For a combined figure, this guy has amazing articulation. Because of how sentai mecha are, I got used to the idea that combining figures means no articulation so this guy surprised me. His arms are the same as X2; 360o shoulder joints, elbow joints and wrist joints so it’s very easy to get some good poses out of him. His legs aren’t as articulated, he has good thighs but little to no knee joints. There’s no head joint or articulation which is a little disappointing, but it was to be expected from this kind of figure. Overall he’s more poseible than I expected him to be, he’s better than most combiners who can just stand there. 9 out of 10 for articulation.
The paint on this figure is… average. His legs are painted fine, the white and orange contrast each other nicely and look like the character from the TV show. Certain areas of the torso and arms have just been painted with one block of colour though, more detail could be added to the hands, gauntlet and his chest. It’s not too bad though, I expect the D-arts version will be much better. What really let’s this figure down is his head paint. There’s a lot of people hating the figure for this reason on forums, and in some ways, I can see why, it’s just lazy, no detail, no eyes. Bandai could have done such a better job with the head with little effort. 7 out of 10 for paint, he’s a nice figure, but laziness in some places has let him down. I hope the X5 head is painted better.
I like the sculpt for X4. Sure, it’s not perfect or figuart quality, but it’s good for what it is. Although because he’s a transforming/combining figure, there are some obvious problems, the obvious one is Shoutmon’s head awkwardly poking out of the guys chest. If that wasn’t there you wouldn’t be able to tell he was a combined figure. His sword is also kind of disappointing, lots of people commented on how it only came with four pickmons, and they really did need to include a couple more to make the sword in scale with the figure itself. Otherwise it’s a great sculpt and a good representation of the character. 7 out of 10 for the sculpt.
Shoutmon X4 is very sturdy and durable. I actually got my partner to play around with him to see how durable he is. You can drop him, pose him, and he won’t fall apart. Everything clips together well. I’m pretty sure that further combinations with be more easily broken but right now X4 is perfect. The sword could maybe be a bit tighter but that’s what you get for using soft plastic. 10 out of 10.
It’s hard to review this figure’s gimmick, because having the three others combine into this guy IS the gimmick. If you don’t have the others you can’t get him. It’s also fun knowing that this guy will eventually combine with other figures and it’s nice to anticipate that. It makes you wonder if he’ll be involved in the big end-of-season clusterf**k in the schedule scans. 10 out of 10 for gimmicks.
If you’re a Xros Wars fan, I would defiantly pick this guy up. If you’re less interested in the combining gimmick and just want a X4 figure, I’d wait for the eventual D-arts version. It’ll probably cost less than the three components anyway.
