REVIEW
Mega Man X: Regenesis
(fangame)

THE VERDICT: 

I spent the better part of two weekends off and on, dabbling with progressing through this fangame once I found the time to check it out last weekend. 

Right off the bat, I have to admit that the game had some kinks to work out as there were some bugs and added jank that made some parts of the game cumbersome. Fortunately, I can confidently say that as of the current patch/update to the game, all of those concerns and issues were eliminated and addressed, including a bug that froze the game upon the defeat of the boss at the end of the first area of Sigma’s Fortress. I documented that glitch for my own reference as I initially thought that it was just a one time occurrence, but found out on social media that several players ran into that issue along with numerous others during that particular boss fight, including players falling through the environment and instantly dying before the fight even started and other concerns. 

I had mentioned it with a few other friends that I discussed this game with but I thought there was some awkwardness in terms of the inputs for wall-climbing, so it came across as X looking like he was stuck on walls when I was attempting to scale them. I was relieved to discover that this was another issue that was alleviated in the current version of the game.

The week one version of the game had some various odd choices in terms of the Mavericks’ damage scaling. Special weapons, including that Mavericks’ particular weakness, and X-Buster shots all dealt marginally the same minimal damage of about 1-2 lines of damage on their lifebar. In the current version of the game, it was altered that weaknesses deal 3 lines of damage while X-Buster shots, including the fully upgraded Buster, deal 2 lines of damage. Because of this odd choice in terms of damage scaling, I found myself using the X-Buster on the majority of the Mavericks instead of using their particular weakness, save for a handful of them since I didn’t want to deal with their annoying behavior patterns. I thought it was pointless that the fully upgraded X-Buster doesn’t deal any significant damage to the majority of these bosses. It made me wish there was an option to toggle that X-Buster option off completely, much like Samus Aran’s upgrades in Super Metroid. At the end of the day, I felt that particular upgrade felt ultimately pointless in the boss encounters, save for clearing screens of common grunt fodder across the levels.

Speaking of upgrades, the infamous Hadoken can be acquired in this fangame, but it’s not a one-hit kill on the final boss. On Hunter difficulty, it only knocks off 60-80% of his first lifebar. However, I did like the visual cue to a player having the Hadoken from the added headband added to X’s sprite and on his profile picture in conversation dialog boxes.

The popular armor upgrades are scattered throughout the eight Maverick stages, but with an additional twist. There are EIGHT parts total, with two leg upgrades and two arm/buster upgrades. Two of the upgrades offer a Rising Uppercut and Ground Smash special attacks (can only used sparingly due to their limited usage due to the cooldown required before using them again) that allow X to destroy portions of the environment to reach other hidden secrets. I should mention that X can ONLY acquire these upgrades with currency earned in the form of chips found scattered throughout each level. Each armor piece costs between 15-20 chips, with the final hidden armor capsule (containing the Hadoken upgrade) on the first stage of Sigma’s Fortress, requiring 40 chips to purchase. So along with locating each of the eight heart containers to extend X’s health bar and the four subtanks to replenish his health in battle, players have a lot of exploring to do to discover all of these secrets. I have to admit that a lot of these secrets are VERY well hidden to the point where I admittedly resorted to reddit and YouTube to locate them all. The game does have a clever notifier for players to let them know that they have located every secret in a particular stage “MISSION COMPLETED” is labeled over their portrait on the stage select screen. 

Last but not least, we HAVE to talk about the difficulty spike once you get to Sigma in the game’s climax. Everything to that point of the game I felt was fair to an extent. Sure, a lot of the Mavericks’ stages had their obnoxious qualities about them, but at the end of the day, that’s NES to SNES era gaming in a nutshell in terms of trial and error that isn’t so forgiving as modern gaming tends to be with numerous checkpoints and save points. The final boss of this game is a brutal gauntlet against Sigma’s hounds - yes TWO instead of one like the original Mega Man X title, Sigma himself and finally Sigma’s final form that is reminiscent of his appearance in the SNES original. From the second the fight starts after his two lifebars fill up, this iteration of Sigma feels like a trial by fire to test even the most savvy of Mega Man X savants. He deals insane amounts of damage to X, even with the fully upgraded armor capabilities, all weapons (including his weakness) deal insignificant damage across the board with even the Hadoken not even shaving off an entire lifebar, and he seems to react constantly to players’ inputs. That being said, there’s still some parts of his behavior patterns that can be exploited, much like his SNES original counterpart. I noticed that he will scale walls to anticipate X on the opposite side to counter him respectfully and will almost cancel other actions to ensure that he is in the optimal position to do so. It’s highly frustrating but not impossible. I had to laugh when reading comments on reddit about this boss fight that read along the lines of “What in the actual Dark Souls is this shit??” that captured my sentiment exactly. 

Sigma’s final form is essentially the same as his SNES counterpart, but with the additional headache of having him spawning grunts on the ground and in the air at random. Plus, Sigma’s head, the only point of weakness, can only be damaged with the lvl. 2 and 3 X-Buster charges, along with his specific weapon weakness. Anything else simply bounces off uselessly. I have seen a speedrun where someone actually got the Hadoken off and I tip my hat to the folks who can pull off that feat among all of the chaos going on in this final challenge. 

Play It or Don't Bother?

Overall, I don’t regret taking the time to play this fangame as it was a blast to revisit the original SNES era Mega Man X with a different coat of paint and new challenges to overcome. Capcom doesn’t seem like they are going to do anything with the X series anytime soon, so it’s cool that someone took the time and effort to make something worth checking out. 

If you’re a fan of the X series, definitely take the time to check this out, but make sure that you’re installing the most up to date version of the game to avoid the previously mentioned issues that I had the misfortune of running into. For everyone else, I can’t say that anything offered here is going to make you a new fan of the X series if you aren’t already. I think a lot of casual players will be turned off from the difficulty spike at the end of the game if they have the patience to get that far.