You can play as zero in 3, there’s a Rom hack that even lets you play as him unlimitedly. I Agree that zero is pretty bitchin in the PlayStation ones, but the original 3 just have such killer tone and imagery. I felt like X was only hunting maverick in his spare time away from playing guitar for Slayer.

Abd about X8, you should seriously play it. It is exactly NOTHING like x7 other than being able to take 2 characters to a level. Its a pure homage to the first 5, incorporating elements from both the SNES and PS ones. Its tone and music honor the SNES games but it has a lot of features of the PS ones too, and zeros sword control is fantastic. They also made axl a unique and useful player instead of just a weaker X with autofire and shape shifting. Except for 2 levels it’s all 2d too and those are just autoscroll JetBlue levels.

Take it from someone who loves the first 5 and hates 7 (6 is just meh), 8 is a great experience. You can tell they actually tried on this one to please the fans. It even has decent voice acting. (Ever played the RPG MMX command mission? It uses the same actors from that)