Mega Man x DiVE Closed Beta 2 Review: Rolling out!

With Mega Man x DiVE finally launching on 24 March, we had a go at another closed beta with more of its features in place. If you’re unaware, Capcom Taiwan has developed a mobile Mega Man game, based of the X series of games. It’s free to play, with the by now standard gacha game trappings. Let’s take a look! You should also look at our initial Closed Beta impressions and see what’s changed.

PRESENTATION

The game’s looks haven’t changed much from its initial Closed Beta state, which we’d tried out here. It’s still nice and bright with the good ol’ feel of the Mega Man games. The music is a little bopping too, with tunes slightly retouched from their original soundtrack. The 3D models don’t stand out too sharply from the relatively flat backgrounds, but they’re still visible enough so that you can see what’s going on. The stages themselves take cues from the original game, so even as things shift around, the layout would probably be recognizable to long time fans.

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Choose from the largest roster of playable characters of the series!

The weapons all have their own designs, with ornaments and such tacked onto them according to rarity. I’d personally be looking forward to seeing the winners of the design contest see their creations in the game, to see them translated into in-game models!

The whole thing has a suitably futuristic vibe as you might expect. While the game is themed after Mega Man X, eventually, I’d expect the characters from the other games of the franchise eventually make their way over too as one big celebration of the franchise.

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CONTROLS

The controls are honestly a little bit awkward personally speaking. There are “shortcuts” you can use, like holding down and dragging to the appropriate control, but they didn’t seem to work particularly well on this occasion. I did have some of those issues back during the closed beta, so it’s a shame the controls feel less fluid than I would have liked. Of course, being someone who isn’t very good at platforming games to begin with, I will take the L and admit part of it could be due to me.

With a mobile compatible controller, I would think it would work better with physical button inputs over the virtual ones, depending on availability and your preference. Otherwise, controls are pretty simple. Keep tapping on the jump button and you’ll scale the walls. If you hug close enough, you will slide down the walls automatically. There’s a bit of a pause between movement types I feel, so something to take note of if you’re awkwardly fumbling away.

GAMEPLAY

Just play it like your usual Mega Man games! Hop, skip and jump around the terrain, shoot down the monsters that stand in your way. Don’t fall into spikes or lava, which don’t kill you instantly in this game, but instead take away a set percentage of your HP. There will be on-screen indicators to telegraph certain boss moves, like say, a sweep across the screen. Time your jumps so that you avoid damage!

A boss rush mode unlocks as you level up in the game.

You gradually unlock more stuff to upgrade as you level up. Characters and weapons can only reach maximum player rank, so you’d best keep grinding out those levels for the EXP. You’d need to anyway, to get a whole variety of materials you can use to research more knick knacks. You can collect some free energy and a weapon crate from the lab as well, so it’s a good idea just to check in.

There are multiplayer modes in PvP and co-op. They’re pretty self-explanatory. Let’s talk co-op first. It’s basically teaming up with your friend where you clear stages together and obtain materials for armour. These stages are not the same as the main story ones. Whether there’ll be more than 2 player co-op is unknown but presently, you can’t fight bosses with your friends, so good luck with that. There are also some connection issues and/or dropped frames, which is something the developers will need to look into.

As for PvP, only 1 v 1 is available for now. The stage is quite a large one, providing many platforms to which you can avoid enemy attacks and find some places to ambush. Learning the stage will be key to getting the jump on your opponent! Items to recover HP may also be found to turn the tides. There seems to be a certain degree of level adjust. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to account for character rarities, as an S class character can decimate a lower rarity one.

VERDICT

I’d personally think it’s quite a good game for a quick pick-me-up! Stages aren’t very long, so you can jump in and out, and skip the stages you’ve cleared to get the materials if you’ve got no time to play. The various connection issues can be patched as time goes, so that isn’t the most pressing matter for now.

It would be great if the gacha had more of a safety net, where you could guarantee a certain item after a number of pulls, or even an in-built “reroll” function. You obtain characters from gacha too, but more often than not you need to gamble for shards to actually redeem them, which adds another layer of randomness. Duplicate weapons likewise become shards to upgrade their star level. It racks up a lot!

For the co-op side, it would be nice to have more than 2 players at once, and that if everyone could fight the boss together. The balance issues for PvP, in the mean time, would need to be looked over. Once the issues are fixed, I can see the game as being incredibly enjoyable, whether you’re slowly becoming stronger, or tagging in a friend to help or fight each other.

Decently enjoyable for fans of platforming, and a nice addition for fans of Mega Man.

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