30XX

 Switch
Metascore
86

Generally favorable reviews - based on 9 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 9
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 9
  3. Negative: 0 out of 9
  1. Universo Nintendo
    Mar 1, 2024
    90
    30XX is an incredible action rogue-lite, with beautiful, ever-changing environments. It's a treat for fans of the blue bombing franchise. Fun, fast, precise and with several game modes, this is certainly one of the best games released this year.
  2. Pure Nintendo
    Oct 30, 2023
    90
    If you’re a fan of retro action/platformers, then you’re in for a treat with 30XX. It’s a fun game with a good amount of customization and level variety. Play alone or with a friend, and blast your way through ever-changing levels and tough bosses.
  3. God is a Geek
    Sep 20, 2023
    95
    30XX combines Mega Man run and gun platforming with Roguelike elements, and has co-op, community levels, and so many great ideas.
  5. Hey Poor Player
    Sep 14, 2023
    90
    Put simply, 30XX is by far the superior Mega Man-inspired rogue-like experience. It oozes style and features challenging gameplay and diverse bosses. I wouldn’t mind more to do in the game, but that in no way changes how well-made the experience is in general. If you’re at all a fan of rogue-like platformers, buying this is a no-brainer.
  6. TouchArcade
    Sep 12, 2023
    80
    30XX takes the basic idea behind 20XX and expands on it, offering more of just about everything to players. That’s pretty much what you would want from a sequel, though I suppose the shift in graphical style and slightly more repetitive main mode might find some detractors. I like the Mega Mode and I feel it makes for a nice olive branch for Mega Man fans turned off by the roguelite elements of 20XX, though it probably doesn’t go far enough. Like its predecessor, this is a solid action game with great controls that is doing its part to keep the spirit of a dormant franchise alive, and if you’re an X fan who can enjoy randomized elements, you’ll likely have a great time with it.
  7. Nintendo Life
    Sep 11, 2023
    80
    Although it can be a bit uneven, 30XX is ultimately an enjoyable take on action platforming with a roguelite twist. The high difficulty, extreme replayability, and gorgeous visuals all come together to make for an action platformer you won’t want to miss out on. Beyond this, Mega Mode makes this one a solid recommendation even for those who don’t usually like roguelites, as it strips out most of the randomness and presents a more old-school challenge. For any fans of Mega Man, retro action platformers, or roguelikes, 30XX covers all those bases and then some, and deserves a spot in your Switch library.
  8. Video Chums
    Sep 6, 2023
    80
    I thoroughly enjoyed 30XX and the thing is; there's always more to play with its open-ended nature and clever roguelike structure.
  9. KeenGamer
    Sep 6, 2023
    85
    30XX is far from the first Mega Man game with user-made content. Mega Man Powered Up had it as a feature (preserved by fans despite the closure of online servers), the fanmade Mega Man Maker is incredibly ambitious and feature rich, and user-made levels were the central concept for the cancelled Mega Man Unvierse. But of all these games, 30XX is the one I want to play the most. It masterfully plays tribute to the Mega Man series while managing to stray away from it and have its own style. If you're patiently waiting a thousand years for Megaman X9 like I am, then 30XX is a must buy.
  10. Digital Chumps
    Sep 5, 2023
    85
    It’s pretty clear to me that 30XX is gameplay-forward over anything else. This isn’t a bad thing, but setting your expectations as such will prevent you from thinking that you’ll become invested in 30XX’s protagonists, antagonists, and everyone in between. Instead, you should expect a casual yet fun roguelite platformer that can be picked up and returned to at any time without needing to remember your progress, any side missions, and/or any other progression-based mechanics. I’ve quite enjoyed seeing 30XX progress through Early Access; I’ve enjoyed its official release on the Switch, too. I’m quite excited to take 30XX with me when traveling and returning to it when I need a good platforming roguelite fix if I need to wind down after a long day at work. I just hope that someday the Switch version will get the map maker in some capacity.

Awards & Rankings

16
#16 Best Switch Game of 2023
74
#74 Most Discussed Switch Game of 2023

User Reviews

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User Score
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No user score yet- Awaiting 3 more ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. bvbreezy
    Sep 11, 2023
    5
    Positives: The gameplay mechanics are fluid and satisfying, the music is amazingly composed, the general aesthetic wonderfully captures thePositives: The gameplay mechanics are fluid and satisfying, the music is amazingly composed, the general aesthetic wonderfully captures the retro feel of the megaman X series while injecting its own personal flair, the abilities and power-ups are creative and varied, the the quasi-random level generation provides good replay value.

    Negatives: This game does a pretty poor job of explaining itself and how it works. The power-ups, for instance, oftentimes have descriptions that do not explain how they work or what they do effectively at all, opting instead to provide some tongue-in-cheek one-liner, leaving you to piece together what the power does. This would be somewhat fine, except the game makes you choose most of the time to take one power up instead of another, and much of the time, you have to pay for it with pickups, so at worst, the game is asking you to guess what the power is and hope it’s useful.

    The game also, as alluded to, has an obsession with juvenile quirkiness in everything from the menu prompts to the dialogue, and it’s, in a word, obnoxious. I rolled my eyes quite often playing this game; it actually wrecked my immersion quite often. One of the worst offenders here was during the tutorial when the main villain ponders whether or not she should, and I quote, “Do a MuRdEr”. This villain is supposed to be a brilliant and sophisticated scientist by the way. And before anyone claims that the story/characterization isn’t supposed to be taken seriously, my knowledge of the lore, which I looked up out of confusion more than anything, implies just the opposite. The story clearly takes itself quite seriously and clues to it are sprinkled esoterically throughout the game, so I argue that critiquing the awkward presentation is fair play.

    Then there’s the gameplay, which is buttery smooth in its construction, but fumbles in two key aspects; difficulty and platforming. The game has two main modes, standard and megamode. Standard is a roguelite experience where you traverse 10 randomly-generated levels that appear in a random order (except the last two) and get harder as you go, and you have to start over if you die. You can also collect persistent currencies to buy permanent upgrades between runs. Megamode, on the other hand, let’s you pick which order you do the levels, which are set for the entire run, and dying allows you to retry the level. Instead of getting harder as you beat levels, the game selects which levels will be harder and which easier, basically strongly encouraging you to go in a certain order. I did megamode on my first playthrough and my first impression was quite bad. The reason is that I selected a level that was in the harder tier first not knowing that the game prescaled the difficulty because nothing conveyed to me that that’s how it worked. How you know which is which is that each level name will have a subtitle that says normal, bold, or defiant (there’s that obnoxious quirkiness again). I didn’t pick this up though since I just chose a level without perusing enough of them to notice the subtitles. The result was a massive headache because of how the game increases difficulty, which is just by giving enemies way too much health, throwing a ton of them at you, making the game a bullet hell, and forcing you to platform through it all, sometimes with sections that require precise timing and jumps that feel too tight, like the devs took the exact distance/height you can possibly jump and tuned the platforming so you’d have basically no margin. Most of the platforming isn’t like that, but enough is to cause problems (the second to last level cones to mind).

    Now to be fair, you can turn down the enemy health and damage you take in the options menu (not that the game explains this either, you just have to find it). It’s not worth doing that in the early levels, but I would say that it is for the later ones, because the enemies have, in my opinion, way too much health, to the point where it makes more sense to bypass as much as you can because engaging takes so long that it leaves you open to the bevy of other enemies currently firing on you that take just as long to kill.

    And then there’s the bosses, which I actually really like from a design standpoint. They’re all imaginative and satisfying to fight, but again, only at the lower and mid nominal difficulties, because at the highest one, they become bullet-sponge, bullet-hell chores. If you’re not decked out on power ups by the time you reach them, fighting them is a crapshoot, and if you are, it’s become tedious and boring by the time their health bar is halfway depleted, as chipping away at them is agonizingly slow. I have had sweet-spot fights where my heart was racing because it felt like the outcome could go either way before pulling out a satisfying victory. Much of the time though, I’m either sitting pretty or tired/bored.    … Full Review »