Megaman Zero 4

The Core Video Games Forum
1

Just beat it last night. Good game.

Story is really well told; as most people probably notice, the MMZ story is pretty solid compared to the rest of the series. I really enjoy the storyline and the writing a great, great, great deal better than MMX, even though I think MMX has the superior gameplay. The climax of the story had me on the edge of my seat, which I would otherwise laugh at the thought of doing so during a MM game if I hadn’t experienced it myself.

Gameplay is very tweaked, retaining a lot of original properties, but making it easier to play. First off…I can’t say anything about Cyber Elves, cos I don’t use them, but it looks similar enough to MMZ3. EX Skills are still in MMZ4, but you don’t need as high an average; you just need to keep your average above 70 and make sure to play the normal weather of each stage, and you’ll get your EX Skill.

By the way, one thing that has changed in the normal stages is the weather system. All the stages have something to do with environmental nonsense, and you can go when the weather makes it easier to go…like for example, if you go to the desert stage, there are a lot of places outside where you can’t stand for long before you start taking damage, but if you go when the weather is cloudy/rainy, you can just breeze through all the outside parts. It’s pretty cool, because it’s a tailorable diffuculty system of sorts.

There is no _____Rod or Shield Boomerang in this game; I kinda like that, cos the Shield was too hard to use, and the Rods were sort of gimmicky. Now, you have a third weapon called the Zero Knuckle. You can attack in any direction with it, and charge with it. The catch with this weapon is, if you kill certain enemies, you will get their weapon with limited uses. Like, killing the generic Neo Arcadian flunkie will get you an incendiary cannon, which you can use to burn ice blocks and stuff in the snow level. You can also, of course, use this to your advantage when fighting particular enemies. When you run out of uses, you can press Select to “toss” the weapon (it’s a double entendre, cos he really throws the weapon at his enemy, lol), and steal a new one.

There are less levels overall, and now, you can choose all 8 main missions immediately after the intro stages. There are still midway levels and stuff like that, though, which is cool.

The diffuculty is pretty good…the levels are easy, regardless of the weather, but the bosses can be rather diffucult; as they can mix up some of their attacks, there isn’t always a clean cut just-memorize-the-boss-patterns-and-win thing. It’s pretty cool, and it makes for a challenge.

Oh, and lastly, you can hang onto poles now. You’ll be doing this fairly often.

The graphics are just as you’d expect from MMZ, which is of course, nice. The backgrounds in some levels are very nicely detailed.

The music is easily the best in the series, even better than MMZ2; this was my only gripe with MMZ3…a lot of the songs were just straight up BORING.

The ONLY, ONLY gripe I can think of with this game is that the last boss has an unavoidable attack. But, he almost never does it, and it won’t kill you if your life is high (you can actually get life back on rare occasions during the final boss fight anyways). That’s really the only thing about the game that I can complain about.

Overall, I’d say this is the best MMZ game by a longshot. I’d reccomend it. Go forth.

2

Danke for the recommendation. I have some cash to burn and I was looking for a new game. :smiley:

3

I had the ROM sitting in my HD for a while, but I was busy with X7 (I’ll do a thread like this about that one once I finish). I am really happy to hear the story was interesting, since the initial parts somehow made me feel like it would be just a “meanwhile” side-story game like Xenosaga Ep. II.

The game brings a very important factor of the storyline that got little to no mention before: The Humans. Up to now we’ve only been told that the humans are “there” and we’re supposed to protect them, so it’s interesting to see them doing SOMETHING for a change, even if it’s to do the absolutely predictable “Let’s blame the reploids for fighting even though we built them and made them fight each other in the first place” rant. Also, the Eurasia crash is mentioned: Someone in Capcom finally learnt to use consistency while writing scripts. I think I’m going to cry of joy.

I dunno about the bosses. It’s true I only fought the Underground Forest and Living City bosses, but I didn’t have any serious problems. I am very glad to hear the last boss is challenging, the last three were serious disappointments (Difficulty-wise, Zero 3’s last boss was fucking awesome plot-wise).

Since I am playing trough X7 as we speak, I can very much appreciate the Zero Knuckle. My biggest complaint about Axl’s Copy Shot is that it’s too weak and a hassle to use, at least the knuckle punches hard. I still have to steal an ability that is actually useful though, in either game.

The new Cyber Elf system goes like this: For starters, you are no longer required to hunt the fuckers throughout the stages (THANK GOD). There is only one elf that Alouette takes care of and that you can feed whenever you want. The Elf imitates the three variations (Nurse/Beast/Hacker) and can use any of those abilities to help you… with a catch. The elf has a “level” that determines how many abilities it can use without causing penalties to your ranking, if you increase the abilities over that limit, you lose points. It looks pretty handy, even though I’ve only tried a lame lvl1 hacker skill.

Also, and I believe this is the most important detail of all: Neige is hot. And human. I think this is the first time those two traits combined within the Classic/X/Zero timeline.

4

Would it have any really important storyline things from Z3 I would need to know, or could I skip that one since, A) I am poor, and B) I’ve heard almost universally it was bad.

5

Get the ROM, or ask me to make a summary, but yes, there are some BIG details you need to know.

6

I think MMZ3 is good, actually. The only lame thing about 3 was the music. MMZ3 actually is more interesting and more diffucult than the first two. I think it’s tight. Personally, the only bad MMZ game in my opinion is the first one…but it’s not terrible; just kinda mediocre. It was acceptable at a time when what MMX fans had lately was X6 and X7, but nowadays it’s like “ehhhhh nah”. :stuck_out_tongue:

Besides, if you don’t play MMZ3, you’ll probably be wondering where certain people suddenly came from, and what happened to other people. Best to just emulate it or something.

7

I’ll definitely be skipping it then. I can’t even beat one of the first four levels in the second one (partly because of the controls, but largely because of the difficulty). I haven’t really had a problem with X6 (it is mostly just getting some of the armor pieces), but Zero games kill me.

8

X6 is hideously easy, I wouldn’t use that for comparison. Unless you are already very skilled on them (Notice the subtle way in which I brag about my sk1llz), Zero games only take extensive hours of repeating movements over and over and over until you get them right or at least want to shoot yourself in the foot. Have fun :smiley:

9

I loved the fact the knuckle could have interesting uses. For example, against the first boss ripping the cables with it disabled the ZOMGLASER attack, or the flower boss can be ripped out of the ground with it. I just found the knuckle really handy overall.

The game is solid and enjoyable, SG summed it up good.

10

Ahh…keep in mind that when I play MMX/MMZ games, I don’t use anything except for what I start with. This can make some games harder than others; for example, if you play the first three MMX games normally, you’ll probably find 3 to be the hardest, wheras using nothing, 3 is the easiest of the SNES MMX games.

Likewise, it seems like there are a lot of things that have been facilitated, and there aren’t a lot of crazy panicky levels loaded with ways to die instantly like there were in MMZ2.

11

I said X6 since it seems to be the general consensus that it is the hardest X game.

12

I’d like a second opinion for that, to me it was the easiest game by far.

Ok, now that I passed a few more levels, I can comment: It’s easier, a LOT easier than the rest. Like you said, there are no more death traps and the few actually dangerous areas don’t take anything else than just a little tweak in movement to pass trough. Once you know more or less know what to expect, it’s smooth sailing.

The bosses’ new taste for random movements can be a problem, but just as long as one can figure out what they are going to do next, there is hardly any trouble avoiding them. They also leave a lot of openings for attacks and they do it for long periods, so finding an opportunity to strike them isn’t hard at all.

13

Fine replace, X6 with which ever X game was the most difficult for you. In any review you read, they’ll say that X6 is the hardest so far, but whatever, it’s not important. Even then, did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe X6 was the hardest for me? Everyone has different skills and preferances. X6 was a very small point of my post. The majority was about how Zero games kill me.

Am I getting worse at typing/writing/posting? This is the second time some has sort of gone off on a word I say and compltely ignore the bulk of my post.

14

X6 was hard due to some elements being totally broken, levelwise. Combatwise, it was not much of a challenge as the enemies and bosses were pushovers.

S’how I see it.

15

i wish i had cash to burn, cuz that sounds like an awesome game.

16

I agree with Zero, and this is why I think it’s the hardest X game. X7 could be a little diffucult for the opposite reasons; that being that combat was just diffucult. Zero was not powerful OR fast in X7, and Axl was just HORRIBLE. X, on the other hand, was like god tier or something. :stuck_out_tongue:

And on the other hand, Seraphim Ephyon, I don’t think the MMZ games are as hard as you say. MMZ games have pretty tough bosses, but the only one with really tough levels was MMZ2, and MMZ1 was just diffucult because it took for-fucking-ever to use your Cyber Elves, and you had to level up your stuff so much. That really isn’t hard, so much as it’s “I-Don’t-Wanna-Spend-This-Much-Time-On-The-Thing”.

It’s really a good thing I don’t use Cyber Elves, heh. :stuck_out_tongue:

17

Ok, I admit I went trough the garbage compressor stage a few more times than I would have liked, although mostly due to not being able to get to the Reploids on time. But the bosses, as Zero already mentioned, were pathetic. The final boss especially.

…wait, that’s not entirely true, the two-block biological-looking… thingie in Gate’s lab did take a bit of work now that I recall. Still, nowhere near the previous titles, I still have nightmares about the Black Demon in X5 and X3’s Sigma.

I apologize for not being clear enough, I was talking mostly about Zero 2. There were a few areas in which I had to really time my movements so as not to get assassinated by the stage. Not using Cyber Elves (in other words, half the sub-tanks) and going for the EX Skills (High ranks) combined into a pretty little hell that I hadn’t experienced since Legends 2’s Class S Digger Test.

What I meant was that being able to pass trough X6 easily wouldn’t matter too much when determining MMZ’s difficulty, but nevermind that, we’ve talked enough about this already.

Coincidentally, this is not the first time someone has interpreted two phrases I posted as going off in a rant.

18

I dunno, X5 was the hardest one of all to beat on a nothing run, but that’s cos of the final stage, not really the Black Demon. And X3 Sigma is the easiest one of all of them with nothing. If you want, I’ll make you a video of me killing him in like, one minute. :stuck_out_tongue:

19

Showoff. :smiley:

I haven’t played a MM game since, like, 5. On the NES. Are the newer games that much more difficult? Could someone possibly expound upon the difficulty element?

20

It’s not so much Sigma 3 being hard to kill, but the aftermath climb that always killed me. I was still pretty new to the series so my jumping wasn’t too good, I’ll have to do that again sometime to see how hard it is now.

By the way, am I the only one who did the Megaman Legends 2’s Class S test? That was probably the hardest thing I ever saw on a Megaman game.