Mega Man Zero 2

Another day, another Mega Man Zero game checked off. This time around, I'll touch on gameplay.

All of the basics from Mega Man and Mega Man X are back. You've got your basic run-and-gun platforming, you've got hidden power-ups, and you've got that "choose your own adventure" style freedom to select which stages you play in almost any order. However, there are some key differences between this series (so far) and the two that preceded it.

Stage Selection:

In the Mega Man X games, the order in which you chose to beat levels had an affect on the levels themselves. In the first game, for instance, once you beat Storm Eagle, his ship crashes into Spark Mandrill's power plant stage, which makes it much easier to handle. There's a heart power-up in Flame Mammoth's level that you can't get to unless you've already beaten Chill Penguin; likewise, there's a heart in Chill Penguin's level that you can't uncover until you've beaten Flame Mammoth and have his flamethrower weapon. So any 100% run in Mega Man X involves visiting levels after you've already beaten them. And furthermore, there are eight stages in these games, traditionally, that you can beat in any order. You don't have that same freedom so far through two Mega Man Zero games. In the first one, there were three missions available at once, and you could select any of them, but that still made things progress in a very specific and mostly predetermined order. Part of the charm of Mega Man was that freelancing ability to play things in any order. It's a minor change, but it's one I'm noticing.

Boss Weapons and Weaknesses:

Here, almost every boss has some sort of elemental weakness. Fire seems to damage water and ice-based enemies, paradoxically; ice hurts wind and lightning-based enemies, and it's lightning that hurts fire-based enemies. But that's all! Back in Mega Man and Mega Man X, every time you beat a boss you acquired a new weapon. Furthermore, every boss was weak against another boss's weapon - and often in creative ways. Here, that's just less so the case.

Weapons:

On the bright side, Zero has way more basic weapons at his disposal than Mega Man or X ever did. In addition to the buster (gun, basically), Zero has a saber and a boomerang and a grappling hook. The saber, in particular, just dishes out all kinds of punishment. You could play as Zero in Mega Man X3 and X4, and all he could use there was the saber, so it's nothing new. Still, having both a saber and a buster brings a whole new element to this type of gameplay.

Power-Ups and Cyber Elves:

The classic Mega Man series didn't really have these, but Mega Man X made all kinds of hay out of hidden power-ups that made you stronger and more powerful, or that gave you new abilities. Chief among these were the heart tanks - one per stage - that increased your life bar. In Mega Man Zero, these are sort of still around. The heart tanks are gone, but you can still increase your maximum HP by finding specific cyber-elves. Cyber-elves are a new gimmick in the Mega Man Zero series, and I'm not a huge fan so far. There are tons of them to find in each stage. To use them, you need to level them up by collecting energy that occasionally falls from defeated enemies. And they do just about everything. Some will increase your life bar, others will turn into sub tanks, and several more become these one-time-use instant-cures. Why not just spread heart tanks and sub tanks throughout the stages instead, like in the good old days?

Leveling Up:

This is the worst. There was no reason for Mega Man Zero to do this, but, neither your buster nor your saber is capable of charging up early on in the game. In order to unlock charged shots - and to strengthen the weapons in general - you need to use them. Like, a lot. The only real effect of this is that players just farm enemies for half an hour upon starting the game, grinding their way to having charged shots and stronger saber attacks. Why bother with this? Mega Man games have never needed grinding before.

Difficulty:

I lied - this is the worst. These games are brutally hard. Most of the difficulty is fine - just well-designed and challenging gameplay, really - but occasionally these games will give you a really cheap death due to an off-screen trap or an unseen pitfall. There's nothing wrong with trial-and-error learning curves, but they work a lot better in something like Super Meat Boy, where levels are ridiculously brief and precision timing is everything. Here in the Mega Man Zero games, a silly and unpreventable death might set you back two full minutes. Where's the fun in that?

Now, one last caveat - I'm playing through the Mega Man Zero Collection on a mode called "Easy Scenario." It's almost an unreasonably cheap way to get through the game - some have dismissed it as a god mode of sorts - but what it does is give you all kinds of hidden power-ups from the get-go. So in both games so far, for instance, I've played with a maximum health bar the whole way. And my saber and buster start out fully charged, and I've already got at least a few of the sub tanks. I'm torn about this. On the one hand, it's making these games much shorter and easier and allowing me to appreciate the story, the art, the design, and everything else without really worrying about the insanely hard gameplay. That's not to say I haven't died - I've died a lot, particularly from the aforementioned pitfalls - but I can't pretend I've "earned" any sort of completion status on either of these games so far. But, yeah, on the other hand, I'm robbing myself of the experience of finding all the cyber-elves and power-ups. A ton of the monotony is gone, but so is the rewarding feeling you get as you build up your character's strength throughout the game. It all kind of feels like starting a "New Game+" in an RPG. Look, as always, I appreciate every opportunity to make a game shorter or easier than it needs to be; I'll spend extra time on the ones that merit it, but I've still got more than 60 games in my backlog, and I just can't devote as much time to exploring them as fully as I'd like to.

In conclusion, the Zero series so far doesn't have quite the same feel as the X games did, and that's too bad. But it's also entirely understandable, and these games have been plenty enjoyable - probably more so than later X games, actually.