Strangely, the midboss of the Mandril stage, Thunder Slimer, gave me much more trouble that Mandril itself. It’s hard to avoid due to its sticky slime, and still kills X in a couple of hits.
Unlike previous three bosses, Armadilo is no pushover. It’s a “bouncy” boss, but unlike second phase of Sigma in Mega Man X4, I couldn’t find a clear pattern, so I had to brawl it cyborg’o’marsupial
The Mammoth is very easy if you fought Pinguin and Eagle first to freeze the stage and get the Eagle weapon. Octopus though is tough. First, his stage is beautiful, with an impressive on SNES water effect, but it has one of the worst mini-bosses in the game, that sucks you on spikes, which are one-hit-kill. What’s also cool about Octopus stage is that I didn’t destroy the submarine, and fought mostly harmless eel. Turns out if you do destroy the submarine, you have to fight it in a spiky arena. Have no idea why someone would prefer it, though.
Then there’s the X-Buster upgrade on Mammoth stage… What can I say, the reason I won’t replay this game ever, I think, is this bullshit jump you need to perform.