I love you guys for teasing the incoming Alleyway Retroactive. <3
Also, Mega Man X4 is something I've also committed to muscle memory.
I seem to think X5 is better than most people do.
and I think Mega Man X6 is worse than X7. yeah. it's THAT awful. Mega Man X6 is an example of what happens when you take a game engine that fucking works and just **** all over it. From prototypes of the game that leaked to the internet, it's been debated that that game's turnaround was somewhere in the league of 7 to 8 months. Inafune didn't even know it existed until he saw it in a store.
the rushed development shows too. sprites recycled from X4 and X5 animate far smoother than any asset developed specifically for Mega Man X6. the english translation is littered with spelling and gramatical errors and leaves in the japanese voice track. they left in the Jrock opening that they usually scrub from the western releases of the Mega Man X games. Boss fights are outright recycled from Mega Man X5.
Level design faires much worse. Blind jumps over instant death (Metal shark player, Commander Yammark, Infinity Mijinion), Obnoxious Mini-bosses repeated 4 or 5 times through a single stage (Blaze Heatnix, Ground Scaravich), instances of levels getting HARDER if you beat the Maverick the current level you have chosen has a weakness to (Shield Sheldon, Rainy Turtloid, Blizzard Wolfang, Blaze Heatnix), and some of the most obnoxiously healthy fucking enemies in a mega man game ever make for a FUCKING maddening. most of the time I just dash through and take hits because it's preferable to trying to beat the enemies with the absurd ammout of punishment they take, especially given Mega Man X's very weak Z-sabre attack and the overall nerfed feeling of even his charged up buster shots. Maverick weapons only go so far in aleviating this.
that's not even mentioning the whole reploid rescue system, where there are reploids you can touch in levels to save them and get some health and an extra lfie from them. sometimes, they also have abilities X and Zero can equip. There's also the Nightmare Virus enemies. these are just obnoxiously healthy and respawn if you don't pick up the pickup they drop when you kill them. they also will fly to any reploid on screen in need of rescuing and corrupt them.
Corrupted Reploids are gone for good once one of the nightmare viruses touches them even once. they dont' respawn. you get one shot to fucking rescue them. and if you're thinking "So, what? these abilities sound pretty minor; I don't need them!" think again!
there's a room in the first gate's lab stage that Mega Man X cannot make the jump for. the walls and ceiling is lined with spikes. yes, blizzard wolffang's weapon makes an ice block to stand on, but even with that AND an air dash, X cannot clear the spikes. you need the Jumper ability from a random reploid, or X's shadow Armor...
The SHadow armor, which prevents you from using maverick weapons, as a **** giga attack, doesn't ahve a charged buster shot, and shoots these shuriken that spray all over the place and do next to no damage.
Seriously, you better like fucking playing as Zero, because the damage he does is the only thing that's going to get you past enemies with any sort of efficiency, and his double jump is the only thing that can really get you past the horribly dickish level design and platforming.
This is of course, ignoring the fucked boss design. bosses are either so pathetic that they never get a chance to attack you, or take such a retarded ammount of punishment even with their weakness that a proper fight with them takes around 5 minutes (I'm looking at you High Max and Gate...!), not to mention there's a maverick in this game that DOES NOT HAVE A WEAKNESS (supposedly it's Guard Shell, but I have yet to reflect a shot of that **** at him) and makes for one of the most stupidly hard boss fights in all the series. also, every time he takes certian threshholds of damage or randomly when he takes slashing damage, he creates a clone of himself that tkaes a stupid ammount of punishment and fills the room with homing bubbles. and he can make as many clones as he wants and that fight sucks.