For the Uninitiated: Megaman Zero

The Megaman franchise was massive. Because of that, most people have played a Megaman game. And if you were a fan, you've most likely made the pilgrimage through the original Megaman and the X games. Unfortunately, the last third of the mainline Megaman titles has largely been relegated to the sideline and often left overlooked and under appreciated. Some of that is circumstance, some of it is Capcom's fault, but we're going to try to breeze past all of that so you can hopefully jump into and enjoy the final arc of the mainline Megaman series as too many have missed out on Zero's closing chapter due to the immense difficulty the arc is known for. But I've got some tricks and we're going to go through them so you can finally end the battle X and Zero have been fighting for so long.

NOTE: This is just a primer to power you up for your playthrough and is STORY SPOILER-FREE. It should also be noted that this is a primer for people that intend to take on the original mode of the Zero series. If you're just looking for a chill Megaman time and want to see the story you've missed out on, consider the new casual mode! It basically brings the difficulty down to be more on par with the original Megaman X and you won't miss out on any story. Remember, you can always play the original mode on your second playthrough!

Finishing the fight

Zero awakens and is told by a strange woman that he is the legendary fighter, Zero, who once fought alongside the great hero, X, a century ago. And that X has turned on humanity amid an energy crisis and now rules with an iron fist over Neo Arcadia, the sole bastion of human-kind amid a barren planet. The woman introduces herself as Ciel, a young researcher trying to find a solution to the energy crisis, and begs you to aid her cause and take up arms against the one person you promised to stand by.

What follows is a four part story of anger, desperation, deceit, and loss set in a wasteland of our own making. The Zero series tells a story of accountability, the costs of war, and a single promise; the promise to finish the fight that began so many years ago.

Zero - Waking up to bad news

Fans of the X series are in for a harsh realization once they get control of Zero. Gone are the air dashes, equipment, new armors, basically anything that could've made you stronger. You don't even have the Z-saber. Just some handgun. You can't even charge it... yet.

Without spoiling anything, Ciel has just helped revive you, Zero, and you're kind of struggling to remember anything. That unfortunately means you'll need to "remember" your old techniques. You can do this one of two ways.

• Gradually regain abilities naturally by using said weapon a lot as you play the game.
• Walk back to the first level and force an infinite number of grunts to respawn so you can grind the weapon levels out.

The first entry in the series is actually a Metroidvania in a sense. All of the stages are connected and you can walk right outside of your home base and kill some grunts to get the ability to charge your weapons if you're struggling against a boss. While this is kind of boring, I would highly recommend at least getting the first level charge if you're struggling to do enough damage. Thankfully, by Megaman Zero 3, Zero has had his morning coffee and you won't need to potentially spend the first 10 minutes of the game grinding for abilities anymore. It's a weird quirk of the first two titles and while it's often attributed to being an attempt at a RPG-like element in the series, I think if we're being honest with ourselves, it's padding. The MMZ1 in particular is balanced with that in mind however so if you do grind to get the full charge ability, you will be able to be a little overpowered for the early portion of the game.

Ranking System

YOU DON'T NEED TO WORRY ABOUT THIS YET.

Mission Failed (again)

Another unique aspect of Megaman Zero 1 is that you can fail missions and the game just goes on like nothing happened. It's weird. Like, you'd think you would have to pass a certain % of the missions or get a "game over," but you can honestly fail every single mission and end up at the final stage anyways. This is a system that only exists in MMZ1 and you can circumvent it pretty easily by just making sure you save before you go out on a mission. To avoid getting too frustrated, grind up some extra lives on the first stage so you have a little more room for failure.

Elements

Unlike traditional Megaman games, bosses aren't weak to moves, they're weak to elements. In each game you will collect three different element chips. These can be equipped to imbue your charged attacks with an elemental edge. Bosses are generally weak to one of these three elements. You'll know when you nail a boss with their elemental weakness as their body will be covered by whatever element you're using and they'll be knocked out of whatever action they were performing.

Cyber-elves

So, what are cyber-elves? In short, cyber-elves are data that has become sentient. They're found as "babies" and you have to feed them crystalized data in order for them to grow and fully mature. They're thinking, living creatures that are selfless in nature and, when mature, have immense powers. However, by using a cyber-elf, you kill it. Beyond the obvious moral implications within the world of the Zero series itself, you can systemically think of cyber-elves as permanent one-use items. There is a set number of cyber-elves in each title scattered across the stages and it is almost always worth collecting them as they will often be the difference between success and failure. Let's talk about some of the most important abilities cyber-elves are capable of performing.

Increase your health bar - The only way to increase your maximum health is to sacrifice certain cyber-elves. For your first time playing through any of the games, this is highly recommended.

Double your health bar - This elf is unique in that it doubles what health you have so you should only use this cyber-elf once you've found and used all of the previous class of elf that increases your health bar. If you choose to use this cyber-elf early, it'll only double your current max health and if you haven't gotten all of the max health upgrades before it, you'll never be able to get your full maximum health!

Subtank - Some cyber-elves are subtanks! There's four of them as usual for a Megaman game! Obviously very important.

Doubles defense - Sometimes written as "halves damage taken" but it basically amounts to a permanent defense upgrade.

Spikes no longer instant-kill - Self-explanatory, and if you've played a Megaman game, you know how big of a deal that is!

Saves Zero from one pitfall - Keep falling in that one pit every time? Well, this cyber-elf will save you from it once. Great if you have an area you keep dropping the ball at.

Temporarily force your rank to be A - This does exactly what it sounds like. For a few minutes your rank will be set to A before returning to whatever it was before you used the cyber-elf. Why is this useful? Well, we'll get to that.

Cyber-elves are there for beginners and first-time players. Don't be afraid to use them. Just be cautious of the order you use the health ones as I mentioned above. That is one place you could potentially mess yourself up with them. 

Ranking System for real

KEEP IGNORING. IT DOES NOT MATTER... YET.

Living the legend

Zero has been fighting for a long time and it shows in even his most basic moves as you can find some seriously unique and powerful attributes hiding within. Here's some key examples

j.d+Z-saber is different from j.Z-saber - Let me clarify. Zero has his standard jump attack, but if you hold down when you do it, he will just hold his saber out, forever. Like, how long is the attack active? How long do you want to hold down? And, for whatever reason if you do the hold down + attack variant of his down attack move, it does more damage than the normal jumping attack.

Dash height =/= walking height - Dashing in Megaman Zero is everything. While movement of the dash functions in a lot of the same ways as the original ground dash from Megaman X, it's worth trying to visually identify things as walking height or dashing height as there are a lot of projectiles and things you can dash under that you wouldn't be able to walk under. In fact, mashing dash can be used as an impromptu crouch option. If you're finding you can't comfortably jump over something, try dashing under it if it appears it may be enough space. This is an essential part of a lot of boss patterns.

Combos exist - Boss fights in the original title generally boil down to run away and charge, then pick an opening and release your charge attack, but from MMZ2 onward, you should start considering combos. Combos in the MMZ series are kind of weird. There's relatively strict routes, but there's some room for expression. Here's the combo route

Full charge attack > basic chain > EX-Skills

As long as you follow that path, you will combo for more damage despite the boss being in invincibility frames. For example, the most common, high damage combo for bosses is to do full Z-saber charge, quickly do the basic Z-saber triple-hit combo, then cancel the third hit into the uppercut EX-Skill and cancel the uppercut into the down air EX-Skill. This is something that, to my knowledge, the series never explains you can do and it makes boss fights substantially shorter.

Know your enemy

There's a relatively short list of enemies in the Megaman Zero series so it's worth taking a little time to consider how you might approach any enemies that seem to get a cheap shot on you each time you cross paths with them. And just like Metroid or Castlevania, it's worth knowing which enemies are easy to grind so you can get some health back should you find yourself a little low or in need of a fuller subtank.

Weapons of choice

Zero's Z-saber isn't his only option in battle in the Zero series and each game has a unique weapon that isn't in any other. It's worth noting that you can play the entire series with just the buster like a classic Megaman game if you want and forego the Z-saber or any other weapon. How you use them is totally up to you. Let's look at the arsenal.

Z-saber - By far Zero's biggest damage dealer, the Z-saber is your go-to boss weapon. In some games there are means to make the saber even more powerful giving you the ability to slash bullets back at enemies or changing your triple slash!

Buster - The default ranged weapon. The buster acts as the typical X-style gun weapon, but has some of the lowest damage of the options. While lighter on damage, the buster has some of the wildest elemental EX-Skills with real utility.

Shield boomerang - By far the most overlooked weapon of the series, the shield boomerang is one of the most versatile weapons in the series. Its default use is a shield that, while held, reflects projectiles. You cannot dash while you're holding your shield out, but reflected bullets do damage enemies and there's even ways you can buff your shield so that reflected bullets turn into health or crystal drops instead. I won't spoil anything else about that. When charged, Zero will throw the shield like a boomerang. This is actually the single strongest damaging attack Zero has. One last note, the ouroboros shield loop. By dashing forward, then jumping back over your ground thrown charged shield you can cause the shield boomerang to infinitely circle around Zero. Not always useful, but I wanted you to know it is a technique that has been proven and exists... Also it looks really cool.

Triple-rod (MMZ1) - The first of the unique weapons, this is an extendable spear that can attack in all eight directions. Great in combination with the buster to cover threats coming from above or below that the buster can't reach. Another unique ability of the triple-rod is it's down stab. Only performable from the air, this down stab allows you to pogo on certain obstacles like enemies' heads. Can allow you to reach some otherwise unreachable items.

Chain-rod (MMZ2) - The beginning of the trope of the now mangled triple-rod being reworked into something useable at the start of a new game, we get the chain-rod. Effectively the same as the triple-rod, except it reaches the full length in one swing. While the chain-rod can't pogo bounce along enemies, it can grab things! With the chain-rod not only can Zero latch onto anything and swing around, but he can also grab enemies and pull them into spike pits! It's hilarious! Many players' favorite rod weapon and for good reason.

Recoil-rod (MMZ3) - Zero is bad at taking care of his rod weapons so with the destruction of the chain-rod, we see the birth of the recoil-rod. It retains the 8-way attack ability of the first two iterations, but whereas the chain-rod could pull things, the recoil-rod can push them with a fully charged attack. I know, really groundbreaking stuff here. Probably the most important thing to mention of the recoil rod is its ability to do a full charge down attack and do a massive bounce off an enemy's heads.

Z-knuckle (MMZ4) - The resistance engineer, Cerveau, just fully gave up on Zero's ability to take care of his creations at this point and just did some things with Zero's hand figuring he couldn't possibly destroy that. What can I say about the Z-knuckle besides, well, it sucks. With the worst reach and damage of any of Zero's weapons, this one exists almost entirely as a novelty. Should you kill an enemy with the Z-knuckle, however, you will gain a few uses of one of their abilities. While this can be useful, there are just so few enemy abilities to steal and even fewer worth using. What the Z-knuckle does offer is the ability to now hold onto certain pipes and other overhead objects which adds some nifty platforming variety.

Forms (MMZ2)

Forms aren't really talked about in the narrative. It's just kind of a weird game mechanic that tries to offer enhancements to certain play styles rather than being a direct power up. Unfortunately, the requirements for getting forms are insanely tedious and often not worth the work put into getting them. The basic gist is that in order to get a form you have to accomplish a hidden objective while playing through a normal mission. If you accomplish the hidden objective for two different forms, you will only get one of them. Since there are a limited number of missions, it means you'll need to do some planning when you attempt to unlock one. Much like the ranking system, I wouldn't worry all that much about forms on your first playthrough of MMZ2. The original intent was for outlier play styles to be given small abilities that helped them continue to play how they were and intended to be unlocked organically from how you were choosing to play the game. For example, if you just use your buster, you might unlock X-form which lets you shoot more rapidly. It's very little changes like that.

The Chip System (MMZ3 & MMZ4)

Unlike the Forms mechanic, the chip system is a small part of the larger narrative of MMZ3 so I won't dive into that so much. What I will talk about is how it works. Basically, Zero now has the ability to modify his body via upgrade chips that can give you a variety of abilities from allowing your weapons to auto-charge to making you invincible when you dash. By far the most fleshed out upgrade/modification system of the Zero series, you will be revisiting areas trying to find every chip. The system remains in MMZ4 largely unchanged though with fewer abilities. Instead of finding chips, you now have to grind for item drops that you craft into a chip.

The Ranking System

By far the single thing the Zero series is most infamous for, the ranking system, is a brutal beast that will show you no mercy. I joked above about ignoring the ranking system, but I do genuinely mean for new players to just ignore it for their first play through as it is more of a hindrance than a help for newcomers. 

It's important to note that the ranking system has no impact on the story so don't feel like you're failing if your rank is low. Rather, if you haven't beaten several entries in the series already, you should be expecting a low rank as the ranking system is effectively a new game+ mechanic that is available at the outset of the game and is meant to give returning and experienced players a new challenge.

The ranking system is an accumulative score of how well you've performed in each stage so far. So, your rank at the end of a level is actually your current overall rank after your performance within the level. So, if you have an A rank when you enter a level, but do really poorly when you defeat the level, you might be shown a B rank. You didn't get a B rank from the level. Rather, your overall rank dropped to B after your poor performance in the level. Actions taken outside of a stage don't count against your rank so you can run back to a stage after you've Ace'd it to pick up chips or cyber-elves you might've missed without having to worry about that affecting your rank.

While there are some general things that are measured each time, most levels have their own unique requirements to get the highest score and you'll need to pay close attention to your mission dispatcher to know what your unique mission goal is. Let's look at some general guidelines for a good score in no particular order.

• Time to completion
• Enemies killed
• % of mission objective complete

Seems simple enough. Now let's look at what things can count against your score

• Damage taken (accumulative across all lives used during level)
• Lives lost
• Cyber-elves used in level
• Permanent Cyber-elf buffs you've used up to that point in the game (like health upgrades)

Seems simple enough, right? Just never get hit, reset from save any time you die, never use a cyber-elf, complete all mission objectives, then kill whatever arbitrary enemy killed number that level has (because it is different for each level) and do all of this within whatever time limit the level requires.

EX-Skills

Why would anyone put themselves through that hell just for an A rank?? Well, that's the only way to get EX-Skills, the Zero series' equivalent to boss abilities, in MMZ2 and MMZ3. While EX-Skills aren't even in the first title of the series and completely unnecessary for playing and enjoying the games, they're still really cool and worth talking about.

EX-Skills are special moves that, when equipped, either cover a weapon's weakness or play to its strengths. EX-Skills become even stronger or take on more unique attributes when combined with an element chip which can change the EX-Skill. For example, Zero's uppercut is somewhat standard until you equip the flame chip which makes it a flaming uppercut that can burn foliage. It also extends the height of Zero's uppercut. Most EX-Skills have an element they can combine with in order to enhance them and I'll leave it to you to experiment.

"But, what if I'm terrible and the best rank I can manage is a D?" I hear you asking. Well, that's where that cyber-elf that forces your rank to A comes in handy. If used during a boss fight and your rank remains A when you beat the boss, you'll receive the EX-Skill for the boss! There are four of these cyber-elves in total and a little research should help you figure out which bosses you'd like to use them on. My personal recommendation is the uppercut, well, because of course it is.

But what about MMZ4's EX-Skills? Well, MMZ4 has an entire weather system. We'll talk a little more about that below. It's worth noting right now that you do not need any rank to unlock the EX-skills in that game.

Holding the A rank

There are much better and more thoroughly written guides out there to getting an A rank and keeping it, but basically the reason you want to keep at least an A is because that is the lowest rank you can have and still get EX-Skills. For the masochists among you there is technically an S rank above A. That's good however as that means S is a perfect score and A is mostly perfect. That means there is some room to mess up and still scrape by with an A. 

Additionally, once all of the bosses are defeated, there's no reason besides personal satisfaction to keep that A rank as there are no more EX-Skills to be obtained from it. Another reason you might want to ditch your ranking is bosses will use a special super move if your rank is A or higher so once you have what you need, there's no reason to put yourself back through super move hell during the boss rush.

It's always sunny in Neo Arcadia

While not getting too into why the weather starts being a thing in MMZ4, the gimmick of this title is that the weather can change on the mission select screen and what that weather is changes the level. For example, if it's snowing on a level, outdoor area's spike pits will be safe to walk across as they'll be covered in snow. As a system it was really cool, but in order to get the boss skills, you had to only play each level on its hardest weather setting which meant a lot of the nuances of the weather system are completely missed if you're trying to get all of the EX-skills. And not all of the stage's weather options for EX-skills were intuitive so don't be afraid to look up a list of necessary weather conditions for the stages.

Game-specific nonsense and general advice

Hopefully all of this information will help you make it through. If that's not quite enough information overload, here's a few more bullets on ways to survive this series. That's all from me for now. Hope you enjoy the series!

MMZ1

• Make sure you've always got the max 9 lives before you go into a new level.
• The spiders from the first stage are an easy place to grind for lives and crystals. Use the gun so you can sit back. Just don't destroy the nest.
• Grinding to get the full charge ability for the Z-saber early on is super useful and is probably the only time you will feel overpowered in this game.
• Seek out those cyber-elves that raise your health and get your first subtank as soon as you can.
• Grunts that have a buster gun shoot the exact amount of bullets needed to kill them so if you walk up to them and hold out the shield, they'll kill themselves basically.

MMZ2

• You don't have to grind as long for abilities this time around.
• Practice chain-rod swinging in the base. 
• The first level has a mandatory swinging section that always kills newcomers, but if you stand at the edge of the platform and jump straight up, then use the chain-rod, you should be able to catch the side of the swing block without risk of falling in the pit.
• This is the first game with combos so if you hit a boss with a charged attack, don't forget to finish with your 3-hit Z-saber chain! It'll make getting through those earlier bosses before you have element chips much faster.

MMZ3

• For the opening stage's boss, remember what I said earlier about dash height being lower than walking height for getting under some projectiles.
• Chips are amazing. Make sure you're picking them up and learning how to get the most out of them.
• Elements aren't just for bosses. Don't be afraid to see what that flame chip can do to some foliage.
• The Cyber-space holds a lot of secrets, but during a mission you're most likely just focused on surviving so, enter with caution. Battle Network fans will recognize some enemies in Cyber-space.

MMZ4

• Cyber-elves are the weakest in this title than any other. That said, this game is substantially easier than the rest.
• Easiest way to track if an enemy is ready to kill with Z-knuckle is with the buster. Just shoot one or two shots at an enemy as you're coming up to them and then jab them with the Z-knuckle. If they're not dead, usually one more Z-knuckle will kill them.
• The axe ability for the Z-knuckle is one of the good ones. Does good damage, but it's up to you if it's worth going out of your way for.
• Due to how tedious chip crafting is, I would highly recommend you look up a guide for it.
• There is a huge difficulty spike at the end of the game if you haven't found the item that lowers damage from spikes.
• Have a tissue box ready for when you finally finish this series. You've earned a good cry.