Megaman X7 heralds the Megaman X franchise's leap into 3D. The new visual style is accompanied by some gameplay changes with control issues that will leave casual gamers frustrated. With uninspired level design and a lacking audio presentation, the game has little to offer hardcore fans of the series. People new to the Megaman X games will likely be turned off by the high difficulty level and the overbearing and boring storyline. Shaking up the old paradigm has never been so dull.

Making the leap from 2D to 3D can be a trial for many series. Megaman X7 uses cel-shading to keep the cartoonish look of the Megaman characters while making the jump, and does so fairly well, as the characters all look appropriate. Unfortunately the rest of the art is fairly bland and you'll be seeing the same crates over and over again. However, the real hurdles that the new 3D worlds represent are in the gameplay. Levels switch back and forth between the traditional side scrolling formats that all Megaman fans are familiar with to a behind the shoulder view that gives you 3D control. Unfortunately, the controls and hit detection in the 3D view can be problematic at times, and the auto-targeting can be a real pain when you need to switch between targets. The level design is also fairly uninspired for both sections, and jumping puzzles in 3D mode can be ridiculously frustrating.

Megaman X7 does make an effort to add some new touches. Chief among these is the ability to switch between two characters at any time. There's also a new character, Axl, who can use his super shot to temporarily turn into one of the enemies he defeats and use their attacks. This can be useful to get past a horde of baddies since immunity to their attacks is part of the package. Unfortunately, his attack is ranged, which means that in the 3D portions it can be more hassle than it's worth to get him to switch targets. The same applies to Megaman himself, leaving Zero's melee attacks as the right answer in almost any situation.

Adding to lackluster presentation is an extremely heavy storyline which can be condensed down to Megaman not liking the tactics of one group of bounty hunters, creating his own, and then they fight. These are told through long cutscenes between levels as well as the familiar anime-style talking heads at the bottom of the screen. The English voice acting for these portions is nothing to write home about and can be painful in spots. There is an option to switch to Japanese audio which leaves English subtitles on the bottom of the screen for those who find the voices too terrible to live with. The music is a mixture of generic techno beats that fails to set any sort of tone for the game and just kind of exists to fill a vacuum. The sound effects, however, are classic Megaman fare.

While there's little enough to appeal to the hardcore Megaman fan with the switch to 3D gameplay and the lacking level design, the real failure is to hook new fans. Kids especially are more into Megaman now than they have been for years, but the difficulty level of X7 is more in line with the punishing classics and is likely to turn new fans off. People looking for this kind of challenge will likely get tired of the uninspired level design which fails to live up to the standards set by older Megaman X games. Overall, this is bizarre mess of a game with no clear audience.