HUGE step up from X5, X6 and X7, but that's not saying much. Stage design was generally alright (besides Central White and Dynasty, those sucked). Bosses were still pretty braindead with weaknesses.
Character switching was implemented pretty well; I found that I switched between Zero and X (my two characters of choice) way more than I thought I would. On that note, while I did feel like Zero was weaker than he was in the PS1 games, upgraded X felt pretty strong.
It's neat that the navigators are actually helpful this time around, first time in the series where I actually wanted to hear from them.
The chip system was pretty cool, but backtracking for items and upgrades was still a slog, and they really needed to take it easy with some of those metal prices.
Overall, X8 is the very definition of a weak 7/10; not much about it is offensively bad, but it is merely the bare minimum of what could be considered "good". I'd almost go as far as to say that it's positively soulless! The game definitely doesn't approach the level of quality that X1, X2, or X4 had, but it was fun nonetheless.
Character switching was implemented pretty well; I found that I switched between Zero and X (my two characters of choice) way more than I thought I would. On that note, while I did feel like Zero was weaker than he was in the PS1 games, upgraded X felt pretty strong.
It's neat that the navigators are actually helpful this time around, first time in the series where I actually wanted to hear from them.
The chip system was pretty cool, but backtracking for items and upgrades was still a slog, and they really needed to take it easy with some of those metal prices.
Overall, X8 is the very definition of a weak 7/10; not much about it is offensively bad, but it is merely the bare minimum of what could be considered "good". I'd almost go as far as to say that it's positively soulless! The game definitely doesn't approach the level of quality that X1, X2, or X4 had, but it was fun nonetheless.