SAGE 2022 - Demo Mega Man X8 16-bit

Man, I will never be able to thank you enough for doing this, everything in this game feels great, so fluenty, the enhaced animations of X, and playing in 16:9 and at 144 fps just feels incredible, and combining this with the "modern" music of x8, its just an unique experience, If I had a Megaman x9 that looked and played like this i would love it. Its not perfect, but its almost.

I can respect the effort, but I'm just not a fan of the direction.

X8 is kinda bad. You don't have to agree with me, but I don't think it's hard to see where I'm coming from. For as bad as it was though... X8 had ideas. Interesting ideas. X8 demake's choice to not even go with ideas that had been proven to work at this point (namely Zero) is confusing and I think it harms the game.

X8 demake doesn't do anything to address the poor level design of X8 beyond the obvious fixes. The autoscrollers are gone, sure, but in their places are stages I don't think are much better. I'll generalize, but the stages are pretty similar to X3 stages, just a lot shorter. They're blocky and tend to have a lot of timewasters, or strange design choices that I don't think make much sense. Like how at the end of dynasty you need to wall jump for 15 seconds to reach the end of the stage, or in the same stage where they give you a ridebike and then immediately put a stair case that you need to jump off of in the opposite direction to progress... Moments like these don't feel especially thought out. I also think that levels tend to overuse spikes. This was present in vanilla X8, and the fact that it has not only not been addressed, but arguably worsened in many areas, is disappointing (and frustrating.)

I'd like to give a small moment to talk about the bosses, as while I'm not super knowledgeable on boss design as a whole, I do have things I'd like to say. Namely, the damage scaling feels incredibly off. I feel like the bosses do the same exact damage they did in X8, but in X8 you had the ability to swap out with your partner and heal, somewhat mitigating the extreme damage you'd be taking from bosses. It feels unbalanced. I've also been clipped into walls by Earthrock Trilobyte a couple of times, and that would be nice to see get fixed.

I do think in terms of armors and weapons, X8 demake is extremely good. The armors are both very useful as are all the weapons. They are also fun to use, which I think is especially important. I don't have much to say here, good job on these.

This should go without saying, but the sprite art (while I feel it is somewhat jarring and out of style) is really good! Sprites are detailed, animations are smooth, everything is great on this end.

Overall, while I think X8 demake has potential, but I personally don't think it's come close to realizing it yet. I think it has worse overall design than X3, with none of the interesting ideas that made X8 worth playing (beyond the multiple armors.) I know some people will enjoy it, but it's really not my cup of tea. If you are going into X8 demake, I'd recommend treating it like X1, X2 or X3, as I think those are the most comparable experiences.

I just created an account just to say that your work is awesome and like no other. As Megaman X fans, seeing this kind of project so close to completion and enjoying it in the process is just soothing, and I shouldn't have to remind everyone why. But on that note, I'm not happy that they've left you with 4 star ratings by being so picky about something that is such a welcome gift to any fan in the first place.

I'm a designer, and I've always dreamed of doing this myself, so let me say it again, your work is impeccable.