If you're a Mega Man fan, you'll love to hate this game!
This is the second game in the X series where Capcom decided to throw Mega Man into a three dimensional realm. Now, this doesn't mean that you'll be running around a fully 3D plane, it just means that instead of sprites, the game uses polygons to show X running back and forth engaging in his robot massacre. This was a big mistake. The collision detection is shoddy, and this combined with the prevalence of one-hit kill spikes means that you'll be dying a lot. In fact, many of the enemies in the game pose little threat to the heroes. Their only matches are the aforementioned instant death spike pits and the nigh-unstoppable bosses.
Now, the seasoned MMX veterans might be reading this and shrug it off as the ramblings of a newbie to the series. This is not so! X8 is not challenging in the same way as the past entries in the series. This is not a game that punishes poor players -- it is one that punishes those who fail to grasp the pathetic collision system and thus fling the robotic protagonists to a spiky death over and over again.
Hopefully that point has gotten through. The gameplay is tough, unfair, and repetitive. As for the aesthetics go, the graphics aren't really much to shout about. The 3D look will likely turn off those who want Mega Man to stay sprite-based, and it isn't really nice to look at anyway. The music is so generic and typical that nothing needs to be said about it, besides that.
In short, if you're a Mega Man fan that's looking for a new X game, don't look here. Dust off the SNES for the classics, try the new ZX game for the Nintendo DS, or play the X1 remake for PSP. Stay far, far away from this game.