Mega Man X7 (PlayStation 2) review "Like a pancake on the floor, frankly."

Mega Man X7 (PlayStation 2)
It’s playable. That’s not a good place to be for a mainline Mega Man X game. The series has been on a downhill slant since X3, or X5, depending on where you got off the hype train. With the PlayStation 2 as the main console event, it was apparently time for Capcom’s ol’ reliable exploding robots franchise to hit the big time third dimension!

Like a pancake on the floor, frankly.

The PlayStation 2 is a graphical beast in its era, running rings around its progenitor with a library that puts even modern consoles to shame. Consider that very few of it’s games are remasters, ports or re-releases, then get back to me on that. Or don’t. However that balances out, Capcom had performance and storage than they knew what to do with.

Somehow, in spite of other franchises demonstrating how the adaptation of a sprite based platformer should work in three dimensions, they made all the wrong decisions. I’ll say this once and only once: Mega Man X7 is tedious and painful to play at almost every step. Let’s have a look at what they were trying to do, first.

X7 leads heavily with story, selling the idea that society is getting its act together, even while Maverick activity is on the rise. X steps down as an enforcer in the field, and the Maverick Hunters blah blah blah Red Alert step up and challenge them to a competition of sorts. The story is trying to be detailed and interesting, but somehow trips over its slow, unskippable text boxes and clunky translation.

The music is trying to be cool and interesting, but winds up sounding like ill-timed loops and gets lost amid all of the overly loud sound effects and incessant character barks. Did we take a page from X3 on the PlayStation? How is the music so bland? Meanwhile platforming is a disaster.

The intro level is standard fare, and we’re given control of the freshly minted Reploid of the moment, Axl. Astro boy he is not. Axl is supposed to be the plucky new hero and even has a fancy new power to prove it: He can copy the ability of certain enemies, especially when you’re directed to by the ever so chatty Alia. There’s something disconcerting about bringing a boy to a war, even a robot one.

No disrespect to you Axl fans out there, but this little skip has never impressed me. It doesn’t do him any favours that the developers decided that X needed to “peace out” in order for Axl to fill the role as long range fighter. He’s redundant, and poorly utilized here. X whines about more baseless conflict and seems to lack any perspective that 30+ years of incubating and so many years of actual protectorship would have granted him.

Maybe it’s the translation, but I’ve already griped about that, so let’s move on.

When you begin, you’re given control of Zero, who is investigating a site devestated by conflict of one kind or another. As you learn how Zero controls, you’ll find he’s pretty responsive and nimble. As to be expected, so that’s a thumbs up. The terrain, however, is another matter. It’s not always clear what can be jumped on, and sometimes invisible walls will prevent your forward movement until you’re just in the right spot for the next part of the stage to load.

X7 makes a major departure from its successors by having two different views: 2D, which is a side view, and 3D, a very poorly angled POV waaaay over your character’s head. The angle is such that you can’t see what’s targeting you, which can be anywhere in 3D mode. For some reason enemies spawn in while you run through the level...and I couldn’t tell you why that is. It’s not like there’s a heavy texture budget, here: There’s a whole lotta cell shading going on.

The developers try to mitigate the terrible view angle by having ranged characters (yes, more on that in a moment) auto-lock on available targets. Why not just have them explode on sight? Why have them spawn in at all? Sorry, the annoyance is pretty high, here.

In 3D view, your ranged character will flick between nearby targets, which makes them easy to attack, but if you’re too close, they’ll target something at a minimum distance. That wouldn’t be so annoying if it didn’t include enemies that weren’t visible and hadn’t even spawned yet. It’s a good thing I keep my hair short. Not much to pull at.

Speaking of keeping things short, the devs made the smart decision to keep cutscenes short, after the introduction, that is. As you make progress through the game, you’ll be treated to brief discussions between the main players. All dialogue is voice acted, and the quality varies. The voice of Red is instantly recognizable as an industry veteran, though, and he’s entertaining to listen to. I don’t envy Zero’s voice actor: Balancing aloof, wise and cool can’t be easy.

X. Oh please. Someone get that kid some tissue or a bucket to cry into. Now, he does rejoin the fight, because of course he does. He even gets a set of nondescript armour to play with, but I dare you to have the patience to navigate the levels to recover the pieces.

Level designs have the expected variety, and are interesting enough, but somehow the enemies are impossible to read. If you’re playing Zero, our close ranged saber wielding monster, it’s slice and pray you hit a weak spot. If the enemy doesn’t immediately pop, that is. Without a “shoot here, dummy” target, good luck figuring out what will work on your enemies.

X7 has some interesting ideas that are worth mentioning. For instance, Zero gets some new weapons to play with, though they’re not very useful, either too slow or short ranged. Instead of choosing one character to play a level, you have a team and you can switch between either of them whenever you please. The good stuff would make it into the next and final release in the X series. On the plus side, most of the stumbling happens here, so if you skip this game—and I wouldn’t blame you—you’re also avoiding the worst mistakes in the franchise.

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Community review by hastypixels (September 02, 2025) Retro, and moreso all the time.