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.

At first I thought I was going to love this game. Right from the start there were so many ways to go. It was crazy. I never expected that from a Mega Man game. And it had a great soundtrack to boot.
But that initial amazement quickly faded and turned into frustration. The idea of an interconnected world is cool but I don’t think it adds anything really. Just frustration on how to get to places. And Jesus Christ, that mini-map is so fucking bad. It’s not rare that when you want to go to an area that’s to the left on your minimap that you have to walk to the right to get there and vice versa. It’s super confusing and it baffles me that the devs thought this was a good idea.

Then you have the mission system. Only being able to take on one mission was annoying since it’s impossible to tell where you have to go to do this mission if you haven’t visited the area before. So it could be either in the top-left, top-right, bottom-left or bottom-right of the world map. Good luck figuring out where you have to go. The two pieces of biometal were usually close together on the world map though but still it was a huge pain in the ass to take on a mission and then go to the wrong section of the world map. Especially when you decide to go deep in the wrong section and then find out there’s nothing there at the end just because you didn’t start the proper mission.

As for the models, I thought they were pretty cool at first but I started to sour on them as time went on. The first model I got was the HX one which I thought was a great addition to my kit and I expected the other models to be of similar usefulness. However, the other models paled in comparison to the HX model and I ended up just using the HX model for the most part. ZX is fine with both a short-range and long-range attack and FX is useful for when you want extreme long-range. LX and PX are just ass. It’s just that HX has such great mobility and has a very strong boss killer attack too.

Then there’s the bosses. They weren’t that great. I especially remember hating the monkey boss. That Anglerfish boss was a cool idea though.

The same goes for the stages. Some were alright, others I hated. Fuck that Lava stage.

It such a shame that I had a very good first impression with this game but it just didn’t hold up. To be fair, the game isn’t terrible but I sure was glad to be done with it by the time I beat the final boss.

Not a bad game at all. I prefer Zero 3, but this one is a good second place.
I am very happy that rank does not affect anything anymore because that was one of the things I truly disliked about Zero 2 and 3. So that means I allowed myself to take my time in the stages, as well as use the Cyber-Elf system again in this game without feeling bad because I might lose out on EX-skills.
They did simplify the Cyber-Elf system somewhat in Zero 4. Now there is just one Cyber-Elf which you can upgrade and who can grant you many benefits. I actually liked what they did with it. In the other Zero games you had loads and loads of Cyber-Elves where end up only using a very small fraction of them anyway.
In this game, your Cyber-Elf does become perhaps a little too strong though at the higher levels. I had the 6th level unlocked at the end of the game and I already felt pretty much invincible. I didn’t even try to dodge the bosses in the teleporter room since I could just facetank them and easily win.

While the Cyber-Elf system was simplified, the parts system got way more complicated in this game. Most enemies can now randomly drop their parts which you can use in combination with other parts to use in recipes that create a head/body/foot piece for Zero.
The majority of the recipes are not given to you though and you are either going to have to brute force these by trial and error or guess correctly based on the hints given by the NPCs. And when you guess wrong you lose the parts used in the construction so that you will have to get them from the correspondent enemy again. Yeah, I wasn’t really a big fan of this system. It didn’t take long for me to give up trying to figure out these recipes and I just looked them up and only constructed the parts that I thought were the most useful.

The stages were okay. Sometimes a bit too gimmicky though and I did not really enjoy the final few stages. Compared to Mega Man Zero 3, the stages were definitely a step down.

The best Zero game thusfar and one of the best games of the Mega Man franchise as a whole.
I still don’t like the fact that you need A-ranks again to get any of the EX-skills though. Because this means that you have to rush through stages and you never get to use any of the Cyber-Elves since they deduct points from your score too. That sucks because you basically lose out on that part of the game entirely.
The stages in this game were pretty good. Cool and unique stage designs. One that stood out to me was the Missile stage, that was such a cool idea.
There were a few stages that were a bit less enjoyable like the electrifying water level and the final few stages but overall they were of a better quality than the ones in Zero 2.
The bosses in this game have some of the stupidest names I've seen, even for Mega Man Zero standards. There were also a few recycled bosses which I thought was a bit lazy. Other than that, the boss fights themselves were alright.
I liked that you can get different boots/armor/helmets in this game. That allows you more customization than Forms did in the previous game. And I absolutely loved the Ultimate Foot chip. Feels great to have all those upgrades together and zoom across the stages.
The new weapon the Recoil Rod was alright but I didn’t use it much except for some breakable blocks and some pogoing. I was happy that I did not have to retrain my weapons this time too.
A feature of this game that I didn’t really understand was the Cyberspace. Is it just easy mode? I hate how it makes the game look anyway. Everything is green. Seems such a waste of the art in this game. However, the one time you have to enter Cyberspace to fight a certain boss was a lot of fun since I had so many Cyber-Elves by that point and they all activate at once so Zero felt completely unstoppable compared to his base form.

The concept of the EX skills appealed to me and so did the skills themselves. They were fun to use and a welcome addition to Zero’s moveset. But I did not like that you have to get rank A or higher to get said EX skills. It made me rush through most stages and I couldn’t really explore these stages since I didn’t want to miss out on these skills.
And then there’s forms. Again, I liked the concept but I didn’t like that you had to fulfill some arbitrary objective. These objectives are different for every mission and are never explained to you. So you either have to get lucky and fulfill the objective unknowingly or you’re going to have to look them all up.
I do appreciate that there are more stages now but I like these stages less than the ones in Zero 1.
They were kinda boring and samey.
So overall, I like this one a bit less than the first Zero game.

This was the first Mega Man game I’ve ever played and now while replaying it, it isn’t quite as hard as I remembered. Yes, dying is pretty unforgiving in this game but enemies drop so many health recovery items and the Z-Saber makes quick work of them too so it isn’t that bad. And you can use some very strong Cyber-Elves to help you if you have trouble. Like the double vitality one. It sucks that you’re going to have to grind for these though since you can only get like one of the higher priced Cyber-Elves if you play through the game normally.
The stages are pretty good but the mission system does make you revisit the same stages multiple times. They do mix up enemy placements or you get to visit a different section of the stage but still it felt a bit like recycled content.
The bosses were quite good as well. They were unique enough and fun to beat quickly with skillful use of the Z-Saber.
Speaking of the Z-Saber, it has never felt as good to use as it does in the Zero games. It is cool, fast and absolutely shreds through enemies and bosses. It gets extra moves too when you level it up a bit.
Controlling Zero feels great too. He is fast and the controls are responsive.
There aren’t as many different weapons to use than in the X games but I didn’t mind that since the weapons we do get are such a blast to play around with. Well, I basically only used the Z-Saber and ocassionaly the Buster but that was enough for me.
Overall, great game with stellar controls but dying is a bit too unforgiving and revisiting the same stages over and over was some lazy game design.

First of all, I did not like how the characters controlled compared to the earlier X games.
The stages are either meh or complete ass. Dynasty, Inferno and Primrose especially stood out as very bad stages.
One stage that I did find cool however, was the elevator level.
Because of these stages I really appreciated the Retry chips.
I liked the many upgrades that were available with chips. However, it also meant that in order to be effective you would have to focus on one character because you get nowhere close enough chips to upgrade all three characters a reasonable amount.
The beginning is a little rough but as soon as you get armor the game becomes extremely easy. The Icarus body armor especially trivializes the game.
As for the bosses, they were alright. I found most of them somewhat interesting and unique.
Although, the final boss did kill me twice with some bullshit. First time he pushed me off the platform which was an instant kill and then in his last phase he just has an instant kill attack? Fucking stupid.

Honestly, I didn’t hate this game. Yes, the camera is terrible at times, the bosses are tedious and yes it sucks that you can't play as X right from the start and Zero is absolute trash, etc. etc.

But I can appreciate the devs wanting to try something different, especially after the trainwreck that was X6. And the final product isn't all that bad.

I liked the Chip upgrade system. I liked Axl's machine gun (turn on Auto Repeat for that). I liked that Axl would sometimes receive a new normal gun based on a boss power, the Rocket Launcher (Explosion) was especially cool and very strong too. I liked being able to switch characters on the fly. Most stages were fine. The majority of the 2D sections weren’t bad and some of the 3D sections were pretty alright too. It's just when you get to a 3D section with awful camera that you can't rotate that it became really annoying.
The bosses were the weakest part of this game for me. All of them took way too long to kill since they have a shitton of health and a few of them have very annoying mechanics to boot. Like the Hyena (although his crazy screaming also made me laugh) and Red.
And because of the bosses being as bad as they are I was really dreading the Teleporter Room. It didn’t help that the final stages preceding that were some of the worst in this game too.
As for the other stages, I thought most of them were alright. Apart from the Red/Sigma stages, only the Ride Chaser (Central Circuit) stage and the Cyber Field stage were truly bad.
I pretty much only used Axl for the whole game and very rarely X when the Charge shot would be better.

Terrible game. All stages are a complete mess and have some extremely frustrating mechanics.
Fuck that Totem Pole level. Fuck the Magma level and fuck those red ring bosses with the green gems in particular. Jesus Christ, whoever thought that was a good idea should be shot. And you don’t fight just one. You have to fight FIVE! of them.
The North Pole, Temple, Recycle Lab and Laser Institute stages were extremely unfun and frustating as well.
The Gate Lab levels were somehow even worse than all the stages that came before it.

The bosses weren’t much better either. The worst offenders being Infinity Mijinion and Gate.
That fight with Gate is probably the worst boss battle I’ve ever encountered in a videogame.

It wasn't all bad though. The soundtrack was good and I did enjoy messing around with the parts. Especially the Jumper and Hyper Dash parts. It was pretty fun to go fast.

The weapon/parts system is convoluted as fuck. Why do you need 4 parts of a specific armor before you get to use any parts of it? What is that Weapons & Energy/Life shit and what’s with bosses having levels?
Even though the upgrade systems are a mess in this game I did like the upgrades themselves. Or the ones I was able to get at least. For example, the Falcon Armor is great, albeit a little overpowered. You can fly in all 8 directions and you’re invincible while doing it to boot. I had a great time with it.
As for the stages, most of them were okay but some of them were just bad and/or frustrating and I wished that Alia would shut the fuck up.
I absolutely despised Volt Kraken’s stage. And the first stage of Zero Space with the instant kill lasers was terrible as well and to top it all off you get to fight Yellow Devil again. One of the worst bosses in the Mega Man series.
On the topic of bosses, they were pretty meh and they took way too many hits to kill. Especially those in the teleporter room. They had some insane health pools and as a result, those fights were extremely tedious.
Damn Falcon Armor is extremely overpowered. You can fly in all 8 directions and you’re invincible while doing it to boot. I had a great time with it.
Fuck those instant kill lasers and to top it all off, Yellow Devil is back too.
Man those bosses in the teleporter room have crazy health pools. That was extremely tedious.

Stage design-wise I prefer this game to X2. So I was going to rate it a little higher than X2 but my inputs getting eaten all the time was extremely annoying and frustrating.
The bosses are still pretty meh, but that seems to be par for the course for the X games. The final boss was especially bad. What a slog that was.
I like the double upgrades to your suit but I don’t like how you’re supposed to get these and that you can only get one (out of four) of the lvl 2. upgrades.
You’re going to have to plan the stage order perfectly in order to get all upgrades in a reasonable amount of time or else you’re going to have to play each stage like three times.

Frustrating stage designs. Lots of things that just instantly kill you. Didn’t like the bosses much either. Especially Agile, Serges, Violen and the worst offender Sigma, were a huge pain in the ass to fight.
I liked the suit enhancements less than in X1 too. Targeting Helmet is tedious to use and the Armor upgrade is pretty lackluster too. And it felt like the Double Shot X-Buster was a downgrade from the X-Buster upgrade in X1 as well.
The Air-Dash was alright, although in most cases, a dash into a jump would suffice in most cases. But it did have its uses.
I would have liked to be able to use an Air-Dash after a Dash -> Jump, however that's not possible.
The boss powers were alright I guess.

This game introduced the dash and wall climb. Both of which are great additions to Mega Man's kit.
The Dash in particular is fun and a very welcome addition. I love the speed at which you can zoom around the stages thanks to the dash, especially when compared to classic Mega Man's snail's pace.
The Wall climb is neat too. The bosses were pretty good as well.
But idk the stages are kinda boring? Just long stretches with very little enemy variety. The soundtrack isn't anything special either. It's a shame when considering that this is the best that Mega Man has ever controlled and then we get stages like this...
Don't get me wrong, the stages aren't bad, just boring.
I still had fun with the game though, thanks to the great movement and the cool weapons.

First of all, I'm playing this on a shitty laptop which meant that I had to deal with slowdowns. But that wasn't going to stop me from completing this game since I've come so far after beating Mega Mans 1 to 10 in a row.
This is one of the reasons why I don't like 3D models in 2D games since the only thing it does is add lag.
I think 2D sprites can look great and the Mega Man series has already proved that they can do great 2D art so I don't really get why they felt the need to do this 2.5D thing. I don’t really like it that much visually either.
Anyway, the game is great. Great soundtrack too. The gear system is neat, especially when combining it with the boss powers.
I could’ve done without the voice acting to be honest.
I liked that the shop had a lot of upgrades. You get a lot of gear in the stages so you can buy many of the upgrades as well as items like 1ups and E-tanks in the shop. Because of that, this game wasn't that hard. But I didn't mind, because I had a lot of fun. There were still a few bullshit sections which could get frustrating but nothing Rush Jet couldn't handle.
Speaking of bullshit, Bounce Man’s stage is somehow both the best and the worst stage I’ve encountered in a Mega Man game and I wasn’t a big fan of Block Man stage either.
I'll definitely replay this game as soon as I get a better PC.