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To start with the conclusion: yes, this is the best version of MMX5, so if you're thinking of playing it, this is the version you should try.

That said, it's not without its issues, and especially after having played MMX6 N's Edition, I feel like this hack ends up falling a bit short.

• The localization is definitely better, but still not great. Still sounds unnatural here and there.
• Why on earth was double-tapping to dash removed!? At least make it optional.
• Would really liked to have the ridiculous leveling system for the bosses removed. The insane health bars in the Boss Rush stage are just incredibly tedious to deal with. MMX6 N did this right.
• It's cool that you can use new armor parts without having the full armor, but I had the impression not all of them functioned? Maybe I was getting something wrong, but for instance, only getting the boots upgrade for the Falcon armor doesn't let you use the air glide.

So yeah, a definite improvement, but not likely to change your opinion if you didn't like the original.

Introduces elements that fans and enthusiasts are certain to appreciate; however, it falters by offering only fragments through the Hondori translation while concurrently modifying/censoring the original Japanese terms. I find this practice personally disconcerting.

I sense that I am engaging with an incomplete experience, as the dub employs the term "Irregular," while the subtitles present "Maverick," causing perplexity and a sense of unease, this is just an isolated example; I'm referring to general terms.

While acknowledging the overall commendable effort, it is imperative to bring attention to these noted "addendums."

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!!!!!! Now this is an amazing hack. So far, all the improvements presented are really helpful. The virus annoying thing is no more, now it's fair to recover yellow robots.

Great hack, thanks for the effort and the extra options provided for those who want to tailor-make their experience.

My only issue is something I have no knowledge of achieving myself at the moment, and that is changing the bin file's title and serial number to "Mega Man X5 - Improvement Project" (or something) and "SLUS-04331" (or some other unassigned number). So it can be a separate game from the unpatched ROM for the emulator screen (Duckstation) and safe files.

I wish you could be so kind as to add it in a future patch if you can. And again, thank you for the great effort of making this patch.

This mod definitely takes all the grips I had with X5 and makes the game a lot more enjoyable. It's great to be able to have both X's Fourth Armor and the Z-Buster, as well as sharing the life and weapon energy upgrades between both, not to mention the equipable parts and making several weapons more useful (the Dark Hold's immunity to spikes is a great feature).

The only remaining issue is the Hunter Rank system. Truth be told, I've never been able to beat the game maxing out both X's and Zero's rank (highest I got was one of them to PA and the other to GA). I've noticed that in the current version it is possible to rank up in the intro stage (which didn't happen in the vanilla game) so it would be great if the algorithm to go up in the rank could be tweaked somehow to make it easier. Like for example making it go up by defeating MORE Mavericks as opposed to less, especially since there are stages where you can't simply speedrun the thing to make it quick (like Tidal Whale's).

I know it's a minor detail but felt I should point it out. Other than that, great work on the mod.

The original X5 was my favorite Mega Man X, but I have to admit that it has some problems like the hours grinding and the translation wasn't the best. Now those problems are gone and the game can be enjoyed and considered a masterpiece.

Edit: I finished the game with X. The experience was smoother and I got all of the parts. It was also a lot more enjoyable not having to use a guide in order to at least get some parts.

While the script had some swearing, it was not J2E level of swearing, and at least can be explained by the situation.

I reccomend this hack to everyone that wants to play Mega Man X5.

Alia's gone. Enough said.

...

Ok, ok. Ever since I learned about the Retro engine versions of Sonic 1, 2 and CD, I've always been fascinated by the idea of fans making improved versions of games from their favorite series. Not even our childhood classics are perfect after all. As far as MegaMan goes, the first time one such project caught my eye was X6 Tweaks, which is a fantastic hack that makes one of the franchise's most infamous titles just that much more enjoyable or more tolerable, depending on your perspective.

So, as soon as I heard about the X5 Improvement Project, I just had to check it out. X5, despite its own plethora of stupidity, was very obviously a much more competent game than X6, and its flaws much easier to fix, at least so I'd imagine. I knew this would be a winner from the get-go, and sure enough, it was.

To explain my opinion on X5 itself, I've always loved almost everything about it. It has some of the most interesting and inventive levels in the series, the Falcon and Gaea armors add cool ways to replay the game, the bosses are fun and memorable for the most part, the soundtrack might just be my favorite in the franchise, and I could go on. Looking back however, it's easy to see that for one reason or another, the team couldn't refine it quite to the same degree as previous entries in the MegaMan X series.

Enter the Improvement Project. It turns what was, in my opinion, already a good game into a (mostly) great one. Just the fact that Alia's intrusive hints can now be turned off makes a world of difference, the levels flow a ton better.

The other changes are comparatively small, but still immensely welcomed. For instance, Duff McWha- I mean, Tidal Whale's stage is actually fun now! What was once a slow, backtrack-y mess of a stage with rehashed X2 music is now noticeably faster and more exciting, can be completed in one go with proper routing and features its vastly superior original unused theme. I just find it funny how this one stage was improved upon so drastically, but I'm all for it. It serves as a shining example of the great work done in this hack.

Frankly, my only gripes with it aren't so much what has been done, but rather what could still be done. Going from the Tidal Whale example, I was a little disappointed that Spiral Pegasus' stage didn't undergo similar changes in its elevator segments. Increased speed on them would've also made that level more fun by a mile. In the same fashion, Volt Kraken's stage is downright notorious for its beginner trap before the 'READY' text even collapses. Extending the first platform by just a few tiles would give players more time to actually react to it.

Some modifications on a few bosses would've also gone a long way, in particular Dark Necrobat could use a more aggressive AI, as his frequent idling makes him quite a pathetic boss. As well, I'd love if there was a way to adjust the Maverick bosses' HP to a set amount. Though I understand the developers have no intention of creating a patcher like in X6 Tweaks, I believe it'd do wonders in making the hack more customizable, as well as more accessible.

I'm not sure whether or not my suggestions are outside of the scope of what is possible, but regardless: X5 Improvement Project is simply amazing across the board and I can't thank the team behind it enough. Do yourself a favor and download this hack, especially if you wanted to like X5 but couldn't due to some of its more pervasive problems. It's very well worth it, and is now easily my go-to way to replay this game.

Yeah, I said it.

The biggest problem with X5 on its own was its overambition. It seems like every idea the developers had was thrown in without question or any kind of editing process. For every good design decision, there are two that ruin it. But unlike X6, which has such unspeakably bad level design that any hack of it amounts to polishing a turd, there is a great game buried within X5. It has some of the best and most inventive level design in the entire series, multiple story paths, a kickass soundtrack, and an epic and conclusive atmosphere that pervades the whole experience. And this hack brings that great game to the surface.

Alia? Gone. Crappy translation? Gone. Unskippable dialogue/cutscenes? Gone. Arbitrary locks on obtaining parts? Gone. Splitting parts/heart tanks between characters? Gone. Needing to assemble an entire armor to use any part of it? Gone. Losing an entire armor by choosing Zero at the start? Gone. RNG determining whether you get the good or bad endings? Gone. Even the time limit can be removed, if you feel it impedes exploration that much. And those are just the big ones. There are so many small enhancements and QoL changes here that add up to make this one of the best X games in the whole series.

Easily the go-to way to play Mega Man X5.

This hack fixes a lot of the weird problems X5 had, which is a great thing! I do actually prefer this hack over the original X5. Here's some criticism I wanted to leave for this hack though.

1. Why is there no way to at least manually edit back in some major features like the characters not sharing heart tanks? Or X and Zero not losing the Fourth Armor/Z Buster depending on who you chose. While many people probably don't care, it strikes me as odd because there's a guide to nerf the fourth armor in the manual fixes for added challenge, but you can't add back the characters not sharing heart tanks? While it isn't too much of a problem... A way of adding them back would be appreciated.

2. Forced to have to have the translation if you chose the version of the hack with the music changes. Making a second hack for the unused music tracks without the translation would also be appreciated.

I have fond memories of Mega Man X5. I first played it when I was 5 years old, and it remains my favourite game to this day. Even despite the blatant flaws I can see looking back now, there was a lot there that made it a great game and a great closing chapter to the X series. But with this, with all these flaws ironed out, X5 is not only the best game in my own opinion, but the best objectively. Thank you so much for polishing this gem.

After constantly watching over how the project rebooted in 2021, I decided to review a build with no serious known bugs/problems. This is a 10/10 hack which *greatly* improves upon the unfinished groundworks left by Capcom. Not only it contains almost every single option about the infamous suffer factors from original, that can be freely customizable following the tutorial in readme, but it also contains one of the best restorations I've ever seen in the hacking scene that restores almost all the contents to the exact same as in the game's Japanese origin. The *gigantic* amount of additions over the original Improvement project, in their result, is comparable to what acediez has done to the fantastic X6 Tweaks mod.

My only gripe was it's currently not possible to change the music to the same as in the original Japanese version, but in its current state this mod is already a 10/10 worthy project for any Mega Man X fans, any Mega Man fans, and any sidescroller fans. If you happened to be one of the hard-to-the-bone haters of the original, I'm pretty confident that this brilliant mod can change your opinion soon.

Poor X5. Not a bad game, but for what was supposed to be the final chapter in the X series, it's not nearly as good as the masterpiece that preceded it, so this game was itching for some improvements. Thankfully, this hack from acediez and friends scratches that itch, and does so with the same level of care as their stellar X6 improvement hack.

Adding to DarkSamus993's handiwork, this hack reworks a lot of Capcom's funky design choices: the shakey Enigma/Shuttle success rates, wasting "hours" and figuring out which parts to get, choosing between the Fourth Armor and the Zero Buster, and the list goes on. While it added replay value (which was likely the point), charting out a plan to get the exact upgrades you want feels excessive for a Megaman game. Now you can simply play the game and get bonus parts as you go along, and not have to worry about one character losing out.

Being able to use armor parts as you collect them is a nice change, but it's not nearly as impactful as in X6. Even with buffs to both sets, the Fourth Armor offers so much utility that I seldom found myself wanting to use something else, especially now that Dark Hold can prevent spike death and can be cancelled. Still, I'd rather have them available than be locked out until they're fully assembled. If not for technical hurdles, it would also have been great if the game could render X with individual parts of his armor as in X4.

The numerous other changes for better pacing or exploration are a great addition as well. Granted, Whale and Necrobat's first sections are now harder, but they feel necessary. The only issue is that the buffs to Dark Hold devalue the Gaea Armor to a degree, since it's no longer exclusively needed to explore spike-heavy areas.

My only nitpick for this hack is that you can exit the intro stage, which is fine if you've played X5 dozens of times and are tired of it, but being able to bypass it entirely feels strangely jarring. I also don't fully get why the double-tap dash input was disabled, but I found that it didn't really impact my playthrough.

Overall, I'm a lot happier with X5 in this state. It's still not the masterpiece that X4 is, but that's a discussion for another time. For now, this hack makes it a much more enjoyable experience. Many thanks to acediez and everyone involved!

Very good welcomes, mainly the stages changes and part changes. After finishing the game on extreme mode, with X Sandy Zero, I hoped for a HP increase in bosses. They are very fragile and aren't a threat... especially with Zero... maybe increased damage, use all attacks without HP threshold or overall speed would be nice. (But not as ridiculous as X4 boost....). Some bosses really need it, yes, I'm talking about you Necroobat! Using half armors is very fun too, well played. Since you can control how to activate them, maybe you can make a custom parts armor? Make parts choosable and mixable... (But then again, I think that is too much to ask..) Overall very noice, made me play again and again. (Do a X4 :D)