A big drop from its predecessors, I'm sorry to say.
The level design is a step down, the bosses are mostly bad / disappointing, and it has a much slower pace than I would want and expect from these games. The Maverick designs kind of looked better than X2's, but their battles and their weapons were way worse. Levels are littered with enemies that take too long to beat and most of them have projectiles. The stages blend together a lot and they're not as unique as X2's. Being able to play as Zero is a neat addition, but the implementation makes it a complete afterthought. I didn't mind the side-content, but I can see why some may find it excessive. Some people say this is the hardest of the SNES games, but I can't say I had a legitimately harder time beating this one. I didn't at all. It just had more BS.
As you might've been able to tell, I loved X2, so I'm rather disappointed. There are good things here that I enjoyed and I can't say I regret playing it, but towards the end, I really just wanted to get it over with and move on to X4. Hopefully that game's better.
The level design is a step down, the bosses are mostly bad / disappointing, and it has a much slower pace than I would want and expect from these games. The Maverick designs kind of looked better than X2's, but their battles and their weapons were way worse. Levels are littered with enemies that take too long to beat and most of them have projectiles. The stages blend together a lot and they're not as unique as X2's. Being able to play as Zero is a neat addition, but the implementation makes it a complete afterthought. I didn't mind the side-content, but I can see why some may find it excessive. Some people say this is the hardest of the SNES games, but I can't say I had a legitimately harder time beating this one. I didn't at all. It just had more BS.
As you might've been able to tell, I loved X2, so I'm rather disappointed. There are good things here that I enjoyed and I can't say I regret playing it, but towards the end, I really just wanted to get it over with and move on to X4. Hopefully that game's better.