This game really tries to be the epic grand finale to the Mega Man X series with ambitious gameplay ideas, like greater customization and a wider time limit system. But it's also got a lot of questionable design choices. For example, the RNG and missable elements are designed to incentivize repeat playthroughs, but some of these mechanics are a little confusing to be honest. It's like there's these little systems going on in the background that you only sorta understand. Instead, Alia pop ups in the levels to explain that you need to jump on platforms so you don't fall. At least you can skip her text easily.
In general difficulty is lower than usual for a Mega Man game, since if you pick X at the start, you begin the game with the upgraded armor from X4. You can find other armors throughout the game, but you can't use them until you find all four pieces, and the game's countdown system de-incentivizes going in and out of levels to search for armors. The boss fights are often really easy, and subweapons have so much ammo, it almost feels like they shouldn't have even bothered limiting them. Worse still is that the game offsets this general easiness with some truly terrible difficulty spikes, like the green lasers in the first endgame level or the bike section in Squid Adler's level.
Now the graphics and music are as good as ever. The music especially is awesome and maybe probably even better than X4's. But the overall presentation takes a big hit because the cutscenes are presented in a very dated, low-budget fashion compared to X4. Going from voice-acted anime cutscenes to text over still images for what was intended as the grand finale to the series' storyline feels really cheap. It would've been really cool to see some of these sequences animated, especially the parts where Dynamo pops up. He probably could've been a cool and memorable rival if animated sequences gave him a chance to really shine.
Mega Man X5 still isn't necessarily bad, but it is really messy. They definitely should've stopped here though, or at least not rushed X6 and X7 out the door the way they did.
In general difficulty is lower than usual for a Mega Man game, since if you pick X at the start, you begin the game with the upgraded armor from X4. You can find other armors throughout the game, but you can't use them until you find all four pieces, and the game's countdown system de-incentivizes going in and out of levels to search for armors. The boss fights are often really easy, and subweapons have so much ammo, it almost feels like they shouldn't have even bothered limiting them. Worse still is that the game offsets this general easiness with some truly terrible difficulty spikes, like the green lasers in the first endgame level or the bike section in Squid Adler's level.
Now the graphics and music are as good as ever. The music especially is awesome and maybe probably even better than X4's. But the overall presentation takes a big hit because the cutscenes are presented in a very dated, low-budget fashion compared to X4. Going from voice-acted anime cutscenes to text over still images for what was intended as the grand finale to the series' storyline feels really cheap. It would've been really cool to see some of these sequences animated, especially the parts where Dynamo pops up. He probably could've been a cool and memorable rival if animated sequences gave him a chance to really shine.
Mega Man X5 still isn't necessarily bad, but it is really messy. They definitely should've stopped here though, or at least not rushed X6 and X7 out the door the way they did.