Wow, talk about a major step back from the previous entry.

Story took some very odd directions to the point that I didn't really anything in particular when the credits rolled and the A-Trans system was cool at first glance, until I realized you only really use them to look for upgrades.

Overall, a very weird and, in some ways, unsatisfying way to cap off the Zero/ZX series.

Fixes the most obvious and problematic flaw of the previous game: the horrendous navigation. Just for that, it's immediately better than ZX, but honestly, not by much. Clearly, it's a huge mistake to make the protagonist transform into the bosses.

Their uses are very limited, and most of them are simply poorly controlled or sometimes even impossible, which for a Mega Man game is a crime. One of the main things about these games is how good it feels to control the character. Furthermore, it reuses a lot from the previous game like the armors and level design, although it doesn't have the atrocious backtracking of the previous game, it's also not the most inspired. Because of this, power-ups and abilities have never been as situational as in this game. Some things still don't make sense, like the life system in a game with this structure, and of course, the plethora of one-way teleports that the game doesn't save if you get a game over.

The game's boss collection is also quite hit or miss, with some taken from the previous game and the new ones being inconsistent in quality.

Having played practically all of the Inti Creates Mega Man games, I can safely say that they never quite understood what made the old games so fun and special to replay. I find myself replaying very few of their games (maybe Zero 2, Zero 3, and MM10) while I could replay several classic Mega Man games from 1-8 and MMX from 1 to 6.

Some of the things that stand out to me most clearly to say they don't quite get it is putting a metroidvania map in a franchise that never needed it to have great and enjoyable level design. Furthermore, the map itself is bad and easily ranks among the worst among several metroidvanias I've played. Additionally, the power-ups you gain after each boss in the Inti Creates MM games, especially the Zero/ZX series, range from mediocre to useless. In X4, for example, you can use Zero, and I found the balance there much better.

Moreover, this format of mundane and repetitive side quests, something that tries to function for hours like an RPG, and grinding in general for E-Crystals don't fit the style of game that Mega Man aims to be. At least in this regard, ZXA is more tolerable compared to its predecessor. (I wasn't required to complete a gigantic and unbearable quest chain to obtain the last sub-tank).

Even in the games I consider very good (Zero 2 and Zero 3), I still don't think they perfectly realize what was good about the other games.

For me, Mega Man 11 is much better than any game from this team, and I prefer that Capcom continue with an in-house solution if they want to make other games in the series in the future.

Not good. It was more consistent qualitywise than ZX. The original ZX had higher highs but also lower lows. The constantly getting lost and having to backtrack all the times especially held the original back. And there were some pretty frustrating stages in that game too.
In Advent the stages aren’t great either but at least I am not getting lost constantly and I don’t have to backtrack all the time like in the previous game.
But yeah, the stages were pretty forgettable and bland. They weren’t frustrating or anything though for the most part. Just boring.
For this reason, I did not feel like revisiting stages and doing quests.

Then we have the models. First of all, there are way too many models. Like 15? With half of them being so clunky that they are pretty much unusable save for some very specific niches. One model is so fucking big that he fills half of the screen. Most of these clunky models do have a use though. Usually they can break some type of obstacle or interact with specific objecs. But that meant that you just have to switch back and forth constantly to get past these obstacles, which got old pretty quickly.
I would have prefered to get more upgrades/attacks to your models as rewards for bosses instead of a whole new form. Now all forms just perform some niche and that’s all that you’re using them for. And the humanoid forms pretty much make the big bulky forms obsolete since they are way easier to control.

The story was pretty uninteresting too and I just got annoyed at the constant story interruptions while I was playing a stage for the first time. And for some reason the game makes you automatically transform back to Model A for every story bit and speaking to NPCs, as well as when interacting with some objects like warp points.

Advent just isn’t that interesting to play and has a tad too many annoyances to be a good game.

I definitely left the game liking it more this time. However, gonna be up front there are serious problems I have. Switching to model A automatically for every boss and warp station you activate slows a LOT down. Pseudoroids are slow, with limited as hell use once you get the biometals. Since the story is part of a very incomplete whole, it’s basically gibberish. And due to this the other four Mega Men in the story feel like totally wasted antagonists, who you literally only fight once. Pseudoroids don’t get enough gameplay use and are mostly slow and cumbersome to use. The voice acting is on the tier of X7, where it’s dragging down an already bad story. I don’t play Mega Man for the story, but when you throw a heavily voiced story at me, and it’s bad, I’m calling it out. ZX worked because it really was just a fanservice bomb, and the plot held no weight. Not so much the case here. However, the game’s fun as hell. It’s still fun to explore and control, though the way the Metroidvania aspects have been heavily stepped back is very odd to me? Was this not ZX’s entire thing? Ashe is especially fun to use; you can do some damn nasty tricks with the laser shot. Soundtrack is fun, and stage design is good as well, sometimes mandating you use powers you previously gained, so it does benefit from the linearity. There’s potential here, and a good deal hits, but a good deal also doesn’t. I’m glad quests aren’t labeled as missions though, holy shit. Found myself doing far less of them but that’s a vital QoL change. Generally, this feels less like a step forward or backward but moreso a sideways one. I just happened to click more with what ZX did than its sequel. Prometheus and Pandora are shining gems amidst the story, but again, they’re part of an unfinished narrative, so kinda punished for giving a damn lol.

The Second Part of a Trilogy that Never Came to a Conclusion

Last canonical entry in the mainline series, huh. Expected a bit more out of this game just for being the very last one, but it's alright.

It's the direct sequel to Mega Man ZX, though it doesn't feature the old protagonists. Instead we take control of either Ashe (Female Protagonist) or Grey (Male Protagonist).

The main difference I quickly noticed is this game is barely a Metroidvania, even though it features a map. Most of the levels are linear or are very easy to navigate. There are still some questionable decisions like making a teleporter being the only method to travel to a remote zone, not conected in any way to the main map.

In all honesty I would have liked a more realised Metroidvania styled map, since ZX did it very poorly. I just didn't like the execution. But I could've worked in this one if fixed. The map in this game comes up as a middle ground that doesn't satisfy me personally.

Biometals are back in this game. Their use is simplified from ZX, we defeat a boss, we get his/her Biometal without having to collect the other half. As you may expect most of them are fulfill a specific role, for a specific use case. The one you'll probably using the most is Model A (Based on Axl from the X Series, yeah him). It's the default Biometal you get at the start of the game and it's solid. There are two types of Biometals in this game:

Pseudoroid: These Biometals are obtained after defeating a boss that aren't human. Based on animals for the most part, easy to spot the difference between this and the "Model" bosses.

Models: These Biometals are obtained after defeating a boss that resembles a human. Model L, H you name it.

Main differences is that the Pseudoroids are pretty useless outside of certain situations. You can use them as usual but they won't be an optimal option for anything compared to the models, some are pretty big, slow or very gimmicky compared to the Models which are the same as in ZX. Pseudoroid end up being nothing but filler by the end.

The story again, is nothing to write home about. Big evil man wants to reset the world nonesense, again. I did liked some of the new characters though.

So, in short. More ZX. Expanded but changed some of it's fundation, mainly the map not being structured as a Metroidvania. And for being the last game in the series, is a bit disappointing for not trying to stick out more. I do think ZX even with it's flaws, is a bit better and special than this one.