There's an invisible bar on each side of the screen that you can't attack through but you can be attacked through, the magic all feels underpowered unless Tyris spends half the game maxing hers out, Gilius is the only character that seems to have any range to his attacks, and the endgame is littered with enemies that can hack anywhere from one bar to three bars of health from you before you can even react. Oh, and there's two extra stages compared to the arcade version which exist to pad out a stunningly short game.

I hated 'Golden Axe' as a kid and as an adult, I still hate it. Even the arcade version looks like ass. At least they did better with 'The Revenge of Death Adder' I suppose.

Some of the stages are too gimmicky for their own good, some weapons suffer the same issue, and Zero continues to struggle at keeping up with his projectile-based coworkers. At the same time however, it's the most competent game in the series since 'X4' and the 2.5D design forms some stages is a nice touch. Additionally, it also brings some sense of finality to the endless fight against Sigma.

'Mega Man X8' is a mixed bag but even the weakest prize from that bag is still leagues better than most of what we've gotten from the past three games.

Yikes, yikes, yikes...

The games looks terrible, everyone feels slower than ever, the auto-targeting neutralizes half the challenge of playing with X and Axl and, oh yea, you can't play as X until you've rescued half the Reploids! They're not in as many terrible places as the previous game but they do offer up upgrade chips which only serve to make X feel even more underpowered than he already does until a new game plus kicks in... assuming you'd even get that far. Some of the music is still good so at least that's something?

I grew up playing this so I'm used to its bullshit but there's no denying that this feels like a bigger rush job than 'Mega Man X6' did...

SOMEHOW.

Hastily pieced together for release months after the supposed end of the series, the game is balls-to-the-wall hard because its level design is all over the place and the nightmare system which adds further hinderances only worsens the experience. The disc I have is so scratched up that for years, the nightmare effects would permanently layer on top of one another and I thought it was normal because that's just how sloppily the game is designed. Some of Zero's weapons can actually get him killed if activated in the wrong place and while the Reploid rescue system from 'X5' is built upon, some of them are left so out of the way or directly next to danger, almost guaranteeing their loss. The music is really good though and brings the game up half a star but yea, you could've let this cook for another couple of months and it only would've come out burnt; there's no fixing a lot of these issues without completely rebuilding its foundation.

Originally designed as the end of the X series, 'X5' now hides new armors behind a full set requirement, X and Zero can be used whenever desired, and the music is as good as ever. Unfortunately, bosses become punishment sponges towards the end of the game, some stage gimmicks actively hurt the overall experience of some levels, I never fully grasped how the upgrade system was supposed to work, and if you can find it, the Ultimate Armor breaks the game in half. The story is good and there's a great sense of finality in it but this is kind of a messy sequel surrounding a solid core experience.