When Ciel resurrects Zero in that abandoned underground laboratory, her circumstances are at their most dire.

The dwindling population of reploids live under the threat of immediate genocide they remain powerless to impede; a massive energy shortage crisis looms in the horizon, promising to bring about mass apocalypse. Heck, right before Zero awakens, Ciel can do nothing but watch as her lapse of judgment continues to befell her, as all her companions are mercilessly slaughtered, slayed and sacrificed before her eyes, leaving her as the last one standing. Zero is quite literally her last hope at achieving world peace.

When Zero offers assistance towards Ciel's plight, the situation is far, far worse than one might think.

The resistance base is restrictive and compact; the rebellion's continuously failing efforts to fight back against the constant onslaught of vicious enemy assault have shrunken their numbers and their territory. They are constricted, trapped, and foolishly stepping foot outside the borderlines of the base practically guarantees instant death. This gives the base and its surrounding areas where missions take place a sense of connection, establishing the connective tissue that forms Mega Man Zero's worldbuilding. It's fittingly small in size to encompass the dire situation and lack of breathing room faced by the resistance, emphasising the importance of Zero's mission - should he fail, even this morsel of ground the resistance occupies will crumble underneath the tremendous pressure.

When Zero emerges from a century of cryogenic sleep without the memories of his past, its almost as if a toddler was plunged into a battle against trained soldiers.

At the beginning of Mega Man Zero, Zero is seemingly just as powerless as the Reploids he's tasked with defending. Every slash of the saber is heaved with mounds of great effort, and every bullet of the buster feels as if they barely leave a dent against the powerful adversaries Zero faces. This induces a sense of brutality within the gameplay, as every enemy is relentless and unforgiving, and every boss fight serves as an immovable barricade. This game wants you to feel the struggle the resistance is coping with in their uphill battle, and that is evident in how difficult this game is compared to every other entry in the series.

However, with every small victory Zero and the player steal from the jaws of defeat, the paradigm of the war begins to shift in the resistance's favour ever so slightly.

The previously barren corridors of the resistance base slowly grows in numbers as Zero saves each and every one of them from peril, providing a sense of accomplishment and proving your efforts weren't meaningless. But more importantly, every successful mission gradually imbues a glimmer of hope - Zero's abilities and swordsmanship gradually return to him as the game progresses, and soon enough, he's the unstoppable force that legends spoke of, a shining beacon of hope that is pivotal to the growing numbers of the resistance. Previously daunting obstacles are now taken care of in a few slashes, and the bosses that once terrified you are now seen as a fair challenge. Still an arduous task that requires great hardship and sheer will to overcome, but one that can be handled painlessly if the player has mastered the gameplay loop of Mega Man Zero. Combined with the fluidity of Zero's movement and the satisfaction of executing masterful slashes against the incoming horde of enemies, the latter half of the game injects a subtle feel-good factor within the player. Just like the resistance, they will begin to believe that maybe, just maybe, they can fully overcome the harrowing obstacles laid before them and emerge victorious.

Even when Zero finally infiltrates Neo Arcadia and deals the critical slash that eliminates the threat of Copy X, victory is yet to be ascertain - the looming threat the energy shortage crisis still dances dangerously on the brink, and while the resistance can rest easy for the moment, they still have the rest of the world to reclaim from the oppression of Neo Arcadia. With Zero leading the charge, though, they have someone to look towards.

Total victory may be far off reach for now; but the resistance are slowly beginning to fight back.

This shit is better than Sonic Forces and it's not even close LMAO

Final score: 8/10
Focus: The overall tone of Mega Man Zero and how it complements the narrative and difficulty of the gameplay.

So according to the manual, Pulseman the character only exists because a scientist got so horny for a literal e-girl that he digitised himself so he could bang her.

90s Japan was wiiiiiiiiild-

Pulseman's game design is especially interesting to me - its visual style effectively harmonises both reality and cyberspace as you flip-flop your way past this dazzling palette of vibrant colours that aims to stimulate your brain at every given moment. The backgrounds are astonishingly filled to the brim with detail, with the external environments depicting bright, colourful casinos and skylines, as well as glittering coral caves; while the digital environments have a more abstract feel to them, sometimes depicting a trippy rotating group of trees, and sometimes just displays eerie, pitch black environments occasionally illuminated by abstract shapes that constantly shift in hues. Towards the end of the game, Pulseman really leans into its futuristic, cyberspace aesthetic by thrusting you into the setting of a video game (complete with a credit count!), and then the constantly flickering coloured scanlines of a CRT, and finally plunges you into an area consisting of nothing but pure static at the beginning of the final fight.

Even the level design does a great job distinguishing the blend of synthetic and natural environments, with real environments utilising real objects with uneven terrain and things such as cameras, tree branches and cacti that you can platform on. These areas encourage players to use Pulseman's natural speed and jump to reach the goal.

On the other hand, cyberspace areas take advantage of, well, artificial terrain, with the level design being incredibly blocky and rigid, standardised as a digitalised setting would realistically feel. In these areas, players are instead incentivised to interact with their environment using all of Pulseman's artificial Voltteccer attack to traverse the narrow mazes scattered throughout the digital landscape. This sort of synchronised game design is a sight for sore eyes in modern gaming, especially with Pokemon, so to see Game Freak pull it off in 1994 is particularly astounding.

Of course, this being a 90s platformer, players can always opt to forgo the thematic significance of Pulseman's moveset and instead learn to master the surprisingly intricate mechanics laid within. By double-tapping the left/right directional keys, Pulseman does a dash forwards. More important than the dash itself is the pulse charge that is generated from it, allowing players to immediately get off a Slash Arrow or Voltteccer as soon as their dash animation ends. This little quirk allows for a significant amount of movement optimisation, giving players the chance to think outside the box and find opportunities to use their dashes and Voltteccers optimally to beat the level in the most stylish, fastest way possible. Much like the classic Sonic games, Pulseman movement has a low skill floor and a high skill ceiling, making full mastery of the game's ins and outs satisfactory.

However, while the game's visuals push the boundaries of the Genesis' hardware, perhaps it was a bit too ambitious for its own good. I'm not sure if its just my emulator, but I noticed a concerning number of frame drops throughout my playthrough when a lot is happening on the screen, which alongside the fact that I can accidentally clip through certain assets (mainly the gears in the Thailand level) tells me that the game could've used a bit more polish.

Between this and Drill Dozer, I find it extremely disappointing how Game Freak now chooses to churn out shitty quality Pokemon games on a yearly basis rather than actual good games. We may never get a game like Pulseman ever again, but honestly? I'm perfectly content with that.

Final score: 9/10
(Partial) Focus: The synchronicity between reality and digital environments in Pulseman's visual design, level design and movement.