Megaman Zero 2 takes place 1 year after the first game and Zero has left the Resistance Base behind. Zero still battles Neo Arcadia, but he no longer knows the reason why he fights or why he is hunted down by them anymore. He feels he needs to once again find the Ciel and the Resistance forces in order to find his purpose.




Graphics: 9

This game has done a whole different turn compared to the original Megaman Zero. The art style on both the game backgrounds and the character portraits have changed completely. The Dialogue box is one text smaller which means the character faces are box-shaped instead of rectangular, meaning that the faces are not as large as before; yet they look better as the faces look like actual anime portraits rather than if they were a old-styled painting. However, some of the colors of character portraits do not match up; for example, the portraits show Zero's head being red and gray in the middle with gray eyes; when Zero's head is in fact with red and a navy blue in the middle, with blue navy blue eyes as they present with anime styled snapshots in cut scenes and as well as in the previous game. Some effects have changed such as Zero's dash after-image effect being red instead of blue (which makes more sense) in the previous game. Some effects have had a few animations added on to them. The backgrounds are now extremely colorful, and usually highly animated. Even at the very beginning you are in a completely dead desert wasteland, but you get to see a beautiful background with a sky of various colors with a setting sun that wavers around signalling the desolate heat of the area. All backgrounds whether outside or inside of a buildings are either filled with lots of objects that are colorful that fill up empty space, or have an animating object in them, such as a light in the background flickering or a dripping pipeline. The anime snapshots for cut scenes too have greatly improved, although are slightly blurry in comparison to their original game's counterparts as if they were made almost too small and had to be re-sized. These snapshots are far more frequent than in the previous game as well.

Many of the character sprites are the same as before, although enemies now feel much more lively, having a few sets more of animation. All boss characters have have full sets of idle animations, and their attack animations have quite a few frames in them making them feel more realistic and alive and it helps the feeling of a quick paced game.

Zero too, has a whole set more of animations with him being able to change color as well, giving a little bit more diversity on the main character you see on the screen and not seeing the same repeated animations of Zero over and over seem as stale. However, Zero does have a completely whole new set of animations to work with due to Ex-skills being added to the game and the animations on them feel very convincing and makes the skills feel unique and powerful to use compared to your own standard attacks.





Sound: 10

Megaman Zero 2 literally makes the Gameboy Advance SING. The introduction song on the first stage alone being called 'Departure' for example has been made popular throughout the ENTIRE Megaman series genre, including the side series; being about as popular as Megaman 2's Dr.Wily Castle Stage 1 (and I may add that it is literally now my favorite music soundtrack of all time. Literally). The music in this game fits the atmosphere of every single level, being quick upbeat, and the melodies being easily hummable and sounding completely fantastic all at the same time. There are a few areas that do however betray the pace of the gameplay but these areas are usually less action oriented, and are more platform oriented, sometimes with minor puzzles meaning that they still fit well in position to the game.

There are more diverse voice clips in the game with Zero having a few more grunt voice clips, and a couple of them being slightly higher quality and louder to make them more apparent than they were in the previous game. Bosses themselves are almost fully voice clipped with their attacks either giving grunts, or even complete speech with their attacks. Although again this is still in Japanese, the voice acting is still however convincing and matches the ferocity of the enemy's attacks just with the intensity of their tone. Some main character NPCs such as Ciel have minor voice acting as well when you speak to them. Considering the quality of the Gameboy Advance, Megaman Zero 2 does a fantastic job of working around the 16-bit low quality of sound and makes it sound just as good as console games despite that.




Addictiveness: 8


Megaman Zero 2 has a lot more replay value than Megaman Zero 1 did. It still features the exact same Cyber Elf system although some Cyber Elves are revamped and changed, and a few more different abilities have either been completely changed or removed (such as a Cyber Elf in the previous game that would increase how much time you have in a timed mission would now decrease the time it takes you to charge you weapons). Unlike Megaman Zero 1 however, you now get to collect forms which will change your attack, changing how much damage you dealt; change your defense which decided how much damage you would block from an enemy's attack, and speed which... I honestly doesn't seem to actually increase or decrease; rather it just changes Zero's attack pattern with his Z-saber. Meaning that instead of being able to do a three-combo slash, you may only be reduced to one single slash. Or instead of a standard 3-combo slash, you would preform a more advanced rising saber stab which would do more damage than the standard slash. Forms as well sometimes had special abilities, such as being able to attack bullets with your saber and delete them, or being able to recover twice the amount of life from a life-crystal drop.

The bigger change is the addition to Ex-Skills. You obtain an Ex-Skill from each boss you defeat while your mission rating is either at the A or S rank. Ex-skills were either selected to be turned off or on, and you can use them such as holding up, and then attacking with the saber to do a rising jump slash. They could be combo'd together as well; such as a rising jump slash, and then holding down and attack with the saber again to do a stab for a large amount of damage in a very quick amount of time. Ex-skills were also further powered by elemental chips which you also find by defeating the bosses at the start of the game. This means that you'd have to play the game EXTREMELY well in order to get all of the Ex-skills since your Skill level was based on how well you did on the missions. If you got level B or lower, you would miss out on that Ex-skill for the rest of the game and if you wanted to collect it again, you would need to do a new game plus.

Much like Ex-skills, you need to fulfill certain varying conditions to obtain different forms in Megaman Zero 2. These were generally much harder to get because the game doesn't exactly tell you how to obtain forms.

Like the previous game, you could level up your weapons, although there are far less levels for every type of weapon. Also they removed passive abilities weapons had from the previous game, such as leveling up the weapon "Shield Boomerang" would not passively increase your defense for the rest of the game. This is most likely due to the addition of forms being able to do that. Levels are also much quicker to obtain, meaning they take a lot less time to grind to their respective maximums.

Just like Megaman Zero 1, clearing the game would also unlock at Hard mode. The Hard mode was vastly different than the first game. Once again you were denied the access of power ups, and you were locked into a form that would not allow you to charge your weapons at all on exception to the Shield Boomerang (which needs to be fully charged to even be used to attack with). You took double damage in this form, although you dealt double damage as well with all of your attacks, and your speed was set as default although all of your weapon levels would remain at one. You are not able to use Ex-skills and obtain Cyber Elves, making the mission score rating no matter. Beating the game with this mode on your file would unlock a new form on a normal game which acted like the hard-mode form; you deal double damage, and take double damage. However in normal mode you would still be able to use Cyber Elves, Ex-Skills, charge your weapons, etc.

Unlike in Megaman Zero 1, you must (thankfully) complete ALL missions and cannot skip any of them. However, the free roaming aspect of all the maps being connected together in the game are gone, and the game has gone back to its old classic roots of each stage being separated from each other.




Story: 9

The story is far more active and engaging, due to the fact that you cannot skip missions, every single mission you do usually has at least a small bit of the storyline in them. You get a selection of missions that you can do in any order you prefer at your discretion, but you must finish those batch of missions before you are allowed to receive a more important storyline mission, which then gives you the next batch of missions. Sometimes you will be forced to do two storyline missions in a row. This constantly feeds you the story and never feels like you are necessarily "working" to advance with the game as the flow of storyline, while slower at points, is at least always constant. The game has Zero as a character be much more engaging, actually saying more than a few lines of text this time, he speaks almost just as much as every other main character.

The story in Megaman Zero 2 does a much better job at pacing itself, eventually leading up to the climax and never seeming to go either too slow or too fast. The game however does not have any direct conclusion, for they planned to continue the story on to the next game which is Megaman Zero 3. The story is very engaging and when it is a tension filled moment, you may very well feel that tension, or if it is a sad moment, you will feel that sadness. The music too, does a good job expressing the emotion to help you feel the moment.




Depth: 8

Megaman Zero 2 only has a little bit more to offer as far as depth goes from Megaman Zero 1. You still need to grind your weapon skills and farm up energy crystals to feed your cyber elves to grow so that they are still usable. Thankfully, this literally takes half the amount of time to do now. Almost all of the Energy crystal requirements on Cyber elves is almost reduced by half, meaning you are not literally spending hours running back and forth between an area of the game just to get enough crystals for a single Cyber Elf. Also, since stages do not change over time in the story like the first game, you can never permanently miss a Cyber Elf. It will stay there hidden until you go back and get it so it will not permanently cripple you late game if it was a very important one, like a maximum health increase.

There are also Sub-Tanks which you can find in this game as well, which will store any excess Life energy you pick up if your health is full which can be recycled for later use. Some Elves turn into Sub-Tanks as well; but using those kind of elves will still permanently hurt your mission score for the REST OF YOUR SAVE FILE. Permanent upgrades such as maximum health and turning an Elf into a Sub-tank will ALWAYS subtract points from your mission score even on a new game plus since they are still in use. This means that Ex-skills are almost virtually impossible to obtain if you missed out on some, and the only way to obtain them again is to use MORE Cyber-Elves which will temporarily make your level become Level A for only the duration of the mission; allowing you to get the Ex-skill no matter how good or bad you do. Your Mission score level will then return back to its appropriate level after obtaining the Ex-skill. These Cyber-Elves DO respawn but it means you will have to repeat the game many many many times before you can get all the Ex-skills since they are limited in numbers and will only respawn on a new-game plus for you to collect again. In a way, this makes you feel like using Cyber-Elves as a whole are a bad game until you've at least gotten all the Ex-skills, and it is not a good feeling. At least in the previous game it was only for one Cyber-Elf power up, since Ex-skills were not introduced.




Difficulty: 10


This game is HARD. FAR harder than the previous game. Every SINGLE stage has at LEAST one death trap in it. Some stages have two, some have a ridiculous amount of THREE death traps per stage. Many of the bosses themselves are BUILT around instant kill death traps. This makes health in the game almost completely pointless, because 95% of the time you're not going to die by an enemy, but falling down an bottomless pit; being thrown into a spike, or crushed by the level itself. This game will have you making several blind jumps, or standing on extremely narrow platforms while being shot at from all directions where one shot will knock you off; or making you fight a boss or sub-boss where you only have a small narrow platform to make your stand on. This game's length is not necessarily long due to being a long game; but long because you ARE going to die over and over and over again. You get punished for using power-ups to make the game easier which will unfortunately in turn come back to bite you in the butt when you don't have those ever-so-precious Ex-skills you are going to want.

The bosses themselves are extremely even if they DON'T have an instant death-trap implemented in them. Without Cyber Elf power ups, some of the bosses will literally take nearly half of your health in one single hit. Don't even get my started with how near nigh impossible Hard mode is to complete as you will lose a life if you take only two or three hits from a boss enemy. If you can find a Sub-tank however the boss damage becomes not nearly as bad, but sub-tanks will not save you from the constant flooding of one-hit-kill level disasters which flood every stage. Yes, even the first stage has many bottomless pits and even the sub-boss of the stage has you standing on a little platform while shooting at you, trying to knock you off. Even the boss at the end of the stage will chase you down, creating several bottomless pits around you as you desperately try to run and gun it away. However, when you do complete one of those stages, you feel not only very relieved, but very very proud. This game is probably not the best game for someone starting the series to try. You will most likely rage quit. This game is acts as if you played the first game already, know exactly what to do, and it is a direct exact continuation with almost no difficulty curve; the game difficulty is nearly a line that is almost off the charts rivaling the classic Megaman series for the NES because once you pass the first mission of just bottomless pit deathtraps, the second stage is going to give you bottomless pits that you have to fearlessly literally swing across; spikes, lots and lots of spikes which will send you BACK to the beginning of the stage, and then the stage will then attempt to crush you -- with a wall of spikes -- from multiple directions. And then you have to battle the boss on a moving platform that wiggles and wobbles everywhere with the rest of the battle arena being nothing but a bottomless pit as the boss's every attack will almost certainly knock you off. This game requires PLENTY of either skill, or patience.




Overall Score: 9.2

Megaman Zero 2 despite its ridiculously high difficulty of expecting you to pretty much complete every stage like you played them fifty times if not more, is still an extremely really fun game. Very action packed and fast paced for a hand held console that you could play anywhere on the go. The game is far from holding your hand and doesn't give you even close to enough advice as the first game did with introducing you into everything; it literally just throws you right into it Ninja-Gaiden style. From the very beginning of the game you are literally being chased by a giant army of Neo Arcadians with the intention to destroy you and you have to stumble your way through hordes of enemies. If you played many Megaman games period, you will understand the difficulties this game offers being very much like the classical games with a completely ramped up combat system that is even quicker paced than before. Failure is always a learning experience and success feels fantastic because you're like "YES!! I DON'T HAVE TO DO THAT ANYMORE! THANK THE LORD I DON'T HAVE TO DO THAT ANYMORE!!" And then are thrown with a challenge that is just as horrible.
You will iron out the difficulty eventually as you overcome ridiculous challenge after ridiculous challenge and better your game skills until you eventually reach the end. And when you do, you will most likely say that all of the trouble and hardship you have went through was worth it.