El primero es un juego muy corto, para pasártelo rápido y repasártelo intentando sacar mejor puntuación.
El segundo es más largo y exigente, pero tiene unos momentazos con sus peleas en el aire, duelos contra personajes propios, misiones más variadas...
Sé que no será para gusto de todos, pero a mí me marcó mucho en cómo se debería sentir una pelea en gravedad cero o en el aire. Me ha hecho sentir la velocidad y la importancia del posicionamiento al estar flotando. "High Speed Robot Action" con creces.
Tengo muchas ganas de coger un día y rejugarme las escenas de los aviones y del asalto a la fortaleza.

Me han encantado y los recomiendo mucho.
Si no fuera de Konami, me tentaría mucho a comprarme el nuevo port a PC para rejugarlo.

My name is Zone of the Enders: the 2nd Runner and I have cable.

And my name is Zone of the Enders, and I have DirectTV.

The difference between my enjoyment of the two legendary Kojima-led mecha games is staggering and quite unfortunate. The first ZoE is a fairly rudimentary mech game, controlling and playing out almost as if it released in arcades. Controls are basic, enemies are easy to defeat, and the bosses are pretty one note "find the weakspot" encounters with some unique designs. Voice acting/localization was refreshingly cringe and there was almost no plot, but I had a pretty damn good time piloting a mech and fulfilling my power fantasy of smashing big ol' robots to bits. The plot was basically driven by "go here and do this" for the sole reason of defeating the bad guys and moving on to the next objective, but that was... okay? I didn't find anything really wrong with this game other than that it was milquetoast in its narrative ambition. For a game that came out gee, twenty-two years ago, it controlled quite intuitively when factoring in the amount of movement necessary to make it fun.

The 2nd Runner on the other hand felt like a nightmare I couldn't wake up from... which is unfortunate because it was visually beautiful with the touched up HD graphics and had a somewhat understandable plot, great codec-esque conversations, and excellently animated cutscenes. Outside of that though? The game felt like a chore and a half to actually play, and not an easy chore like taking out the garbage. Instead it was like taking a toothbrush to clean your entire home by hand. Levels were... unique in the least enjoyable ways, three were of note. The first in which you have to follow your AI's directions from beginning to end otherwise you would be bombarded by offscreen cannons and have to start all the way back at the beginning. A second one in which you were tasked with leading a small squadron of mechs across a plateau with enemy forces that outnumbered yours by fifty to one, with you serving as the sole medic of all of your forces. And a third which saw you have to destroy five cruisers that each had anti-air rounds and waves upon waves upon waves of enemy forces respawning between them. These don't sound too bad in theory, but in practice played out like eating pounds of molasses with a fork. Each level went on too long, there were far too many enemies and respawning waves, and the in game map just kinda sucked. I could go on but it would be moot, the bottom line is that even if the narrative was far superior and the levels themselves were designed better (as in linear versus zone-based missions from the first game,) it felt far worse to play.

Bosses in the 2nd Runner were all gimmicks too, which as a fan of Metal Gear Solid isn't a shocker to get out of Kojima Productions but there wasn't even a modicum of similarity in how any two bosses were defeated. I don't really understand how a game can rely on a certain style of play to defeat its world enemies and then throw it out come boss time... and there's quite a few bosses. Red Letter Media had a great trope with the "No-one's ever really gone" meme with the Star Wars sequels, and it rings true with ZoE (especially the second game.) Bosses don't die, you kill them once and they'll reappear an hour later, that just makes each fight feel frivalous and even when the credits rolled I couldn't be sure that the boss I'd just beaten three times was really dead. I'm also used to tough bosses, and my favorite boss fight of all time (the ultimate boss fight of DMC3) is/was rather difficult but it felt fair if you understood the enemy timing and combo's. In ZoE2, the final boss just feels cheap and unenjoyable with the way that they block every attack unless you have the cognizance to use the correct one that hadn't been asked by the game to use until said engagement. It just felt anticlimactic, a final boss should use the summation of skills learned from your runtime with the game, not a surprise of mechanic coupled with perfect timing.

I was happy to start this collection and now I'm happier to be done with it. I'm also a little dejected that I haven't found that mech game that will click for me despite so many mecha anime being really dang cool. I can't recommend Zone of the Enders unless you're a fan of Kojima Productions or a sucker for pain.