The redone visuals are excellent and really give hope to old-school gamers like myself that there is some life left in 2D side-scrollers. The game is still played in 2D, though all of the sprites have instead been replaced with 3D characters and set pieces. These changes help to bring a new life to levels, if not the entire game. Animations are smooth and everything in the game has a clean, crisp look that shows just how much work and polish went into the game. What I found surprising was the amount of slowdown present in some areas. Interestingly enough, all of the slowdown appears in the same areas as in the SNES version, adding a strange bit of nostalgia.
Audio isn’t as impressive as the visuals. Music has been redone and remixed, some of which work well and others that do not. Voice acting has also been added. Overall the acting is good, although there are times where characters overact just a little too much. Some will groan at it, but I thought it was fun in that overly exaggerated, anime way. One of the vocal elements I could have done without was X’s insistence on calling out the name of the weapon he’s currently using. Saying the name the first time is fine, anytime after that is just plain annoying.