Mega Man X5 (PlayStation) review "They rolled the dice, and so will you."

Customer feedback. I mean, obviously, right? They had the template, the engine and then reworked the decades old Mega-formula into something less obvious and more risky. Visual novel lite, perhaps, with a side of countdown style trial and error consequences. Factor in some new game mechanics and a couple of new armours and more if you can figure out how to keep/acquire them.

Also, Zero is your boy, this time. He’s overpowered and a lot of fun to play, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. You see, Capcom has built on top of their winning formula, throwing in the spices I mentioned just a moment ago. With change comes controversy and not everyone is a fan of the shake up of the tried and true gameplay.

However far this one runs with you, it may be the most memorable of the three PlayStation titles in the series. As with the prior MMX titles, you choose between X and Zero as your intro level character. You’ll learn in time that there are consequences for doing so, but for now whomever you choose will offer a differing style of combat.

X brandishes his Buster Cannon and the Fourth Armour, of you choose him. This grants you ranged combat options and the capabilities of the armour, which are fun to dabble with. Upon selecting Zero, that’s it, you’ve got his Z Sabre short ranged melee combat and pithy buster shot for the duration of the introduction level. Sigma isn’t shy this time, and tips his hand right away. The Earth is in for more punishment, and all you can do is blast his head off.

Not literally...well, yeah, but...he’s a virus, okay? He doesn’t have a physical head. Anyway, now that he’s sorted you’ve got a timer with hours on it before the Earth is threatened with total annihilation of everyone living on it (including the Reploids). That bedratted space colony is falling and needs to be stopped, and it’s up to you (the player), X and Zero do to it.

The scenario may be reminiscent of prior games, but the presentation is band spanking fresh for the Mega Man series. We have a full cast of supporting characters who will survive future titles and become mainstays in the series, but that’s later. Everything has been cranked up several notches and the first thing you may notice after the striking, character evocative design, is the music and the banger of an opening music video.

Skipped that, did I? Fortunately Capcom’s development team isn’t dropping any plates, this round. We get a rockin’ reprisal of familiar music alongside past events smattered with super clean artwork of the new characters you’ll get to know during your time with this tension-laced adventure. After all the hype building you’ll get to play with the usual array of options on the start screen.

It’s all common fare at this point: “Game Start” which does what it says on the tin. Then there’s “Save/Load” wherein you interact with external media to...well, duh. “Options” lets you change all sorts of things, such as button layout, auto charge, rapid fire, and so on. There’s even a difficulty option and the strange addition of a speed toggle. Feel like playing double fast? Maybe it’s just a programming flex on the PlayStation.

Back to the action. The team has taken the interactivity dial from X1 and cranked it all the way to 11, here. For some reason you have 16 hours to visit four levels and acquire what you need to hopefully prevent the colony from falling on the Earth. The narrative draws your attention to Mavericks who will stand in your way as framed by the detailed dialogue they spout once you get to their chamber.

The translation needs some help, but it is serviceable, and interesting to read, the first time. That brings up one of the flaws this game couldn’t figure out: Skippable tutorial dialogue. In the opening level it makes sense, but all of the chatter afterward is useless after you’ve been forewarned once. There’s no option to skip any of it, though, and it has a tendency to interrupt the flow of action. Given the platforming, lite-puzzle-shooting style of gameplay, its usefulness is debatable, except to add that layer of story depth they were hunting for, pun intended.

Thankfully that’s just about were the flaws end, because there’s so much more goodness to be had here. It’s teased in the opening FMV that X is going to have access to more than one set of armour, but acquiring all the pieces is going to be much trickier than usual. On the plus side, Zero is permitted to carry the data for X, if you...oh right, you’re not locked into using one character for the entire run!

Upon beginning a stage you’ll be prompted to choose from the list of available characters, which include any armours you have unlocked. You’ll also be able to equip parts to augment each character’s performance. Rather a few are quite useful, and some just don’t make any sense, but that’s the fault of the other silly story thing this game does: You can become infected with the Sigma virus.

In terms of how it affects your playthrough, the result can be rather shocking, but in some ways being chased by purple Sigma heads is absurd. It does had a modicum of tension to the game, so there’s that, and as silly as it might be, I don’t like getting cornered trying to avoid them. Sometimes you’ll get caught in unavoidable platforms and crushed, or get pierced by spikes and have to start the level all over again.

The entire game plays like a great big puzzle that teases you and tests your patience trying to both find all the armour parts and gear while beating the clock to save the world. There’s no certainty that you’re going to succeed, and your list of characters may change by the time you are prepared to hunt down Sigma. The element of uncertainty is going to keep you coming back for more, and so will exploring the eight levels with the armours you unlock.

The music keeps up its excellent quality, and is absolutely top notch. That boss theme is one of my favourites. This is one of those games I don’t mind coming back to every once and a while. Somehow, just like giving X and Zero the ability to duck, all the pieces come together into an engaging slice of gaming pie. You will undoubtedly turn in repeated plays while trying to figure out how to change the outcomes of one thing or the other, and seeing what you can control is quite interesting.

You’ll also see what you can’t, which throws the numbers you’ll see into the trash. They rolled the dice, and so will you. A percent chance doesn’t mean what they think it means. Saying this emphasizes the writing quirks of first party translation, but as scripts go, this is still the top of the pile in MMX history. We’re not talking Shakespeare, here. We’re not even talking fan fiction, but it’s functional.

It’s a pleasure to acquire all of the armours and mess around with the unique modes of traversal you’re granted, even though one of the suits definitely comes at a high price for its protection. Overall, this is one of the most engrossing MMX games to dig into, for as long as it lasts. It may have rubbed some of its fans the wrong way, but that’s the chance you take!

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Community review by hastypixels (August 29, 2025) Retro, and moreso all the time.