Really fun game but very poor presentation quality.
Story: In the year 21XX, ideas of expanding nations in to spaces have been set in motion and as a result the space colony Eurasia was built.
One day the notorious maverick Sigma attacked a nearby city, X and Zero were sent to confront the menace and defeated him, however Sigma's destruction caused a massive maverick virus out burst around the world, chaos broke every where and what's worse is that someone altered the space colony Eurasia's gravity control and was on a collision course to earth.
If the space colony falls the entire earth will be completely wiped out.
In order to stop this the maverick hunters will need to deploy the Enigma, however the cannon is very old and will require certain parts to properly function.
Now X and Zero must gather the parts within 16 hours before the earth is doomed, if the Enigma fails then the hunters will have no choice but to launch a shuttle directly at the colony to destroy it, it is a race against time!
Game design: The game's graphics is the same as in X4, that's not a bad thing since the sprites still look great, however the frame rate and animations are quite slow.
The AMVs from the last games were removed in favor of image slide cut scenes followed by text.
You will start out in an intro stage, then 8 stage select and final stage; there is also a training mode so that beginners could learn the basics.
You will have 16 hours to save the world, an hour is used once you enter a stage so you can't exactly go where ever you want (although 16 hours is actually plenty of time).
Your goal will be to gather parts for the Enigma and space shuttle, you will have to beat each boss to get each parts, you can also choose to directly shoot the enigma or launch the shuttle but it will decrease the chance of it succeeding.
There are multiple endings based on how you progress (whether you succeed or fail in saving the world) and who you play as (X or Zero ending and in which conditions)
During the stages the navigator Alia will guide you through stages, warning you of traps ahead and gives you hints.
Game play: You can play as X for long range shooting and Zero for short range slashing. If you choose X at the beginning you get to use the Force Armor from X4, it will have the exact same functions except for the Nova Strike (See my Review on Megaman X4 for details), and if you pick Zero you won't get the Force Armor but Zero can use his Z-Buster, but its pretty weak and slow so you would obviously choose X.
Once you are in the stage select screen you can then play as either characters regardless of who you choose first (even if you chose X you can still go through stages without his Armor if you wish).
You will once again gather new Armor parts for X, this time there are 2 Armors available.
The Falcon Armor, which gives X the ability to fly for a while, allow his charged shot to pierce through walls, increase defense and gives him a new ultimate attack, but will not be able to charge special weapons.
The Geae Armor, a prototype armor developed a century ago, this armor can allow X to go through dangerous terrains without dying, the charged shot is strong and takes a second to charge but has extremely low range, the armor will also increase X defense and will also have its own ultimate attack, however you won't be able to equip items (which I'll get to later) and won't use any special weapons.
While capsules for these armors can be found by either character you won't be able to use them once procured, you will have to gather all 4 parts for each armor in order to use them.
X will gain new weapons after defeating bosses and Zero will learn new techniques.
Once you complete a stage Alia will allow you to choose between 2 additional upgrades, you could choose to either increase weapon energy or life energy, but can only choose one of each, in addition to power-ups Alia will also develop items depending on which upgrades you choose, so you won't be able to get all power-ups in one game, if you want to know what the other items are you would have to play again.
Sound: The music in X5 is incredible and by far has the best sound tracks in the series, you can listen to them at the BGM test in the options menu anytime you want.
However voices have been completely removed, so apart from X and Zero (in their Japanese voices) you won't hear anyone speak.
The game uses the same sound affects as in X4.
Megaman X5 improved the series in terms of game play, because different things could happen there are multiple endings so you will come back for the extra replay value.
Although the story is very deep and interesting it is poorly presented.
The complete removal of AMVs and voice casts totally reduced the presentation quality and the plain text and picture slides is very lame, considering that games before that had Anime cut scenes (MM8, MMX3 PS version and MMX4)it is not acceptable not to have any at this point, especially for a Playstation game!
Capcom put in the effort in game play but completely missed out on production value, which is a shame since Megaman X5 (despite its slow speed) is a really fun game, Capcom should seriously start putting some effort into the franchise!