This post is an analysis of the systems in Mega Man Zero that were not already covered in the deep dive into Weapons.
Here are links to the rest of the deep dives:
Ranking System
Just like all the other systems in this game, the ranking system is well documented online, but inside the game the rules are opaque, vague, and harsh. Getting a good rank means beating a mission quickly, while also killing enough enemies, while also taking very little damage, and avoiding the use of any Cyber Elves. This sounds challenging enough on its own, but it sometimes gets worse. In some cases just burning through the level and killing everything in your path is not enough to satisfy the game’s “kill threshold”. In these cases, you may have to backtrack a few times to cause enough enemies to respawn, while still not taking too much time to do so. So you have to go fast, but not too fast, and you have to kill enough, without knowing how much. Tell me again why anyone should tolerate this?
Save Assist
This is a feature that is not unique to this game. Rather, it is a new feature added to all the games in the Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection. Save Assist essentially adds Dark Souls-esque checkpoints to each mission. If you die, you can respawn at the last checkpoint as many times as you would like, though you lose any XP or Energy Crystals you acquired between hitting the checkpoint and dying.
Save Assist allows you to avoid having to replay through sections you already cleared, while still asking you to prove yourself against sections you have not. It is a Quality of Life improvement that makes the game play out in a fashion similar to many modern games, which is why the Collection allows you to use Save Assist and still collect achievements/trophies.
Speaking only for this game, I found Save Assist to be extremely helpful. In fact, I’m not sure if I would have tolerated the additional frustration that would have come from trying to play this it the traditional way.
Quitting Missions
Mega Man Zero breaks up its content into a series of missions. One weird thing about this is that you have the ability to “Give Up” on a mission in the middle of it. The catch is that once you give up, you can no longer retry that mission. It effectively becomes locked content.
You might be wondering why anyone would ever consider giving up. After all, this is Mega Man - if you fail, just retry!
Folks, I have some bad news …
How Lives Work
In Mega Man Zero, how extra lives work depends on the mission. In some missions, losing all your lives results in a hard “Game Over” that spits you back to the title screen (at which point you will need to load your most recent save).
In other missions, losing all of your lives causes you to fail the mission. Failing, like giving up on the mission, results in you being unable to replay it.
One problem with locking away failed missions (aside from the fact that, once again, it is extremely hostile to the player to block away content like this) is that it prevents you from accessing the powerups you would normally get from defeating the mission’s boss. Sometimes this may be a powerful Cyber Elf, but some missions reward you with an Elemental Chip. There are three of these - Ice, Fire, and Electric - and each and every boss is weak to one of them. They are the replacement for the usual “each boss is weak to another boss’ weapon” design seen in most Mega Man games. Without these elements, your odds against mid to late-game bosses are going to be much worse.
This is why, in a non Save Assist run, you need to essentially micromanage your lives. You can burn through them all in order to practice the level, but once you think you can clear it, it is best to reload a save and complete the mission without losing a life. The reason for this is simple - say you finish a mission on your last life. When you do your next mission, your lives carry over; die even once and this new mission will fail. The only way to avoid this is to essentially save scum yourself into a “no death run”.
Conclusion
Aside from Save Assist, I feel about these systems the same way I feel about the weapons - they are needlessly complicated and unfriendly. It is already quite enough to throw a generally challenging game at the player, but these systems add another layer of cognitive load for the player to have to manage. It is not merely enough to play well. On top of that, you need to have a plan for how you are going to play, one that understands what you need to do and when you need to do it, with little to no tolerance for error.
Are there people out there for whom that sounds like a good time? Certainly. But that does not make it a good design for a video game. There is a difference between challenging through testing of skills, and challenging through punishment and tricks. Mega Man Zero is all about the latter.