Same scenario for me, almost exactly. I have a friend that I marathon the X games with every so often, and our times are pretty close to yours. X is the easiest for us, since we have almost the entire game committed to memory, meaning it usually takes about 2 hours. X2, like you said, is a bit tougher and usually takes us 3-4 hours, depending on whether we care to save Zero. And our first run of X3 was a while ago, and it ended up taking about 6 hours because neither of us had ever beaten it before. Our long term goal is to beat all three back to back in one day, so we've got to cut our times down on X2 and X3 if we ever hope to accomplish that.MyNameIsVince wrote:Last year was my most recent playthrough of X and X2 (which I did in 2 days). I can 100% X in roughly 2 hours, give or take. X2 it took me about 3 hours to 100% it. Why the difference? Because I don't quite remember all the item locations in X2 from memory as well as I do with X, plus I had to interrupt my stage progression to beat the X Hunters to get Zero's parts, so that took a little while. I will say that X2 has the easier final boss battles, but they're also more fun (IMO at least).
Yup, this is a great place to farm for health/lives at any point in the game. Same goes for that area with the worms that Gunstar mentioned, especially if you'd rather not back out of the final stage.Ziggy587 wrote:I found the Armadillo stage to be great to play in between the final stages. Those platforms that wisp you across portions of the level, instant killing any enemy in it's path... If you avoid taking that thing, most of the enemies are 1 hit kill bats, and they all drop lots of energy. Then there's the two big capsules midway through the level, and the one at the end (where you'd get the Hadoken). Then in the beginning, if you don't take the ride, there's 1 odd bat that seems to always drop an extra life. So all you have to do is play that level 2 or 3 times and you'll fill your energy tanks and gain a couple extra lives.
