Mega Man Zero

The Good
Mega Man Zero is the first game of a sub-franchise of the main Mega Man franchise. It is actually the fifth sub-series of Mega Man : There is already the original series, the X series, the Legend series, and the Battle Network series. The original series involved beating 8 elemental bosses, each one would give Mega Man a new weapon to help him to defeat other foes and bosses, and after all 8 boss are beaten a final stage would come up. The X series is basically the same, except there is significant change in story (supposed to happen long after the original series) and gameplay improvement. I know nothing about the Legend series, I've never played it. And the Battle Network series does have nothing to do with all others, playing like a RPG.

The Zero series starts with this title, and is supposed to take place long after the X series, which itself was supposed to take place long after the original series. So it plays just like a Mega Man X game, but with some significant changes in gameplay. You play as Zero, which is awaken from a very long rest and that found that the world isn't going much well since.

Capcom introduced some 'Metal Gear' elements such as a mission system and some 'minigames' that involve the player to not just defeat the enemies and pass your way through stages, but also to destroy enemy bombs, to avoid enemy detection systems, etc... Also, the 'get weapons from bosses' system is gone, and you get a totally different system instead.

Now for the game in itself nothing is really wrong, the graphics looks somewhat good and most music is good too, while the quality of the instrumentation is somewhat lacking at some places. I just didn't like that frightening music you get just before bosses that obviously is strongly inspired by a similar music in the first Mega Man X, but this one is less good. The sound effects are well detailed and sound very good overall. You even get voice acting from some bosses when doing their moves, which make you feel like playing a fighting game.

The Bad
Now, the game in itself isn't much flawed, but some of the fundamental elements of the game system are really bothering me. You don't chose from 8 bosses any longer, but you have missions to do. Most of the time it looks like your mission isn't about fighting a particular robot, but you'll always end up doing so, sooner or later anyway. You finally have 8 main bosses altogether (plus some side-bosses), but you'll figure that only after completing the missions. As a side note, bosses have turned back to a 'human-like robots' form from the original series, as opposed to 'weird animals like robots' from X series (I'm not saying it's bad I just want to note this).

What I'm really complaining about is that you cannot determine much in which order you'll do your missions. You'll just start with a list of 3 missions, and completing one will sometimes unlock another or sometimes just do nothing. When you run out of missions, a big robot is trying to destroy the base you're in, you have to fight it, and then the game is back to normal, and your mission list is refilled. This happen several times in the game. There is 8 missions overall, just like in previous Mega Man games from other series. You just have very much less chose for the order of completing your missions. Also, if you fail to beat a boss and get game over, it's possible to just give up and continue the game as normal. Why Capcom introduced this is beyond me, but I guess it's to make the whole thing more realist. What also bothers me is that the game is set in a ambiance of total darkness, everything in the game was made so that it would feel completely evil. This is kinda depressing after a while, and is the exact opposite of upbeat and fun elemental stages I've found very entertaining playing on my NES in the original series.

Also, Capcom decided to have no longer bosses leaving weapons. You get four weapons in the game, the Z-Buster (you get it when you start the game), the Z-Saber (you get it when fighting the first boss), the tri-spear and the shield (an engineer named Cerveau made them for you pretty early in the game). The shield is absolutely useless and the tri-spear isn't of much use either, so only the Z-Saber and Z-Buster are really handful to defeat enemies. Finally, you get 3 'element crystals' at some fixed points in the game. Equip them will give an element power to your weapon when it's charged up, and it is actually this which will determine the weakness of enemies. However, you only get the 3 most basics elements (Fire, Ice and Bolt) and some bosses have just no weakness of these three. So gone is the basic non-linear gameplay that was so fun in the original Mega Man series.

Aside of that, this play just as any Mega Man game, you have to remember enemy pattern by heart in order to have any chance to defeat them. Many bosses in this game are particularly annoying.

One thing I just hated is that, when you encounter a boss, they deleted the good old "very cool boss animation" then the boss life bar fill up by replacing this sequence by a "long speech from the boss" then a stupid warning alarm beeping and the boss start with it's life bar directly full. Where is the fun, where is the coolness ?

The worst thing is the cyber-elf system. You can collect cyber-elves that are supposed to help you (by healing you or something similar), but you can only use each elf one time and that'll never actually help you. The only elves that have a permanent effect must be fed with crystals, that are collectible from enemies. In order to use any of those interesting elves, you have to collect from 600 to 2000 crystal, and you'll get in average, say, 80 crystals per mission. See ? Will you rather spend hours of collecting crystals to be stronger or just spend hours to learn perfectly boss patterns in order to beat them without getting hit (and you can die with about 3 to 6 hits from ANY boss, while most bosses have 2 whole bars, and some even 3 bars of energy, that is 6 times more energy than you who only have one half of a bar). Personally, I took the chose to use save states, and that is very handful to beat bosses with little to no power ups. However, that way, I finished the game in just than two hours.

The Bottom Line
The game isn't bad, but all the most interesting parts from older Mega Man games are gone. I think it is rather bland and boring overall, and that most part of it is to collect crystals and/or to learn boss patterns. The overall ambiance is dark and depressive. If that doesn't afraid you, feel free to play the game. It has some interesting missions and scenario, though.