Mega Man ZX is a side-scrolling shooter like the Mega Man games of the past. Primarily based of the Mega Man Zero series, ZX has similar game play, looks and story. ZX takes place in the not-so-far future of the Zero universe, which in turn takes place after the X series. Beyond the fact that Zero made the world a more peaceful place and that Model Z is based off him, he supposedly has no place in the story, the same basically goes for Mega Man X and his model.
The two main characters of the game are the teens Vent and his sister, Aile. This marks the first time a female character is playable in a Mega Man game, to my knowledge. It is possible it is the first time you can play as a human, too. Both character’s story lines differ and supposedly don’t take place at the same period of time, but their backgrounds are both identical. Their parents were killed in Maverick attacks when they were younger and now work for a delivery service which will take anything from mail to illegal weapons. This brings them in contact with Biometal X and their employer with Biometal Z. As you can probably tell, I’ve gotten a bit ahead of myself. Lets start with the Mavericks. Mavericks are rebellious reploids (extremely human-like robots) who “defies the will of the Maverick Hunters or of the human governments.” Basically they kill humans for various reasons, they may have been infected by a the Maverick virus, developed a reason to hate humans, etc. This really isn’t my area of expertise as most Maverick story elements happened in the X story line. Now, Biometals. Biometals are simply “living metal.” Vent and Aile use the Biometals, along with the Meta-Encapsulated Granule Awareness System or M.E.G.A. System, to transform into Model X and through the course of the game acquire other Biometals which merge with Model X. This is where the game’s potential really comes from, in my opinion. Anyone who has played through and games in the Mega Man Zero series has probably marveled at some of the characters or wished you could play as someone besides Zero. I know I’ve always wanted to play as Harpuia and once you defeat one of the corresponding Guardian you take his Biometal. It merges with the X Biometal and now you have model HX (Or PX, LX or FX for the other three Guardians.) With the new Model you can perform attacks very similar to the Guardian and the related Reploid from the Zero series. Harpuia has wind powers and does the H Guardian, so with Model HX you can create a cyclone and fly. Each model has specific details it shows on the DS’s second screen, too. All this choice will make for some very interesting game play, puzzles that need a specific Model or maybe even the human form of Vent and Aile witch can do things that the Biometal’d version of them can’t. One other aspect of this game that should be really interesting is the connected worlds. Instead of a base to mission then back to the base set up like Mega Man Zero had, everything is connected, much like Castlevania or Metroid. With all these abilities and powers Mega Man ZX is going to be a challenge, one idea the Zero series seemed to always have was that Zero was the underdog and I’m sure ZX wont disappoint. Press members who have played the game seem to think they’ve finally got the Easy, Normal and Hard thing figured out. Maybe this time Easy will still be a challenge. Normal wont have such a steep learning curve and Hard wont be near impossible.
I’ve got September 12th marked down and I’ll be calling stores all day until I hear that someone has it in. If you are the kind that doesn’t really care about being able to understand what they are saying in the game’s various anime and story sequences (Yes, the whole game has voice acting,) and you’re looking forward to it as much as me, you might want to go ahead and import it. I would but I need to know what is happening in the story line. I should be able to cope for a couple of months…I hope.