I have an apology to make: I was too harsh on Mega Man 7, which upon further reflection since my initial review has firmly rooted itself as one of my favorite Classic Mega Mans, an opinion only strengthened by basically everything I said felt weird and bad in that game being WAY worse in this one.

EVERYTHING is over-animated. Now it’s not just hard to judge where precisely you’re standing and how far or high your jumps are gonna go, but mega man’s comically floppy animations make it feel like you’re going slow as hell too. The buster feels weird. Additional weapons feel weird. Colors in every screen element are so intense as to be elevated from pleasantly cartoony to uncomfortably garish. The menu has these long animations to load in and out of it. There are little voice barks now and I hate that lol.

It’s a textbook Bad Mega Man Game death by a thousand cuts scenario where very little about this game is actually technically wrong but a lot of the little choices chafe on me personally. I could see this being a middling to high ranking Mega Man in someone’s estimation if they weren’t bothered by all the little aesthetic and game feel things here that fuck me up, and indeed I spoke to two people last night who enthusiastically defended this game from me when I, two levels deep, said what the fuck man how did this happen. So like, I get it! It’s not a Mega Man X3 situation where the game is just a sad shadow of its own defining traits from the ground up. It’s just firmly Not Working For Me. I’m always trying to convince people that I’m not just being a contrarian for the sake of it and lo, here it is: i think mega man 8 blows.

WHICH IS NOT TO SAY there isn’t joy to be had here, it’s just that unfortunately that joy comes, for me, almost exclusively from the non-play parts of the game. The hideous aesthetic choices that make looking at the game so unpleasant while you’re playing it also make it REALLY funny when you’re just watching it. Just fully leaving the bounds of Earth’s gravity with these robot master designs. Got an evil clown robot, got a- got a guy who Is An Igloo I guess, that man is a GRENADE. That’s just the first three guys right in a row. God’s bounty is endless. I don’t need to mention the English voice acting it’s incredible. Every line a treasure. I finally understand what Bass’ problem is man, he lives in a world where everybody is named after music and they’re all clearly mispronouncing his name on purpose!! I would be pissed too.

So that’s it I guess, classic mega man over. Weird one to end on. Oh I guess I should play Mega Man And Bass? That probably counts. Anyway. Didn’t like this one lol.

The more I practice speedrunning this game, the more confidently I can call it my favourite in the original Mega Man series.

The simple and humble nature of this entry makes for a fantastic purity that (while perhaps not always intentionally) feels quite free and allows for tremendous player expression. Due to the lack of E-tanks, not to mention I-frames not serving as a crutch mechanic against spikes, everything must be approached with skill and tactics alone. Take for example the Copy Robot fight. Should players slowly pelt it with bombs for a safe strategy, swap between the buster and Guts Man's weapon to render it helpless, or go all out with the fire to quickly kill it?

What of the pillars in Fire Man's stage? Should they be skipped with the Magnet Beam, frozen with ice, or patiently jumped past? Or the platforms in Guts Man's stage? Should the player learn how to leap across them, or fight Elec Man twice to destroy the guts blocks with his beam? The concept of revisiting stages for items would not be revisited until Mega Man 4, and boy did I have fond memories of experimenting with every weapon so heavily with this game.

In fact, I still have so much fun experimenting with different ways to tackle enemies. Maybe I'll freeze the Big Eyes and rapid blast them with the Buster, or maybe I'll use the magnet beam to lure them into the pits in Elec Man's stage. Every weapon in the game feels overpowered in the right circumstances. While later MM games feature more weapons, the limited amount of robot masters meant the limited amount of weapons here needed to have more than one purpose, thus the shield bundled with Fire Man's shot or the multi-directional nature of the Elec Beam. It's something I greatly prefer to only a couple weapons being worthwhile, such is the case with the metal blade mostly making the other weapons in MM2 redundant.

Of course, I can't forget the atmosphere either. The almost cheerful nature of Bomb Man's theme mixed with an underlying melancholy is permanently engraved in my mind, heavily mirroring my feelings of excitement to explore such a colourful futuristic world despite it being in the back of my mind I was unfortunately forced to face my own robot brothers. The battle against Yellow Devil also sounds like a descent into hell as I do my best over countless attempts to finally learn its pattern.

Sure, the game isn't perfect; I really wish Ice Man's level had water physics from later entries and the RNG platforms didn't suck, but something about reaching my destination always makes me feel complete. Seeing the hero I played as the entire time was a kid with his own family to return to, it truly awoke feelings of motivation in my silly child self.

FIGHT, MEGAMAN!
FOR EVERLASTING PEACE!

Inti Creates might be the master at crafting fantastic games, then hampering them with the most confounding, pernicious, thoughtless, counter-productive, anti-fun design decisions.

Consider this, Zero 2's newest addition: EX skills. These are widely derivative of Zero's moves from the Rockman X series. In those games, you simply obtained new moves after defeating the corresponding boss. In Zero 2, you obtain EX skills by defeating a boss with an A or S rank, but not the rank acquired on the current stage (that would be too simple), but rather whatever your rank was the previous stage. By the time you've obtained an A-rank on every stage for the EX skill, you certainly proven you don't need these skills, and have likely played the game enough.
Simple things such as health upgrades fall against the same hurdle, unnecessary gatekeeping. In the X series you found a health upgrade. Your health was then increased. In Zero 2 you find a health upgrade, take it back to base, feed it energy crystals (should you have enough in the first place), transfer it from one menu to another, then you can finally improve your HP a solid 4 pixels. This feels like X5 syndrome all over again.

And you will need those health upgrades because, dear God, why. At the start of the game Zero can be described as a glass canon, minus the latter part, stemming from his pitful damage and dearth of moves. Basic attacks like charging the buster or swinging Zero's saber more than once need to be unlocked. It's MUCH briefer unlocking moves than it was in the first game, but... that just highlights how Inti Creates recognised what a pointless hassle it was. Why keep it? For the love of Ciel do not pick Flaming Flamingo as your first boss. Fighting a potential first boss should not be more difficult than all the end-game bosses. For a game which splits the Rockman series' traditional 8-stage layout into two-halves, why is (by far) the most difficult boss & stage in the first half? Fervent Falcon is even one of the better bosses in the series, he's just set horridly early. Potentially running into him before Zero musters up the immense dexterity to swing his sabre twice in a row is a recipe for agony.

The game's hard, but that's not really the problem. On my recent playthrough, I didn't die until an insta-kill in the boss rush. These are still issues. Locking out so much that makes the game fun to play is simply baffling. The problems don't cease there.
Some sections of the game just flat-out suck. There's no elegant way to say Inti Creates should've deleted spikes from their level editor. I love Frost Kibatodos' theme Ice Brain, but his stage is about negotiating ice physics with bizarre momentum, avoiding accelerating at high velocity into a spiked wall within the purview of a squashed GBA screen. A few stages (such as the train and Sake Harpoon's) are interesting in concept, but more tedious to play for not evolving much behind the concept. I'm convinced Power Room (more accurately called Pain Room) was Inti Creates way of deliberately demoralising the player. Coincidentally this is also Fervid Falklanders' stage.

Despite the amount of bullshit fitted onto an 8MB cartridge, I still am fond of Zero 2. There's a lot of love. Theming the stages as missions is a great way to inject a feeling of purpose into them, as well as affording some in-stage objectives. Every boss feels ground-up built to be a unique encounter, rather than designed from some generic template (though admittedly a couple of them don't mesh well with the aforementioned small screen estate of the GBA), and the end result is a game surging with memorable boss fights. The chain rod opens paths for unorthodox platforming challenges, and surprising works well. You can even skip entire portions when you acclimate yourself to the rhythm of the weapon. The story & setting are leagues above the X-series. While the X-series was content to pit X against Sigma and his latest Hollywood-induced weapon fascination that week, followed by X staring into the sunset, the Zero series has real emotional pieces. It's not particularly incredible, but it's competent. The game might be worth completing solely for the end credit's theme, Awakening Will. In a franchise renowned for its music, Awakening Will is one of its best songs (give a listen to the official remastered version if you've already beat the game https://youtu.be/rDHSYrkHIFU).

There's a lot to love about Rockman Zero 2; there's a lot to despise about Rockman Zero 2. Even if someone patched the game so the distribution of EX & weapon skills less stupid, and Cyber Elves less grindy, the game would still have annoying shortfalls. It's less a diamond in a rough, more a ruby someone flung poop upon for no good reason. Despite my predisposition toward games of this nature and this series, it's a tough sell. I like it. I also acknowledge it can be total horse shit. Inti Creates created Zero 2 in one year. And while the only thing I can make in a year is failed New Year's resolution, that doesn't excuse all the problems present.

Sands off much of the rough edges of the first, but doesn’t innovate massively either, mostly ending up as a more comfortable trek through old ideas.

For instance, I didn’t mention the issues with screen crunch with the original, with lots of blind drops into instant-death spike traps, but it’s mostly remedied here with much of the stage design leaning into the hazards that will damage you and eat away at your overall rank- but not kill you. While getting bombarded by offscreen enemies is still a pain, overall the threats here a much better fit for the dimensions of the GBA screen and the tremendous mobility of your character. Gimmicks like timing your jumps to avoid geysers of frozen air or speeding across a minefield are relatively simple, but they are a huge step up from the first game, which seemed almost willfully designed not to account for any of these limitations.

The idea of tying your score at the end of levels to gaining new moves is a cool one too, and while its another system that the series would toy around with further (in this iteration it’s an all-or-nothing: you have to come into a level with an “A” rank or above to unlock a new move) it’s a powerful incentive to replay and really learn levels. With so many scoring systems, there’s a fundamental question of “why even engage with it,” and this gives clear answer to that: because you’ll miss out on the full range of your kit if you decide not to (and also because you’ll get called mean names like [SLUGGISH EDGE])

That said, for the mechanical improvements it does make, 2 is way too familiar in its scenarios- retreading through much of the first game only without the same curveballs in its mission design, and further compounded by the fact that it’s hitting all the notes of a regular Megaman title. Realizing that the back half of the game was going to be spent fighting the Guardians from 1, and then going into the formality of its boss rushes and final gauntlet made the game feel deeply inessential- like a Black Label version of the first. (This all might be due to the fact that the first Zero was meant to be a self-contained game, while 2 and 3 were developed together, the sophomore effort seemingly saddled with the baggage of vindicating its own existence in the wake of the first and laying the foundation for more interesting titles ahead.)

The best moment here is probably its midpoint, with a pair of missions where you’ll first run through the wreckage of the failed assault on Neo Arcadia, a pretty easy but very atmospheric section that calls to mind some of the best upsets of 1, and then racing your way through an airborne armada to defuse a bomb before it hits the resistance base, rapidly working your way through a succession of boss fights and some of the better platforming sections. This sequence doesn't just work because of the strong execution, but because it feels like the game is finally throwing off its comfortable template for a moment and really committing to a standout set of levels that are totally their own.

Otherwise, it’s a decent obstacle course, but not an essential one.

///

References:

"When we first created Mega Man Zero, we were not planning to make sequels," says Aizu. "After Zero's release, the sales were strong enough that Capcom wanted us to create the sequel. When we began planning the sequel, we decided to make two games. So as we began developing Mega Man Zero 2, we also had the story for Mega Man Zero 3 in mind for the series." - From "Companions Through Life and Death: The Story of Inti Creates and Mega Man," Jeremy Parish, writing for USGamer

Don’t know if I’m quite as taken with this as the fanbase at large is, but it’s easy to see why it’s such a favorite; for all the fine-tuning around the progression system and the changes to the weapon lineup, it’s the big narrative moments that make this such a strong experience. With some hindsight, a real strength of the Zero sub-series is that they flow pretty naturally together when played back-to-back, meaning that all the unresolved tension of 1 and 2 are given a game’s worth of space to play out here. It can be hard to think of a portable game as ever really being “AAA,” but Inti Creates plays out these moments with such conviction that the betrayals and revelations about the characters land with some real weight, despite the tinny bombast that it’s been presented with.

Nowhere near good enough to comment on some of its deeper changes, (like, I assume the recoil rod is something you can get a huge amount of value out of if you’re a fiend- I am not that person) but structurally, it’s a massive improvement over the other titles, mainly for the fact that it bolsters the midgame by having you rematch against three bosses from the prior games, and cuts down the finale to two levels, giving the action some real momentum at a time when things would normally start to drag down into their most familiar. Combined with the strong narrative elements, and it's the entry that's the most exciting to just casually play through- compelling even as your letter grade starts to nosedive.

Despite the months-long break between playing the first two games and now this, there’s still a bit of series fatigue that’s no doubt cooled my impressions on this, but it’s undeniably satisfying seeing an entry smartly build on and improve its predecessor's foundations.

Good game with a great story but definitely not a game without its flaws. I enjoyed the soundtrack and exploring Lospass Island, but I did not get that DS feeling when I had to constantly go back and forth across the island to do fetch quests. Pretty sure the joke Suda wanted to tell is since video games are considered to be just time wasters, the game decides to literally waste your time by doing the former and with having to do like 30 basic math problems at the end. As annoying as some of the gameplay can be, I still had a good time with the game but think it would have benefited from having more of a visual novel style like The Silver Case did.