I agree that the later NES Mega Man games aren't really exceptional but I think that the X series already started dropping below their level with its second game.Sengoku Strider wrote: I can't get behind calling X2 mediocre while saying the NES games all range from good to great. Not that the NES games were bad at all, they were just kinda running in place for the last 3, doing the same basic game template with a new situational traversal gimmick added. So if those were good, X2, a challenging game with great controls, colourful huge set pieces and a nice amount of exploration and secrets to discover, has gotta at least be in the good category along with them.
Even the first X game is overall very solid but has its problems. Its big strengths are its fantastic handling and developed aesthetics, but its level design and enemy layouts are kind of underbaked compared to the classic series' (owing largely to its reduced difficulty), and its bosses are outright tepid. I'd still say it's a more than passable game because of how uncommon its great-feeling movement is, but I think it's already a fundamentally weaker action game than even the mid-tier NES entries.
X2 is much weaker than 1; I replayed it a few weeks ago after a full Zero series replay and was surprised. It at least has great controls and pleasant visuals, but its levels are outright dull, scarcely providing interesting action or exploration (I feel like half the secrets are just air dash / charged speed burner into a hole in the wall or ceiling), and a lot of its bosses are outright poor - so many of the eight mavericks have boring, tedious patterns and way too much health even when fought with their weaknesses (the boss rush at the end is a drag). I definitely wouldn't call it a challenging game, either, though I wouldn't knock it hard for being on the easy side; Mega Man 2 is one of the best classic entries despite being the easiest, anyway.
I think it is pretty marginal - I'm not really in love with Mega Man 5 or 6, either - but I think even the relatively weaker classic Mega Man games are stronger than the middling X entries because the classic games have to have at least decent level design; X's designers seem to just fall back on the strength of that series' core mechanics and allow for a lot of extra slack in their layouts, which doesn't feel good in 2D action games.
Zero 1 is definitely the weakest of the series, but I think it's alright overall. It has some dogshit levels like the desert escort mission and the tedious "stealth" level (also in the desert...) but the average stage in that game is alright, and though weapon leveling is definitely a bad idea that bogs the beginning of Zero 1 and 2 down, it stops mattering before long and is the least of those games' issues.Sima Tuna wrote: I can't agree with any of this, really.
X and X2 are fucking masterpieces. The levels in both range from good to excellent and both are rightly hailed as some of the best games in the mega man franchise. But from about X2 (or X4) to X8, the series spiraled off into myriad directions, most of which were a downgrade from what came before. If not outright horrible. The X formula didn't meaningfully evolve from MMX until MM Zero. Zero was that needed next step. But X and X2 are still amazing games in their own rights, the more so because the latter X games didn't surpass them.
The second major point where I disagree is with this notion that there's not much quality gap between Zero and, say, Zero 3. Zero 1 is practically an unfinished game. The boss fights are good, but many of the other elements suck immense quantities of anus. The open world concept really doesn't work in practice. Leveling weapons is stupid. Weapon balance is all over the place. The game is jank as fuck generally and full of shit-tastic escort missions.
But Zero 3 fixed all of that.
https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Mega_Man_Zero_3/Weapons
No weapon leveling. Cyber-elves you can use without murdering them or your rank. Better bosses. Better levels. Proper stage design rather than a bunch of individual (shit) stages connected into a hub. One weapon doesn't dominate the game anymore. Zero 3 may not seem much different on the surface, but delve under the hood and there are a wealth of changes. Zero 3 is challenging and rewarding for casual play, but has even more depth when you dig into it.
The later Mega Man X games had some good ideas (armors) balanced with a lot of bad ones. Aside from the screen size, which is an innate issue in almost ALL GBA games, I can't think of anything Zero 3 does poorly. Zero 4 suffers a bit for being a redundant, iterative sequel rather than the radical leap forward the series should have been making at that point. Zero 2 is fantastic, but I think it still has a few flaws here and there (some levels that are kinda ass). Zero 3, in my book, is the complete package. The heights that Inti never reached again.
... Although I am leaving room open for Gunvolt 3, which I haven't played, to take that spot as the next evolutionary step.
I don't think any of the Zero games were great leaps in quality over the previous ones, though again they definitely improved as they went on. Most of their improvements were just incremental quality of life adjustments - phasing out weapon leveling, improving cyber-elves, coming up with more interesting weapons as the series go on (even if you want to play with the sword most of the time, still).
The screen size being an issue for many GBA action games is an explanation, not really an excuse (and I would also point to Ninja Five-O as an example of quality GBA action not hamstrung by large sprites and that resolution). Just because other games on the platform faced similar issues doesn't really make Zero's screen space feel any better.
Having to shoot the wheel enemies to slow them down ignores that you have to already be shooting as you scroll them on screen for that to have a meaningful effect, and that even then you have less time to react versus the car or wheel enemies in X1. I'm not sure what the point of your X1 example gif is, because it clearly shows how much more time you have to react to those cars versus Zero's enemies. This is saying nothing of all of Zero's sloppy moments like the train stage in Zero 2 (which has points where you have to jump up the side of a train car, where a wheel enemy will then just fall directly on top of you as you reach the roof) or the final stage in Zero 4 (where you have enemies instantly shooting you with screen-covering projectiles the instant you scroll them on screen; the only way to stop it is to have pre-emptively stolen a specific shield weapon with the knuckle beforehand).Volteccer_Jack wrote:It seems obvious to me that the hardware was considered at every step of the process in developing the Zero games, from the level design to the artwork to the style of the music. Those games are made to be played on GBA hardware, moreso than any other GBA game. I've never experienced the supposed blind jumps people complain about. Even in the quite rough Z1, the longest jumps you're ever required to make are to things in clear view. Wheel enemies appearing "right on top of you" seems annoying, sure, until you realize shooting them slows their movement. The Z games are very generous about your limited ability to see.
Zero's bad elements are ultimately memorizable - which is why I'd rank the series higher than most of the X series, maybe even the first one - but I don't think that really excuses how rocky those games feel initially, which feels more due to sloppiness than anything - I expect they wanted players to just replay for rank anyway and so didn't care if the Zero games ended up more memorizers than usual Mega Man games.