Terrible camera angles mixed with terrible controls in a 3D & 2D mix makes you pray for a quick end.
This game has segments of 2D side scrolling and segments of 3D platforming. The 2D is fairly mediocre. Nothing special about it, not too bad on its own. The bad part is there's not much 2D in this game. The game is probably about 20% 2D and 80% 3D. 3D = BAD. The absolute worst part of the 3D is the total absence of camera control. In some levels, particularly the battle with Red, the camera is completely in the opposite place of where you need it and you can't change it. But it is also quite difficult to judge how far you need to be from things, such as enemies and ledges, in 3D mode. Just play it and you'll see what I mean.
A minor thing that irritated me is that this game has absolutely no sense of Newton's laws of physics. Particularly in the airforce stage but also in the boss fight with Hyenard, you character will be on a moving object (be it Hyenard's walker that looks like an AT-AT or a jet plane) and will just slide across it if you do not move. I can understand wind resistance but the characters look to be having no trouble keeping their footing so they should not slide across a vehicle while standing still. Stand on the wing of a red jet and you'll be pushed off as it moves.
The auto-target system with any ranged weapon takes some getting used to. It will "lock-on" to the closest target to you that's within range. This will change if another target gets closer though which tends to be annoying, unless you switch target with the R2 button. Quite frankly, I never learned to master it and kept forgetting how to switch targets and got annoyed by targets changing as they moved around.
The new character, Axl, brings little innovation to this game. He is more or less a copy of X. He can hover, one of X's abilities from games past, roll out of a dash, and he has his unique ability the Copy Shot which allows him to assume the form and abilities of any maverick about his size (bosses excluded of course) if he collects the DNA data from one defeated by the Copy Shot (its terribly weak but you only need to get the last shot). He has one special weapon that's unique to him and the rest are the same as X's.
Another headache in the game is that rescueing reploids has returned and again is recorded as it was in X6. Believe it or not, that is the good news on the subject. The bad news is there's more than just one that's extremely hard to reach (Kuro in Infinity Mijinion's stage was the only difficult one in X6) since now anything can kill them instead of the way only Nightmares could kill them in X6. Worse yet is that these reploids hold every single upgrade (aside from X's armor upgrades) for you so there's more pressure to rescue them. If you want to rescue every last one you have QUITE a task ahead of you (prepare for immense frustration).
Another very minor irritation is that you do not start the game with X as a playable character. You must first rescue 64 reploids before you can select him.
Not sure if this is a curse or a blessing but the final boss is extremely hard... unless you use Zero, in which case he's a complete joke. One move makes him completely invulnerable to all except one attack (an easily avoidable and rarely used one that does little damage at that) and another that you need to swing your Z-saber 3 times+ at to counter. This move also reflects stuff back at the boss damaging him. So any idiot could beat the final boss without taking a single hit.
This game is the absolute slowest game in the series. Characters run very slow, jump slow, attack slow... heck they even dash slow. The X series has always been known for fast gameplay, not the sluggish gameplay in this installment.
And of course no bad game would be complete without insanely long loading times. Not only does this game have them but there is no short supply on them. Every stage will have at least two 30-45 second loading screens (one when starting the stage and one when moving to the boss), but some can have as many as ten of them!
Now there are a few good points that have been introduced. The team system lets you switch out your character between two characters (picked when entering the stage) at any time. It is never a requirement per se, but it often helps to know when the right time to switch characters is. This alone completely eliminated any need for me to use sub tanks (I never bothered to find them if there even are any in the game) and is generally all around a nice innovation to the X series (I'm glad it returned in X8 actually...)
Another feature that was not at all bad (though probably added to give this game SOME replay value... with such frustrating controls, multiple endings may not be enough for most to replay...) was the new game plus type feature. You save the game after you beat it and you can start a new game with all your chip upgrades, X if you got him, and all his armor parts. You do not keep heart tanks, ex tank, weapon tank, or energy tanks. Probably the only practical use of this is to have X from the beginning or to get all chip upgrades for every character (an impossible feat in one run through).
The graphics in this game were actually quit nice. Cell shading created beautiful character models.
The sound in this game did not impress me too much. Could be because the music was so low that I couldn't hear it over the explosions, but it just did not impress me. Didn't make me want to mute it, but just wasn't impressive. Zero's voice was bad... it was too deep and slow. Axl's voice was very kiddy. Signas's voice was extremely slow. Aside from that, I had no issues with the sound.
If you're a fan of the X series and want the story, rent it or borrow it from a friend who was unfortunate enough to waste money on it. If you're a passing fan of Megaman, pass this title up please. If you're not a fan, don't play this one to get an idea of Megaman PLEASE. I would only suggest buying this if you are a die hard X series fan or Megaman fan in general.