The shuttering of Mega Man X Dive meant that the long-running international mobile and PC game could seemingly be lost to time alongside so many other free-to-play games over the years. Fortunately, Capcom announced the debut of Mega Man X DIVE Offline earlier this year to keep the game alive and playable for years to come. Having played it on PC, I found DIVE to be an interesting what-if kind of game because of how it was structured. You had stages and missions set throughout the history of the X series, but using a high-fidelity polygonal art style that resembled the one used for Maverick Hunter X on the PSP – only if it was more modern interpretation of that art style.
In a lot of ways, it felt like a continuation of that re-imagining that we never got to see beyond the first game – at least visually. The core gameplay was blended with a lot of different characters that weren’t played in Maverick Hunter X, and the gacha structure to getting things felt odd when compared to a traditional level-based Mega Man game. We’ve seen a similar approach taken to Konami’s mobile polygonal Castlevania that was cancelled before its worldwide release and then brought back to life with microtransactions and gacha elements reworked for Apple Arcade.
You can very much still tell that it was a mobile-centric gacha game to start, but had its unlockables hidden beyond progress instead of simply spending money. Having that removed should be nice because the game does feel good to play and it does offer playable characters like X and Zero, but also lesser-known characters like Axl, Vile and Alia to take out mavericks. The game has over 100 characters that can be customized with weapons and armor alongside buffs – so each level itself can feel different depending on your character and loadout.
With over 900 stages to play spread across the whole X franchise’s stage options, there’s a lot to enjoy. The offline version will be spread into a more normal layout with a story mode to tell the tale, an event mode with homages to past games being more direct and a challenge mode set to make players better and toughen them up a bit.
Mega Man X DIVE is available for pre-order now on Google Play Store, iOS and Steam for $29.99. It’s not quite the same as getting a whole-new Mega Man X game in-canon, but it still scratches the itch for new adventures with that cast even in its free-to-play form and it should be far better revamped.
