2018-07-22

Hey friends. So, Mega Man X Legacy Collection is coming out in like a day, and I want to whine about some stuff. You know, because the best way to celebrate something you're super excited for is to complain about it. Well, only one of the complaints is about the collection, the other is just about the fanbase lol.

SO BIG COMPLAINT TIME. It's been officially disclosed that they're going to alter the English version of Mega Man X5 and change the names of the characters to their Japanese versions.

This is kind of old news now but I've been whining about it on GameFAQs for a while, so why not here, too? Well, I don't want to rant TOO much there so I can put more detail here where no one will even read it.

If you're unfamiliar with what I'm talking about, the person in charge of the localization for X5 back when it was released on the PlayStation decided to take some creative liberties with the names of the eight boss characters. Instead of the Japanese names like "Tidal Makoeen" and "Shining Hotarunicus" we got names like "Duff McWhalen" and "Izzy Glow." Personally, I loved this change because it gave the characters more personality, and in X5 in particular, they tried to start putting a lot of backstory to the characters, 'humanizing' them more than just 'animal-shaped things you fight.' You actually talk to them before fighting them and there are a variety of possible dialogues depending on what's happened in the story so far, and you can learn about them as characters. So I've always loved being able to refer to Dr. Glow as, well, Dr. Glow

Since the release of the English version of the game, fans have complained about the names and created their own fan-dubbed names for the characters. That's right -- they didn't use the Japanese names! Because as much as people hate that it was changed, they don't even like the Japanese names either. Instead of Hotarunicus, people would say things like "Shine Firefly."

This is because it put them more in line with the localized names of the first four games -- all of which were changed for the English releases, too. The names of the characters have always been creative or strange alterations of English words, like "Icy Penguigo" or "Electro Nazamuros," but they were changed for the English versions to tame things that followed this ugly Noun + Animal Name formula like "Chill Penguin" and "Volt Catfish." So all this time people are complaining that we didn't use the Japanese names (yes, the complaints were specifically worded like that) when fans didn't even like the Japanese names anyway. For the longest time I never had played X2 or X3 in English and only knew the Japanese names of the characters and would get crap for it from other fans when I used them because I was using the "stupid" names and the English names were "better." But I'm not going to go look up the English names just to talk about the game lol.

So fans hate all the names except for the weird early-English ones. And now people are cheering that the names are changed... but they're changed to the other names that those exact same fans hated as well...? The fans that were complaining about the new names refused to use the original names, too, so... lol.

Anyway, this actually wasn't meant to be my complaint about the fanbase. This is my complaint about Capcom's decision. The reason that Capcom gave for changing the names back to the original version was that it was to create a ~cohesive experience~ now that all eight games are available together to be played at once. Of course, they didn't bother changing it back when the Mega Man X Collection was released for PS2 that contained the first six games all together.

But my main problem with this excuse is that changing only one game's name doesn't create that same experience...? The first four games still have their localized names unchanged, so we're going to go from games with characters named stuff like "Armadillo" and "Ostrich" to suddenly having names like "Pegacion," "Scaravich," and "Stonekong." That's... not a cohesive experience at all?

And I would put money on saying they probably won't even change various other localization errors that cause even worse breaks to the cohesive experience like saying Magma Dragoon "left the Irregular Hunters" and crap like that.

So what does this decision even do? Fans are not getting the names they like, just another set of names they hate. And Capcom isn't getting the cohesive experience they're claiming to create. So this change does literally nothing other than ruin the nostalgic experience for fans who liked the original names. Oh, and to add insult to injury, the Japanese versions of the games will also be playable in the collection so you could easily just play those if you wanted to see the other names.

OK, first rant done.

Now my second rant is against the fanbase itself. And that's in the constant hatred toward Mega Man X7.

Now, Mega Man X7 is by no means a great game. Personally, I love the game, but I will quickly admit there are a lot of flaws. Unlike Unlimited Saga, though, which I would hesitate to recommend to someone unless I knew their tastes very well because it's a flawed game that I would anticipate many people disliking, Mega Man X7 is decent enough that I think most people could easily have fun with it, especially if they like Mega Man X games. In fact, the game pays homage to the rest of the series in a lot of ways that it should be even more enjoyable to long-time fans.

Recently, I've been playing a lot of Sonic Adventure 2: Battle on Steam, trying to 100% the game (which also includes breeding three perfect Chaos Chao and filling the rest of the Chao Garden with Chao based on my friends and Twitch regulars, so I'm nearing 300 hours with the game now...). This is my third time replaying Sonic Adventure 2 from beginning to end. Having lots of experience with both SA2 and MMX7, I'm pretty confident to say they have very similar quality.

Both of them have messed up cameras (though Sonic's can be worse at times where you can get stuck with the camera behind a wall or something so you see literally nothing at all and have no choice but to die, where as X7's camera is more just frustrating in that sometimes you want to be able to turn it but you can't, but you can still see your character and see what's around you enough to keep playing the game; not any worse than Super Mario 64's camera issues.)

Both of them have clunky controls. Here, both of them are pretty equal where they both have times you'll try to use a certain skill only to use another and end up getting yourself hurt -- or worse -- plummeting to your death. But both of them had predecessors like this with Sonic Adventure and Mega Man X6 also having these problems.

Both of them have hilariously bad voice acting, with a couple of characters having good voices while everyone else is terribly that you hardly notice the good ones anymore. Both have noisy, talkative bosses that repeat the same lines ovr and over and annoying support characters who constantly interrupt you to say stuff like, "Did you know you can JUMP in this game?!"

The only things that Sonic really has over X7 is the Chao Garden and the graphics are a little nicer. Though the PC version of X7 has great graphics, as they were able to do a lot of aesthetic stuff they had to cut or redo for the PS2 version. So hopefully we'll be getting a port of the PC version and not an emulation of the PS2 version. Then the only thing we're missing is the Chao Garden.

X7 also was the first Mega Man X game to offer a New Game+ mode, allowing you to start the game with powered up Hunters and unlocked characters and abilities, as well as allowing you to fully upgrade your characters with all of their Chips, something that fans complained about not being able to do in previous titles. The game also is more cinematic and has more story than previous games, trying to create a more cohesive story experience with (skippable!) cutscenes between every stage and a lot of character and lore development. Again, another thing people complained about in previous titles.

Now, I understand the initial backlash to X7 pretty well. It does a few things that infuriated a lot of fans. The main thing being that the game's title character, X, has now retired and turned into a background support character, with a completely new made-up character named Axl with an "annoying teenager" personality taking his place. I think that's reason enough to immediately have a sour taste about the game, and I understand how that can affect your impression of the game from the start. Then there's the fact that they tried out the 3D stuff. In a franchise that already had about 20 major titles and plenty of spinoff titles that were all build around the same 2D platforming formula, suddenly changing that around is off-putting.

And this is the place that X7 suffers the most. Fans wanted something the same, but they got something different. And the reaction to that is always "this game is terrible and bad and everything about it is bad." But X7 is actuall a really fun game in its own right, marred by a few unfortunate flaws. But it's not any worse than something like Sonic Adventure 2 or Banjo-Tooie which are decent-but-flawed games succeeding previously better games. The difference is that Sonic still starred sonic and was built around the Sonic Adventure engine, while Banjo-Tooie starred Banjo and Kazooie yet again while being built from the Banjo-Kazooie engine.

Overall, I'd say I enjoy Mega Man X7 more than either Sonic or Banjo. Actually, I kind of hate Banjo-Tooie and think it's objectively a poorly-designed game overall. Sonic and X7 are around the same level, like I mentioned before, I'm just more attached to Mega Man as a franchise and like the shoter, replayable aspect of Mega Man compared to the long do-it-once campaign style of Sonic Adventure.

OK, so with all of that context, here's the problem we're having now: This is going to be many fans' first experience with Mega Man X7. This is a perfect opportunity for them to add another fun new Mega Man game to their library. An entire experience they can enjoy. But so many aren't going to. I've seen so many fans who haven't played X7 before already saying they're going to refuse to even try the game despite owning it on the collection, or already saying the hate the game before even playing it. And it's all because of the overreaction of previous fans.

Like, I get being upset that the game is about some new rando and does all this weird new stuff and didn't deliver the experience you were expecting it to. I definitely undrstand that. That's happened with me many times with many franchises. But instead of, you know, objectively criticising the decisions and direction of the company, people loudly and publicly hate on the game so bad that they ruin others' experience of the game by marring their opinion of the game before they even have a chance to try the game for themselves.

I played X7 not knowing the fan reaction of the game at the time and found it to be a very enjoyable experience. Yeah, I had my own complains about it and think some of the design choices were pretty questionable. But there's a lot to the game beyond that and a lot to love there. And I remember when I told my brother and some friends that it was a pretty much universally-hated game and they were shocked to learn that, because they also viewed the game for what it was and not for what it was made out to be by obnoxious fans. And I've met plenty of other X7 fans online, and we all share the same experiences -- whenever we try to express any kind of fondness for the game, we're heckled and belittled, usually by comments with very little substance.

In fact, I've seen entire professional reviews of the game that can't even manage to explain why the game is bad, and just constantly say "Oh man, this is so terrible! Don't even play it!" the whole time. It's so ridiculous. X7's reputation is one of the most overblown and unrealistic things I've ever seen in the history of gaming. And I have a lot of complaints about general reactions to various things throughout gaming history...

So, lots of crying about why I'm mad about this game.

But don't get me wrong, I am so stoked about Mega Man X Legacy Collection, and yeah, one of those reasons is finally having a PC version of X7 to play. In fact, I've been losing sleep because I can't contain my excitement for pretty much the entire weekend and I won't even be able to play the game until Tuesday. To be honest I can't even tell you why I'm so excited considering I already own all of the games in the collection anyway...

So let's talk about something I really like about the collection, so we're not all negative here. (Geez I've been using a lot of italics in this post...)

And that awesome thing is the achievements! I know some people don't care about stuff like that, but I love achievements in games, because I like to replay games anyway, and it's fun trying to explore the game and see what kind of stuff I missed. Achievements usually encourage you to try things you wouldn't normally try or to pay attention to aspects of the game you didn't pay much attention to otherwise. Well, when they're good achievements.

Sadly, the achievements for Mega Man Legacy Collection were not very good. Pretty much there were just achievements for clearing each title in the collection and for clearing arbitrary numbers of the challenges. So I was expecting this collection to be the same. I'm trying to avoid learning too much about the collection so I can have some surprises (though I'm way too excited and involved with talking to other fans so I don't think much will be a surprise at this point) so I was considering not looking at the achievements beforehand. But I figured I may as well sneak a peek and get the disappointment out of the way early.

But instead, I was very pleasantly surprised!

There are achievements related to each individual title, which encourage you not only to play through each game and collect all the optional items and stuff, but also encourage you to play around with the games in various ways! For example, there's an achievement for cutting off Flame Mammoth's trunk in Mega Man X or for defusing seven bombs in a row in The Skiver ~~Spiral Pegacion~~'s stage in Mega Man X5. Sadly, the X7 ones seem to be the least creative, but they at least encourage you to try out all the different weapons and techniques and play the game on New Game+ a little.

Actually X8's look even worse and less creative but will force you to play the game way too much because the requirement to upgrade everyone to 100% is pretty much a ton of tedious grinding.

There are also a slew of hidden achievements, which will probably be awarded for reaching certain story points in each game. But that's interesting because X5 and X6 both have a lot of varying story paths and endings so hopefully there will be hidden achievements for doing things in those different ways.

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