Mega Man X DiVE is out in Android Early Access and I don’t completely hate it

Mega Man X DiVE Impressions

We’ve been talking about Mega Man X DiVE on Destructoid for almost two years now. The free-to-play mobile title is probably not what any fan of the X series wants out of Capcom these days, especially given the exceptional revival of the flagship Mega Man series back in 2018. But outside of compilation titles, it’s all we’re getting right now.

To its credit, Capcom has done a great job of trying to make this game appeal to the Mega Man fan in us all. Not only does it feature a wide variety of characters from across the X series and beyond, but the narrative actually revolves around a Mega Man X super fan being sucked into a digital world to save the day. It’s basically the plot from The Last Starfighter but with a lot more androids and high-pitched Japanese voiceovers.

As a free-to-play game, Mega Man X DiVE is obviously saddled with a lot of bullshit. There is a ton of crap to collect to level up your characters and weapons, an energy meter that’s sure to become an issue the longer you play, unintuitive menus, and all the best characters and alternate costumes are restricted to gacha pulls. If you avoid free-to-play games because of their gambling aspects or shady exploitation of FOMO, there is really no reason to download DiVE.

But, if you don’t automatically write off F2P titles, DiVE might be worth a look. Because while it might not be a good Mega Man X game, it is a pretty decent mobile game that rewards actual player skill rather than just your character and weapon levels.

The gist of the narrative is you, the player, are called in to help restore the Deep Log. This is a digital space where memories and data of the Mega Man X series are stored. The stability of the Deep Log is under threat by invasive programs that are corrupting the world. Playing as X or whatever character you’ve unlocked, you’ll venture through bite-sized levels inspired by classic Mega Man X stages.

In any other Mega Man game, these short levels would be massive disappointments. They’re not challenging and lack most of the unique design elements the series is known for. They are, however, ideal for touchscreen controls. Each character can dash, double jump, dash jump, and jump dash, and while you won’t extensively use those skills in any one stage, the more I played the game, the more fluid and precise my movements became.

Where you won’t have to worry about precision is with the actual combat. Mega Man X DiVE uses auto-aim, so no matter which way you’re facing, you’ll always fire at the locked-on enemy. Without that feature, I imagine this game could get very challenging with touchscreen controls. With it, however, you really need to only worry about is dodging attacks. Don’t think you can just hold down the fire button and be okay, though. Each weapon has a reload meter that quickly fills whenever you’re not firing. If you don’t manage your weapons and ammo adequately, you could find yourself stranded for a few seconds without a means to attack. But you should be alright as long as you remember you have a secondary weapon.

I’m still pretty early in the game, but already Mega Man X DiVE is one of the better F2P games I’ve played this year. It’s a fairly decent run ’n’ gun platformer that functions well on my Google Pixel 3a. Would I rather have Mega Man X9? Of course I would. We all would. But that doesn’t seem to be on the horizon. So until that happens, I think I’m just going to keep diving into DiVE.

Mega Man X DiVE is now available in the U.S. and U.K. in Android Early Access. An iOS version is in the works.