this isn't my first time, actually played this on it's released while borrowing from a friend. I just came up to a BRICK WALL of difficulty and confusing inventory and elf system. 10 years later, I came through Mega Man Zero Collections.

I'm going to start I had an idea at first, well to be honest, Mighty No 9 being such a whooping success and everyone going "but we have no idea what the game is?" And well that lead me to the impression it could be like Zero, Early on the character designs for the Number characters have different shapes and designs not just "MAN" and "Animal" themes. And a lot of the creature designs were so detailed, not even in that charming Megaman NES designs where "it's a giant mecha frog," or "it's a giant mecha dragon" Innocence, had some design to them.

Not only that, but they made 4 of these games in a short amount of time, Was more considering how they look from game to game, with limited resources and short production scheduled. Now that's the story of mostly all of Capcom's classic library before they ran them into the ground. Although the date on Mighty No 9 is April 2015, they have about a year and a half to go to really polish it up considering they now reached their final goal of even Vita and 3DS ports.

Difficult, yeah, oh yeah..... difficult

no not really, I didn't care to count my chest hair and went on easy because I wanted to experience this story and see what it has. And to be honest no it's not that difficult. In fact it's quite considerate since I have a FAQ open on a laptop just to keep it less worry free. I accept this, and because of easy mode I just rush right into what I want to see and experience, and to be honest, it's addictive.

I never went down the rabbit hole with Mega Man games, I felt cheated in Mega Man 4, right about the part where dr Cossack turns into Dr Wily. I always felt this circle will continue, and with Mega Man X, I only played the first game and stopped the series. I continue this policy with almost every capcom series. Always taste the first, see what's so innovative about it then stop. But Zero was different, not much was said except for "IT'S HARD" from the most devoted megaman fan. So it's wonderful there's an easy setting on this collection.

First impression, it's beautiful, just the little animation of seeing the gun animation of Zero's pistol. The slide, the extractor and the shells, this is a GBA game, it's not the most real estate of pixels we are talking about here 240x160 pixels to be exact. It's an amazing techical attention to detail to a small cartoonie world. Unlike Megaman X series which has it's own specific look that's not as hardcore as people made it out to be, especially those PS2 games where they got pretty colorful. This is a slightly more ruined world, you can see the age on the walls, and the colors. The mechs are detailed but have their own sense of evolution, they are round with long limbs big hands. So when they animate they are very energetic flowing movement which makes the combat quite exciting.

I'm not going to lie, I found the controls a bit sticky. The GBA was a bit different in controls, this never felt as smooth as the X games. There was a sense of commitment to an action, which is why it was so difficult to gamers. But after a while, I got into the rhythm of it all and it became just rewarding, slipping past bullets, using the right combinations of elfs, knowing how to use the shield, the spear, it's clever and fun.

Now what was odd is that this is a big single map, it isn't just small levels as to what everyone made it out to be. Gone is the classic "select boss master" screen, instead there's a small hub, where you select between 3 to 2 missions at a time to help grow your resistance. Once you beaten a mission you can leave and explore this large map and see how all of this connects together. The hub I found to be rewarding, Megaman games never gave me a sense of a world, hell I couldn't tell if megaman was a boy or a man. It's not the best depiction of a growing camp but it's satisfying, in it's own charming way to see people you rescues now in sections of the base you thought were empty.

I mentioned before, the missions are small actually they could be played in less then 2 to 4 minutes. And excuse of the portability of the GBA, but actually there's a lot of variety from escort missions, bomb diffuseness. You are going to see the same maps 3 about 3 times, they actually don't feel that repetitive there's always something new to do. It's radically different from the X series which has massive set pieces, but you BLAZED PASSED THEM not even really giving consideration to the design or how they fit. There's always something new in Zero, plus the difficulty even on easy was pretty challenging. There's one that's a stealth mission to rescue other rebels and that was different then I expected it to be.

I'm not done, I feel I could be 3/4 of the way through. It's interesting how each of these Megaman games are radically different from one another. This feels like a world, using a smaller scale, higher difficult they can construct something really different. I'm itching to play this even as I'm typing this. I don't know if Mighty No 9 will be like this? Actually I doubt it, maybe some of the mech/robot designs? Just reminded that dragon from ZX looks similar to something to Mighty No 9's concept art.

I really do recommend playing this on easy, OR SAVE STATES ON AN EMULATOR. God, save stats would help a lot if your really intimidated by this.