Megaman Zero is a game that takes place one century after the Megaman X series.
The story begins with a small group that is part of the Resistance force is being chased down by an army that is owned by Neo Arcadia; a group that has been created for the survival of humans due to a large world wide energy shortage.
The Resistance group being ambushed while trying to look for the legendary Reploid, 'Zero' accidentally find him when only a few surviving members make their way into an abandoned underground lab, where a badly damaged Zero lays. However, he is unconscious and inactive.

The Neo Arcadian forces find them however and all the members are wiped out except for a human female scientist by the name of Ciel and a small little program that is her partner named 'Passy' who is a Cyber elf; a program data entity created by the Resistance group's best and latest technology.

To make sure her partner will not die, Passy sacrifices herself by spending all of her energy in resurrecting Zero. Ciel pleads for Zero's help, and does so by aiding her in escaping the clutches of the Neo Arcadian forces and helping her back to the Resistance base. This begins the story of the Megaman Zero series.




Graphics: 7

The animation in Megaman Zero at many points is lack luster. The animation when playing Zero himself is extremely good, especially for being a gameboy advance game where his running animation alone has nine frames; most games usually got with only five frames of animation, or sometimes even only three. However, the animation on a lot of enemies only have two or three frames for movement and it is very rare that enemies, or even bosses, have any idle animations to them at all. NPCs too, suffer from this, sometimes only have four sprites in the entire character (not including inverting the sprite to look in a different direction).

The game features faces for dialogue to show who is talking. The artwork doesn't look 'bad' exactly, but it looks very dirty and gritty like it was an artwork painting. With the size the dialogue boxes are with the artwork, they had plenty of space to make these look better.

Throughout the game, you get complete artwork of a scene in an anime styled like picture. Most of these scenes suffer from the same 'paint-styled' grittiness, but to a much lesser degree.

The backgrounds sometimes look very plain. Sometimes one shade of color taking up a large section of the screen feeling like empty space that could have some ambient piece to fill it in when inside a building and not a wide open space, like a pipe in the background... or something to fill in the space. Most of the places look old and crumbled, which however do a good amount of detail in explaining the state of how the world has fallen into while Zero has slept for the last century, as many of these places you go to are rather abandoned and feel abandoned as they have been taken over by Neo Arcadia, most likely in an effort to protect the human populous.





Sound: 7


The music in Megaman Zero feels mostly classical and doesn't really fit the cyber, action placed roll the game has to offer at most bits. The tunes I feel mellow down the combat of the game play and I almost feel like I am going too fast against the music, which gives a rather strange feeling. The game despite this, does have some good music itself despite it not really keeping up with the game play. The music sounds more industrialized than it should.

The game offers a large variety of sound effects and some very minor sounds from characters, a couple of grunts from Zero and boss characters, and some boss characters even have voice acting in Japanese for their attacks. However, some boss characters simply repeat the same grunting sound again, and again, and again.

The sounds from effects as wide as they are, are pretty convincing, with individual footsteps from when Zero's feet comes into contact with the ground, to very real saber noises when he swings his saber weapons around, even with varying tones and pitches depending how he swings them. There are a few ambient noises as well, such as when it is raining outside, or when you are underwater which help liven the experience.

While the sound is great, the music has a bit of a ways to go to matching the standard of the game type and setting it is in.





Addictiveness: 4

There is almost no reason to play Megaman Zero again after the first time you beat it. You get almost no reward for beating it the first time other than trying a new game on hard difficulty. Starting the game on normal using your old save file just starts you off with all the upgrades you got from before; this is almost pointless because there is only one place you can't return to after a good while of game play and that is returning to the introduction stage where you first met Ciel. The only reason to play again is mostly for bragging rights that you completed the game 100% which you can easily do in just one run anyways. However, with the use of Cyber Elves, while they die when used, some will be permanently used; such as one that increases your maximum life. Cyber Elves which are like usable items, such as recovering you a small amount of health, can be found again on a new game plus and therefore reused. All and all, once you play Megaman Zero once, you've most likely played the entire game as it is.




Story: 6

Megaman Zero's story is okay, but it's not very great, although it was a pretty good introduction to the story itself and explaining the situation that the story was in which help sprout the plant and spread the branches for the rest of the series. Megaman Zero did a good job introducing all of the characters, although Zero did not have very much character at all, only beginning to show some at the very very beginning of the game; he was almost mute, just seemingly doing everything just because the Resistance asked him to, and not giving a reason as to why he was helping a group that had been branded as Mavericks and a threat to society. It seems in this series, Capcom didn't actually know exactly where they were taking the series for sure, and left the road wide open for it. Perhaps that was a wise move on their part however.

The story however almost seems predictable, as "X", Zero's old partner is the one apparently branding the Resistance group as Mavericks. As a sort of rule of thumb for the Megaman series since Megaman X, you are going to have to be in a 'Zero versus X' battle yet once again.

Four of the bosses will eventually be more important of the series, which is a bit unique in its own right, giving Zeros other 'rivals' to go up against that isn't just X. This does a good job of explaining that Neo Arcadia isn't necessarily evil, but just trying to do what they believe is best to protect the small remaining human populace on a dying world.




Depth: 9


The worst mechanic this game has is being able to completely, entirely skip missions; and keep skipping them until you are at one you cannot skip which I dub as a 'story mission'. These missions USUALLY have story related to them, but not in the missions themselves, but usually -before- the mission even begins such as when Ciel as talking about when to do. These are generally with attacks coming towards the Resistance base. You can literally be at the end of the game in a span of ten minutes and not missed anything as far as story content even goes. You get punished with a low score rating, which score is only for collecting a certain power up.

Not completing a mission means you will not get that mission reward, which may be a elemental chip which helps to defeat certain bosses, or a cyber elf which may grant you a temporary ability, or a permanent ability such as more maximum health, but this is really about it. These "optional" missions only help make the end game easier.

Unlike any of the Megaman X games, this game however has one of my favorite features; and that is the fact that almost every single stage you go to is actually linked with another stage, meaning that the game technically is one giant massive overall map. This world however is not very big. Many of these missions you go to end up being on the same stage; but you usually have a completely different objective to go to. In other missions, you may go through one stage you went through before, and then branch off into a completely different stage. As well, as you do missions, stages change over time. A place that was iced over before, may now have melted and be completely be submerged in water. It's the same place, but it completely changes how you have to go through the stage despite knowing the layout of it from before. Although while reusing levels and making them different is cool, it means that some secrets become unavailable to get, and it limits how expansive the game world actually is, meaning that if you don't get a secret in an area, you are technically crippled throughout the rest of the game.

Again, there is a score rating, which I believe is a poor system since it rewards you for being good, and cripples you for being bad. A good player I feel doesn't need to be rewarded. Thankfully, this system in this game only enables you for getting one cyber elf; it is a pretty good cyber elf unfortunately. As long as you do good at the very very first Mission (which is hard to do bad on) and get this power up which is hidden within the Resistance base as long as you have an A or S ranking on your score, then you can pretty much do as badly as you want in the game with no risk.

Megaman Zero also has one more feature which I like but also hate, which is the ability to level up your skills in weapons. These make it so you can preform instead of a single swing with your saber, up to three swings, make it so you can charge your weapons up higher grades and also makes you be able to preform completely new actions, such as a spinning jump attack additionally with your basic jump attack which helps do a lot more damage quickly and around you. Which weapon levels, you also collect Energy Crystals which you feed to your Cyber Elves that you collect so that they are actually usable. I feel this makes the game quite a bit more of a grind instead of completing it which actual skill, however, if you do struggle with the game play, this makes it quite a fair bit easier.

Finally, while reaching the end of the stage is (usually) your objective, a lot of times you will have a lot of side objectives in a stage, such as having to go around an enemy base finding your captured Resistance members; going to an end of a stage and then BACK while escorting a member, making sure he doesn't take damage or else he WILL die and you WILL fail; another one has you going around disarming bombs before they explode. This keeps the game play always different and interesting and each every mission is unique from each other, making the game constantly fun and that should be reward enough for doing the optional missions. Speaking of missions, you at a time can choose one out of three missions after the first one and do all the missions in any order you like. After you either fail or succeed in the mission you have selected, it will be replaced by a newer one. Only after doing, or at least attempting "X" amount of missions will a important mission that you cannot bypass come up. This means that if you struggle with a mission, you can hold it off until you become stronger and feel you are more comfortable with taking the mission on. However, some missions will not become available until that mission is done, so eventually you will have to do them.

The game is not the length as an RPG and you won't be playing it for days. But for a side scrolling action platformer, you will be able to waste quite a few hours playing this game which is pretty lengthy for it's type. Dying is part of the length of the game; you most likely WILL die a few times and have to try your luck again.





Difficulty: 6

There is no actual 'Easy mode' in Megaman Zero. Only Normal mode and a hard mode after you beat the game. The game starts off simple at the first couple stages, but it does quickly branch of in difficulty. The game however gently guides your hand at telling you what is what. You got an electricity chip? It tells you that it makes your charged attacks have an electric side effect on them which is great against fire-type enemies. And if you are completely new to the series, the game is not shy about telling you every crook and cranny about the game mechanics, such as even telling you that you can charge up your weapons, and that the more you use them to defeat enemies, the more skilled you will get when you use them. It tells you about the score punishments of using cyber elves, the rewards for doing missions and the consequences for abandoning them. If you pace yourself, grinding a little and free roaming around between every mission just a little bit, the game should be quite enjoyable for the standard player. If you are hard core, you can rush in without grinding and test your luck. If you're interested in the Megaman Zero series, but are a more casual player, you can take your time. While the mission scores try to pressure you to rush in and kick butt, you really don't need to. If you find yourself struggling with a mission, if you've been thorough with hunting secrets, you will have plenty of Cyber Elves available to help bail you out of trouble.

Like most Megaman games every since the first, the game is famous for it's series of several 'death traps', which some levels unfortunately seem to go a little overboard on them. Some mission you will literally have to do a couple of blind jumps into a pit of spikes which feels very unfair. Many levels have said spikes, bottomless pits, and some levels have both of those AND the mechanic of something trying to crush you; which is also a one shot kill. Some boss fights too, have either a bottomless pit, or spike traps in them, which feels strange because it's not the boss that you fear then; it is the level disaster that they put in to try and make the fight harder.

Speaking of boss fights, the game is usually good with enemy attacks. You may get beaten up and be destroyed your first attempt at fighting a boss, but you will have learned how to dodge their attacks; and there is ALWAYS a way to dodge a boss's attack one way or another; sometimes even two ways. On the exception of boss fights where there is a instant death trap mechanic in them do you really feel that the boss's attacks are fair, and if you get hit by one of them, it was your fault for either standing in the wrong place and cornering yourself; or simply not reacting fast enough. If you play your cards right, you can even STOP enemies attacks before they even get a chance to release them. This makes the game feel very good.




Overall score: 7.2


Megaman Zero is probably the worst of the series, but it was the first of the series and it certainly is not at all a bad game by any means. Capcom did something completely different with the entire Megaman Zero series, and with the rest of the series they chose a set path and followed it which made it possibly one of the best game series for the Game boy Advance ever. The first Megaman Zero game never really hit big with most fans, as the other games are prescribed to only be better and better after this game, as it seems Capcom listened to criticism of fans and gave them really what they wanted. Megaman Zero was a great introduction to an even greater series that set the bar for action platforming bring the Megaman series back to it's more classical roots while able to throw a great overhaul in game play at the same time.