Mega Man ZX Advent (DS)
With Mega Man ZX, Capcom attempted to bring the run and gun action of the Mega Man series into the exploration-focused platforming of the Metroidvania genre, and while the basic gameplay was still enjoyable, the exploration elements were poorly done and didn’t really improve the experience in any way. A second attempt would be made with the game’s sequel though, Mega Man ZX Advent showing some clear improvements in most every regard but at the same time still feeling like it didn’t quite understand how to make the genre work.
Taking place years after the events of the first game, Mega Man ZX Advent opens with the player choosing to play as either Grey or Ashe in what proves to be a somewhat meaningful choice. Not only do they have different abilities, Grey able to have more shots fired at a time while Ashe’s are stronger, but the story has some character specific moments to it. The opening is different for them both, Grey being an android known as a Reploid who awakens in a lab unaware of his history while Ashe is a treasure hunter looking to leave her mark on history. After the different openings the plot’s end up on mostly the same track for the rest of the adventure, the characters facing the same bosses but having different dialogue when speaking to the other characters who inhabit a world where humans and robots mostly live together in peace save for the Mavericks who seek the powerful Model W Biometal. Biometal allows individuals to Megamerge, granting them special robotic armor with unique abilities based on the soul of the machine inside it. Early on Ashe or Grey end up merging with a mysterious new Biometal called Model A that lets them copy the Biometal powers of others, this unique tool potentially the key to preventing anyone with ill intent from acquiring Model W while also revealing a deeper tie to the past of these playable characters.
Your protagonist of choice will end up working alongside the Hunters in their efforts to stop those seeking Model W and one interesting element of many cutscenes in the game is the inclusion of voice acting. Admittedly not all the actors are doing the best when it comes to performances and some lines get clipped awkwardly when they’re spread over multiple on-screen dialogue boxes, but it does feel like it gives more weight to moments where the hero speaks with Model A as you can clearly hear the tone in the Biometal’s voice despite its lack of facial expressions. On the other hand a serious moment can feel a little less exciting when one of the voice actors puts in a wooden performance, so it is a mixed but at least somewhat effective inclusion that supports a plot that is mostly about stopping a fairly typical megalomaniacal power grab with a minor bit of self-discovery for the lead of your choice.
In the basic form of Model A your normal weapon features both rapid fire and charge options as well as a homing shot that can lock onto multiple targets and uses special energy as ammunition. This special energy does replenish over time but your regular shots are often a solid fit for the dangers ahead, advancing often focusing on careful but fairly quick forward progress interrupted by robotic enemies who pose a bit of a threat. The robots often block the path forward somehow like saw-firing machines that line the walls you need to jump off of to climb up higher, spiky underwater foes who try to block your path, and many different types that fire shots forward once they’re on screen so you need to react quickly to avoid damage. New areas bring with them enemies packing novel tricks and their placement can make simply blasting them apart and moving on a bit harder, especially as the world around you gets more dangerous with abundant instant death spikes and drops. Admittedly the instant death drops are a bit incongruous with the game’s design, some rooms requiring you to proceed downward while in others dropping below is fatal, and while there is a power that lets you see some of the room’s map design to determine if a pit is safe, swapping to it every time to check would be tedious. Luckily most of the area design provides enjoyable areas to explore with solid robotic opposition to make it challenging, but things are made more interesting as your Model A abilities actually become key to exploring areas of the world.
When you defeat a boss in Mega Man ZX Advent, be they another humanoid character using Biometal or a massive machine styled after an animal, you will get the ability to transform into that boss character and utilize some of their powers. While humans are about the same size as Ashe and Grey and their Biometal powers are actually the armor models from the previous game being reused, the mechanical animal bosses come in a wide variety of shapes and control in quite a few different ways. Bifrost is an absurdly large bipedal ice crocodile who fills almost the whole screen, Chronoforce is based on a shelled aquatic creature and is long and partly invincible but absolutely immobile on land, and Rospark manifests mostly as a slow-moving bulb with vines twirling around it but can latch onto poles to reveal a human-shaped floral robot inside. Being able to turn into these huge boss characters is visually impressive at first but many of them aren’t all that useful by design. Rospark for example moves incredibly slowly and can barely jump so only when it latches onto poles can it move well at all, but riding those poles is a straightforward process. Bifrost is mostly used to break specific blocks, and while Chronoforce is a good panic transform if you want that protection, it needs water areas to really shine and the Model L aquatic armor is more flexible in aquatic situations. Chronoforce does have a time slowing ability though and some forms like Buckfire with its fiery arrow spread shot and Vulturon with its horizontal hover can find moments of effectiveness, but the boss forms do sometimes feel like they’re solutions to only very specific impediments or tools to reach side areas where the path to reach them is only a matter of using the form.
Other forms can prove a bit more consistently useful, Model H’s mix of aerial mobility and a sword slash attack making it good for exploration and fighting for example. It seems more an issue of form clutter, the player able to stop time and switch them with a press of a button but the selection menu gets larger when many of them aren’t likely to be used much. However, those forms do work well when they are boss characters and there are some sections of stages completely devoted to utilizing one form thoroughly such as the ceiling latching of Model P that was practically useless in Mega Man ZX now put through its paces in a whole dedicated section. Using your powers to navigate specific places does give Mega Man ZX Advent a good focus on its navigation rather than just taking down enemies in your path, the map system a major improvement from the previous game. The map now labels areas with specific names like Train, Oil Field, Floating Ruins, and Arctic Ice Floe. Areas like the Tower of Verdue are long vertical climbs through a tree-like structure while the Floating Ruins contains an admittedly annoying wind mechanic, but most environment concepts work well and have distinct gimmicks tied to them like the Scrapyard having falling junk you can find a switch to disable to make navigation easier. There is a bit of a disconnect between areas that make it so its less an interconnected world and more one that gives you some reasons to return to areas later as you get new powers or open up side quests, much of your navigation tied to warps. Save points offer a transportation system to any warp point you’ve enabled but their initial activation costs money, the player at first needing to weigh up if they want to activate a point or save their cash for a potential hard area ahead. Beating bosses and completing optional missions though will lead to a growing cash reserve that makes activating each one easy enough eventually, although some spaces like the Quarry have few warp points as a way of making themselves feel more dangerous. There are a few other things to spend cash on too but the warp system becomes incredibly useful if you want to return to previous areas to use new skills to find extras like life increases or sub tanks that store healing power for later.
The side quests in Mega Man ZX Advent are pretty decent, the ease of travel making their sometimes basic item grabbing more feasible but most of the time if a character asks for a special item it will be hidden behind a previously optional or inaccessible area. This can lead to moments where you didn’t find the person’s request first and venture through a small little challenge to find an empty space where that item will show up later, but by having small navigation challenges tied to them these quests can make up for their simple concepts like finding a lost wrench or pickaxe.
Boss battles prove to be one of the more interesting parts of the experience though, not only because you’re facing a foe that you know soon you’ll be using the powers of but because of the unique dangers they present. Admittedly a few of them have attack patterns that are easy to identify and exploit for an easy fight, but that makes a late game boss rush more bearable as you won’t be in too much danger of losing your progress during the gauntlet-like final stage. Bosses usually have a handful of attacks that you need to identify quickly and position yourself well to dodge while utilizing your powers to fight back, and while your basic Model A’s gun can kill most of the opposition with enough effort, certain forms and special powers can speed up fights and exploit weaknesses. The odd designs of the mechanical animal ones can make them hard to utilize against bosses without taking some damage yourself but also those designs make for battles more unique and diverse than when you’re fighting a human-sized foe, but even someone in similar armor can have a few tricks like Atlas’s shots that travel in bending and twisting paths. At times it can feel a little odd that a seemingly unblockable beam expected you to decide to shoot that beam to push it away and give yourself room to stand, but most battles are a quick enough learning process that doesn’t wholly lose its edge when you understand it, ensuring the fight posts some danger while you can still overcome it with some knowledge and movement skill.
THE VERDICT: Outshining Mega Man ZX in practically every department but not quite reaching the heights its concept could reach, Mega Man ZX Advent trims down its navigational exploration while also providing a decent map and side quest incentives to occasionally retread it. More an action side-scroller where some areas connect than a Metroidvania, Mega Man ZX Advent still makes progressing interesting as your stolen boss powers sometimes get devoted segments to shake up the usual form of progress while even normal play provides plenty of enemies and bosses who put up solid fights. The exciting action is still the star of the show rather than the world, but the little extras for taking new powers to old places still gives this a bit more to do than simply fight your way to the finale.
And so, I give Mega Man ZX Advent for Nintendo DS…
A GOOD rating. Exploration could have been the interesting angle needed to elevate this game even higher, but it still leaves an interesting mark on your robot busting adventure when it is given more focus. When an area starts catering to a specific form in more ways than simply putting up an easily overcome barrier, your extra powers really get the chance to shine. Whipping them out for their unique attacks will make certain boss fights more interesting, but oftentimes exploring a level requires something simple and consistent like Model A or H while the big boss forms could have benefited from more flexibility. The impact of being a behemoth like Bifrost is lost when you realize he can’t do much besides chomp dedicated blocks due to his cumbersome size, but there are still enough moments where you are using interesting powers to get around or fight that the forms aren’t pointless complications. The warp point system is a smart way to make the money matter though and it could have been a way to connect the world without requiring too much retreading, and when you do have special missions or want to grab extra goodies with new powers they do show their potential. Mostly though Mega Man ZX Advent does trend towards the observation I made about the previous game, that it is essentially a game with normal stage progression but the occasional injection of something trying to connect certain spaces. Mega Man ZX Advent does take that further by having areas you can only use teleports to reach but still provides both the strong forward fighting action of the run and gun play while squirreling secrets away to find once you have more abilities to explore with, so it does at least avoid being a level-based adventure disguising itself as a Metroidvania.
The little Metroidvania experiment of the ZX subseries of Mega Man games probably is a failure even though both games that tried it are good on different merits. The elements only hindered the enjoyment of the first game and their impact in the second one isn’t pronounced enough for it to really feel like it defines the experience, the game still mostly about fighting your way through a new area to face a boss and gain their powers, something that’s been part of the series core since the first game in the Mega Man franchise. Mega Man ZX Advent does at least put in more reasons to scour a place for interesting things to do and has some opportunities to use special powers for more than progress, so once you add in its well designed boss battles and diverse area types, you still have an effective action platformer that prioritized consistent entertainment over embracing new genre concepts.