Great collection of great megaman games
You start off the game seeing a scene where some scientist lady known as Ciel, who also happens to lead a resistance that fights against an area known as Neo Arcadia, is running away from, well, Neo Arcadian soldiers. She eventually runs into Zero's old, busted up body, or was busted up, before Ciel's "cyber elf" sacrificed itself to revive Zero to protect Ciel. After blasting through enemies and re-acquiring his trusty Z-saber, Zero's adventure truly begins!
In this game, every level is a mission, and following the usual megaman formula, you can pick whatever missions you want in any order. One thing about missions in this game, though, is that missions aren't actually required to beat the game. You could only do, maybe, 4 levels the whole game and beat it if you really wanted. Also, If you end up failing a mission by losing all retries, then you are left with two options, give up and start from last save. The former makes it so you permanently fail the mission and cannot retry it, and the latter does as it says, and leaves you at your last save.
This can lead to problems however. first off if you forget to save for a while and fail a mission, you'll have to do some backtracking after returning to your last save. Also if you beat a mission, but lose a large a mount of lives/retries, then whatever small amount of lives you have left is what you have towork with for all future missions until you find 1ups, or decide to fail a mission. So instead of sticking with the the traditional and effective continue system of any other platformer/action game I know of, this game tries a more realistic approach to game overs, and ultimately just makes things more complicated and also frusterating for completionists.
Onto the gameplay itself, one thing the MMZ series has added is cyber elves, which power you up in different ways. You can find them anywhere in any level or in the resistance base. But using a cyber elf kills it, and you cannot use it ever again, so you shouldn't just use them willy-nilly. Cyber elves are nice additions that add some more replay value for completionists and add a variety of ways for you to enhance yourself. Of course you always need to think before using cyber elves, because using one lowers your overall ranking. So if you want to get higher rankings, you actually have to get good at the game! *GASP*
The Megaman Zero series tends to pit a bigger focus on action than any other Megaman series. One thing to support this focus is the ranking systems in each MMZ game. Whatever ranking you are in any game is dependent on how much damage you take, how fast you complete a mission, how many cyber elves you used, etc. In MMZ1 the only thing the ranking system does is tell you how good you are or how much you suck. So for those that don't like sucking, there's more motivation to play again; a clever yet insulting tactic to get consumers to play your game more.
Unlike other megaman series, you don't copy bosses abilities in Megaman Zero 1, but instead get a fire chip, ice chip, and lightning chip when you beat a boss of the corresponding element. The main attacks in this game are the buster shot (good for range), Z-saber (powerful and good for close combat), triple rod (more powerful than Z-saber, but harder to master), and the shield boomerang (blocks enemy projectiles; can be used as boomerang attack if charged). This allows for you to set up your weapons and attacks how ever you ft and allows for some customization, something I always like seeing.
MEGAMAN ZERO 2
You start off seeing Zero walking in a desert in a sandstorm, then suddenly Neo Arcadianns attack and Zero of course gets ready to kick ass. Lateron you enter the new, improved resistance base and meet Elpizo, the "guy" who leads the resistance now...and wears pink and has long, flowing blonde hair...
Gender confusion aside, the story continues with Zero's and the resistance's battle against Neo Arcadia.
megaman Zero 2 certainly improved upon Zero 1. For one, that silly retry system from MMZ1 was scrapped for a traditional, tried and true continue system, making things nice and simple like they should be when it comes to game overs. Also Megaman Zero 2 added "forms", which are different armors for Zero that alter in stats in different ways, which adds another layer of customization which means more experimentation and therefore more fun.
Also included are "ex-skills", which are various weapon techniques. These add even more content to the game, though the problem with Ex-skills is, is that you can only egt them when at A or S rank, the two highest ranks. So in order to get useful abilities, you need to get so good at this game that you won't even need said abilities anymore anyways...great. What's next? a baseball team getting a steroid injection in the bum every time they win a game by a huge margin of runs?
They also replaced the triple rod with a chain rod, which can hook and drag items, and you can swing from ceilings using it (which you will certainly need to do at times). Otherwise the weapons are the same as before.
Overall this game is an improvement over MMZ1 in pretty much every way, except maybe the fact that the ranking system is now more of a ***** due to those ex-skills!
MEGAMAN ZERO 3
In this game's intro, Zero, Ciel, and some resistace soldier's go to Neo Arcadia to negotiate over Ciel's new energy system, and of course, things go to hell once a man known as Dr. weil and a giant reploid named Omega make an appearance. So after you deal with those jerkfaces you have to go on more missions.
This game has added even more new things to the MMZ series than the previous two installments. One thing they added were secret discs, which contain either info, energy crystals, or cyber elves. So there's even more now in this game to help give it more replay value. Like cyber elves, they can be found in any level or after doing certain tasks.
Also added to this game is "satellites", which are used for cyber elves. This is a very nice addition, because satellites make it so you can use a cyber elf without killing it, and therefore not having your rank tainga hit!...or also not having a guilty conscious and loss of sleep. There are only two, though, so you have to choose which two cyber elves you like the most, or you could switch it off between multiple cyber elves I suppose. Whatever the case satellites add a little more depth to the gameplay.
unfortunately, this game has the same idea with ex-skills that MMZ2 had, being that they can only be obtained in A or S rank, but satellities and the fact that there are now cyber elves who can raise your rank to A make it not as brutal as MMZ2. And also like MMZ2, MMZ3 decides it wants to be cool and non-conformist as well and have it's own rod weapon. Instead of a triple rod or chain rod, MMZ3 has a recoil rod, which, for me just isn't as fun or nice to use as the previous 2 rods. but whatever, weapons are a personal choice, so no big deal.
There aren't really forms anymore, but there is armor that gives Zero a certain element or maybe extra defense, and then there are foot chips and head chips. So while there are no longer the forms from MMZ2, there is still plenty of customization when it coes to Zero's armor.
Also, something new that was added exclusively to MMZ3 that wasn't in MMZ3 before, is mod cards. Mod cards strengthen Zero's weapons, add stuff to the setting of the resistance base, alter the appearannce of items etc. I find it strange they added this for MMZ3, but not any of the other MMZ titles, but whatever, they were fun in MMZ3 anyways...
Overall, Megaman Zero 3 improved even further upon MMZ2, and turns out a better game than MMZ1 & 2
MEGAMAN ZERO 4
This game starts off showing caravans driven by humans escaping from neo arcadia, due to something that deals with what happened near the end of MMZ3. megaman Zero, being a hero and all that decides to protect these humans and their caravans from Neo Arcadia's attacks. And Zero's battle against Neo Arcadia continues and you meet some dude named craft etc etc.
MMZ4 actually has a high amount of changes. They changed the elf system so that you really only had one main elf that you could evolve and level in certain areas. What's nice about this elf system is that it does not hurt your ranking, as long as the overall levels of your main elf's three stats do not exceed the max level. Now you can power yourself up with cyber elves without having to worry about your ranking, which is quite refreshing. Also all 8 bosses ae now selectable on the stage select screen, where in previous MMZ titles only a certain amount of missions would be selectable.
This is the first MMZ game to not have some kind of rod! Nor does MMZ4 even have a shield boomerang. Instead of the shield or any rod, there's now the zero knuckle which is used to steal weapons from enemies. The zero knickle doesn't seem too worth it though, since the Z-saber and buster shot work quite well togeher as it is, and the weapons that I did try didn't seem to be anymore effective, or possibly even less effective than the Z-saber and/or buster shot.
There's now a weather system to this game now, where you can change the weather of a stage, and in turn alter a bosses strength, to either your favor or against your favor. An interesting and unique idea, that has some strategy behind it. Do you weaken the bosses to make them easier, and sacrifice getting new moves? Or do you make your bosses stronger and tougher, so that you can gain new techniqyes which may help further down the road?
One thing MMZ4 definitely improved is Ex-skills. now you don't need A or S rank, and instead just need to beat a boss when weather is their favor to gain their ex-skill. If anything, MMZ4's ranking like MMZ1's, where the rankings don't affect much at all. Which is the way it should be; the only purpose of rankings should just be ranking, nothing else.
You can also now build chips for Zero's armor by using various spare parts from dead enemies. You'll need to find recipes before you do so though, as just randomly mixing parts together will most likely just result in "junk." It is pretty hard to find many recipes though, so you may find your self not having a large amount of chips your first playthrough, or it's probably one of those things that you need an online game guide for.
So all in all, Megaman Zero 4 is another great game and a great way to conclude the series!
OVERALL
Overall, this collection is terrific! Even the worst game in this collection (MMZ1) is still pretty good. And if I were to pick a favorite, it would be between 3 and 4, though it is hard for me to choose one over the other. While I liked MMZ3's customization more, I enjoyed MMZ4's cyber-elf system more and liked how they handled Ex-skills more than they did in MMZ3 (and 2).
This package just has much to offer. Each game by themself offer alot of content and have great replay value, but now you have all 4 together in one DS cartridge, along with a collection of MMZ art, MMZ3 mod cards, character cards, an easy scenario for those who don't feel comfortable facing MMZ's challenge (or something to do for the ****s and giggles after beating all 4 normally), and all this for an amazing price of $30! This is most definitely a collection worth checking out if you don't already own all 4 Megaman Zero games. It gets a 9.0/10!