I really like this game but it has some big problems.

We all know how confusing the in-game map is so I won't really bother drilling that point, but what I don't see mentioned that often, and what I think is the biggest flaw of this game is how there's still a mission select screen. Since this is a game with a big open map, then naturally you'd want to just go to the right location and beat the boss or do the side-mission, but first you need to go to one of the save points and choose your mission. You can only choose one mission at the time, so forget about doing side-quests while you're on your way to the main objective. After completing the objective, you still need to go back to the save point to truly finish the mission. In the end, this feels like every other stage select screen from Mega Man games but with an extra step that can be really annoying when you don't even know how to get to the right location in the first place.

Despite that, I still enjoy this game a lot, especially on another playthroughs when I more or less know where to go. As usual with Inti, it has some really good artwork and music and great boss fights. The actual levels are longer compared to these from MMZ, and they're less about fast paced action but that's okay with me. After MMZ4 I enjoyed a more upbeat and relaxed atmosphere of this game. I loved playing with biometals, even when some of them are not always that useful. The post-game content was great, I loved the optional boss fights, and model OX makes me wish this game had proper New Game + mode like other MMZ games.

The Start of a Promising Era

Mega Man ZX is the succesor game to the Zero Saga, from Zero 1 ending in Zero 4. It ditches some of the complexity and inconsistencies of past titles gameplay wise, to a more straightforward experience.

The Biometals are the star of this game and esscencially the evolution of Boss Weapons from past titles. This gives you a whole new weapon and armour. For example if you defeat a boss they'll give you their Biometal which means it's their armor and a weapon. It only applies to 4 of the 8 bosses because the rest gives you the other half of the biometal which is just a new weapon for the base 4 different biometals.

Each Biometal has it's own function, strenghts and weaknesses. For example; HX gives you a big advantage on air and movement in general while lacking in combat. LX is excelent underwater but not as good on ground and so on. Wished they could've been equiped without killing the flow of the game.


I do have to clarify Armours don't work the same as the Mega Man X games where they gave you a pair of overall advantages. ZX only uses, as I said before a specific advantage on a Biometal. So the armour is purely cosmetic and doesn't go beyond being a big indicative of what Biometal you are currently using. Biometals like FX only make use of their special weapons while HX specializes on movement rather than combat.

Believe it or not this game is a Metroidvania. I'm not particullary fond of this genre, just tend to get lost so much and backtracking ain't totally my thing. Navigating the map on this game is a bit of a mess. It separate the areas with letters, in alphabetical order to be exact. Say A-1, and A-2 and that leads to B-1 for example. It's not always the case for latter areas. For example you can only enter Area F through Area B or Area G through D. That seriously messed up with my head. But outside of that the levels are pretty fun to explore because of the movement and level design.
Upgrades like vitality and e-tanks are scattered around the map unlike the Zero Saga, which is a huge plus for exploration.

The story more or less is what you expect. Defeat big bad guy from taking over the world. But it builts from the mainline Mega Man lore. For example, no one knows who Mega Man really is at this point. Everyone with a Biometal calls themselves "Mega Man", introducing it more as a general concept. Zero is barely mentioned here. Still prefer the Zero Saga tone overall, more dark and sinister.

In conclusion, a great Mega Man game that streamlines some mechanics from the Zero Saga. Adding a Metroidvania exploration and elements as a replacement of the linear structure of past title. While not perfect at it's core, it is a great first attempt into a new era.

Holy kino. If you ignore the story drop off, this plays incredibly. It’s also really fun fanservice. I just mention the story as this is a direct sequel to the Zero games, which have a very good overarching narrative. Wouldn’t mention otherwise; playing a Mega Man platformer for the story is like watching porn for the setpieces. But this game is stellar. I don’t really get the complaints about the minimap, if only for the fact that it’s one of the most straightforward Metroidvanias I’ve played, with 3 warps that serve as central hubs so it’s impossible to get lost. Could the map be labeled better? Yeah, but doors are also kind of loudly screaming zone locations at you, so there’s that.

It is as it says on the tin - It is Mega Man Zero and X coming together to form something fantastic.

There is so much fun to be found with the Biometals and not to mention all the neat fanservice found in this game.

Getting the upgrades can feel like a chore at times, but otherwise, this was a fantastic next step from the Zero games.

First Impressions

So the game starts with it all charming and with the very nice late-00s energy, slowly going through the first very easy levels after getting a Mega-Man anime style transformation. And then right as shit hits into high gear, you get treated to a 1-1 translation of Mega Man X's first stage, but this time you fight Zero as the boss, and then after being surrounded you get treated to another anime style transformation where you get to be Zero.

Raw as fuck.

The game itself is incredibly lackluster so far and if it wasn't for this powerful energy this would be in the trash can, with the metroidvania nature of it tacked on at best because it's extensively linear and enemies go down real quickly. Bosses are solid enough but that's where the only strength is. Somehow I'm enjoying it though, so I'm putting it on the shelf.

Mega Max ZX is a disaster. I have to be honest here it's a terrible game. It's most likely the worst designed metroidvania game I have ever played. The map system is confusing and it is a complete chore to get anywhere. I don't even know why it's an open map anyway it doesn't do anything with it at all. Missions and bosses are just assigned to mini sections as it is. Instead of selecting a stage you get the chore of moving several sections before getting to go where you want. Opps wrong way gotta spend the next ten minutes looking for that one door I need to go into.

Gameplay doesn't save it either. It's really easy to start with and doesn't really have good level design (seperate from the map design). Enemies aren't challenging and are more annoying than anything. It's simply better to just dash jump, take the damage, use the invincability frames and continue on. The bosses which are usually a highlight in the zero games are rather uninteresting and dull in design and are extremely simple and easy. Plus there is this really dumb mechanic where every boss has weak points and if you damage it, it weakens your future weapons energy levels. So the best method, at least for me was just using charged gun shots and trying not to hit the weak point. It made for some really boring wait and shoot gameplay when I just wanted to go in with my sword when I feel like I could score a hit.

The quest design is as bland and boring as it gets. Such winning adventures like go get this rock, or pick this flower or deliver this letter ect ect. Except 50% of the quest is simply just getting to the location of where the said item is. Wanna abort a mission because you can only do one at a time. Sure but instead of just stoping you there it brings you back to the last teleporter you used. So dumb just a waste of time to get back where I was. Plus the teleporter save points are in such obtuse placements they never bring you anywhere close to where you actually wanna be. They just drop you off and you gotta travel through the same few locations again and again. There is no interesting story or dialog in quests to make it less cumbersome either. To top it off the rewards are so pathetic it's not even worth doing. The only items worth a damn are the sub tanks and life up grades and those are found within the map. Oh and since this is a DS game let's talk about the second screen. It is worthless. The ONLY use I found for it was in the green form the enemy health and weak points are listed. That's it. Everything else was just a blank screen and or worthless info. You know what would be nice for it to show in a metroidvania game? How about a fucking map! Especially for a game that has such a confusing layout.

Defeating bosses grants you new mega forms or suits. The default one is the zero one and there is four more from the zero games based on characters from that. Visually they look cool but they lack the versitility and damage of the basic zero form to be worth anything. The green one was a bit useful for an extended upwards dash though. The problem is I only found them useful for a select few uses inside the maps and nothing else. To weak for most bosses and lack damage output for normal play. I didn't find a single use for the phantom form in my playthrough at all.

I know these games aren't known for an engaging story but man this one just feels like pointless filler. It's just a redone badly mmz plot except we literally just had that. Characters have no personality and weak no motivations.

If I had to say one postive thing about this game is that the visuals are not terrible. They are not great but passable for a gameboy advance / early DS game. It is not a very good aesthetic IMO though. It was neat to play as a girl mega man though. Although I can see many people restarting the game as the girl becuase after every jump she makes a stupid girly "Eh" sound that quickly becomes grating.

Capcom can do better and there is no reason to play this game over any other mega man game.

* 1er vistazo #62 *
* UUUFFF... aún no puedo creer que haya vuelto a jugar este título después de años... disfrutándolo como si fuera la primera vez xP [aunque, en este caso, empecé primero con Aile y luego con Vent B)].
* A rasgos generales, para alguien que no ha jugado la saga Zero (siendo ZX una secuela directa), puedo decir que la historia misma de esta primera entrega se sostiene bien al punto de brindar un enfoque personal :3.
Aunque lo más seguro es que alguien con un mejor contexto de todo lo disfrutará aún más o.O (hasta donde recuerdo, en la ruta de Vent, aparece una ilustración de Zero y Ciel, además de menciones adicionales sobre esta última).
Respecto a lo "personal", se plantea una problemática que va escalando poco a poco B), entre la decisión de luchar, los eventos que girar alrededor del destino y el Mega Man que estará por encima de todos...
Si bien, en el caso de Serpent, al ser el villano "principal", sin pensarlo mucho... se podría decir que esta primera entrega flaquea en la participación del mismo, pero, una vez conocidas las "verdades" intenciones... x.X.
Se justificó la poca interacción al punto de hacer una comparación con un camino que "podría" tomar Aile o Vent, dando paso a un conflicto mayor que puede ser abordado de distintas formas en futuras secuelas... (F por ZX3).
Para pasar al gameplay, quiero añadir que, en el aspecto de historia, hicieron ameno el jugar las dos rutas, aunque se pasen por los mismos puntos, se brinda información en una que en otra quizá ni se mencionó o.O.
Sobre el control de personaje, resulta bastante llevaderas las opciones brindadas (dejando configurarlo a estilo de cada uno), recordando que, en ciertos enfrentamiento, se pedirá algo de perfección para evitar recibir daño.
En el caso de los biometal que se obtienen en el progreso de la aventura... el más útil de todos es modelo H, debido a que expande más esa versatilidad antes mencionada :3, al punto de esquivar ataques que pueden restar mucha vida.
Sin embargo, los mismos no utilizan del todo la pantalla táctil de la Nintendo DS, al menos ese fue mi caso durante las dos rutas... well... supongo que quizá, al leer el manual, puedo ver alguna función que se me pasó por alto xP.
Lo que sí no tiene perdón alguno es... la ausencia de realizar anotaciones en el mapa que se maneja debido a lo "engorroso" que puede resultar recordar la ubicación de ciertas puertas para seguir con la aventura...
DIGO... ta bien que el mapa no se indique esto último (tampoco te la van a dejar fácil :P), pero al menos se pudo aprovechar una función de la consola misma para sumarle a esa exploración de las distintas áreas :v (como la ciudad).
Uhm... siendo que esta entrega da para extenderse bastante... así que mejor lo dejamos aquí por ahora... aunque...
El hard mode hizo que me dolieran los dedos en la recta final (y ya ni del jefe secreto hablemos)... ME GUSTÓ OwO.

Warning: Alphabet soup

I recently finished the Mega Man Zero series and was surprised by its overall cohesion. Mega Man games are typically formulaic but usually within that formula there is always room for a new collection of enemies, robot weapons and maybe even another playable character to allow for some novelty. In contrast, Zero 1 sets out a design statement that Zero 4 loyally ends with: this is a serialised storytelling character action game starring Zero and you can take it or leave it. From beginning to end, you fight against largely the same foes using largely the same tools alongside allies you've known since the first entry. Each game did provide a different facet to that design goal, but for Zero the name of the game was continuity and it used it to surprising emotional effect.

In contrast, Mega Man ZX comes off as anything but coherent as I started it. All 4 Zero games started with a terse and energetic introduction stage where you’re introduced to the game’s mechanical and narrative beats before being thrown into the stage select screen to start the game proper. Mega Man ZX is more ambitious or rather meandering. You start in a forest stage, followed by slowly completing two tutorial quests in the game’s main hub, before travelling to a secondary hub where you are then teleported to a stage that beat for beat is a replica of Mega Man X’s highway intro stage. Only when that ends are you introduced to your main form, ZX, and allowed to pick the usual four stages. Albeit there is a hitch: you have to manually travel to everyone of those stages as ZX has a large interconnected game world. What followed was probably the most frustrating first two hours of any mega man game I played. I chose Model F’s stage, the fire filled Area G and when I found it, I died enough times to get a game over and subsequently returned to the last place I saved in. When I abandoned that mission, the game reloaded back to just after I acquired my ZX form at the beginning and thus I discovered the most pernicious side of the game: you can only choose one mission at a time and abandoning a mission means reloading to the point just before you took the mission. After the reliable rhythm of the 4 prior Zero games, I was confused by what ZX was trying to be and what Inti-Creates was trying to achieve here.

For my second attempt, after some scouting I chose the frozen Area F as my next mission. Although still difficult it was more managable and I was rewarded with the powers of its boss: Model L, based off of Leviathan from Zero. ZX does not reward individual weapons but new forms that are practically separate characters. One of Model L’s unique abilities are her ice infused attacks. Back in the main hub, there was a running fountain and using Model L, I froze it, platformed over it to a hidden alcove that drained the fountain, revealing a save/transporter point that was conveniently right beside another mission. After choosing and beating that mission, I unlocked Model H, whose attacks were wind infused. I gave Area G another try and recalling the elemental triangle of prior Zero games, I was able to use Model H to put out the fires all over the stage and swiftly beat the boss.

Those first few hours of ZX may have been frustrating, but the next hour clicked with me. It was when I realised that ZX was not really a mega man favoured metroidvania but instead a classic Mega Man game spread out across an open world.

One of my favourite things about classic Mega Man games is their capacity for personalised playthroughs. How I choose the order in which I defeat robot masters gives each stage so many permutations that can change my relationship to it. Flash Man’s stage in Mega Man 2 can either be an adrenaline rush unlike anything else in the series or a more leisurely jaunt depending on whether I got time stopper. It gives the series an addicting quality of mapping out what sort of route I’ll take that is in many ways separate to the main gameplay loop. How Mega Man ZX builds upon this is by making that decision making progress you’d usually make on the stage select screen much of the open world you’ll traverse. As debilitating as the single mission element is, it does encourage scouting ahead and familiarising yourself with the world and where its mission-based stages are. Whilst the non-mission areas are generally less difficult than their mission counterparts, their enemy and hazard placement in addition to the lives system provides enough friction to make this sort of pathfinding meaningful and inevitably satisfying when you confidently finish a mission making optimal use of teleport and save points. You’re always encouraged to think not just of the mission but how it relates to the world as a whole and the forms further reinforce that.

Simply going by the main stages, there are an additional 4 forms you can acquire in additional to the basic ZX form you start with. Each form however is a character in and of itself, showing the mechanical nuance and utility Inti-Creates put into Zero’s basic toolset. Model H is the star of the show for me. Its air dash from the X games can be used in conjunction with ground dashes and aerial slashes that don’t halt movement to rush with kinetic momentum that put most metroidvania double jumps and dashes to shame. Yet its telling that although they come up short, the other models still hold up well on their own. Model L provides graceful swimming controls and fluidity in a franchise that’s been reluctant to commit to either with a trident whirl that both shreds enemies and doesn’t halt underwater movement. Model FX in contrast is a lot less mobile than either of those two, grounding you in place whenever you fire projectiles. The upside is that he is a living cannon that can fire his empowered lemons vertically in addition to horizontally and the pattern of his bullets can be easily shaped by the player. Really the only model that stumbles somewhat is Model P whose excellent visual design does not make up for his inconveniently angled kunai throws and near useless ceiling attachment. Poor Phantom. This synthesis between the varied robot weapons of old and the depth of a small set of tools a la Zero results in the most varied and fun to use set of abilities in the whole franchise. I loved learning the ins and out of each biometal and how I could use both to traverse the world more efficiently and interact with stages in unique ways, such as using Model F to break the ice blocks in Area H or in my case outright skipping chunks of Area I through careful gliding with Model H.

All of this takes place in a game whose presentation is crisp and sparkling. The worn industrial ruins and muted natural environs of the Zero games have been exchanged for a world that is vibrant in every sense of the world, both technically and artistically. Area A’s glades of deep green and blue have a pronounced naturalism with their expert use of backgrounds and foregrounds. The morning touched purples and blues of Area C infuse the game’s main hub with a vibrancy and activity that’s its scattered npc sprites otherwise can’t. The bright pixel cityscapes of Area G once you clear out the fires. The beauty of Area F’s auroras and Area L’s coral depths. The moody ambience of Area I’s rain soaked wastelands or Area D’s highway. Despite their unimaginative names, the areas of ZX are some of the most artistically varied and gorgeous in the entire series. Whether its because the increased specs of the NDS or the opportunities presented by a world set centuries after Zero, ZX aesthetic has a vibrancy to it that makes it my favourite in the series after X4. I haven’t talked much about the story, because in all honesty there is not much interesting to talk about, but one underlying implication I did enjoy was that the beauty of the world I was exploring was in a sense a reward for Zero’s actions centuries ago. In that regard, ZX feels like the highpoint of these games’ environmentalism.

I came out of ZX in much higher spirits than I did coming in. Its flaws are as deep as its narrative is not. Yet in spite of its jagged edges, it is surprisingly holistic in its design offering me something I didn’t know I wanted: a Mega Man game that integrated the route planning I enjoyed so much into the act of play of one of the best looking, best sounding, best playing games in the franchise. It is a high point of Inti-Creates line of mega man games and one I look forward to returning to.

PLAYED VIA ZERO/ZX COLLECTION ON NINTENDO SWITCH

Mega Man ZX is a game that takes place 100 years after the events of the Mega Man Zero series, which is a little weird because Zero and the Four Guardians get referred to as "ancient heroes" when 100 years isn't that long ago but then again people in the Star Wars universe just forgot Jedi existed after a mere 20 years so i guess it's not that unbelievable. Anyways, the moment to moment gameplay of Mega Man ZX is very fun, which is to be expected. Nice fluid controls make moving around and shooting things feel very nice and it somehow feels even more refined than Zero 4 in that aspect. New to this series is the ability to change forms because this game is just Mega Man power-rangers. You get to pick between a male and female protagonists (for the record, i went with Alie because i'm pretty sure this is one of two times where the franchise called Mega Man has a female protagonist) and over the course of the game, you get to merge with Zero, X and the Four Guardians in fun power ranger forms......except for the part where honestly, most of the froms that weren't ZX form just weren't that fun. HX form is neat because you get double jumps and air dashes and LX form is hilarious to obliterate one specific boss but other than that, there's no real reason to use the other forms. Yes you could use them to exploit boss weakness but charge shot from ZX was just the better solution. Compared to Zero 4's EX Weapons, this is definitely a step in the lower direction. At least the bosses themselves were still pretty fun to fight and combined with the decent level design, it made for a pretty good time.

....so why am i giving the game a 6/10? Because one element legitimately hinders this game to warrant it: the Metroidvania design. Metroidvanias are fun but an important aspect of them is a good map screen. This is subjective but while some people love getting lost in Metroidvanias, i don't. Exploring is good but if it feels like i'm just running in circles, that's not a good thing. Which is the problem with this game. Do me a favor and look up the Mega Man ZX map and you will see how it is the worst thing. The worst part about said map is that the position of the areas don't even line up with where they actually are so it's all misleading. And then we need to talk about how despite being structured like a Metroidvania, the progression isn't. The progression is still the standard Mega Man deal except this time you have to physically make your way to where the levels actually are. You're not exploring in this Mega Man Metroidvania, you are simply taking the long way around and it does not help that you are not at all told where the areas you need to go to actually are. I had to use a guide to figure out where everything was located and to be honest, you probably will too after taking one look at that atrocious map screen.

Mega Man ZX is alright. It honestly fails at being a Metroidvania but at least the moment to moment gameplay is good enough to make up for it and this is the one and only time you'll ever see me use the "good x but bad y" way of describing something maybe i should just deduct another point and call the game bad.

Mega Man ZX annoys me. I desperately wanted to like this game more than I ended up liking it. But I find its map implementation to be one of the worst I've ever seen in a metroidvania. In fact, it's not even a proper metroidvania; its map handles things in a very strange way. And the backtracking is unbearable, the areas have an extremely confusing layout and some of the worst padding I've ever seen in a game.

Something that should last two, maybe three hours, ends up lasting seven because the game developers either hate the players or disregard their free time.

Even the dialogue and the distance you have to travel for mundane things within the ship are a huge time sink. The sub tank in the fire stage is one of the biggest absurdities I've seen in a game of this style. I literally gave up trying to get the last sub tank after that one because it is a even bigger waste of your time.

The game having three different items to collect also makes the rare HP healing items too scarce. The implementation of currency in this game is simply bizarre and very unnecessary. With the amount of useless space this game has, it would have been easier to include armor upgrades there instead of the bizarre system of final strike on bosses.

And I say all this sadly, because I really wanted to like this game. It has a wonderful visual style (better than whatever the fuck they were trying on Megaman Zero), the armors themselves have great designs (although I'm annoyed they baited and switched with X's armor), and the gameplay itself is the enjoyable Megaman X gameplay as always. I honestly hope they've fixed at least some of this in ZX.

Furthermore, if you're going to make a horrendous map like this, it's better to do it like in the classic series and X. You select a stage and that's it. Better than a half-assed attempt of a Metroidvania. Furthermore, this lives system, reminiscent of the old Mega Man system, doesn't even make sense in a game trying to be a faux-metroidvania

Anyway, the formula of selecting a stage and it being just the right size has been repeated for over 20 games for a very simple reason: IT JUST WORKS, DAMMIT!

Um jogo muito FODA. É realmente impressionante os gráficos e as cutscenes desse jogo que é do Nintendo DS, a jogabilidade é melhor que a de Mega Man Zero e o level design agrada muito também. A ideia de ter Biometals dos guardiões da série MMZ é muito boa.

Pra mim o único ponto negativo é o metroidvania. Sinceramente, não sou fan de metroidvania em um geral, mas é nítido que aqui eles não souberam tão bem como aplicar o metroidvania, dava pra ter feito melhor sabe, o mapa não é tão intuitivo quanto deveria ser e no início você fica bem confuso em qual áreas você tem disponível para acessar. Mas esse ponto não estraga um jogo, é apenas um ponto negativo que tive que ressaltar.

Pretty good game. The metroidvania structure really doesn't work, and it's compounded by that wack ass map. Otherwise, the game is pretty fun, and I love the OST. Biometal transformations are a cool concept, but you'll likely just end up using model ZX and model H (and model L in the water) all the time. As usual, Inti-creates' bosses continued their steady increase in quality, and at this point, you have some of the best bosses in the Mega Man franchise (though that's not a very high bar when it comes to classic MM and MMX). Story isn't as cool as it was in the Zero series, though.

Oh, and Model Ox is the coolest armor/upgrade in the entire franchise. Bar fucking none.

Replaying as an adult via the Mega Man Zero/ZX Collection on Switch

I didn't really remember much about this game from my 16-year-old playthrough. My only solid memory was "a spinoff of MMZ that was not quite as good".

Going into this game with that thought in mind, I was very surprised when the opening was very strong. The story of MMZX involves a group of humans who are able to equip biometals to basically become the legendary reploid warriors whom those biometals are derived from. I'm on board with this new direction the story takes, though I'd like it if there was more explanation about what happened to all the original characters that these biometals come from. Why are they all gone, how did they get turned into biometals (if it is actually them in there), who changed them/made the biometals in their images? These questions are not answered in any way and we are expected to just play the game. This is fine, but would have been a lot cooler if there was some rationale for it. In MMZ we weren't given a whole lot of history but the whole game is built upon the concept of the original X storyline existing, even if most of MMZ's historical detail takes place in the years (centuries) after X8 and before Z1.

Back to ZX.
I think that this game has some very good level design and most of the bosses are pretty fun and challenging! I really enjoyed the soundtrack in this one as well, feeling very faithful to a MMX style of music instead the much thinner rock-style soundtracks that were featured in the MMZ games.

You start out just playing as X (basically) which was a welcome nostalgia trip after playing 4 games as a modernized Zero. The redesign for X looks very good and you get the double charge shot (the best addition to the Mega Man series since the charge shot itself) right off the bat. Gameplay is quick and your character feels powerful. You play as X for a bit until you take over the Z biometal and I must unfortunately say that it feels like a downgrade. The MMZ series has excellent melee/ranged hybrid gameplay and ZX brings that in almost 1:1, but you feel so much more powerful when you're playing as X than when you get the Z biometal too. I don't understand what the point of saying that the metals fused and that now you are ZX when you play exactly like Zero in the previous 4 games. I feel like they should have allowed you to switch between being X and the modernized Zero from MMZ.

You earn more biometals as you defeat bosses and they are all based on the "Guardians of Master X" from MMZ. This is a great concept. Everyone wants to play as the bosses they defeat, especially if they are characters that have come up multiple times throughout the previous series' run. I believe this is one of the reasons that Mega Man has always felt so good. It gives you a bit of the power of the enemy that was so powerful themselves. This is the ultimate form of that, you get to play as those characters fully! Except that the translation of those characters from bosses to playable is really quite pathetic.

- Fefnir's main shot is pretty strong for a non-charged attack and his charged attack is powerful, but you can't move while he shoots (something that is detrimental in an action game that requires a lot of quick and precise reflexes) and his charged shot has a very limited range.
- Phantom is cool but he only has one attack, the kunai storm, which isn't terribly useful for anything but regular enemies. He can stick to the ceiling too but this is entirely just a novelty and is never actually necessary or even beneficial in any way.
- Leviathan is completely useless outside of the water and, even then is only good for traversal. This form's combat is either a single swing on the ground or a spinning attack when you are swimming. Both of these attacks stop your movement and neither have any of the range that you'd expect from a person using a staff as a weapon. Her charged attack creates a platform of ice. This "attack" is useless everywhere except for in 2 water levels and even then is just to get a meaningless powerup.
- Harpuia is the only form that is actually enjoyable to use. He can dash in the air and straight up, his sword swings have a wide area of effect, and his charged attack stuns a lot of enemies.

The main issue with this game is that it wants to be open-world, kind of like a metroidvania, but it is cumbersome and pointless to explore. It's pointless because if you just follow the story you'll get to every area eventually, so you might as well just go where the game tells you. Exploration could have been rewarded by putting a transerver (mission start/save point) at the beginning of each area. Then you could explore for fun, find a new area, and then start the mission that is in that area. Or they could have just auto-started the mission when you got there if it was available.

It's cumbersome because there is no real map, just a screen that shows you the "areas" and which one you're in. No way to tell how to get from one area to another and no way to tell which areas are connected to which. This is especially confusing because the areas are just letter-named, but they don't make sense. Areas A, B, C, and D are connected in a straightforward manner. But area E is found through Area C, not Area D. Going through area E gets you to I. Going through H gets you to L. None of it makes any sense at all.

The other issue is the lack of transervers which also act as warp points. As said above, there should have been one at the beginning of each area so you could conveniently get back when you needed to and so you could easily start missions for the corresponding area when you arrived there.

Overall, MMZX was fun but has a lot of problems that I really don't feel should have been there. Issues which, while not exactly terrible, significantly affected my enjoyment of the game, and even my desire to pick it up and finish it. Better than MMZ4 but below every other game in this series.

On to the final game!

literally everything about this game is good besides the level progression, and it's such a big problem that it almost ruins everything else. the levels themselves are fine but the way they're strung together isn't. they're interconnected but not in ways that are helpful, also the map is such a mess, idk how to describe it bc i dont even know how to read it, you start in A-1 and then get to A-2 until you're in B-1 so you're like oh they are connected alphabetically but then you're suddenly in F-1 from B-3 and it doesn't connect in any way to E-anything or G-anything and the map tells you that if you go left from B-2 you get to C-1 but really if you go left you STAY in B-2 and if you go RIGHT you reach C-1 so seriously just look at a complete map online and a walkthrough so you don't have to figure this shit out yourself and then the game becomes good because you get to play it like a regular mega man game. i'm not against a mega man metroidvania (i'd actually love to see another attempt) but this is possibly the worst attempt at metroidvania map design i've ever seen in my life. but also you can basically play as the guardians from the zero games and playing as harpuia is fucking sick

Como maluco que gosta de desafios, eu acho esse jogo muito casual.

Não sei se foi de propósito, ou o modelo ZX é quebrado, porque ele mata qualquer chefe em menos de 10 segundos. Nenhum chefe me proporcionou um real desafio, todos eu pulava e batia com a espada giratória. Parece até que estou fazendo speedrun, mas não, isso acontece com qualquer coisa desse jogo, ninguém tanka esse ataque, não sinto interesse nenhum em usar os outros modelos, porque o ZX já proporciona tudo que eu preciso.

A coisa que eu mais gosto aqui, é a OST, que faz sua obrigação como um megaman, e se você também gosta dela, recomendo procurar pelo "ZX Tunes" que deixa até as mais fracas, em um banger. O que adoro também são os gráficos, tudo nesse jogo é bonitinho, des de inimigos ao cenário, a pixel art do ds nunca foi tão linda quanto aqui.

A maior controversa desse jogo é o mapa, mas é só olhar para o menu do jogo que ele indica todos os caminhos para acessar tal área, então preste atenção no jogo da próxima vez.

Capcom's attempt at metroidvania but they apparently didn't understand how metroidvanias work. In this game rather than having everything connected physically, it's comprised of a bunch of separate areas with doors that teleport you between them. So you spend most of your time looking for these doors and backing out of them until you find the one that takes you where you needed to go. You can bring up a 'map' which is just a bunch of Scrabble tiles suspended on a black background with lines drawn between them. The doors' actual locations are not marked nor where they lead to.