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.

Ok at least it is a much better entry then what X7 tried to do and failed by making it into 3D, so thank god X8 plays like the previous entries, which are X1 to X6.

But one nitpick I have to say about the game is that why would Capcom really have to force you to play the game all over again in either in the Normal and Hard mode, just to fight the true final boss, why not just make it also available in the easy difficulty, simple as that.

But overall I had fun.

X8 was the last game in the X series, and this is one I'd heard was pretty good despite not being able to continue the franchise. It's also a game I'd been told by Gunstar was another quite divisive game in the series, and I definitely agree with that opinion as I came down pretty hard on one side of that division XD. It took me 6 hours to see the Japanese version of the game to its conclusion on normal mode.

X8 is yet another very standard entry in the series as terms as story goes. A new generation of reploids based on Axel's form shifting design has suddenly appeared on the scene led by a terrifying new leader, and tackling that new threat is the crux of the game's narrative. X is in it from the start this time, as him, Zero, and Axel can go two at a time to take down the eight main stages of the game before going for the final battles. It's another perfectly serviceable story, even if it does make the really weird choice of substituting out Sigma for this new bad guy. Sigma is still here, don't worry, but he's just at the direction of this new uber-antagonist who is still basically just Sigma in that he wants to make a master race of reploids ruled by himself. It's not a bad story so much as just a weird choice for one, especially given that this takes a very odd turn for a PS2 game and locks the actual final stage behind playing on normal mode or higher, so you won't even fight that real final boss if you're playing the game on easy.

Playing the game on easy might be something you're quite inclined to do as well, because this game is easily the hardest out of the latter half of the Rock Man X games, but not for good reasons. This game looked at how X7 was a bit too easy and cranks the difficulty up in very unwelcome ways, throwing in the trash the very forgiving checkpoint system and having a slew of stages with some really mean and unfair sections (particular the smashing spike blocks) coupled with some pretty damn tough bosses. On top of all that, this also has what is easily the worst vehicle level in the entire series, which is saying something for a series that's no stranger to not very fun and overly difficult bike racing segments. By and large I'd even say this game takes the cake from X6 in being overall quite mean in its design, as the 3D visuals and quite long stages make for an even more grueling experience spread out over the whole game where X6 has its difficulty constrained generally to a few specific stages.

This difficulty (albeit uneven, as many bosses are still quite easy despite how hard the stages often are) also has a really weird effect on the playable characters, as like in every other X game, you can find parts to upgrade X with. There are not only two sets of equipment to find, but you can even mix and match those parts. While Zero has his double jump and Axel has his hovering and 360-degree aiming, X gets these upgrades. This makes Zero and Axel quite strong at the start, but it also makes X laughably powerful by the end of the game, particularly with how good his charge shot gets and how super over powered his phase dash is. Introducing the Piccolo effect to your other playable characters is certainly something I never foresaw happening in the X series, but it's a wild and wacky problem that for me it overshadows even the staggering problems that X6 and X7 face with their multiple characters.

The presentation of the game is overall fine, and it's really not much more than that. The new operator characters have nice designs as do the bosses (although Sigma's final form is hilariously over designed), and the music, while not exactly MP3 player-worthy, is fine for what it is. It refines the 3D style that X7 starts, but not to terribly great effect in most areas.


Verdict: Not Recommended. I come down pretty firmly on the side of not enjoying X8. This is another case where I can see why people might feel this game is better than I find it to be, but I just can't agree with that frame of thought. With all the overly mean design, this is ultimately the weakest entry in the series for me. It isn't necessarily a bad game, and you might well enjoy it, but the "hard because Mega Man HAS to be hard" design philosophy it follows makes things frustrating far more often than they're fun as far as I'm concerned.

It's been quite a time going through so many Mega Man games and the entire X series, even if it took me a while to get to writing about these last three games. My final (and to some I'm sure heretical) ranking of the X games is:
4 > 3 > 1 > 2 > 7 > 6 > 5 > 8
Mind you, that's how much I enjoyed each game. I will definitely concede that X6 is a worse game overall than X5, but X5 is just so bland and the RNG stuff in it drags it down so much that I ended up enjoying X6's flaws and madness more comparatively. X7 is also, as previously stated, a really weird case where it's SO different I find it really hard to compare it to the rest of the series in many ways, but I think sitting below X2 (or above, depending on the day) is fine for me. I'm really glad I took the plunge on the latter X games, despite all the advice against doing that (X3), as it gave me a really cool look into just how flawed yet still enjoyable games in this style and in this series can be. As much as blame deserves to be put on the X5-8 team for making the games the way they did, I think equally if not more blame deserves to be put on Capcom's management for the absolutely absurd production schedule they had these teams on, and I think the X series might still be around had these games been allowed dev cycles of even two years compared to the often sub-12 month productions they too often had.