Capcom has shown precious little interest in keeping the Mega Man franchise alive, hence it’s up to indie developers to carry the torch. Chief among those developers is Batterystaple Games, whose well-received 20XX first appeared on Steam in 2016 and made its way to consoles over time. After a period of early access, the sequel, 30XX has fully launched on Steam and Switch. The new game offers lots of new levels, weapons, and mechanics; a level creator, and 2-player local and online co-op support. It’s everything a Mega Man fan could want, but old-school difficulty limits the game’s accessibility.
30XX takes place a thousand years after the previous game. During the single-player tutorial, Ace, the Zero-style, melee-focused android awakens Nina, the first game's Mega Man-like protagonist from her extended stasis. Shortly thereafter, an evil scientist named Eleanor arrives to challenge the duo to find her lab. The two heroic robots must explore a variety of levels, find upgrades, and thwart a menagerie of memorable bosses in their fight to catch up to Eleanor and save the universe.
Whereas 20XX is strictly a Roguelike action platformer, 30XX lets players choose between two distinct modes: Standard and Mega.
Standard mode plays like the first game, allowing players to proceed through randomized stages set in 8 zones, with the next zone appearing in a random order. Standard is the roguelike mode, which means permadeath, so there are no extra lives and no continues. Being the main game mode, Standard has a more expansive hub than Mega Mode, with new elements popping up between runs. It’s clearly how 30XX is meant to be played, though Mega Mode might be slightly easier. Within Standard, players will eventually unlock a boss rush mode and the ability to play specific seeds (exact variants of randomized runs).
As for Mega Mode, players will start in a tiny hub that resembles the level select of classic Mega Man games. Within this mode, the lower zones are easier than the higher zones. The central portal will eventually unlock and lead to the last two stages. Off to the side, players can access the various upgrade vendors. Mega Mode doesn’t have permadeath, so dying just sends you back to the hub so that you can buy upgrades and try again without losing anything. This does make things easier because players can replay levels in order to earn more upgrades within the levels themselves and currency for spending in the hub. However, the game is still tough, especially the final zone.
Gameplay-wise, 30XX is a solid tribute to the Mega Man X series. Nina plays just like X, with the ability to rapidly fire her mega buster or charge it up for powerful blasts. She can wall-jump and dash across gaps or in the air by default. Later upgrades give her the ability to double jump or dash in different directions. As for Ace, he is a melee-centric character who fights with a sword, just like Zero. Ace is more challenging to play but deals greater damage.
Both characters can gain upgrades through a variety of systems. As with Mega Man, defeating a boss provides access to a weaker version of his weapon. Here, however, players can choose not to take the weapon if they prefer, turning it to a currency called scrap that can be spent on alternate upgrades. Boss weapons can be mapped to three buttons, and these weapons can be swapped at will. Powers, as they’re called, consume energy that can be replenished from the drops of downed enemies.
Other types of upgrades such as Augments can be acquired by completing optional challenge areas within levels, defeating optional minibosses, and/or by spending nuts (a type of currency dropped by enemies) at upgrade stations. Memoria is the metagame upgrade currency awarded from bosses and minibosses. The Memoria upgrade station in the hub provides permanent upgrades that carry over between Standard runs.
Co-opTo play co-op, players must visit the Co-op Setup station in either mode’s hub area. There, either a couch co-op player or an online player can join the host’s game. In co-op, one player controls Nina and the other plays as Ace, for better or worse. It makes sense from a balance standpoint, but you might have situations in which neither player really wants to be the melee guy, for instance. Still, the original Mega Man X games never supported co-op, so it’s definitely cool to have the ranged and melee heroes finally getting to team up here.
In co-op games, both players have their own health and energy supplies, and those types of pick-ups don’t get shared between partners. When playing online, both players can split up and spread out, only being required to join up when reaching the door to a new area. In local co-op, however, the two players have to stay on the same screen, necessitating a greater focus on teamwork. Each player gets a unique weapon upon defeating zone bosses, too. If one player dies, the other player can keep going. Reaching a resurrection station will bring the downed player back to life with a small supply of health. Thus, co-op is more forgiving than playing solo.
30XX has lot going for it, from the gorgeous pixel art (improved over the first game) to the catchy music and sound effects. Whereas 20XX’s level design relied heavily on modular-looking floating platforms, the levels in 30XX feel more hand-crafted and genuine, even when their elements are randomized. Each of the eight zones here is genuinely distinct, with several featuring memorable set pieces like a snake robot that chases the players across a horizontal stretch of landscape, and an area with switches that flip pools of water from the floor to the ceiling. The bosses all look like they could’ve come from a real Mega Man X game, with distinctive character designs and creative, unique attack patterns. All the fun you’d get from the Mega Man series, you’d get here, and then some.
The only downside to 30XX is that it carried over one of the Mega Man X’s bad habits. Back in the 32-bit era, I owned Mega Man X4, and I enjoyed every bit of it until the final boss(es). I never could beat that sequence of bosses which essentially grinded my love for the game to a halt. 30XX, unfortunately, is the same way. The final level pits players against a sequence of at least FOUR bosses with zero checkpoints and only a paltry amount of health restored between a couple of them. Mega Mode lets you try the level over and over again, sure, but you’re still thrown up against a challenge that was obnoxious by 1990s standards, let alone those of this decade. The final boss rush is by no means impossible, but it will likely be insurmountable for many of us.
It's great that Batterystaple has managed to keep the look and feel of the Mega Man games alive in 30XX and its predecessor. 30XX is superior to those original games in many ways, with excellent co-op options, plenty of refinements, and community-made levels that we haven’t even touched upon in this review. People who really love Mega Man will undoubtedly love this game too. The addition of a non-roguelike mode is also a good step towards accessibility. It’s just a shame that the overall difficulty level remains so high. The very best Roguelikes such as Rogue Legacy and Dead Cells have such refined metagame systems that an average player can eventually beat them. One thing they don’t make you do is fight four bosses with no checkpoints, because that is lame. 30XX is still receiving updates, and we expect Xbox and PlayStation versions to arrive in the future. Perhaps the last part of the game will get slightly easier by then. Even if not, this one is a lot of fun before it grows too big for its britches.
30XX sells for $19.99 on Switch and Steam. The Steam version is fully Steam Deck compatible.
Steam download codes were provided by the developer for this review.