Mega Man Zero

One thing that is undeniable about Mega Man games is that they are difficult. Even the easy games in the series can still be tough to the inexperienced Mega Man player. These challenges are as much of a draw to the games as they are a deterrent, but the average Mega Man fan craves that challenge. When it's done wrong, such as X6, players feel cheated, frustrated and annoyed. When it's done right, players have fun tackling the challenges and feel accomplished in achieving their goals. There is a threshold for many players though, a certain level of difficulty where they will give up no matter how well made the game is. For many players, the Mega Man Zero series crosses that threshold. It is an extremely well crafted, well designed, and nearly overwhelmingly difficult.

The difficulty can be mitigated, but this series isn't for first time players. This is a veteran's series, and not for you if you haven't ever played a Mega Man game. Even though it is difficult, the majority of that difficulty comes from enemy placement and interesting boss patterns. This game requires you to focus more than any other before it, without resorting to being stupid cheap like Mega Man X6, or fundamentally broken like Mega Man X7. Zero arrived at a time when the old school Mega Man formula was being was being experimented with in all directions.

It poses the question, how do you keep a series fresh and innovative after 15 years? For most of those years, Capcom didn't bother trying. From here on out though, Capcom is going to get really experimental with the franchise as a whole. Sometimes it won't work like X7, other times it will have a really nice pay off but overall this experimental phase is to our benefit as players. The Zero series brings in a new play style of really working well with the tools you start with more than the tools you'll gain on the adventure. The boss fights are the most difficult in the franchise and will test every bit of your skill and reflexes, and that's why they are among the best in the franchise.

Story

Some time after the X series, Zero had sealed himself away for fear of the spread of the Maverick virus, and a general feeling that his prescience was a danger to both reploids and mankind. Because the Earth still lie mostly in ruins from the Eurasia incident in X5, X would build a new center for humanity in Neo Arcadia hoping to bring peace to humans and reploids once and for all. Of course if that lasted we wouldn't have much of a game would we?

An energy crisis developed and the reploids were blamed for it. X and his guardians, essentially the new generation of Maverick Hunters, begin labeling innocent reploids Mavericks, and brutally lay assault to them.

A young human scientist named Ciel sees the injustices created by X and forms a resistance force to evacuate wrongly accused Reploids from his tyrannical grasp. X labels the group Maverick and sends his forces to retire Ciel and her followers. Retire is the reploid word for kill basically.

Desperate, Ciel and her group track down the last resting place of the legendary hero Maverick Hunter, Zero. Ciel is literally surrounded by hostile X-Drone mechlanoids, with all her companions KIA when she reactivates Zero. She begs him for his help, and before he really has time to think about it, Zero rescues Ciel and sets himself off on a mission to over throw his former partner and friend X.

During the course of the game, Ciel sends Zero on missions to aid the resistance while she tries to work on a new energy source to solve the energy crisis which she hopes will end the war. Zero is aided by Cyber Elves, which are small sentient programs that resemble balls of light. When their primary functions are carried out however, they expire. One mysterious particular cyber elf assist Zero in giving him his Z-Saber and unlocking teleportation directly into Neo Arcadia.

Zero himself is put to the test as he fights X's Guardians, who, while not exactly evil, are vigorously loyal to him, seeing him as the hero of mankind. They are even so loyal that one of them, Phantom, self-destructs in a last ditch desperate attempt to take out Zero before he reaches X.

About halfway through the game, Ciel reveals that the X in charge is a copy of the original X who had been missing for quite a while and that she is the one who built him. (One wonders if Ciel's last name is Light? Hmmm?) Zero, suffering from hibernation sickness barely remembers X as it is. Eventually the mysterious Cyber Elf opens the way to Neo Arcadia and tells Zero to "Exterminate that copy of me with extreme prejudice!"

Zero faces the forces of Neo Arcadia and faces the guardians again. They attempt to form a final line between Zero and Copy-X, but Copy-X dismisses them. Copy-X dons his Ultimate Armor from X5 (quite a throw back huh?) and they battle. Zero comments that Copy-X is much weaker than the original and eventually destroys him. Copy-X begins to self-destruct the Area X part of Neo Arcadia in an attempt to take out Zero.

Lying on the outskirts of Neo Arcadia, the mysterious Cyber Elf reveals himself as the original X and tells Zero of how he has been fighting by himself for so long. He says he needs to rest, just for a little while and leaves Earth in Zero's hands. Zero, finally regaining his memory, agrees to protect humanity and reploid kind. He finds himself surrounded by hundreds of X-droids. Zero picks up his Z-saber and keeps fighting.

Aesthetics

Mega Man Zero is a beautiful game and features its own unique art style to go with it. Every cutscene is fantastically detailed and each character has a new look to match the style.

The environments are run down, busted old buildings well suiting the post apocalyptic setting of the game. Neo Arcadia of course looks much more vibrant and lush in the small amount of time you spend there showing the contrast between it and civilization outside the city.

The bosses look great, in particular the Guardians who quickly became fan favorites of the series and would make reappearances in both this and ZX.

The animations are great too and Zero has hundreds of sprites for the various different actions he does. The same goes for the bosses who even have attacks that you might never even see ready to hit you with. This game is full of eye candy and even if you can't find, buy or playthrough the entire game, I highly recommend the Complete Works book just to see some of the effort put into the art of this game.

Sound

Inti Creates would go on to make some of the best sound tracks ever made in a Mega Man game, and has released a host of sound tracks to just about all of their Mega Man games, including this one. In fact they just came out with a new one in Japan called Rockman Chip Tunes which is a collection of remixes of the original games themes. Not enough can be said about how good Inti Create's music is. Except that trend doesn't start here.

Don't get me wrong, the sound track is alright. Zero's theme is represented in full force, and the music suits the mood of each scene well. Its just that the tracks are incredibly short and loop a bunch, and a lot of tracks are reused over and over. It's not like they are annoying or bad or anything, just a bit repetitious. The game sounds like it has less music than it really does because of it. Compared to the rest of the franchise, and Inti's own amazing creation in the coming ZX, it just isn't very memorable.

The other sound effects though are pretty good. Zero's sword makes a lot of satisfying sounds and he and all the bosses have some nice grunts when they attack. Ciel also screams when captured and it sound better than you would think a GBA was capable of. Sure, there's no real voice acted dialog or anything, but what did you expect for a Game Boy Advanced game? What is there is impressive though.

Design

Did I mention this game was ball bustingly hard? It is, but a lot of care has been taken into just how the challenges would present themselves. This is one of those games that will kick your ass as you play it, but eventually train you to be an unstoppable killing machine... in a very literal sense I suppose. Your training may consist of multiple playthroughs to reach that level though.

This game sticks to the basics. You have a buster and the Z-Saber and you need to make the best use of them you can. You can level up your weapons through continuous use and learn new moves to improve your arsenal, but for the most part you'll have to make use of your dodging skills the whole game, unlike other Mega Man games where once you get an enemies weakness, you can throw any need for skill out the window.

That isn't to say the bosses don't have weaknesses, although some don't. During the game Zero will get elemental chips which you attach to your weapons for extra effects. I wish these chips had more utility in the stages as they more or less are for dealing with bosses more than anything. There's only three of them though, but the real trick to using them is to know how to goad an enemy into an attack pattern that is easily predictable. For instance, Fenfir, one of the four guardians, is actually more dangerous and harder to dodge at long range. If you get close to him, you'll goad him into using his melee attacks which are really simple to dodge, making him eat your Z-Saber without problem. Harpuia on the other hand can be massacred with properly timed charged buster shots.

There are a couple of other weapons you'll get later, but unfortunately one of them is a bit of a gimmick weapon with little combat use, and the other is a shield that blocks enemy shots, but I hate to put my Z-Saber or Buster on reserve for it. If you're the type who skips a lot of dialog in action games, chances are you'll never see them anyway.

The stages are pretty tough, but only a hand full of them have some instant spike trap or pit setups. Most of the danger comes from placing those enemies in just the right spot to hit you. Especially those flying cocks that drop the spike balls on you. I hate those damn things. The game wears you the fuck down by the time you reach the boss you're almost dead anyway.

The lives system in this game can be really annoying. The number of lives you have stay with you the entire game, and if you find yourself saving with only 1 life left, that's how many you'll start each mission with until you find more. If this game wasn't brutal enough as it is, expecting the player to beat the stage and boss in a single life puts quite a bit of confidence in first time players. That said, each stage does have an extra life or two hidden out of the way a little bit if you look.

The stages themselves are all interconnected, and you can revisit them after you've completed them in order to collect items, extra lives or just grind out some more levels for your weapons. This adds a new layer to the immersion of the game world that other Mega Man games just don't have. It wouldn't last the Zero series as they eventually went back to the old format, but they brought it back for ZX later.

Even though this game is balls hard, you can mitigate it greatly by using Cyber Elves who give you special abilities ranging from turning into a subtank to removing all the enemies in a level to taking all of the spikes out of the entire game. Powerful little bastards, but the game literally tries to guilt you out of using them because they'll die if you do. And if that wasn't bad enough, the game grades you as well, stopping just short of calling you a gigantic pussy for daring not to beat it with the pitiful amount of health and armor you have. You're not a gigantic pussy are you?

It's not like you aren't rewarded for doing well... if you want to call it that. Players who reach a boss at an A or S rank will face a harder version of that boss who will have extra attacks. If you're like me, you'll never see them though. After you beat the game, it almost jokingly asks if you would like to try hard mode. Yeah... fuck that. Still if you're masochistic to go for an S run or hard mode, those options are there. The game is extremely well made, but it's difficulty is definitely going to turn off casual gamers.

Playability

By default the game sets control of your sub weapon to something stupid like L and B at the same time or something like that. Swap the control over to the R button though and you're in business. I don't have many complaints about the controls in this game as they are really fluid, and barring a few completely asinine challenges to get some optional Cyber Elves, control won't ever be a problem.

There is one thing that bothers me though. The rolling dash is completely fucking useless. If it did more damage and actually killed anything it came into contact with it might be worth using, but instead you'll take a hit of damage practically every time you use it. In a game like this, you just can't spare those hits for a cool animation.

Extras

• Mission Order: There's nothing really wrong with completing the game in the order the missions are presented. For some help in choosing what mission to take though, here are some of the rewards. Destroy the Train: Totten (removes all spikes from the game), Retrieve the Data: Triple Rod, and later the Shield, Find the Hidden Base: Ice Chip, Occupy Factory: Fire Chip.
• Level up your weapons in the Underground Laboratory before doing the Retrieve the Data mission. The spider egg sacks generate a bunch of enemies at once giving you plenty of fodder for your weapons. This is a good place to farm E-Crystals as well, but it disappears after you finish that mission.
• Speaking of leveling up weapons, the weapons will level up faster depending on how you level them up. For instance, using a charged shot more often will level those upgrades up faster. If you use rapid fire instead, that bit will level up first.
• Don't ever forget about your buster. It's easy to get head long into the game sticking with the Z-Saber on bosses, but let me tell you, half the battles are made easier sticking to a distance and using charged shots. Harpuia is pathetically easy with the ice chip and charged buster shots.
• If a mission is too hard for you, you can just give up at it. Your rank will go down and you might miss a few elves and upgrades, but you won't have to finish the mission.
• If you complete hard mode with an S or A rank or complete normal mode collecting all the Cyber Elves and leveling them up, you'll unlock Jackson, a more powerful hidden Cyber Elf. Beat the game with him and use all the Cyber Elves and then you'll unlock Ultimate mode which won't penalize you for using any of the elves and you'll start with the permanent effects in place. Useful if you're dying to see those extra S or A rank attacks the bosses give off.
• One awesome little touch, if you destroy a boss with your buster, they explode. If you destroy them with the Saber, you slice them in half.

Zero is a fantastic game, but it's every bit harder than the X series. I wouldn't recommend this game to new comers, but veterans will probably love this series.

Playthroughs
Speed runs by Youri 'Elpis TK31' Landweer and Mike Uyama