TMMN Reviews: Minecraft x Mega Man X DLC

No one saw this coming.

As if out of nowhere, Capcom and Mojang shadow-dropped Mega Man X downloadable content for the enormously successful Minecraft last month, and it was such a surprise and out-of-left-field thing, the thought didn’t even occur to me until just recently that maybe I should review it. So I bought a copy and gave it a go this past weekend.

For a quick summation: If you’re not one who would be into Minecraft, you’re probably not going to be into this. That isn’t to say you have to already know or like Minecraft to enjoy this, but you’re going to have to be able to like and enjoy certain aspects of Minecraft on a fundamental level in order to be able to enjoy this. If you hate Minecraft, then you’ll probably want to stay away, because so much of this is literally Minecraft with a Mega Man X skin.

That isn’t to say Mega Man X doesn’t contribute anything to the experience beyond aesthetics, though. You play through the experience as X, and you have access to some of his moves right from the start. You’ve got the X-Buster on the trigger buttons, and can charge or toggle rapid-fire with the left one (why not the right, or split the charge and rapid functions between them? I have no idea), and you can even wall-jump by pressing up against a wall and jumping repeatedly. That said, you’re still doing all of this with Minecraft controls, which are a very different feel from Mega Man X‘s finest moments.

Then you’ve got some things that are different here. For instance, you can actually aim in this, which is pretty novel, Axl in Mega Man X8 notwithstanding. Unfortunately, the targeting reticle is only available in the first-person perspective, and there is no sort of lock-on, though it looked like some shots did possess a slight homing quality to them. And if there’s a way to play in a sort of 2.5-D way like the trailer showed, I wasn’t able to find it.

Enemies have a pretty high respawn rate, at least in the normal difficulty, and it feels like by comparison to Mega Man X. This means they can catch you from behind unawares as you try to move through the stage, and if you’re keeping to the first-person viewpoint, you may not even see it coming or know what’s going on until you’re dead. What’s more, enemies will chase you in ways they never could in the games; a Spiky, for example, won’t just do a little hop when it bumps into a wall and then go the other way, but it will aggressively start to climb the wall after you. Slowly, sure, but that’s a new trick all the same, and their increased resilience to your attacks can pose an interesting challenge to the Mega Man X veteran.

Other differences include changing a longtime Mega Man staple: You don’t get Special Weapons from defeating bosses. Nor do you get upgrades from hidden Dr. Light capsules — not in the traditional sense, anyway. Along with some unlockable art and a boss rush mode, the Hunter Base which acts as the game’s hub (after completing the highway stage intro), one wing contains a sort of lab of Dr. Light’s. Here is where you’ll use the Mega Man 7-styled Bolts (what, no Zenny? Oh, well…) you gain from defeating enemies to purchase everything from Special Weapons to armor upgrades to Heart Containers (nee Tanks), 1UPs, Sub-Tanks, and Weapon Tanks.

To my surprise, however, the armor upgrades aren’t permanent. Basically, it doubles your life meter with a blue color over the yellow, and when that’s gone, you revert back to regular X. And while the Buster upgrade will give you a more powerful blast, you unfortunately do not get to behold the Spiral Crush Buster shot in three glorious voxelated dimensions; it’s just a more powerful (I think) version of your level 3 charge shot.

Playing the content on Normal difficulty, I found the game to be surprisingly challenging. I think part of that might be due to the fact that I haven’t played Minecraft since 2016, and even then, I was just farming resources and building stuff, not hunting down Ender Dragons or anything. The intro stage gives you unlimited lives, but once you’re done with Vile, the training wheels come off, and you’ve got a stock of lives to manage before you have to restart a stage (ProTip: This isn’t one of those games that tells you how many lives you have remaining, but how many total — die when you have 1 life left, and you don’t restart with 0, but go back to base to start again).

There are some settings you can adjust to make things a little easier, but… they don’t always tend to work as intended. For instance, you can add these “coils” to stages that will propel you forward a great distance, often past some tough bits. The problem is, that distance can end in a pit or in a crowd of enemies. Even then, I still found myself dying for reasons I couldn’t figure out. For instance, it would be like I’d use a coil to jump ahead and hit a wall, and… die. Did hitting the wall kill me? It didn’t always happen, and it was tough to figure out, as it often seemed to happen randomly and from out of nowhere.

That’s why I didn’t end up finishing the whole pack. Maybe someday, but at the moment, I just hit one random death too many. I’ll get back to it at some point, I’m sure, but for now, I got my fill.

As I mentioned before, I haven’t touched Minecraft in a while. I’d been meaning to get back to it, but as you might guess, it was this Mega Man X DLC that finally pushed me back in. Suffice to say, this is why I don’t know how Minecraft DLC typically works, and so I actually came away a little disappointed — not by what it did provide, but what it didn’t provide.

For those who don’t know, Minecraft has different modes, including Survival and Creative modes where you can build a lot of stuff. I had hoped that when I switched the game mode to Creative, I would have the opportunity to basically craft and create my own little Mega Man X world occupied by Mega Man X critters and such. Unfortunately, that does not appear to be the case; for content, the DLC gets you the truncated recreation of Mega Man X, but little for the actual game of Minecraft itself. You don’t even get to use the X-Buster on your arm to blast away Creepers from a distance. Bummer.

What you do get to carry over are a variety of skins for your character. You can have your avatar appear as X, Zero (as he appeared in the first game), Sigma (ditto), Vile (yep), Armored Armadillo, Storm Eagle, Chill Penguin, Sting Chameleon, and even the Navigator from Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X (a nice inclusion). There are also some Classic skins for Dr. Light, Proto Man, Bass, Roll, and Dr. Light — though strangely, no Mega Man himself. Go figure.

Incidentally, you can’t use any of the other skins in the Adventure mode, so my dream of playing through Mega Man X as Zero in his original incarnation will have to continue waiting.

I have to admit, I was initially disappointed early on when I found out that Classic characters were included, there weren’t any skins for other series, such as MegaMan Volnutt. Our Digging hero in Minecraft? It sounds too perfect! MegaMan.EXE and others would be neat, too, but alas. Still, once I found out that you can’t play in a normal Minecraft world that’s been “Megafied”, that took some of the sting away (but not Sting, he’s still there). But if anyone from Mojang or Xbox Game Studios is listening, I’d still love to see more Mega Man skins, though!

So, the verdict on this one is tricky. The Minecraft x Mega Man X DLC is a fun novelty that I think is worth the money for sure, but it all boils down most to how you feel about Minecraft. If you don’t like and have Minecraft, this probably isn’t going to change your mind and open your wallet. But if you’ve already invested in Minecraft (I think it’s the “Bedrock Edition” you need, specifically) and you like Mega Man X, then I definitely think it’s worth the money, which is around $8 USD.

It’s flawed, but it still has its charms. Even if you don’t go all the way, the highway stage is a fun time in its own right, and seeing it and the other stages from a new perspective and checking out all the 3D voxel versions of classic Mega Man X settings and enemies (complete with the original music) is a joy to behold. And if you’re into Minecraft and love Mega Man X, the skins may just provide an extra value for you.

And of course, if the generation of kids who have been growing up on Minecraft are introduced to Mega Man through this pack? That may just be the greatest value of all.

If you’d like to see how things went when Nadia and I took on this DLC in the latest edition of “Mega Man Mayhem”, you can check that out right here:

Thanks for reading!