A New Page Turned

Zero 1 is a game that can be pretty well compared to the very first Mega Man game. It has a fantastic base engine – even better than MM1's, because it didn't need any refining at all for the following titles – and a few very good ideas, but is hampered by the execution of those. It desperately needs polish in many parts, but is so solid in its core that it can be enjoyed despite those flaws.
As said, the controls of this game are probably its main selling point. They are as close to perfect as you can get. In general, what you can do is not really that different from the X games; however, Zero refines that to a great degree, and I know it might sound irrational to many of you, but after having played Zero for so long, I can't go back to X without those games feeling clunky in comparison. Added on top of that, Zero's trademark saber is now an elegant murder weapon, no longer a crude slashing instrument, with a variety of smooth moves to put a fighting game to shame.

The games will expect you to master their controls. At points, especially if you challenge yourself, the difficulty seems overwhelming. However, almost always, a certain line is never crossed: A mistake you make will always make you feel like it was [I]your[/I] fault, and not the game's. This is essential for the challenge feeling fair, and the perfect controls help a great deal to solidify this mindset.

That's the gameplay side, which is great. The presentation is a little more...controversial. Many people are put off by the art style; it's certainly different. Won't comment too much on that, taste is subjective. I personally don't mind it at all, though, and it can look pretty cool at points. What I really dislike in Zero 1 is the music, though. Apart from a few outstanding tracks, it's pretty bland and boring and doesn't fit the game at all. That's not too big of a deal, but it's there.

And finally, the story. The intro, which we're going to come to shortly, is pretty long and unskippable, a big negative because I want to get to playing, damn it! It's not the first time a Mega Man game tries a really for lack of a better word „epic“ storyline. The X games did that. However, especially in the later ones, what awesome story there was was told with boring text crawls and still images, and especially in X6 even a glancing look at the contents made it apparent that it was little more than shoddy retcons and insanity-fueled garbage.
Zero does things differently. It tells its story in a coherent manner, and doesn't go overboard; I think it makes perfect sense, for the most part. The downside is tons more text than before. Fortunately, not only the storytelling method is miles better, the content is, too, so I don't have to groan all the way through it. We'll see soon enough that the Zero games' solution to the clusterfuck of X's storyline is to acknowledge it happening, but putting a lid on it, inventing an entirely new backstory to set up their own games and sticking with that. There are almost no references to the old stuff, and for only the best.