Jokes aside, I went into Luoke Ren DX6 expecting to hate it, which is why I am having such a hard time putting words together. Expectations were shattered like a businessman after a long and gruelling day of back-to-back meetings. Not only does this game look and feel great, it is accompanied by excellent music and as far as I can tell very little of anything was directly stolen from elsewhere.

Luoke Ren DX6 is an anomaly in that there are not five preceding games, though to be fair, this is very common in the pirate gaming scene. It has all of the quality you would expect from a sixth game in a series, though. Refined gameplay makes for some solid entertainment.

The game is a traditional style Mega Man romp but with elements from Mega Man X, such as the charge shot, wall kicks and dashing moves. Sufficed to say, this mixture works great. It looks like Classic, plays like X, and feels like it could be a genuine Capcom produced title. Kind of like the Mega Man Xtreme games.

Six stages are available to pick from, each with its own unique boss enemy with a specific attack pattern. Rare for Mega Man pirates, this game contains Robot Master weapon types which you obtain after successfully beating them. Also, some weapon types work better against specific bosses, showing thought went into this.

The stages vary in size. Some of them are humongous with sub-bosses part-way through the stage. They are challenging and are laden with one-hit-kill spikes... yikes! Luckily though you can farm lives, health tanks, and ammunition tanks by leaving the screen and returning, killing enemies over and over. In rooms where items spawn, you can leave and come back, and the items respawn.

Another thing that also amazes me is the branching paths — not only did some stages have multiple routes, they also had rooms off to the side that contained items! However, some of these rooms were blocked off or inaccessible, so I was forced to return.

After I defeated three bosses, the game took me to two levels in a row that had big bosses. After fighting what felt like a final boss, the game took me back to the stage select screen to fight the three remaining bosses. After I completed all stages, I was left unable to access any further ones. Is this a game breaking glitch, or had I failed to do something important? Either way, I decided I was finished here as progression from that point no longer seemed possible.

I returned to the previously blocked off areas I found but they were still blocked off, I spent the whole of the game thinking "these sections will be relevant later", but they weren't.

The game contains a working password mechanism, I would be amazed but Rockman X3 also contains a password system. At least in this game, the passwords actually do something outside of look pretty.

The art direction alone is the main reason to stay playing; I was interested in whatever weird boss would show up next. A tank with a flower sticking out of it, an evil robot snowman baring sharp teeth, or or a giant robot dinosaur with arm-mounted cannons it doesn't even use; there is always something that comes and trumps the previous trumpy trump-pah-pah thing that was the trumpiest just moments ago.

Enough babble, see for yourself: