The Mega Man Zero Series | From Zero to Hero

[Music] no this isn't happening there's no reason for me to go on what am i fighting for we should give this character his own series when you really look at Mega Man as the huge franchise it is one of the most fascinating parts about it is the multiple series that are found within like many others I was all about the classics growing up not diving into the more serious themed X series until way later on and I discovered that what I had been missing out on this entire time was this attempt to not only make Mega Man a series of fun games but to create this dystopian world with darker overtones revolving around a massive war and including stronger reasons for fighting rather than just doing it because this old doofus was the bad guy I'm sorry at the time it was pretty hard to see behind all that Mega Man Zero always eluded me back during the GBA era I was too busy playing Mega Man Battle Network - that was my game of choice I was also busy avoiding that Mega Man and base port like the plague that it is hole man they thought that was a good idea so once the Mega Man Zero ZX legacy collection became a thing I figured this is the perfect time to see what I've been missing out on I've heard plenty of good things so I'm pretty sure I'm in for a good time also special thanks to Capcom for hooking me up with the code for this game you guys are gonna get two episodes out of this so don't say I never did nothing for you so yeah zero + ZX all in one package marketing wise you may as well give the buyer the best bang for their buck while also making the relatively hard-to-find Mega Man Zero collection on DS less desirable as far as I'm concerned while the names of these two series may be different this is actually a six game long overarching plot it's something that X kinda had going for it too but it kind of relied heavily on having a new villain take the center stage every time before the evidently immortal Sigma shows up regurgitating the same maverick speech over and over again and in my opinion it got pretty old not here though from beginning to end this is a story and world mostly built around consistency which is actually super cool there are still of differences between the two series though so this time we're gonna primarily stick to good ol red here zero when diving deep into the Lord that led into these games honestly it can be a bit confusing considering the X series was supposed to end with game 5 and despite 0 getting sealed up for a hundred years at the end of X 6 he shows up in X 7 anyway continuity be damned my poor little brain hurts but this is where relative newcomers empty creates come in to try and make sense of things and create a series that stands out on its own right off the bat in zero 1 and you can tell things are serious you have a girl and some troops running away from a bunch of robots that look almost exactly like X as well as these huge machines that just come in and plow through everybody it's wild it's even crazier in Japan where those soldiers die a bloody death yeah those xxx red pixels there they're not gonna fly in the rest of the world no chance but it's here where that girl seal finds the resting zero she manages to awaken him and from there you begin a four game long robot destruction tour as part of the resistance and their main opposition is neo Arcadia a metropolis that was built so humans and the human-like robots rep Lloyd's can live in peace but apparently Megaman X is still around and he's power-hungry terminating anything that stands in his way of his vision of peace that sounds pretty weird to me I don't know about you and to assist him there's also the addition of the four Guardians a group of powerful and conveniently elemental themed rep Lloyd's built in his image though along the way it's discovered that that isn't even X it's a copy of X since you still receive guidance from the real X this all leads to a large-scale power struggle against multiple parties with many twists and turns happening along the way across all four games new faces do come and go with each one but everything in this series is all about that battle between the resistance and the evil forces controlling neo Arcadia with some ulterior motives peaking in the further you progress into the story and even still there is an ultimate villain in dr. whale but he doesn't even show up until 0-3 which is after a mere tease at the end of zero - and you don't even get to see the fruits of his labor until 0-4 which actually add some context and substance to the plot points in the previous games including zero one all of these games stories are connected and the wildest part of all it's actually really good we have come a long way from cranky old man pretends to be an alien for 30 seconds to me this level of consistency is genuinely impressive at all times it feels like you're constantly playing a part in this ever evolving war and by the time whale shows up the stakes grow to such a level that it's really easy to care about seal the resistance force that she's put together and zero being the critical unit to see her plan through to the end each game is set up as a series of missions and unlike other Mega Man series will you go and stop the bad robot from doing the bad thing and they're conveniently themed location every time you embark on a mission in zero it's to play a part in stopping the enemies overall goal heat den blem here isn't just a laser beam shooting turtle with a weird name he's the power source of a massive particle beam nobleman Drago isn't just a fabulous looking plant based robot though she is certainly that she is responsible for speeding up erosion in area zero one of the only habitable areas left on the planet and in game two we have a one-off character working alongside us elpizo he only shows up in that one game but his inclusion to the story was to show the power of this world's massive energy source cyber elves or more specifically the dark elf a character there would be nothing more than a relative throw away suddenly becomes pivotal in understanding what this battle is all about this is Megaman here and we're getting all this story that actually kind of makes sense that's really cool the things you do in these games actually matter you're not just running and shooting for the sake of it and if you play all these games through an order you're actually rewarded with a really well-done story with a compelling beginning middle and satisfying end what a novel idea that is but if the story is good while the gameplay suffers it wouldn't really amount to a whole lot but luckily the gameplay is really good too similar to other Mega Man series each zero game essentially plays the same just with a bunch of little tweaks here are there some good some bad pick a mission run through a level die - Oh boss plenty of times until you learn the pattern and defeat it go through a gauntlet at the end featuring a boss rush I don't know why all four games do this I figured at this point in history we would agree that this is just a ploy to artificially lengthening games over all time but whatever it's here fight the big Daddy at the end credits all four games operate this way with two three and four doing the tried-and-true buff selection screens that were used to meanwhile zero one goes for a mission list instead which actually kind of made the whole thing a bit more confusing since there is still a recommend in order to go through or you may fight a boss at the very end you might fight just a big enemy it's all up in the air it's kind of weird and since you're not just a Mega Man but also a zero you not only have a buster gun to work with but also the Z saver to attack in close combat this is perfect the action is just about as fast paced as the X Games are but with the smaller screen size and the modified art style to go along with it the gameplay is actually better built around having quick reflexes to the enemies that you barely have a chance to see before they attack and slashing enemies to pieces in general is just inherently more satisfying anyway on top of that each game gives you a couple of extra weapons to play around with as well in particular zero 2's chain rod and zero threes recoil rod are so much fun to use both of these weapons are not only cool tools that you can use as a substitute for the saber but they both lead to some really awesome platforming segments as well when megaman 0 is good it's all about flow stringing together your movements and attacks in such a way that the best way to describe it is smooth which is why I'm not really so huge on the other weapons that you have access to like the shield boomerang that you can use throughout most of the series not really a fan I never had fun using it but when everything finally clicked for me it was then when I realized that these aren't simply megaman games like we're used to on a new console this is actually more like a 2d version of something like Bayonetta or Devil May Cry you even get graded at the end of missions like in those games - depending on how good you perform that's awesome and if you manage to maintain s rank which is incredibly difficult you gain access to even more abilities at your disposal nothing that makes the game impossible if you don't have them but it's still a cool reason to replay these games to get even better over time don't worry young one we may all start off as a wounded edge boy but with enough effort we can all strive to be better Godspeed edge boy scratch that edge man Godspeed Megaman zero one is the game that suffers the most here as soon as you get to zero to the shift immediately goes towards focusing on satisfying combat first more than interesting platforming leading into zero three which can mean damn that game perfects it when the series started off though they clearly didn't really know how to firmly grasp it you just get bombarded with enemies with no time to prepare and the level designs are no better the reliance on leaps of faith is ridiculous zero - suffers from this occasionally as well but nowhere near as bad as the first game there was this one boss fight where I landed the final hit while I was over a pit and then I was forced to die and redo the fight so you know that was fun thankfully the Legacy Collection introduces the option of a ton of checkpoints that also eliminates the life system letting you retry tough parts a whole lot easier honestly if this wasn't here I don't think I could see this game through I know I'm weak the game also does a poor job introducing some of these 0 exclusive mechanics like there's no beating bosses to get their weapons here kinda the way you change up how you attack in this series is as you play you gain access to modifier chips that give you a slew of new abilities to upgrade your movement options as well as adding elemental properties to your attacks the bosses aren't weak to specific weapons but the elements that you attach to your existing weapons since I didn't want to research anything online and I just dived into the game straight it took me most of 0 1 to figure that out I'm such a fake gamer I'm aware and then there's also the addition of cyber elves these little creatures that can do a little bit of everything actually messing with item drops changing enemies into useless Mets giving you health stuff like that and the fancier cyber elves end up being the equivalent of these sub tanks but in order to use them you're required to grind for a crystals like a lot of them this applies for weapon upgrades - the more you use a weapon the stronger it becomes the thing is though zero-one was clearly not designed around that idea playing this game through like normal leads to an incredibly difficult adventure only because there's not many opportunities to grind you need to purposefully take time out of your playthrough to get a bunch of monotonous grinding done with if you take about a half hour or so to sit there and mindlessly grind you're in for a much easier time but that doesn't make for a much better game but once again though once you hit zero two things are so much better the weapons upgrade faster fewer crystals are required to do anything and there's also the addition of forms as a way to modify yourself on a grander scale and that level of customization is a lot of fun the jump in quality between games 1 and 2 is astounding 0-3 would then go on to streamline the cyber elf system even more so giving you a whole lot more freedom of choice like deciding if the benefits that you want apply only when the elf is equipped or you can attach them to yourself permanently the weapon upgrade system was also removed giving you full access to most of your moves right from the beginning along with the forum system going away in favor of a whole lot more customization chips 0-3 is all about playing how you want and as a result it is easily my favorite of the bunch it is so so much fun oh and also there's eReader support what a time that was luckily the Legacy Collection actually maintains the stuff that you would get with an e-reader so no worries Megaman 0-3 purists you can continue to beg for more battlenet work in your life believe me I would do the same thing as 4:04 it is fun as well I think it's better than 0 1 but I kind of feel like after basically perfecting everything in zero 3 they decided to change things just for the sake of it in this one a new weapon in this game is the Z knuckle and it's weird like it allows you to punch enemies but you got to get really up-close with them meaning you're probably gonna get hit but it also allows you to steal their weapon and use it as your own cool and concept but there is next to no instance where that ends up being the preferable option over the Buster or the saber it's just there to be different the cyber elf system was also even more simplified but in my opinion too much so in previous games you have dozens of elves to choose from in this one only one you can upgrade it a whole lot more the previous ones and you can even allocate available points down one of three avenues it's a need idea but it eliminates the freedom that was so well done in zero three however in terms of actual additions there is now a weather system where each stage has two difficulties that depend on how the weather is acting that day but you can also change the weather whenever you want the idea is that if you go through the hard version of a stage you get rewarded with an extra weapon you ever look at a seven-day forecast and think home men Wednesday has a 70% chance of hardmode the level design sometimes ends up suffering as a result this stage here with all the bottomless pits it's not too bad an easy mode but now that it's cloudy you got to deal with a bunch of clouds blocking where those pits are located as well as wind making the jumps across them a whole lot more difficult this is fun Mega Man Zero for like I said is still fun but some of the decisions they made were just a bit strange the way I see it the series consistently got better with each entry and then had a bit of a bumpy conclusion the same can be said for the music - honestly Mega Man games typically have really good music and specifically the soundtracks to zero two and three oh they are awesome the opening stage in zero - the song departure it's so damn good it's one of the best tracks in the franchise it has its ups it has its downs but on the whole the Mega Man Zero series is pretty sweet I gotta say I'm very impressed I clearly missed out by now playing these games earlier there are some rough edges here there specifically with that first game but men when a Mega Man Zero game does something good it is great Mega Man Zero the way I see it is the only Mega Man sub series that blends together a compelling series wide story with really satisfying gameplay so as long as you can get past the let's call them challenges in the first game you are honestly in for a fantastic time but that only covers two-thirds of the package with Mega Man Zero out of the way all you gotta do is press the right button once and then hey look at that a new game next time we're gonna take a look at Mega Man ZX and its sequel ZX Advent Shirley playing and talking about six games back to back isn't gonna burn me out right [Music] you [Music]

Channel: AntDude

Views: 281,454

Rating: 4.9552164 out of 5

Keywords: AntDude, Review, Video Review, Game Review, Mega Man Zero / ZX Legacy Collection, Mega Man Zero / ZX Legacy Collection Review, Mega Man Zero, Mega Man Zero series, Mega Man Zero retrospective, Mega Man Zero review, Mega Man Zero GBA, Mega Man Zero game boy advance, Mega Man Switch, Mega Man PS4, Mega Man XBOX One

Id: FdPzwHaal5M

Length: 15min 44sec (944 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 29 2020