Review #203: Mega Man X Command Mission

 Turn-based Maverick hunting!

 What is a Mega Man, you ask your self. It used to be one of Capcom's flagship franchises, one that they milked as hard as they could, but since the quality was somewhat consistent, we didn't mind. This one time, someone had this weird idea of turning Mega Man into an RPG. No, no, not Mega Man Battle Network/Rockman.Exe, a turn-based traditional JRPG. And it worked.

 If you ever played a Mega Man game for the story, you were doing it wrong. You'd expect otherwise in a JRPG, but it isn't the case, if you play Command Mission for the Story, you'll be sorely disappointed. The story is as lame as latter Mega Man X installments, this time around it concerns the Resistance Army(X and company) VS the Revolution Army, led by Epsilon, a new villain. The story has a couple of very obvious plot twists, and a very forgettable cast of side characters. Being an RPG, it introduces new allies for X: Spider, a generic male suave bounty hunter, Cinnamon, a generic female nurse, Marino, a generic female thief(Japan LOVES this archetype) and Steel Masimmo, the most interesting character of the bunch. There's a very big issue with the cast... each character gets a chapter that introduces them, Cinnamon and Marino sharing theirs, but after X, Axl and Zero group up, which is the very next chapter after the last of the other characters are introduced, these characters fall to the wayside, never to be seen in a cutscene again, except the second-to-last one in the game. They don't even get an epilogue in the ending. The only way to get more information about these characters is to speak to them in the base during chapters, and get a couple of lines of dialogue from each. So if you expect a gripping story and deep characters, this is not your game.

 Now then, gameplay, that is where it's at in this game. The game is divided in Chapters, each one sending X and his allies to a different location in order to find a Maverick at the end, except that X doesn't get their powers this time. While the game is very linear in that regard, you are free to explore previously visited areas at any time, in order to retrieve missed goodies or open up previously locked doors to get better weapons by fighting challenging hidden bosses. The Energy Tanks return in Command Mission, you start the game with one E.Tank, but you can collect more throughout the course of the game, and they can be used in or out of battle to heal your characters by spending their contents. It's a fairly interesting mechanic, since there are no other health-replenishing items in the game(Besides revival items), and Cinnamon needs to spend her Weapon Energy(More on this later) in order to heal her allies, and it can only be done in battle. Energy tanks are replenished by finding Yellow Crystals on the ground, or you are sometimes rewarded with E.Tank energy after a battle, so you must choose carefully when to use them.... Or return to base and sleep, which also replenishes all your E.Tanks.

 Lastly, there's no traditional armor equipment in this game, you can arm your characters with one main weapon and two side weapons, but the real customization comes in the form of 'Force Metal'. Each character has a different amount of slots(For instance,X has 4, while Massimo only has 2) and a different numbered total Erosion. Each Force Metal has a different number of Erosion, and while you can exceed the max amount of Erosion, it will have negative consequences on your character. These Force Metals have different attributes, some raise your Strength, some your Life Energy, others give you resistance to certain Status Effects or there are some that give you bonus Weapon Energy per turn.

 The game used the infamous Random Encounters, meaning that battles are triggered at random by walking through dungeons. The Encounter Rate is fairly inconsistent, sometimes you may get another encounter just a couple of steps after the last one, while other times you'll be able to walk through an entire zone without triggering one. Battles play out fairly similarly to Final Fantasy X, you can see the turn order on the bottom of the screen, so that you can plan your moves, and you can press L2 on one of your character's turns to swap him out with another character, without losing a turn. On your turn you can use items, either of your Sub Weapons(Consume Weapon Energy(WE)), Special R2 skills(Which consume WE), attack normally or engage HYPER MODE.

 Characters are fairly unique, which makes combat very engaging, you have melee attackers like Zero, Cinnamon and Massimo, ranged fighters like X and Axl, while Marino's attacks depend on her main weapon! Flying enemies are weak to ranged attackers, while some enemies need to be hit with melee attacks to damage their shields and allow ranged characters to deal more damage. Each character starts each battle with a different set amount of WE, and they recover WE each turn, this WE can be used to unleash the powerful R2 attacks or the sub-weapons. The R2 attacks are unique on each character, Zero has you inputting different commands in a set amount of time, X's only needs you to hold X to charge your buster, Cinnamon requires you to spin the right analog stick, etc, and each R2 attack is unique to each character. X's damages every enemy(And if you use 100 WE, it's a guaranteed critical), Cinnamon's the only healing skill in the game, etc. Furthermore, Hyper Mode is unique for each character, although only the S-Rank hunters(X, Axl and Zero) get the more interesting ones, X and Zero even having unlockable alternate Hyper Modes. For example, Axl's cloaks him, meaning every attack will miss, if you equip him with the 'bait' sub-weapon, you can make your entire party invulnerable since they'll keep aiming at him. X's and Zero's make them even stronger(X gets different R2 and Sub Weapons while in Hyper Mode), and their unlockables are game breakers.

 The game is very colorful, and character designs are, in my opinion, some of the best in the franchise. X's new design is particularly badass, and Epsilon looks like something you want to destroy. That said, the models aren't particularly good looking, the mouth animations are particularly cringe worthy since they aren't synced to the audio, and even if they were, their mouths flap around very eerily. Music is really good, it's not as good as some of Mega Man's finest, but it's certainly a pretty good soundtrack, and fits the X series to a tee. Voice acting ranges from passable to terrible, but then again the story isn't very good, so I didn't mind it, no matter how convincing the Voice Actors could've been, they wouldn't have been able to sell me on the game's plot.

 Command Mission is a very weird game. It's a RPG spin off from a Platformer series, and it's a JRPG with a terrible plot, that manages to be good thanks to the gameplay. It's hard to recommend to either X fans, because this is a slow-paced game that plays nothing like other X games, or to RPG fans, because the story is so dull. That said, the gameplay is really good, the Force Metal and Sub-Weapon system is very engaging, battling is a blast, the locations are appealing and fun to explore, character design is very neat. It's pretty good, just not for the reason an RPG is supposed to be good.
 8.0 out of 10.