Mega Man ZX

Jesus I forgot how much of a pain in the ass this game can be. I mean, it's a fantastic game, one of the best in the franchise, but holy fuck can it go from pleasantly challenging to stupidly frustrating real quick. 90% of this game is very solid, and 10% of it would make the designers of X6 blush with how stupid difficult it is, especially in the way of bullshit instant death traps.

ZX continues where Zero left off in terms of gameplay and story, but Inti Creates went back to a more traditional look graphically. We've got all new characters, all new powers and an all new um... even more futuristic setting, but at its heart, this one plays just like Mega Man Zero. Get your Z-saber and buster ready, but this time we'll be able to take advantage of X and his guardians abilities too. Let me tell you why this is one of those games all Mega Man fans should play.

Story
There are two characters you can choose from here, Vent and Aile, but for what it's worth their stories aren't any different from each other save a few choice dialogs. My last play through was with Aile since I had already played through with Vent and fuck if I can remember the tiny differences between them.

Anyway Vent/Aile is a package dealer for a company called Giro express, working for a man (Giro) who rescued him/her from a Maverick attack about 10 years ago in which he/she lost his/her mother. Side note: You play as one character or the other and can basically interchange Vent for Aile or Aile for Vent in any place in the story. To save my sanity from continually typing he/she, I'm going to assume you are playing as Aile.

Anyway it's about 100 years after Mega Man Zero, the planet has recovered and the difference between reploids and humans is very minuscule. Humans take robotic parts and reploids age and die. You can tell the difference by a red dot on reploids heads. Anyway, Mavericks are pretty much anyone who doesn't follow the truce between man and machine.

Anyway while delivering a package to a group called the Guardians (a maverick hunting force) Giro and Aile are attacked by mavericks. They get separated and a giant snake mechlaniod is attacking the people Aile has to give the package to. The package is something called a Biometal, Model X. The Biometal appears to be sentient and decides to help Aile by merging with her, producing an X-Buster on her arm and giving her dashing and wall hiking abilities and basically making her into Mega Man X. She takes down the snake Mechlanoid, but Giro is still under attack. She asks if she can continue to use the Biometal to go save him and the Guardians agree.

She runs off to save Giro who apparently has his own Biometal, Model Z, which resembles Zero. Anyway they head back to base, and the leader of the Guardians Prairie (who is played to be Alouette from the Zero series) talks about how they were looking into the recent Maverick raids and found a lab that used to belong to Ceil who apparently had disappeared. In her lab they found the Biometals which contain the consciousness of some legendary heroes (X, Zero, and the Guardians) and they were hoping that if they analyzed the data in them, it would explain the maverick attacks.

Well just then a Maverick raid happens on the highway... the one from Mega Man X that gets used in just about every game. Aile is determined to stop the attack because of what happened to her mother and runs off to stop them, Model X in tow. Giro follows her and tells her he's going to help. Well he runs off ahead and Aile comes up to him lying on the ground in front of some mysterious people. They appear to be controlling Giro and they have him fight Aile. They're both attacked after the fight by the three people. One man identifies himself as Serpent, the user of Model W, and head of Slither Inc, a security company that protects most of the city... yes, it's going to be one of THOSE stories...

The other two are Prometheus and Pandora, his underlings and they blab on about how only certain people can use the Biometals, and how those people are called Mega Men and how they will build a new world where Mega Men rule and how they are going to sacrifice everyone for Model W. They leave Aile and Giro who are to wounded to move to be killed by the Mavericks closing in on them. Giro tells Model Z to merge with Aile to protect her, even if it means it will end his own life to come out of the transformation. Giro dies and turns into a Cyber Elf and floats away. Model Z and Model X merge together as the Mavericks close in and merge up with Aile, forming Model ZX and now you know where the title comes from. Now that we have the premise of playing as X and Zero down, lets gloss over the rest of the game.

So basically Ceil discovered amongst the wreckage of Ragnarok from Zero 4 part of Dr. Wiel's core. When examining it, some of her reploid companions would have head aches and start to go Maverick. Ceil was afraid of what this core would unleash and created the Biometals as a counter measure to destroy it. Serpent however took the Biometals and split them in two and gave them to his Pseudodroids (these are reploids that can regenerate thanks to the power of the W-Core). Ceil goes missing and many of her resistance members are killed by Serpent. Serpent goes on to form Slither Inc and people see him as a hero because they don't know this shit that he's doing.

Aile goes off to retrieve the rest of the Biometals so the guardians can get to the W-Core and eventually we find out Pandora and Prometheus are using Serpent to unleash the W-Core's true power by going maverick and the W-Core gains power through the suffering of reploids and humanoids and blah blah blah, and the reason that Aile survived the Maverick raids is that Serpent purposely wanted to use her rage against him to fuel his power or whatever. Listen, I got really lost somewhere here...

Anyway, Aile defeats Serpent and he starts going on about how the destiny of Aile is in her blood and blah blah blah they are setting up a sequel and talking about the main villain. Slither INC HQ blows the fuck up, and Aile sees Giro who says fight for justice, then she sees the Guardians and the game ends.

Well, I'm glad we're back to needlessly complicated and strange plots again. I was getting worried for a minute.

Aesthetics
The backgrounds and stages are very detailed and you'll always be seeing interesting things to look at. The environments are varied and you'll be traversing power plants, volcanoes, snowy plains and cities getting bombed to holy hell by your enemies. There's always something to catch your eye in this game.

It reminds me a great deal of the PSX X games, but a lot more detailed. The bosses are unique in design and attack patterns and resemble the Zero styled bosses in how sharp and dangerous they look which isn't surprising as this is by the same team. The other characters are a bit softer in their design and resemble more traditional Mega Man looking characters.

The game is accompanied with quite a few animated cutscenes and still images as well which compliment the game quite well. While their are certainly more graphically superior games on the DS, this one looks good for what it's trying to accomplish.

Sound
Easily one of the best Mega Man tracks in a long time, in fact, one of the best video game sound tracks in a long time. ZX is one of those few games where just about every song kicks ass and it's the best sound track since X and it might be as good or better than Mega Man 2, and trust me this is coming from someone who isn't really a fan of techno in any way. I showed this soundtrack to a friend of mine who is mostly into rap and he thought it was good. The soundtrack is worth buying and the Gigamix track is great too.

There's a bit of voice acting in this game as well but it's in Japanese. It sounds ok I suppose, I'm not one much for judging foriegn acting, but I suppose it's better than having a really bad dub. Honestly though, this game is worth buying for the music alone.

Design
As I said in the introduction this game is tough and parts of it can be really tedious, but as a whole it's a fantastic game. So basically you have the controls of Zero making their way over as you have a Buster gun and a Z-Saber most of the game. Aile/Vent will collect new biometals throughout the course of the game which have different moves and abilities and are based on the four guardians of the Zero series. Model H has the ability to hover and analyzes enemy weaknesses, Model L is good for swimming and finding hidden items, Model F has directional aiming and Model P sticks to ceilings and has a radar. Some are more useless than others, but there are a lot of situations where you'll need one form or the other.

The stages are really though and there are tons of enemy placements in just the right spot to send you flying off into a bottomless pit or bed of spikes if you get hit. Most of these levels are challenging enough that you'll need a few extra lives to get through, but the Volcano stage is just relentless in how frustrating and annoying it is. In that stage you race across the screen with a flood of lava chasing after you in one of the most frustrating instant death stages ever made. It's especially bad if you're trying to get the hidden Sub Tank in this stage as well.

A lot of the design is pretty redundant, although to be fair, mostly in the parts of the game that are optional. One set of missions sends you to the same stage 6 times in a row to get a Sub Tank and another mission has you transferring a letter between 2 people about 6 or 7 times and it can get exceptionally boring. Most of the game isn't like this though.

The boss fights are really interesting. Most boss fights have an elemental weakness which you can take advantage of by activating your Biometal's overdrive, but in addition to this, the boss also have a specific part of their body that is also a weakness. This spot is where they house the Biometal you have to take from them. If you take advantage of this weakness you'll beat the enemy faster but damage the Biometal which costs E-Crystals to repair. If you go out of your way to avoid damaging it the fight is harder but you'll be rewarded with a fully repaired Biometal.

There's other small touches here and there that are nice as well such as the side quests that sometimes award bonus items that boost your abilities or how the large power ups in the game can be slashed with your sword to break them up into other power ups, letting you choose what you need when they drop. This game can be stupidly hard so having all the help you can get is welcomed.

There is one giant problem with this game though and that's the map system which is confusing as fuck and unless you have a guide you'll spend too much of the game lost as all hell. Honestly, I wouldn't play this game without a different map because the in game one is pure shit. Once you know where everything is (you know, after you've done it before) it's not as bad, but games shouldn't be designed around you already knowing what to do.

Playability
Some of the special moves you can do with your Biometals are a bit confusing and I recommend reading some sort of write up on gamefaqs about just what all your abilities are as the game itself doesn't really tell you. Besides the difficulty which even on easy can be relentless the game is mostly no problem to pick up and get going. If you've played a Mega Man game, or more recently a Zero game, you won't have many problems.

Extras

• Mission Order: I went straight from top to bottom each time I played and it works out well because the first stage has a Sub Tank in it. Trust me on this one, you'll need it.
• Talk to the towns people to get sub quests, sometimes they have nice rewards like the extender chip that increases your invincibility time after getting hit.
• On the bottom floor of the Guardians Base a reploid girl will sell you E-Tanks for 200 E-Crystals. There's no reason not to pick one of these up in case you need it for the tougher stages.
• Your spinning jump slash attack can rip enemies and bosses apart in a lot of situations. To execute it, hold up or down while attacking with the saber in mid air.
• After the game is over, you can go and fight Omega from Zero 3 and take a biometal from him for a new form. If you clear the game with both Vent and Aile you can keep Model X as well.
• If you own Zero 3 or Zero 4, stick it in the DS as well and you'll unlock the ability to fight those bosses in the game.
• There's a 1up in the Green door in town. This is a great place to stock up on lives before attempting a mission.

Mega Man ZX is a tough fucking game but so satisfying to play. If you're a Mega Man fan don't miss out on this one. If you're new to the franchise you'll find this one might just be a harsh introduction but still worth a play through. Get yourself a map and enjoy the tunes. If the difficulty is a bit too much for you, there is ZX Advent which is much easier until the final stage, but I personally think this game is better.

Playthroughs
N/A