different ending routes, based on key items you collect as you play. X7 added 3d gameplay segments and a new playable character. Finally, X8 added an in-game currency and shop that was used for upgrades and characters, be it from items found in stages or post-game unlocks from your previous play-through.

However, not all of these additions were for the better. There are problems with a lot of these games and features that ramped up the difficulty. While Rookie Hunter Mode returning for Collection 2 does fix a lot of these issues (like the levels that seemed to be nothing but spike pits in X6 and X8), it doesn’t fix all of them.

To go into detail, here’s the run-down: X5’s issue was an unskippable tutorial constantly interrupting you as you play, sometimes mere seconds after the last conversation they interrupted you with. X6’s main issue was the inclusion of bosses that were invulnerable to everything but very specific attacks without mention. X7’s main problems were that the way it was presented felt extremely slow and clunky and had camera controls that heightened the difficulty much more than it should haves. X8 managed to solidify pretty much everything wrong with X7, but it still is held back by little to no exploration and side-areas due to the nature of the shop system.

These games are still fun for Mega Man fans, but the plethora of problems in X6 and X7 will definitely turn away outside players. I, myself, only really see myself revisiting 5 and 8 in the future. That basically brings it down to this: 2 of these games are good games. The other 2 aren’t.

In terms of time, you’ll have a little less time with this collection than the last. With much less exploration being done in X7 and X8, they aren’t as long as the rest of the series. Each of the games should take you around 3-4 hours to complete, giving you a total of around 12-16 hours of game time. This is still a lot for the price, but not as much as you might get out of Collection 1.

Controls

Controlling these games are mostly the same, with the exception of X7, which adds more buttons for the triggers with its lock-on system and the camera controls.

But the base control scheme is the same as before, and any command can, once again, be moved to any button. You move with the Arrow Buttons / D-Pad or Left Analog Stick. A is the default for Dash and B is for jumping. Y is used for main weapons and X for special weapons.

Presentation

Graphically, most of these games look very good. The filtering options that made X4 look so good in Collection 1 do the same thing for X5 and X6 in this collection. X7 and X8’s graphics have been mostly improved as well. X7’s cell-shaded style looks very smooth and crisp here, and even X8’s graphics have been touched up.

The problems here are the anime cutscenes and X7’s choice in Voice Acting. The anime scenes from X8 are very grainy and blurry to watch and X7’s Voice-Acting performance shows that Capcom didn’t learn much from X4. I muted voiced scenes because of this.

Battery Life

Here’s where things get weird. So, all 4 games in Mega Man X Legacy Collection 1 used the same amount of Battery, right? Well, things don’t do the same thing here. X5, X6, and X7 use the same amount of Battery, but X8 uses significantly more power than any of the others.

So, we have 2 sets of Battery Readings here. First, here are the Battery Times for X5-X7:

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 30 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 36 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 16 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 23 minutes

And here are the Battery Times for Mega Man X8:

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 2 hours, 24 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 2 hours, 51 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 30 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 52 minutes

Why this is the way it is I don’t know. Either way, you’ll be getting lots of Battery Time out of most of this collection.