Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection

It plays awesome!!!!!!!

So fun, colorful, wild, and snappy. Grateful for all that the collection adds, like a checkpoint system and tons of art and music. Proof that platform doesn't matter when the games stand on their own on any device.

This game so tuff. I love megamans,

The definitive way to play MMZ.

Best art style + controls in the series.

All 6 in one place and on a bigger screen.

The Mega Man Zero series is a very good series of action platformers that any fan of the genre should definitely play, especially if you played the later Mega Man X games and loved playing as Zero. As far as the emulation features go that the various Mega Man collections feature, I think this collection has the second best besides the first OG Mega Man collection. It has a Save-Assist feature that essentially is reloadable checkpoints (and reloading them also fully heals you). The second OG Mega Man collection features a similar system, but I find the one in this collection to be a bit more intuitive. The first game is probably my second favorite in the collection. Great level and boss design and not too many issues aside from one insanely glaring issue: E-Crystals. In these games you collect Cyber-Elves, which can do a whole lot of different things or give various buffs. The more notable ones (some that come to mind would be the Mega Man X equivalent of Heart Tanks, Sub Tanks, Shock Buffer, etc.) require E-Crystals before you can actually use them. The amount of E-Crystals necessary to upgrade and use these Cyber-Elves is ridiculous and requires a lot of E-Crystal grinding in the overworld, especially for the really good ones. I would say it is worth it, especially for the Lv3 Elves that give double HP, double Defense, and removal of all insta-death spikes, but be prepared to grind up E-Crystals for a good while if you want the benefits of the good Cyber Elves. If you can get past this, this game is great. Also interesting to note is that these games, instead of having a certain weapon they are weak to like in the older Mega Man games, they are often weak to certain elements; Thunder, Fire, or Ice (though some bosses don't have a weakness). Once you get the corresponding elemental chip, you can equip it and use charge attacks to inflict elemental damage. One other minor complaint with this game though is that you have to unlock the ability to charge your attacks by increasing weapon rank, which can take quite a while to do if you're just playing normally (Although if you do end up grinding for E-Crystals, that is a good time to increase weapon rank as well). Also, unlike older Mega Man OG and X games with an 8 boss selection off-rip, you have a list of 4-5 missions or so and beating a base mission will unlock a second mission connected with it (so if you beat the train mission, you unlock the highway mission; beating one desert mission unlocks another desert mission, etc.). The second set of missions are harder than the first, but it still gives the offer of some unique routing options as a result. Mega Man Zero 2 is probably my least favorite of the 4, but it is still overall a decent game. One thing it did massively improve is that it greatly cut down the amount of E-Crystals needed to upgrade Cyber Elves, so grinding is kept to a minimum. There is the introduction of Forms as well, which I think offer some interesting different approaches to different gameplay styles (one gives a Buster buff, another the Rolling Slash, Shot Eraser, Defense buff, etc.). This also introduces EX Skills into the series, which are basically like the abilities you would get in the X games after beating a boss as Zero. However, you don't just get them from beating the boss, you have to beat the boss while you have an A or S Rank. I wish it was like it was in the X games, but I still welcome their inclusion. Unless you're cracked at the game, I would look into and handpick which EX skills you want (You will typically at least beat the intro stage with an A Rank and there are a few elves you can use which will upgrade you to A Rank that you can proc when you're in the stage of a boss you want the skill of). What's nice is that some of these EX Skills can be made stronger and imbued with an element if you equip an elemental chip and use it, which can make defeating bosses with elemental weaknesses easier (albeit some bosses are harder to hit with certain EX skills than others). There are still the weapon ranks in this game, but the amount of upgrades needed and the time it takes to get them are made much easier to get than in prior games. I will note that what puts this game lower for me is that the level design can be annoying at times, certain bosses are very annoying, and there are certain Cyber Elves that are extremely aggravating to obtain (Phoenix Magnion's stage, one of the first four stages you can access, is the epitome of this). Also there are certain sections that require the use of a weapon called the Chain Rod, and this weapon is very unintuitive, especially when trying to swing across areas with it. This game also goes for a Mega Man 7-8 approach of giving you the first 4 bosses to beat, then intermission, and then a second set of bosses to beat. While this game can be frustrating at times, it still is overall a good time. Mega Man Zero 3 is the best one of the series. Has great level and boss design (there is only one stage that I was mildly infuriated by), the Cyber Elf collection is probably the best in the series with how much you can upgrade yourself along with still having lower costs for Elf upgrading, there are new chips for Head, Body, and Foot that you can mix and match to upgrade youself even further, and it's just overall a great time. EX Skills are still obtained the same as they were in Z2 and bosses are still given to you in groups (albeit 3 groups instead of 2 this time). Z3 is what OG 2 and X1 are to their respective series. Mega Man Zero 4 I would say is my third favorite. Interestingly, unlike the other Zero games, they actually let you go to any of the 8 main stages from the start like a traditional Mega Man game. There is a bit of a double-edged sword with boss weaknesses though. On one hand, this game has the best method of getting EX skills where you just have to beat the level in a less favorable weather condition to get their skill. On the other hand, they removed the elemental chips from this game, so you have to rely on EX skills to do elemental weakness damage (and some of these bosses are really hard to hit with the EX skill they're weak to). Also, instead of having a collection of Cyber Elves to find, you just have one Cyber Elf which is an amalgamation of various Cyber Elves that can have a Healer, Animal, and Hacker Elf all active at the same time. You unlock more effects by feeding it Crystals, but some of the later levels require a hefty amount of E-Crystals to upgrade. Also, instead of just obtaining Chips through Secret Disks or beating bosses like in Z3, you have to combine various enemy parts that will occasionally drop from defeated enemies and using specific parts in specific combinations can give you Chips (it's also how you get 2 of the 4 sub tanks). The combination of going back to having to farm a decent amount for E-Crystals (albeit not as much as Z1) and having to farm for enemy parts does make this one of the more grindier entries (though the king of grinding in this series is still Z1). It does have a few level design quirks here and there that I'm not the biggest fan of, though not as annoying as some of the ones in Z2. Overall still a solid game and the finale of this game is both a great finish for the game and an amazing send-off to the series. I've talked so much about Mega Man Zero, but this collection also has the 2 ZX games as well. I will be honest in that I am personally not a fan of Metroidvania games, which is what these 2 games are. I did briefly play the first one, but just couldn't get into it. I have heard that they are good Metroidvania games and it did seem to control and play well from the brief time I played it, so if you're into Metroidvania, consider giving those 2 a shot.