Wednesday, September 8, 2021

Review: Kotobukiya Mega Man X Fourth Armor

Since it began in 2019, Kotobukiya’s Mega Man X kits have been a really fun line to collect. When they first announced that they were developing the Max Armor (i.e “Third Armor”), I knew this line was going to be special. 

So with my favorite X Armor under their belt, what did Kotobukiya do next? Why, my second favorite armor -- the Force Armor (or Fourth Armor) of course! And, really, I was completely blown away. Not only did Kotobukiya have the same taste as me, but the build quality continued to be amazing. Check out my review after the break!


This kit makes every effort to perfectly replicate the official art and game sprites. All the gems are translucent, giving the figure that extra pop. The individual pieces are color-separated, so you don’t need to worry about hand painting anything in order to achieve a good look. You can, however, paint it if you so desire and that will bring an extra personal touch, whether you’re adding finer details or painting the whole thing with a new color scheme, top to bottom. Having the choice and ability to easily customize these kits is definitely one of the highlights of this line.

By default, the blue colors used on the Force Armor are a bit darker than those on the base X and the Max Armor kits. Keep that in mind when mixing and matching.



The kit’s poseability is very good. It’s easy enough to get X into all sorts of poses. The only limit is your imagination!


Want to know the one thing that this guy brings to the table that other X kits lacked? A smiling face! I don’t know about you, but that was a huge highlight for me when that was revealed. This faceplate shows a side of X that official merchandise doesn’t touch on enough. I am very happy to have it, and it can be used with any of your previous X kits, too.


 

This kit comes with three faces: a neutral face, a teeth gritting face (emulating the Mega Man X4 box art), and the aforementioned smiling face. It also comes with a variety of hand parts: fists, semi-open hands, and wide-open hands. And finally, there’s Force Armor Buster, faithfully recreated, fin and all. (The upcoming Rising Fire Force Armor kit includes the Plasma Shot arms as well!)




Speaking of fins, the Force Armor has plenty of ‘em to go around. While most fins are no problem to assemble, I implore you to use caution with the ear fins. During assembly, the ear fins have been known to snap; an issue I’ve heard about more than once. Just take your time while assembling the ears and inserting the gems, and you should be all set.


To wrap things up here, this kit is excellent. It nails the look of X’s Armor from X4 (and X5!) and looks great on your shelf. I’d say that this kit is an intermediate level build and will probably set you back a few hours. I also highly recommend getting a model kit tool kit (this is the kit I use) to more cleanly get rid of nub marks. Just take your time and have fun!

 

The Force Armor kit is currently available on Amazon. It's currently sold-out at BigBadToyStore, but keep an eye here in case they get more in stock. The Rising Fire Force Armor kit is starting to hit stores, too, so get yours while you can.

The next major release is the Second Armor from Mega Man X2; pre-orders are already available for Second Armor, and it is set to release in January 2022.

16 comments:

  1. Thank you for letting me in on this! Hopefully, there will be more to come in the future!

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  2. I hope we get gaea and shadow armors. might be difficult as those two in particular have no potential for variants.

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  3. I have been collecting these kits. I have every one except the special coating (which I thought was redundant).
    While I enjoy the kits, I do have a few minor gripes with them. Though I have just as many gripes with the undisputed king Bandai too. Bandai is also far from perfect (several of my Gundams have had issues with parts breaking too easy, looseness and poor design choices, and I'm talking RG here)

    I like this kit but I am going to gripe for a minute.

    For this one: It should have came with black arm parts no matter which version you order. Don't go saying "Ah, well you could just paint it!" Nah. I like to swap out every now and then. And I would want my Rising Fire version to match, but I am not buying 2 of each to do it.
    There was some significant black details on the chest that needs to be painted on near the shoulders on the chest that really should have been molded in color as they are fairly large details and have no clear part separation on the back that has to be done entirely by eye. I'm used to painting the shoulders at this point. They could have also designed the shoulder gems into the red fin inserts so you didn't have to paint them, but I guess they didn't think of that...
    None of the buster orbs were translucent. Which is odd.

    Kotobukiya, if your listening: Your ankle joints SUCK. I had to 3D print alternatives for my Nightmare Zero just so it would stand without the foot popping off.

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    1. RG has for sure had some growing pains, but what they're doing with the line now -- and the evolution of that line over the last 3 years, how it has impacted all other Bandai lines, etc. -- has been phenomenal. If you haven't built newer kits like the RX-93 or the Wing: those are absolutely incredible kits.

      Kotobukiya definitely seems a little more old-school where they want the builder to solve some of their own problems, but these kits are way overpriced for what they are.

      I'm glad to hear that the parts from this kit are color-accurate, as every other kit I've built from this line has had parts which are not. I also agree that the ankle joints are garbage, but overall think the general engineering could use work.

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    2. I just built a a brand new release RG Wing Gundam. It kinda felt like a downgrade from my other RG's. There was no cockpit. There were no adjustable digit hands. And the stand mount standard changed, so the stand I ordered wasn't even compatible with the Wing Gundam. THAT sorta pissed me off.
      RG's have too many tiny parts, several key parts of mine have broken. And it's hard to get replacements because NOT JAPAN.
      Kotobukiya does the same stupid thing. They will sell you replacement runners but ONLY if your Japanese.

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    3. Personal preference, I guess. I like the tiny parts, as I prefer that to not having everything color-separated. I also never find myself using the cockpits, as it generally seems to be too fiddly at that scale. Never had anything break on my RG kits, but maybe I'm lucky.

      You're right about replacement parts though. There's MechaPartsGuy, but he doesn't always have the parts you need. He's doing a great service for those of us in the states though.

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    4. Would you be willing to share your 3d printed schema for the zero ankle parts? I would love to be able to display mine since the feet wont even stay on.

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  4. As much as I love Mega Man and model kits, would love to see different characters more than just the same character in different armors

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    1. but at the same time, you probably wouldn't pay like $120 for them.

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    2. @Erik the Red
      I would. Depending on the rate of release. I wouldn't pay $100 for X, but for Sigma who will be a larger kit, sure. It all depends on the product, really. I'm not gonna pay $300 dollars for a mini arcade machine. But I will pay a premium for a figurine to go on my shelf I can enjoy.

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    3. As long as Sigma's poseable rather than another statue like the FiguArts ZERO, yeah I'd consider shelling out 120 dollars for him.

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  5. Keep em coming, Kotobukiya! Do all the armors, all the colors, all the zeros, all the sigmas! All the viles! And every single Maverick! Every armor and every maverick from Mega Mission too! One hundred years of model kits! Do them all! One hundred years! megamanxmodelkits.com!

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    1. infinity mijinion kit is going to be released during the age of carbons

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  6. Franckly, I was very surprised by the quality of all those Rockman X model kit. Yes it's sometimes very long to build but the result is always excellent. The Max and Fourth armor are also my favorite, Zero is just awesome and I hoping for more others characters in the future like Double, Iris, Colonel, Sigma, Vile and Gate for example.

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