I love Mega Man.
My explanation doesn’t get much simpler than that. As someone who owns every single U.S. released Mega Man game and a good chunk of the Japanese versions, there was no way that I wasn’t going to play the Mega Man X DiVE beta. Now that the beta is over in preparation for its official August 16 release, I’d like to share my thoughts on the game itself.
First off… this is a mobile game for iOS and Android devices. I played the beta on Android… more specifically, a Samsung Galaxy S10. The game ran perfectly on the phone minus a random crash here or there that one would expect because it is, after all, a beta. The on-screen controls were pretty responsive but felt so foreign. I was told that there was Bluetooth controller support; however, even though I was able to pair my DualShock 4 to my Galaxy S10, I was unable to get the game to recognize it… even after following an online guide to the letter. I just assumed the controller support wasn’t in the beta and would be upon the final release.
With the technicalities out of the way, let’s move onto the actual game itself.
Graphics
Let’s get the big one out of the way because we all know graphics make the game and nothing else. If you have the shiniest piece of 4k beauty sitting in front of you, you can spend countless hours on your duff drooling and marveling at what your eyes behold, completely ignoring the fact that you’re supposed to actually do stuff because video games are interactive!
I will say… for a mobile game… the graphics are average at best. I’ve played my fair share of mobile games so I kind of know what to expect as far as in-game graphics go but everything was big, blocky, and looked pretty lo-res for modern mobile game standards. However… the animated avatars for every character…
Chef’s Kiss!
Seeing all of your favorites rendered out and animated was simply amazing! Everyone looked so good which makes me wonder why they didn’t put more of that kind of detail into the actual models and game world?
The graphics themselves reminded me of the PSP game Maverick Hunter X only bigger, blockier, and slightly higher resolution. Sure, the on-screen characters have more polygons and use some sort of gradient-style cel-shading which doesn’t look too bad when they’re small and in the stage but on the main menu when you see them up close, it’s apparent that they could have benefitted from a little more polish.
Gameplay
Hoo boy. Here comes the big section because there is a LOT that you can do in this game… and yet, you’re so limited as is the case with the majority of mobile games with a gacha system.
First and foremost, there is the story mode where you go through a stage and either kill (or ‘correct’ as the game calls it) enemies, kill mini-bosses, or actual bosses. There are 14 story chapters in total with 6 sub-chapters each for a total of 84 stages to plow through. There are two difficulties… Normal and Hard and the big issue I have with this game is that when you reach a certain point in Normal, it forces you to go back and complete previous content on Hard.
For example. To access stage 4-1, you need to go back and play through Chapter 1 in its entirety, on Hard. Then when you complete Chapter 4, you need to go beat Chapter 2 on hard before you can access Chapter 5. This back and forth is really pointless. I cannot see why we couldn’t just do all 14 chapters and then unlock hard mode as any other video game would normally have you do? The constant ping-ponging is annoying and what’s worse, every sub-chapter requires you to have more and more power otherwise you’re going to get your metal ass beat and beat hard.
Completing a sub-chapter for the first time will net you 1,500 EXP and a much lower amount thereafter but you can farm or even skip the stage once you’ve completed it and harvest the rewards and you’ll need a LOT of rewards so you might as well farm as much as you can and stock up. Story; however, isn’t the only way to get rewards and experience.
There is also an Arena mode with a Ranked Match mode where you can PvP against other players, there is an Event mode where you can complete special stages for EXP, Zenny, Armor Upgrade Parts, DiVE Enhancer Parts, and special time-limited events for prizes based on your ranking.
There is also the Boss Challenge mode where you can take on the previous stage and mini-bosses which will unlock once you hit certain character level breakpoints. Once you get high enough, you unlock the Jacob Elevator from Mega Man X8 where you can blast through even more stages for even more, meatier, rewards.
Your Power
Gaining levels is but one way to gain power. There are many other ways to do so and each way has a system. This game has so many systems, you’d think it was developed by Ion Hazzikostas.
First off… weapons. You can get weapons from the Gacha machine and they can be one of three ranks… A being the lowest and S being your equivalent to a 5-star. Each weapon can be leveled up using parts. It can also be ranked up by collecting weapon memories from the store or through duplicates from the Gacha machine. You can insert a chip into your weapon to give it more power and, just like your weapon, your chip can be leveled up and have its ranking increased with chip memories!
By now, I think you see where I’m going with this.
You also have cards you can slot into your character which can be leveled up and have their rank increased! Oh, and your character can also be leveled up and have their rank increased as well! You can also level up your character skills and attack abilities using other special currencies! You can also assign super moves to your character which… you guessed it… can also be leveled up and have their rank increased!
You can also craft and equip your character with armor that becomes useless and replaced every 10 levels but that’s not going to stop you from spending more in-game currencies to increase their levels as well!
Did you get all that?
Weapons – Weapon Chips – Weapon Skills – Characters – Character Skills – Character Abilities – Super Abilities – Battle Cards – Armor
Now do that for every character.
Remember what I said that you’ll be needing to farm a lot? Yeah, I wasn’t joking.
The only thing that is shared between all characters is player level… which is currently capped at level 100. So, you’ll be grinding EXP for a very long time. I, personally, made it to level 47 during the beta which I played for the better part of 3 weeks. It’s not as much of a slog as you would expect because there are a few other modes in the game that help with this… namely Daily Achievements!
You have regular achievements which you get through playing the game but you have a daily task list to complete which will be the biggest source of experience. Things like kill (correct) 100 enemies, complete an event stage, complete a boss challenge, do 1 PVP match, complete a story level 10 times, research 2 items, etc, etc. Just normal stuff that you should be doing daily gets you rewarded with about 1,500 exp per completion and that adds up to, roughly, a level per day at the mid-way mark. It’s still a grind but at least they made it rather easy. Completing most of the tasks will run you about 10-15 minutes worth of time so it’s not as huge of an investment as you would expect it to be.
The Gacha
It’s a mobile game. It has collectible characters. What the hell did you expect?
So, there’s a capsule. There are gems you can acquire in-game or deplete your college fund to buy. You have your standard 1-pull or your 10-pull option… or a special limited once per day pull that only works with gems you buy with real money! I’m not sure if it was because of the beta but the banners rotate really quickly… every couple of days… which means it’s designed to keep you pumping money into it if you want the latest and greatest.
Also, because it’s the beta, the events and character launches in Japan were not synced with the U.S. version so we missed out on ones like Super Bass and Dark RockmanEXE. Without dropping a dime on the game, I was still able to do at least 1 pull a day and even lucked out and got S-Rank 1st Armor Mega Man X and S-Rank Sigma!
A single pull will cost you 100 gems, a 10-pull will cost you 1,000 but you can also use gems to buy stuff in the store, too, so you’ll want to hoard and keep as many of them as possible until you decide to go for what you want. If you’re a completionist and want to get all of the characters then, well, say goodbye to college, your weekly paycheck, your credit cards, and possibly your house because they won’t let you take out that 9th mortgage to pay for Swimsuit Palette.
There really isn’t much to say here. If you’ve played a mobile game before with a Gacha system… you already know what you’re getting into.
Overall Thoughts
All in all, it was just a decent mobile game experience. There really isn’t anything new here that’s going to blow your mind; however, if you love Mega Man and always wanted that one game where you can play as multiple characters from across the entire franchise, this is probably going to be an instant play for you. The game itself is free and it hopes and prays you pour money into it but if you are content with possibly missing banners and/or maining one character for the rest of your life, then you can play this game for free and just enjoy the daily content.
As I’ve said, there’s plenty of content to be had. Between Story, PvP, Challenges, Events, Jacob Elevator, occasional events such as raids, boss rushes, special stages, etc… there is plenty to do without having to worry about shelling out tons of Biden Bucks to get the latest and the greatest.
The game would definitely play 1,000 times better with a controller so I’m really hoping controller support is in the full version. I did ask the official U.S. account on Twitter about that and they did confirm it will be supported so we will see once it comes out next week. (Note to self: Charge my DS4 because it’s dead).
Powering up your character while playing for free is a pain in the ass and sometimes you’ll find yourself logging in to do your dailies and nothing else because the game got so heavy on the power requirements that you’re struggling to catch up. I hope a smoother curve is in the full release but I highly doubt that it will be.
The bottom line is… if you’re a big fan of Mega Man, this is about the closest you’re going to get to an actual game from Capcom for a while so you might as well pick up and play it. If you’ve been around the block a few times in the mobile game scene, you won’t find anything new or innovative here but the game does have charm and it feels nice that you can do everything a paid player can do for free… even if it is on a smaller scale. I’ve seen some games that make it feel impossible to advance until you give up and pay money and while the free route is slow… I never felt it was impossible to advance.
Sometimes, I could have advanced but I forgot that there were systems I hadn’t used or forgot about. There is just so much buried in each menu that I wish the interface was a little more forgiving to allow players to find what they are looking for more easily.
With all that said, get it if you like Mega Man. If you don’t, this is just another gacha mobile game and you’re not missing out on much.
