Here's one of the games I was thinking of when I made this thread:

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Mega Man X6 - One of my favorite entries in the series behind X1 and X4. X6 is the black sheep of the "respectable MMX titles" which basically consists of only the first six games and the GBC entries. Before Axel graced the series and became the poster child of everything wrong with the series and for some fans, Capcom itself, this was the game that got a lot of flak from fans. A hasty sequel made very shortly after the more successful X4 and X5, like many of Capcom's major PS1 releases at the very end of the systems life cycle, the company cut a lot of corners and gave the fans a very rough title that probably needed another six months in the oven to be fully realized. The level design hits(and sometimes crosses) that very thin line between being challenging and outright shenanigans. The Nightmare system doesn't make it any better, being a great idea that has a serious bad habit of making a rough around the edge design feel more frustrating than it should be.

Hardcore fans hate it partially because the game feels less polish and more sadistic than previous installments, but mostly because the game was never actually meant to be made. X5 was the original ending entry for the X series and was suppose to jump start the MM Zero franchise ending with the death of a major character and a cataclysm striking the world. X6 picks up a few months later and has X trying to rebuild the world but has issues as a rough Reploid scientist hijacks the terraforming efforts with several former Mavericks who were assassinated by the Maverick Hunters after said scientist stepped on too many toes. He builds a robot named High Max, who looks like he could be the Big O's little brother, and got access on the Zero Virus from X5 which he plans on using for his own nefarious schemes. Barring the resurrection of the character who died in the last game, there is actually nothing in X6's plot that outright contradicts the Zero series, it's major glitch is simply sucking the momentum out of Zero's return in the MMZero series.

So why do I like this game? Well for one thing, I was happy that X finally returned to focus in his own series. I am well aware of the fact Zero was the originally intended main character and X was the result of executive meddling, but I feel the team at Capcom did a good job making X an interesting and conflicted character. While I do like the ramifications of Zero's past and story for the series, it was still a bit annoying to watch him hijack the plot of the last two (technically three) entries to the series. I don't even know why Capcom bothered putting X in X4, he does absolutely nothing and his story is largely irrelevant. X5 was only slightly better, so it was nice to see a game where X came back into the limelight though he does still have to share it with Alia who has a closer connection to the main villain than anyone. The plot overall is surprisingly good, going back to a plot thread brought up in X4 and dropped in X5 concerning the Maverick Hunters themselves being corrupt and the human led government branding innocent reploids as Mavericks for extermination when they became "inconvenient". Sadly, the story doesn't have a definitive conclusion but I was happy to see the plot thread picked up after X5 decided to be about Zero's past. This was also cool because X was always the more conflicted character, whereas Zero was always more duty over reason which led to the tragedy of X4. Gate himself is also a really good sympathetic villain and had a great boss fight. Granted, Sigma does show up at the very end due to contract obligations, but it's done in a way where his role is kind of pointless but still gives him a new twist to his character that the later games sadly dropped. The story just seemed to wrap up some of the character arcs from the earlier series instead of dropping them all to promote one character and his later game series. Granted, I agree it could have been handled better and I probably would have dropped Zero altogether from the game so as not to hurt the MMZ story.

Another strong point was the fact that after three entries of mostly hit and miss Mavericks, X6 probably has my favorite collection of bosses in the series since X1. Not to mention the weapon abilities were finally good for both characters as opposed to the mixed results of the previous two entries. Also, X6 finally nailed the new armor mechanics for X. With both of his unique armors adding some cool replay value and different playstyles that the level design actually was designed around as opposed to X5 where the Gaia armor was useless and X had to get the Falcon armor ASAP because most of the game's level design was built around having the double jump ability (Zero exclusive ability) to navigate the levels frustration free. Course there is one exception to this with the Ninja Armor being almost useless in one of the final area dungeons, but as I've mentioned, the game certainly needed a few more months of QA work.

Overall, I feel it is an entry that's worth checking out if your a fan of the Mega Man formula.