If you like extremely hard Mega Man games or the even the Zero series, just go for it. Otherwise, avoid this one.

User Rating: 7 | RockMan Zero Collection DS
The past Mega Man games, part of "classic" series (wich go from 1 to 10), were most known because its free gameplay and incredibly hard difficulty. These standards were leaking over time, specially after the X series (the "adult" Mega Man/Rockman character), when the X5 and X6 games were ridiculously easy.

The Zero series planned four games, all released for Game Boy Advance from 2002 to 2005 (the Zero series' spiritual sequel was ZX for DS system). This collection brings, then, the four original games compiled in a single DS card. In storyline, some hundred years later, the lighsaber hero from X series is reborn after a looong sleep. Zero returns more powerful than ever, along with his enemies. The punishing difficulty of Zero series goes from rewarding to irritating, frustrating. Your mission consist, almost everytime, to survive along a deep (and sometimes long enough) stage to fight a tough boss at the end. The poblem is: if you fail on that mission (wich means: run out of lives, there's no continues when you reach the 0 count), you'll never play that stage again. It instantly disappears from data management room. This implies on lost elves (I'll explain later), items and, of course, stages. Frustrating, isn't? To make things worse, your lives don't reset when you exit or complete a mission. For example, if you die twice, you'll have ONE MORE SINGLE CHANCE to complete entire game - unless if, of course, you find another extra live on stages. This can become a boring task, since you probably will have to hunt for extra lives a lot of times before every mission.

The cyber elves are the core of the game. They work like the previous equipable chips from classic and X series (wich you can set up before stages). You can hunt, evolve and collect 'em. Well, the sad part is:

1- if you equip and use an elf, it will disappear FOREVER. You'll not be able to use him/her (they have gender, lol) on the next mission.

2- if you use an elf during a mission, your completion rank will lower A LOT. C and D-rank's are very common ranks for first-time players, imagine if you have used a single elf...

The gameplay was partially enhanced. Now you can use the touch screen to adjust the button layout to your DS preferences. Unfortunately, there is no other good use of the touch screen. They could at least have put the start menu on it...

Soundtrack is a strong point of Zero series. The music goes from mysterious, deep and calm to frantic, electric tunes. They fit perfectly on every dialog or scenario.

Well, if nothing that I listed above bothered you, then hurry up and get this game. It will be a real and a pleasant challenge. Otherwise, like I said on review deck, just forget it - get Megaman ZX (not Advent, for the god's sake!) instead if you're really seeking for a great robot game.