This is a game I come back to year after year and every time it manages to make me smile. The new content added is actually pretty decent and creative (and challenging, the ghost stage). This is far from the last time I will replay this game but in the future I will stick with this remake as it really looks fantastic with just the simple UI and upscaling they did. It's a game that's like no other (except the previous and subsequent ones) and it's absolutely worth experiencing.

Definitely the peak of the X series with fully playable Zero (which also serves as a hard mode). With Japanese audio the cutscenes actually add a lot of emotional depth to what otherwise would be cool jump and shoot game. My main gripe is some of the late game bosses are very poorly balanced against Zero and the sub weapons are a bit too weak, by the time you get the charged versions the upgraded X buster eclipses all of them by a mile.

A lot of the cracks really start to show all these years later with the absurd difficulty swings, trying for 100% in all the games is not something I'd recommend at all. However playing through casually the games are still as fun as ever and the updated visuals really work well aside from crash's model which I'm not super into.