Mega Man Zero is exhilarating action-platforming. The dark tone engulfs the player into the atmosphere surrounding the resistance and Neo-Arcadia. Overall, there is a lot to like about Mega Man Zero; so, where does one begin talking about the great things in Mega Man Zero?
The Plot:
The game takes place half a century after the events of the Mega Man X series. After stopping the evil “Maverick” leader, Sigma, both X and Zero vanish. However, Mega Man Zero begins when Ciel, a human scientist, runs into a sealed chamber to awaken Zero. Ciel awakens Zero after being powered down a hundred years ago and joins the resistance, a group who is fighting against Zero’s previous ally X, the leader of Neo Arcadia. Zero eventually also discovers that the X controlling Neo Arcadia is a copy of the original. Ciel constructed “Copy X” since the original X disappeared a long time ago. Copy X desired world peace, nevertheless, Copy X lacked the moral judgment of the original X. Believing that reploids posed a threat to humans, Copy X branded any reploid posing any threat to humanity as a Maverick. With the spirit of the true X guiding him, Zero sets out on a journey to defeat the four guardians and the Copy X.
The plot is very grim and dark for a Mega Man game. The player ends up helping the resistance, a group that seems to be horribly outmatched and basically a group that fears Neo Arcadia. Helping the resistance allows the player to take pity on the out-resourced and outmatched resistance. Not only does the player take pity on the resistance, the player also pity’s the Copy X who eventually gets defeated by Zero. After being defeated, Copy X claims that “I was supposed to be…the perfect copy…How can this be…possible…I was supposed to be…a hero…”. Even though retiring innocent reploids was wrong; Copy X believed that his actions were just and believed that he was to some extent helping the greater good. He believed that what he was doing was heroic. Defeating and watching Copy X’s ambitions fail only makes the player feel sorry for Copy X’s defeat.
Boss fights:
The boss fights are fun, nonetheless, a few bosses do have their fair share of difficult moments. One of the first bosses, Aztec Falcon, was a challenging boss since you must beat him at a certain time and the fact that the room is small. Zero also does not have access to any E-chips in the early portion of the game. The guardians are no walk in the park as well. Harpuia and Phantom are some of the hardest bosses in the game. Phantom has no E-chip weakness, whereas, Harpuia even with the Ice Chip is no cake walk. Harpuia generally flies about shooting a large arc beam and can even pick up Zero and slam him into the ground. Also, the final level in Neo Arcadia is a boss rush and requires the player to fight eight bosses before the final battle with Copy X. So, despite the occasional difficulty with boss fights, why are the boss fights fun? I found myself enjoying the boss fights because I felt like I achieved something by beating these bosses. The harder bosses were even more satisfying to defeat due to the sheer difficulty involved. I especially enjoyed the four guardians and would recommend this game based only on the awesome boss fights.
Final thoughts:
Mega Man Zero is an amazing action platforming that can be relentless with difficulty spikes. However, despite the difficulty, the game still provides a nice punch of enjoyment and players will feel amazing satisfaction when steamrolling through the difficult sections of the game. Zero is also relatively accessible and can be played on the virtual shop on the Wii U, the original Gameboy Advance cartridge, or the Mega Man Zero collection for the Nintendo DS (probably the best way to play the original Mega Man Zero games). Overall, Mega Man Zero is an awesome game and I would highly recommend it.
So, what did you enjoy about Mega Man Zero?
What do you like about the Mega Man Zero franchise?
Would you like to see another game be made for the Mega Man Zero franchise?
Review Summary
Mega Man Zero is an amazing action platforming that can be relentless with difficulty spikes. However, despite the difficulty, the game still provides a nice punch of enjoyment and players will feel amazing satisfaction when steam rolling through the difficult sections of the game. The ground dash and wall jump also allows players to mad dash through certain sections which keeps the fast pace going. The game is relatively accessible and I would highly recommend this game to anyone wanting a fun challenge.
