I always thought X5 was a little underrated. It has a lot of bullshit trappings surrounding it (countdown nonsense, no X4 armor if you pick Zero for stage 1, silly Guns n Roses translated names) but its action is pretty good and it looks fantastic if you compare it to X6 or X7. I still think X5 and X3 are the weakest of the first five X games, but then again I love the first five X games.
Played more Fuuin no Tsurugi today. Picked up Forblaze and recruited Sophia, Cecilia, Miledy, Perceval, Igrene, Fa, Garret, and probably someone else I'm forgetting. I think the only new units I'll end up using are Miledy (she had GREAT levels after I started using her and she's at level 18 unpromoted) and I guess Fa.
Isn't the countdown timer thing sort of irrelevant? It seems like you'd HAVE to try to actually run out of time.
Also aren't powerups shared between X and Zero?
Anyway, beat the Squid level. My main complaint about the game is that it's... really easy.
The countdown is pretty irrelevant since not only are you given enough time to go through all the stages once, but IIRC even when time's up it simply skips to whatever plan to stop Eurasia from getting colony dropped before giving you the outcome.
As for powerups, it only includes the chips that you can equip (although there are X and Zero specific ones), boss weapons, sub-tanks, and armor pieces (though only X can equip them). Unfortunately the health and energy enhancements are strictly kept to the one that received them, which gets confusing when you're switching up between the two while beating the stages the first time since I believe the chosen upgrade goes to the one who has the upgrade show up on the Parts Completed screen and not the one who made the initial choice.
An example of what I'm babbling about would go like this:
- X clears the Skiver's stage and gets the weapon and the screen asking whether you want extra life or energy.
- Zero then clears Axl the Red's stage and makes his choice. He gets whatever the previous choice was.
- Dynamo rears his smug head and Zero is sent to knock him around a bit. He gets the choice he made after completing Axl's stage.
- X takes on Grizzly Slash and gets to make the choice, but at this point he still has no extra life or energy due to Zero claiming both Skiver's and Axl's designated upgrades.
- Ultimately there are only seven of these upgrades available per playthrough since the first boss will only relinquish his weapon.
- They will appear one in-game hour after the decision to make them comes along.
- And the Life+ and Energy+ upgrades are simply referring to the ability chip that comes along with the usual extra life or energy (and are the only reason to ever want to pick energy over life (unless I'm incorrectly assuming that energy upgrades increase weapon energy instead of damage to bosses)).
- And of course the same thing applies to the one who picks up the various heart tanks.
The tl;dr is that if you go through the entire game as X and collect every available health and energy upgrade then select a stage to go through as Zero you should definitely notice that he'll have piss for health.
