Sanae Toumaden X Reviews

Is fun

rough around the edges, but still a very fun 1/2 hours of silly vidya references with solid mega man X gameplay western AAA games cannot ever replicate the sheer joy of seeing stuff like remilia's stage being a blatant castlevania homage, [spoiler]a giant hourai doll fighting like general from mega man X4[/spoiler], among other stuff

Sanae Toumaden X is an example of how copying a game is not always a good thing. The game is heavily inspired by Mega Man X4, particularly with Zero's gameplay and campaign; and while that is not a bad thing, it does affect the point of playing this over X4. The story feels disjointed with how there is no context in why you fight any of the 8 bosses or why the main villain is even trying to attack the people of Gensokyo. Sanae controls mostly okay, with the exception of wall-jumping; she feels stiff to move when wall-jumping, even when dash-jumping off a wall. The techniques you get in the game while work, end up just being mostly a copy of Zero's techniques from X4. Only 2 of the 8 are not based on moves from X4, though one of the them is just W-Shredder from Mega Man X5. I get that some moves are going to look similar to those Zero had, but it cannot be a coincidence that a majority of the moves and content here were also in X4. Levels are average in terms of difficulty; only stages I disliked were Tenshi's and Aya's stage. It is possible to beat the game without backtracking by beating Komachi before Yuyuko or Tenshi, so that's neat. The bosses, however, are pretty pathetic with how they go down quickly and their patterns being easy to dodge. It doesn't help that a couple of the endgame bosses are copies of X4 bosses, and the final boss [spoiler] is just Sigma without any good aspects; the Tsukumogami virus(?) has a weak 1st phase, and a 2nd phase that is just Wolf Sigma from Mega Man X1 that clearly was not intended to be easily broken by the spinning blade attack and double jump. [/spoiler] But I do believe there are some good qualities to this game. The music is pretty good with how it remixes the tracks from Touhou project, most of the sprite work is well done with the enemies & backgrounds, and the illustrations are adorable. It is unfortunate that Sanae Toumaden X just comes across as a lesser Mega Man X4. I would not be opposed to a Sanae Toumaden X2, but it does need to improve upon the problems of this game. Perhaps make Sanae a combination of X and Zero in terms of gameplay, design the bosses to where they aren't a complete pushover, and make the story more coherent. Hopefully I did not come across as rude in this review.

The Good; Zero fans rejoice, as Sanae plays just like him and has many of his Techniques. Hearts Tank equivalent exists, and if you collect it in the stage, then die, you keep it. Has a save system, and this system will actually keep your life count AND fortress progress. Despite Steam saying there's no controller support, you can in fact use a controller. Adorable art. The Neutral; No equivalent to Sub Tank. There's no EX Item equivalent, so you're stuck with 2 lives after a game over. Stages can feel sparse, with too few enemies. Despite playing like and taking inspiration from the PS1 X games, if you game over, you cannot choose to continue the stage and return to your last checkpoint. You get booted to the stage select. A lot of references to other games and franchises, from the intro being Rondo of Blood to Kmoachi's stage having a Sonic style title card (along with a Ruby-Spears Mega Man cartoon reference on it). The Bad; Aya's stage lags the further along (higher up) you go. Near the end, it feels like you're fighting against molasses. Aya herself is a badly designed boss. She can, and will, just stand in a corner and spam tornados. Bosses can, and will, just move through solid stage pieces to go into their attack patterns. They will also just charge through you to do so, even if you have nowhere else to go and cannot avoid damage. There's no Escape unit function. If you enter a stage you already beat, you have to go through the whole thing again. Enemy placement can feel unfair at times, especially shield fairies.

Game plays ok once you get used to the controls. Game looks and sounds great. Level design is ok. Mechanics are mostly fine. In terms of playing the game it' mostly fine. However, the UI and UX are very Janky: -Had some issues getting my controller to work a few times -Settings menu isn't great -No way to tell what's on each save without loading said save. I ended up starting over from the beginning and overwrote my save because I had thought the game hadn't saved. -No way to exit out of a level if you enter after beating the boss. Mashing buttons on game over a few times I've accidentally entered Cirno's stage and had to game over again to get back to the level select. -Even though it says it's in English, not everything has been translated (though you can still finish the game) All in all, what's here is good, it just needs more polish.

This is a great Megaman X clone! It's also full of references to other franchises, such as Castlevania and Metal Slug.