YMMV / 30XX

• Awesome Art: The new pixel art style has been very warmly received, often being described as having far more character and variety than the previous game's aesthetic.
• Awesome Music: cityfires returns to compose the OST, and it manages to be just as good as the soundtrack for 20XX, if not even better. This time, there's individual tracks for each boss and post-boss kill fanfare, instead of just one for all of them! cityfires has even dome some remixes for tracks from the previous game, giving them a different vibe!
  • The main theme is an energetic piece, like it's ready to show a new side of itself.
  • "Prone to Wander", the Burning Temple victory theme, really emphasizes your victory over the boss. It sounds even better if it was a close battle.
  • "Atomichron", the Clockzone level theme, has a steady beat fitting for the setting, yet manages to sound catchy.
  • "Penance", the Penumbra level theme, has a creepy feel fitting of its overall theme. Even better is that it's a Variable Mix in-game, so you get to hear the music change and evolve as you make your way through the stage.
  • "Reckoning", the Penumbra boss theme, is a fast-paced, intense piece that will get you pumped as you take on Absolution.
  • "Hollows", the Echocave level theme, is an insanely peppy, bouncy groove to suit the musically-themed crystal caverns.
  • "The Upside Drown" the Watergrav level theme, is a surprisingly catchy tune with an air of mystery to it.
  • "Top of the World", the Watergrav victory theme, is a joyous song. It feels like a pat on the back for your hard-earned win against Experiment 9.
  • All of the Aspera level themes, really. The level starts out playing the melancholic "At Her Doorstep", to fit the peaceful space setting.
    • "Eternal Devotion" kicks in once you first fight Kur. Once you start the second phase of the fight, it goes into the much more intense and fast-paced "ETERNAL Devotion".
    • "Verge of Greatness", the final Aspera theme, is a powerful, intense remix of At Her Doorstep, playing when the player is deep into Eleanor's base and reminding them how far they've come to get here.
  • "Infinite Answer", the final level theme, is an empowering song to really pump up the player to take down Midgard, and even has a callback to the main theme of 20XX.
• Breather Level: After the grueling level 9, the tenth and final level has a straightforward layout with little to no gimmicks, and enemies are mostly just there to replenish your health and energy for the boss encounters.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: The good ending has Alexia talk down Eleanor from summoning Midgard by convincing her that countless other Eleanors are destroying their universes to stop the multiverse from completely wiping itself out, so this Eleanor may as well stop and live happily. The two scientists reunite and the world is saved, but there's no solution to countless other universes being destroyed by their Eleanor or the threat of the entire multiverse imploding if those universes aren't pruned.
• Even Better Sequel: Numerous improvements to gameplay, art design, and music variation have made this title become far more loved than its predecessor. 30XX essentially took what was good about 20XX, cut off the bad, and made the good into great.
• Fanwork-Only Fans: There is a not-insignificant population of the playerbase that prefers to consume the game through the conversion mod Mega Man X: Rebirth rather than the game's unmodified visuals.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Unstoppable Force aug. It plays VERY nicely with the change to dashing - instead of short bursts, now you can dash for much longer before stopping. Unstoppable Force makes it so that dashing for long enough wreathes you in energy and makes you deal great damage to any enemy in your way. You also keep dashing until you hit a solid surface. Combine this with being able to rapidly turn the other direction, and it can let you rip bosses apart as long as they're on the same platform as you.
  • On their own, the Vagrant's cores are very finicky to use but fantastic when mastered. However, getting the full set makes Corruption stop decaying, which makes you able to reach maximum Corruption and keep it there, thus resulting in near-invulnerability, as if any bullets hit you, you simply take a hit to your Corruption, which can easily be regenerated by attacking enemies. This gets escalated further if you get the Resonant Chestplate, as you start firing Negation Pulses every .5 seconds, making it very difficult for anything but melee strikes from high-hp enemies and stage hazards to hurt you.
  • Repros in this game are extremely powerful. They're good enough on their own, but can be made even better with the Zookeeper's Sigil, which increases their damage, Zookeeper's Zeal, which increases their attack rate, and Zookeeper core augs, which give them even more buffs. If you have enough repros and augs, you can focus more on platforming and dodging attacks, while your repros take out enemies for you.
  • The Armatort set bonus retains this status from 20XX, giving you complete immunity to a majority of stage hazards. Being able to ignore a lot of a stage's challenge makes runs far more manageable.
  • Advanced Repair was an aug that gave a unconditional increase to healing. Even having one would considerably increase your chances of survival. It was eventually removed during the Early Access period, and its functionality would only appear on Prototypes.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Getting the good ending requires you to complete a number of tasks, some of which are only hinted at with cryptic messages, and some of which have a substantial amount of random chance involved. Once you get through everything, your reward is just a new scene, no new final stage or final boss or anything like that. This isn't even acknowledged in the home base, as none of the NPCs there bring it up and Eleanor doesn't show up either.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • The Wave Beam returns, and it's still fairly lame. While it can pierce all surfaces, its wave patterns make it difficult to aim and land your shots. And again, said piercing becomes redundant if you pick up Quantum Spook, which applies piercing to ALL parts of your arsenal.
  • The Toy Beam seems to have been explicitly designed to be this - your gun drops in accuracy, causing Nina's shots to spray wildly, and your damage drops too. However, equipping it costs no CP and in fact gives you 5 core points, potentially changing it into Difficult, but Awesome if you have the augments and equipment to counteract its negative effects.
• Spiritual Successor: To the Mega Man X series, of course. In case the parallels weren't obvious enough, there's even a popular Game Mod within the community that swaps out all of the game's assets with ones from Mega Man X4 through Mega Man X6, plus renditions of assets from later titles in the same style.
• That One Level: While several levels can be this if tackled late-game, some can get pretty bad from the get go.
  • Dustia is known for having several stage hazards from the get go, from conveyor belts, to bombs that detonate when shot or if you so much as touch them, wrench-throwing enemies that make for some of the spongiest mooks in the game, batteries that litter surfaces with damaging sparks (made much worse if you set Zealot's Fervor (which speeds enemies up) as an Entropy Condition), and all of this can be combined with a very cramped space for action, notably in the stage's first half, and it can get pretty nightmarish if you tackle it late-game. Ironically, its midboss and Capital Punishment are relatively easy in comparison.
  • Penumbra. Specifically the second half of Penumbra, which is a long vertical climb which will test your platforming skills to the fullest, making use of the stage's gimmicks, such as the number platforms. All the while void orbs are constantly spawning all around you. One mistake can send you plummeting a good ways down the shaft. It gets much worse if you choose to tackle the stage late.
• Underused Game Mechanic: While there is a jump stat, only one Core Aug affects it in any way.

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