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(also play Easy if you're not used to high enemy density with Shadow Armor and use the giga attack on bosses for damage)
Six does have good music though. Possibly the most insane juxtaposition between ♥♥♥♥ level and god tier music is heatnix's stage.
Shadow Armor can be easily managed in those areas, namely Gate 2-2, with the right parts (the ones in question cannot be lost to viruses).
Hyper Dash and Speedster or Jumper negate the issue.
Equip Ultimate Buster, and Shadow Armor X dominates.
You can even get Dynamo to drop Orbs by hitting him with the Charge Shot-Saber in the sweet spot (roughly where the tip of the slash barely touches him).
The Giga Attack speeds things up, too.
X6 is like a puzzle, requiring skill and strategy to defeat.
Zero’s infinite slash
Zero’s sword being the weakness to Sigma’s final form
“Did I dream about Zero?”
“Stay on guard”
“ILLSHOWYOUWHATTHISBATTLEISALLABOUT”
“ZELLLLOOOOOOOO”
Dynamo is here just to exist.
etc and etc.
X7 has awkward controls and fixed camera angles, on top of the jarring shift to focusing the story on a new character. It also takes one of the worst elements of X6 and makes it more rape inducing. The rescue victims can now die from ANY enemy, not just to a single form of attack from an uncommon enemy.
The fact that you call Nightmare Viruses uncommon shows that you haven't actually tried rescuing many Reploids. Quick reminder that you have to hard reset if any of them are infected and if you fail to notice it you have to go back to base and check instead of just being told so on the end screen like X7.
I had to make a guide for it. If you were to read the part about Weapons Center, you would see that one of them, one with a Part no less, spawns with an NV RIGHT ON TOP OF THEM. And that is far from the lone offender:
I am getting convinced you're just trying to rage bait. X6 actively penalizes skill. Beat all 8 stages? Congrats, the better character now has a move that can easily send you rocketing straight into pits. Trudge through the hell that is hunting Nightmare Viruses and rank up? Sure, you get parts, but now the bosses are harder to kill!
The Reploid with Jumper is incredibly obnoxious to get and requires Shadow Armor (or tricky and annoying Ice Burst BS), the Reploid with Hyper Dash is in an Another Route that is also tricky to get to without the Shadow Armor which is a massive pain to get to the point where you find the portal, and the Reploid with Speedster is in Central Museum, the horrifying RNG level.
No, Shadow Armor is not good unless you somehow learn to play the game without an air dash and also just give up on it at the end. Its only advantage is being able to stand on spikes. Zero can do everything it can do better than it.
That isn't penalizing skill, that's how arcade/arcade-adjacent game design works. In a Gradius game, or many shmups, a hidden rank system exists, where throughout the game, it rises (if talking in simple terms, usually rising way faster if you manage to play well, not die, do things like scoring or in terms of Gradius, getting upgrades), and that causes enemies and other objects to significantly rise in aggression, with the only ways to lower it being either bombing (a resource) or dying (dying in a Gradius game can end entire runs). X6 is actually somewhat forgiving with this, as it instead just rises boss levels, meaning that a lot of actually deadly boss elements are relegated to Xtreme mode or challenge runs, but the game does force you to be careful with routing through Nightmare effects regardless, so they had the right idea.
An action game is supposed to be actively challenging the player while pushing them to risk, and boss levels in X6 don't raise health values much, so most bosses still have speedkill strategies - penalizing skill in this case would be what X8 (or a lesser, but still bad case, X4) do, where you either can't speedkill bosses or have to waste time on their static and boring behaviors (this is primarily an X4 issue) if you don't use something that effectively nullifies them, being SDC or weaknesses for X4, and Sigma Blade or Ultimate Armor for X8. That actively pushes the player to want to exploit bosses: that's never good, the player should be in a state of tension.
As for Sentsuizan, I never had much of an issue with it, especially when there is only one prominent instance of wires and combat being combined, and it's in one of the 8 stages. If talking about obnoxious input issues, I find it weird how:
-Double-tap dashing in general
-X3's upward airdash, with its' long startup animation, and also the failing jump inputs in X3 when not dashjumping
-X5 dash+slash technique (this one disables SDC entirely), most weapons preventing you from dashing at all during charged attacks
-X7 chargeshot being cancelled by attempting to perform it during most animations, including dashing (this one is egregiously bad)
-X8 having a somewhat similar issue at points, along with most X weapons having lengthy startup animations and Zero not having cancels
is never mentioned. These are all large issues, and just because they won't get a beginner player to die (some of them definitely will, like double-tap dashing and X5 charged weapons) doesn't mean they should be ignored.
I've always liked the Ice Burst thing, it's fun and makes you use your movement well. Also applies to other instances of Ice Burst usage in the game. The Hyper Dash one can be obtained by just getting through one spike corridor to enter the portal, which all characters can do through airdashing, and armorless X can use i-frame exploits (I believe Ice Burst can be used to achieve 0 damage? I haven't tried to see if there's enough space in that spot to perform that). Speedster is optional
I learned how to play the game without an air dash, armorless X is my favorite way to play the game. I appreciate how X6 didn't necessarily make armors "improvements" upon X, but instead fitting as different playstyles to learn, with Blade Armor being focused on mobility and efficiency surrounding weapon usage, while Shadow Armor is a specific, somewhat situational armor that still handles most enemies and obstacles efficiently even on Xtreme mode, along with having the deadliest giga attack for bosses, at the cost of low damage against them otherwise and being tied to scenarios where it works well.
Zero outdoes them both because he is the most powerful character, similarly to X in X7, and I do feel somewhat mixed about his existence discouraging people from learning how to play as X more efficiently, even if they likely wouldn't regardless, given how the most common X strategies for past games are "bruteforce with upgrades collected, use exploitable weapons" and as such, even games like X1 with relatively interesting weapon arsenals end up being defined by Storm Tornado and charged Chameleon Sting spam.
As for rescues,
-At which point of the stage does Shadow Armor have trouble in Inami Temple? It's made to counter pretty much every enemy (high, rapid damage against Viruses and Monbandos, cancels out Sea Attacker projectiles, charge slash creates a large enough hitbox to counter Batton Bones) and the stage is more defined by enemy combat and cramped spaces than platforming. Regardless, airdashes can be used for these corridors, even if I don't like them that much.
-Viruses activate with a delay and their infection behavior makes them move really slowly, with them having another delay given if you rescue the reploid it tried to infect while there are no other reploids in its' range on screen.
-You can slide down on walls and it's at the start of a checkpoint, making it obvious enough to check, while a Virus doesn't just activate with a delay, but also goes for only one of them unless you get one infected, then still somehow fail (the room they're in has nothing else other than a Heart Tank), come to the room again/respawn the Virus by exiting/entering the room without getting the rescue (???) and then getting that one infected.
-I don't know which one you're talking about that has multiple Viruses while supposedly "requiring" a damage boost. If you mean the one blocked by an avalanche near the capsule, it should be possible to just not get too close and only load in the avalanche, wait for it to pass and then go for the rescue. Even then, this is the safe option - you should be able to still rescue it if you act quickly enough, and if you're scared of what might happen, there are many ways to damage a Virus through the avalanche.
-There aren't many ones clustered, and as long as you take care of the Viruses first (and preferrably enter from the top), you should be safe. Top path Virus and rescue - side Virus and rescue - safe to get the Heart Tank ones. The ascending block ones are somewhat luck-based if you don't want to get hit at all, but I find that to be fun due to the nature of "will I be able to do it this time or not? should I risk further or not?" and it being possible to just revisit the area if that's not the case.
-Viruses activate with a delay, so going from bottom path means it shouldn't be hard. Even on Xtreme, the delay should be enough to take care of it.
-The rescues there are all part of the stage's routing, so generally, if you have a good route through the stage to avoid dying/getting hit, you should be able to get all of them consistently. The only ones I remember in active danger is the one around the start after three junk blocks (that one is easy to get, but the Virus near it can be somewhat dangerous) and the one at the very end (mostly threatening due to the Xtreme-only Virus there, but having proper routing for that and not failing to execute it guarantees getting it). This doesn't count in even the "bad" strategies, like Rekkoha usage to stall the press and destroy Viruses, or going for the rescue knowing you'll lose a life just to guarantee not losing it (if you're not sure about being able to be precise enough.)
-That one largely depends on how much you stall through the section, but given its' cramped and swirling layout, I suppose fair enough.
-I don't know which one you're talking about here... you can get all of them as Zero in Laser Institute, he has a double jump by default.
-The Weapon Center ones actually make use of the fact that Viruses have a delay, and respawn with said delay, so if you want to safely get that reploid without dying/getting hit, you'll have to be very precise and careful, and also plan out a route that will involve not respawning the Viruses at the top of the area too soon (or a way to deal with that/dodge them).
To somewhat explain why rescues are like this, it's worth bringing up the mechanic that likely inspired them - POWs from Metal Slug. These, instead of being infected, run away on their own (or, if routing carelessely, you can just block off/destroy your path to them and, since you can't scroll the screen backwards, permamently lose one for the run) and despawn. They have to be shot/melee attacked in their ropes to be released at all, and some of them are present during active combat sequences or ambushes, meaning that on top of everything, if you want to get the POW, you'll have to also deal with the already overwhelming enemies and manage them as well while you do. While POWs aren't anywhere near as "necessary" in Metal Slug, you are incentivized to rescue them, and they're also the main way to get weapons - said weapons can be very necessary for clearing the game at all even for skilled players, as certain sections or bosses are incredibly difficult to manage (sometimes due to random elements, like some of the feared bosses) without weapons, and tend to be incredibly threatening even with them. On top of this, you lose your weapon upon dying, and outside of certain vehicles, you die in one hit in these games. Even the really rare POWs that help you by serving as allies that deal with enemies themselves go away if you die even once, and you can't even obtain extra lives in these games.
I understand that your issues likely come from just not wanting this sort of design at all, and even if I'd argue that X6 offers a balance between console and arcade action games in terms of difficulty and restrictions that is worth appreciating, I understand that you might not want to do so at all if it doesn't appeal to you in the first place. However, I'd like to really ask to not simply view the game as "worthless garbage" and assume every design decision is some kind of a mistake, when a lot of the more punishing elements in X5-X6 have roots in arcade design, which lives on even in shmups released years after X6.
I think X6 is worth appreciating at least because it does push players to engage with the game's design and its' potentially frustrating elements, making them talk about it, regardless if they're fond of them or not, where-as games like X1 or X2 can have absurd elements that most players are encouraged to just bruteforce through (like how RNG-heavy some bosses are in both of these, or how much difficulty spikes if you want to do certain challenge runs), or like X3, where the game wears the mask of "high difficulty" through high damage to the player and pushing beginners to just collect items and bruteforce it, in order to hide it effectively lacking difficulty progression in stage design or enemy behaviors. If talking about X7 specifically, I think the rescue system in that game specifically has issues due to a lot of the placements not being that thought out, so even when they aren't questionable (Radio Tower's first section requiring heavy caution in order to not spawn in a rescue while a midboss attack is active/starting up, unless you choose to try and use Hyper Dash and try to rhythmically dashjump through the whole section to exploit the midboss not being able to catch up if you do this correctly), they don't really play into the stage routing that well and tend to be placed in ways that usually require the player to actively focus on their individual sections, separated from the rest of the stage, in order to get them. I understand that this kind of approach means the rescues can be more interesting to players not interested in doing a lot of replays or challenge runs, and is likely more friendly, so I respect it, but I do think X6's system is more thought through.
I do have a personal dislike towards the "at least X8 removed the system entirely, means we don't have to bother with this anymore", as it does just go into sacrificing any semblance of design behind item obtainment (X8 steps on the same mines as X3) just because arbitrary collecting is generally preferred, for reasons I don't really understand, but that's more of my personal bother if anything.