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"I've got some introductions to make."

"Your mission is to infiltrate Giga City and halt the activities of Epsilon's organization, the Rebellion. I'm afraid the team that went in before you has likely perished. You are our final hope. If you fail this mission, then...We will have no choice but to launch an indiscriminate assault on Giga City."
Colonel Redips

Mega Man X: Command Mission is a video game released in 2004 by Capcom for the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube. It is a Gaiden Game to the Mega Man X series, and differs by being a Turn-Based RPG adventure rather than a platform action game.

In the year 22XX, a powerful new ore called Force Metal is discovered in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and the artificial island Giga City is constructed to mine it. However, things go wrong when a mysterious Reploid named Epsilon forms a Rebellion Army and instigates a revolt on the island. With the situation looking tense, a team of elite Maverick Hunters — X, Zero, and Shadow — are sent to Giga City to arrest Epsilon and put an end to the civil unrest. Along the way, they are forced to band together with the locals in order to save the world from the dangerous potential of Force Metal.

Given the major story discrepancies between this game, Mega Man X8, and the Mega Man Zero series, it is generally interpreted that this game is set in an Alternate Timeline. However, with the X series' abandonment, it remains to be seen if that could be true or if the characters from this title could appear as Canon Immigrants in the mainline entries. Regardless, characters and designs from Command Mission have been featured in Mega Man X DiVE and Teppen (2019), both of which are mobile phone crossover games.


The game contains examples of:

  • Aborted Arc: Axl comes to Giga City in search of answers about his copy chip. All he ends up learning is that Colonel Redips has one too.
  • Action Commands: Each character has at least one Action Trigger; in exchange for all of the character's subweapon energy, the Trigger starts up a simple minigame which can unleash some of the game's most impressive attacks.
  • Adaptation Personality Change: X and Zero experience this the most. X is considerably more macho and aggressive than usual, hardly showing any of his pacifism or reluctance from the main X series. Zero is also a bit more aggressive, but in a grumpier way.
  • An Interior Designer Is You: The Sky Room, an area in the Hub Level unlocked after Chapter 3. The player can decorate the room with action figures, game sketches, and posters. It also acts as a compendium on your story progress, has a Sound Test, a video player, and your achievements list.
  • Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Up to seven characters can be in your party, but only three max can be active in a battle at once. Can't switch places with a dead character, so if three die it's game over.
  • Alternate Continuity: Seems to be the case, given the discrepancies with X8 and the Zero series.
  • Anime Theme Song: "Jounetsu Setsuna"
  • Barrier Change Boss: Incentas, who starts as a non-elemental boss but switches his modes every turn. This is denoted by his color changing as well as adopting a different stance, and in turn swaps around what attacks he will resist. There is, notably, no actual cycle to his swaps; you just have to adjust on the fly for whatever element he changes to.
  • Big "NO!": X, when Ferham sacrifices herself.
  • Boss Rush: Yes, even though this game is an RPG instead of a platformer, being a Mega Man game, it still features this though it's downplayed compared to most examples in the franchise. All of the boss rematches (except Hippopressor, Spider, Shadow, Scarface, Ferham, Botos, Epsilon and Dr Psyche) are copy chip Reploids with boosted stats with a new boss in between them and the final boss.
  • Bounty Hunter: Spider, the original one at least.
  • Bragging Rights Reward: You get Axl's strongest weapons, as well has his final morph, after beating the strongest Optional Boss. The trouble is, there's nothing left to fight after that.
  • Bridge Bunnies: As one early chapter proves, these are mandatory.
  • Button Mashing: The X's Ultimate Armor Action Trigger is simply "Mash buttons until everything dies." You also have to mash to get Steel Massimo's Action Trigger to work properlY; the more you mash, the more damage he does and the more debuffs he stacks on the target.
  • Classy Cat-Burglar: Marino.
  • Charge Meter: Instead of the traditional glowing/flashing, X uses a meter to show how much WE is put into the attack.
  • Combat Medic: Cinnamon. Especially if she's equipped with the Kitty Gloves.
  • Curse Cut Short: "You sonnuva-" [Fight Woosh]
  • Death Dealer: Spider. His attacks involve throwing playing cards (or firing them from the deck slots in his cuffs) and his whole motif is that of a card sharp or casino dealer.
  • Defeat Equals Explosion: Being a Mega Man game, this is pretty much expected. However, Gameplay and Story Segregation sometimes kicked in when the enemy exploding after being defeated in the battle sequence, but shown to be completely intact afterwards.
    • Most of the bosses explodes with Pre-Explosion Glow and the screen whitened out, however bonus bosses such as Duckbill Mole, Rafflesian and Ninetails Clan simply explode into fireballs with exact same explosion animation as regular enemies with no glowing effect when defeated.
  • Depending on the Writer: Some of the returning main cast have subtly different personalities from the mainline games. Axl is more grown-up and level-headed while retaining his boyish charm, while Zero is a bit more reckless and headstrong than usual. X has the biggest change, going from a noble pacifist to a macho action hero who takes down Mavericks with no hesitation. The developers admitted to this latter change, claiming that it made for a more interesting RPG protagonist.
  • Dirty Coward: Despite all the trouble Boros gives you in his debut fight, he's an absolute joke without the Supra Force Metal empowering him. It speaks volumes that one chapter later, his unique battle theme is utterly silly, his copy is stronger than he is and that he'll run away if given a chance.
  • Finishing Move: The Final Strike, engaged when a hit leaves the enemy in the bottom fraction of its remaining LE.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • Axl having the same Hyper Mode as Spider.
    • Axl's transformations in cutscenes have a distinct light effect. At one point this light can be seen before Spider appears on screen.
    • When talking to Spider after Axl joins the party, Spider says he's glad Axl's on your side, because a shapeshifter like him could easily infiltrate and destroy his enemies from within.
    • Spider is named after a card game, specifically, spider solitaire. He's only in it for himself, IE, playing solo.
    • Redips is Spider spelled backwards.
  • Friendship-Hating Antagonist: In stark contrast to Epsilon and his soldiers, Colonel Redips operates alone with his only henchmen being robot henchmen and resurrected Mavericks. While both characters want the Supra Force Metal because they feel that Reploids are second-class citizens compared to humans, Redips feels that he's fit to rule above all others and uses the Supra Force Metal to transform himself into Great Redips. After his god form is defeated, Colonel Redips reverts to his normal form during his death scene. After being called a Maverick by X, Redips claims that X is more maverick due to holding reploids back. This dialogue exchange sums it up:
    Colonel Redips: Maverick? You seem more Maverick to me with all your stubborn nonsense about friendship and your unwillingness to evolve.
    Zero: You don't know a thing about friendship, Maverick scum!
    Colonel Redips: Stay in our place, be friendly to all, decade after decade... Indefinitely... Is this all Reploids will ever be? Some day... you'll see... We'll... change the world...
  • Full Health Bonus: Zero's Red Lotus Sword deals damage proportionate to how much health and armor he has remaining. When his armor and shields are topped up, this is the strongest weapon he has access to. At low health, it does piddling damage. It also offers no defensive bonuses, so any hits Zero does take will hurt.
  • Giant Mook: Mettaur Gigant, a very, very large version of the common Mettaur.
  • Good Scars, Evil Scars: Scarface has a massive scar on one side of his face.
  • Gosh Darnit To Heck: X proclaims "Oh, shoot!" if he takes a critical hit.
  • HP to One: One of Epsilon's attacks.
  • Immunity Disability: Spider's and Axl's Hyper Modes make them invincible, to reflect the fact that enemies trying to hit them are firing completely blind, but this also prevents allies from healing them.
  • Inexplicable Treasure Chests: Those weird floating diamond things.
  • Infinity +1 Sword: X's new version of the Ultimate Armor and Zero's Absolute Zero armour.
  • Interface Spoiler: Is there a reason Shadow never joins the party in battle?
  • La Résistance: The Rebellion. But there was also another La Résistance group against this insurgence, to which the heroes joined up with during the game.
  • Laser Blade: Various bladed weapons called "Beam <object>".
  • Legacy Character: Steel Massimo, who takes up the name and armor of the real Massimo after he dies.
  • Mechanical Evolution: The Rebellion Army's goal, essentially.
  • The Mole: Shadow and later Spider, who turns out to be the Big Bad in disguise.
  • More Dakka: Ultimate Armor. With this equipped, X packs a chest laser, two giant machine guns for arms, and a missile launcher strapped to his back, not to mention double the attack power.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Marino and Ferham, the former being a Classy Catburglar that happens to transform into a Leotard of Power, and the latter having particularly emphasized figure and The Baroness as her personality. If an NPC's dialogue is anything to go by, Marino was even formerly a fashion model Reploid and thus literally built as this trope.
  • Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Incentas, with six. Notably, he underwent a model change to give him five fingers on each hand instead of four, which caused some undue animation and design stress late into production.
    Ryuji Higurashi: Did they know how many hands this guy has!?
  • Mythology Gag:
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: After you beat Epsilon, X takes his Supra-Force Metal and hands it to the real Big Bad, who uses it to turn into a giant monster "god" and take over the universe. Way to go, X. To be fair, X had no idea who the Big Bad was at the time, so he was trying to do the right thing.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: After the first battle with Great/God Redips, Ferham shows up and tries to yank a piece of Supra-Force Metal off his shoulder to weaken him. But she's not strong enough. Great Redips gets angry and blasts her...knocking the metal down with her. Thanks for the help!
  • No Kill like Overkill: The Final Strike, full stop. In fact, performing one gives you WE, and bonus FME depending on how much damage you inflict and how many hits you cause.
  • One-Hit Kill: Some enemies can perform this on you. The Meltdown will do this if you don't kill it in time. The Tail Clan have the Annihilator Hadouken attack, which has a chance of doing this to you.
  • Optional Boss: Rafflesian and Duckbill Mole can be fought if the player finds keys to unlock two locked rooms in previous dungeons. And after beating the game, the player can go beneath Resistance HQ and fight the Ninetails clan.
  • Panthera Awesome: Wild Jango, a high-speed electric bobcat reploid. One of the earliest bosses, but definitely a Wake-Up Call Boss due to his ability to hit both of your available characters and debuff them.
  • Phlebotinum Overdose: Characters can equip force metal to grant certain bonuses, but equipping too much can lead to nasty side effects.
    • There are special neutralizers that knock down the cost of force metal, but even then some force metal is simply too much to be used safely by certain characters.
  • Power Copying: Ironically, X doesn't do this in the game. Axl's Action Trigger, though, has him transform into one of the defeated bosses to use one of their attacks.
    • X's power copying ability is referenced, however subtly, by the fact that the spoils from several bosses include new equipable buster cannons that use their element (Wild Jango give a Thunder Buster, for example).
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: Epsilon. Also, Shadow, after he betrays X and Zero — before then, his eyes are blue — and Spider, since he turns out to be a form of the Big Bad.
  • Scarf of Asskicking: X is sporting one. And it's not just a scarf: It's a laser scarf. Furthermore, by playing the game and fulfilling certain conditions, you can get it in blue and yellow too!
  • Sdrawkcab Alias: The biggest clue to the Big Bad: Spider/Redips. It was supposedly lampshaded in the instruction booklet, which had the excuse of misspelling the latter name so that no one would make the connection until The Reveal.
  • Shoot the Medic First: Inverted with the Preon Medic and Preon Doc enemies. If you kill all the other enemies in a fight except them, they'll heal your party and then run away the following turn.
  • Shotoclone: The Optional Boss, Ninetails, is a robotic chi warrior based around the Kitsune legend...who uses a massive Hadoken as one of his most powerful moves.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Massimo is seemingly based on the eponymous character from Maximo: Ghosts to Glory. Not only their names are similar but also Massimo's Glint Armor bears an uncanny resemblance to Maximo's Gold Armor.
    • There are couple to the Breath of Fire games:
      • Massimo's Beast Lancer works almost exactly as Garr's Beast Lance. The main difference is that while Garr's weapon drains his HP at every turn, Massimo's only drains HP when he attacks regularly.
      • Preon Elite's "Order" skill allows it to concentrate its allies' attack on a single target. The fourth game has a learneable ability called "Command" that does the same.
  • The Starscream: Botos. He's Not in This for Your Revolution, and turns out to be just waiting for the right time to make off with the real bounty, an enormous chunk of Force Metal.
  • Super Mode: Every playable character has an Hyper Mode, a temporary transformation (much like the dragon-forms in Breath of Fire), that boosts their status, and lasts for a few turns.
  • Tagalong Kid: Cinnamon somewhat fits this role. (Axl is grown up in this game.)
  • Talk to the Fist: Epsilon vows to wage war against the Hunters until his death and then it comes instantly, courtesy of X.
  • Taking the Bullet: Spider for Zero. Shadow tries to blast Zero behind his back, and Spider jumps in the way and finishes Shadow off. The shot peels part of the armor off Spider's arm.
  • Timed Mission: One of the Ninetails fights has to be finished in a certain number of turns, or else he inflicts a Total Party Kill. Certain abilities allow one party member to survive the Total Party Kill, but doing so causes the items he dropped, including a few one of kinds, to be unobtainable.
  • Undying Loyalty: Scarface, Ferham and Shadow to Epsilon. Botos is the big exception.
  • Unobtainium: Force Metal, used in reploid engineering.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: The Preon Medic Preon Doc will heal your party and then flee as a means of surrender if you defeat the combat units accompanying them. The thing is, they have to take two turns to do it. It's possible to kill them anyways for the experience and items before they have a chance to flee. They will still heal you even if you attack them after the combat units are defeated to get a head start on beating them.
  • Visible Invisibility: Spider and Axl's Hyper Modes both render them "invisible", appearing as black and blue translucent silhouettes respectively.
  • Walking Armory: Or rather, "floating", as X's Ultimate Armor makes him too heavy to stand. It's also, by far, the most heavily-equipped armor in the series.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: Epsilon.
  • Wham Line:
    Zero: We lost R...And Spider...For this lousy creep?
    Colonel Redips: [Evil Laugh] Ah, Spider! Changes into Spider
    Zero: What? This...This can't be real!
    Colonel Redips/Spider: My ears are burnin'. You talkin' about me?
  • Wham Shot: Once Epsilon is defeated, the heroes are ready to leave, but them a turret emerges from the underside of the ship that is supposed to take them home and shoots Chief R.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: After you beat the Big Bad nothing about Cinnamon, Marino or Massimo is neither told or known.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Along with What Measure Is a Non-Cute?, averted for both Rafflesian and Belladonnas. Despite of them being cute looking human-type female Reploid, they are depicted as enemies (with Rafflesian even showing Cute and Psycho personality). After being defeated, they go kaboom like other enemies with strong implication that they got Killed Off for Real, unlike Ferham who got High-Heel–Face Turn treatment and only ended up killed in a Heroic Sacrifice at the end.
  • When Things Spin, Science Happens: At the top of Central Tower is the Resistance headquarters. In there is a great big computer, and you can notice a number of spinning things throughout the room that make it operate. (Early in the game, you even find a techie repairing the central spinner underneath the main computer console.)
  • Worf Effect: X, who by this point is a Class-S Maverick Hunter and a professional at his work, is defeated/knocked down no less than four times in cutscenes by opponents ranging from a simple bounty hunter to a physical god. Zero doesn’t fare much better, as he ends the first part of the game by being blasted off a building and being absent until the Ulfat Factory, where he loses an offscreen battle against Mach Jentra.
  • Year X: The game is set in the year 22XX.
  • Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Just when you thought defeating the Rebellion signals the end of the game, your superior betrays you, steals the Supra Force Metal, and turns out to be the real Big Bad.

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