YMMV / Mega Man ZX

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • Ashe sure spends a lot of time talking about getting "booty" in her opening stage.
  • One Hunter has another moment during the prelude the Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
    Hunter: ''What do you think the bounty is on a booty that big? I'm getting excited just thinking about it!
  • Chronoforce's Implied Death Threat during his rematch. The fact that it's used for both Grey and Ashe only makes it weirder.
    "Shall we begin our time of bliss together? I'm going to take my time manhandling you!"
• Anti-Climax Boss: Vent/Aile should be the toughest boss in Advent besides the Model W twins and Master Albert. These two have way more experience with Biometals, have fought Prometheus and Pandora to a standstill, beat a man fused with Model W after it absorbed the fear and hatred of thousands of people, and just finished off a giant Mechaniloid effortlessly. Granted, Vent/Aile only use Model ZX rather the full arsenal of Biometals they had during ZX since they lost the Guardian Biometals and never use Model X alone against Ashe/Grey, who, at this point, have five Pseudoroids and all four Guardian Mega Men A-Trans alongside Model A, but that should only make them beatable rather than something of a pushover. The fight would be tough were it on a flat plane where ZX could properly combo you, but you can spend the majority of the fight camping on the walls, waiting for ZX to pull out its drawn-out triple slash combo or try to get to your level before spamming charge shot after charge shot into it. Even trying to restrict yourself to Model H for a melee run won't do much - Vent and Aile are spastic, but have clear moments (the aforementioned triple combo) where they just stand around, waiting to be punished and clobbered.
• Best Boss Ever: Both Prometheus and Pandora, as they have energetic, dynamic boss fights with awesome theme music. It gets even better when you fight them both at the same time.
• Breather Boss: Leganchor in ZX is so pathetically unchallenging that he would qualify as a Zero-Effort Boss if it weren't for his hard-hitting but slow and easily avoidable attacks. Apart from being completely immobile, his weak point is located inside the massive turbines above his body, which makes them easy targets if you want to end him quickly but also gives you enough space to avoid hitting them for a simple Level 4 Victory. Really, all that Vent/Aile needs to do to defeat him is shift to Model FX, get right underneath his face, and shoot upwards with Overcharge on. It's completely possible to just weather the storm of Leganchor's attacks and kill him within seconds.
• Broken Base:
  • The existence of the Biometals, especially the fact that they are the minds of old Reploids brought back as living armor, is a point of contention with fans. Some feel that it's an excellent way to sort-of bring back the old characters without shoehorning them into the series, seeing it as having them "mentor" their biomatches. Others dislike the concept, as they feel it cheapens the deaths of these characters and/or they wonder why they couldn't just rebuild the characters themselves instead of putting their minds in chunks of metal.
  • Model A's identity. There are fans who cry bullshit on it being Model Albert on the grounds that it resembles Axl so closely that it should have just been Model Axl and use Fan Wank to assume that Master Albert was lying, while others either hate Axl and are glad that he wasn't represented or point out how Axl going completely unmentioned during the Zero series would make him having a Biometal problematic continuity-wise and that having a homage to him is satisfactory enough.
• Cargo Ship: Judging from some fanarts (compiled for your convenience), some fans like the "Giro X Coffee" pairing. (Mostly stemmed from this image) Also, have some sweet Coffeedansen.
• Catharsis Factor: Just like in Mega Man Zero, you get to cut enemies and bosses in half. Advent also lets you blow holes in them with charged shots.
• Complete Monster: Master Albert is the true villain of the ZX duology, a man whose delusions of godhood were so intense he appropriated the ruins of Ragnarok to create Model W, the most ruinous Biometal in existence. Master Albert has arranged for every single calamity in the duology, from organizing Maverick raids that leave only a few survivors per attack, to manipulating those same survivors into merging with Biometals to manipulate them into killing each other all off in a plan he calls the Game of Destiny. One of his pawns was Serpent, the Big Bad of the first game, who nearly kills thousands more as Albert's Unwitting Pawn. Albert plans to use the final survivor of these games to activate the full power of Model W, so he may achieve godhood and consume the world to remake it anew in his image. Master Albert also subjects his two Co-Dragons, Pandora and Prometheus, to monstrously awful treatment, permanently merging them with their Biometals and finally consuming them both when they try and fail to betray him. Despite his musings, Master Albert ultimately commits every atrocity because of his monstrous ego, and as such feels it's his godly right to cleanse the world and pick up the pieces anew.
• Contested Sequel:
  • The whole duology to previous Mega Man series. Fans of the series love it for it being much more accessible difficulty-wise compared to many of its predecessors and for its unique take on the "beat boss for weapon" formula by expanding it to become an entire moveset, giving the games a surprising amount of playstyle variety. Critics of the series tend to dislike the games' rather simplistic level design, their emphasis on exploration over pure platforming, and for the first game's very vague map design that poorly conveys where players need to go next.
  • ZX Advent to the original ZX. On one hand, Advent completely did away with the absolutely tedious mission structure and blind map searching for more straightforward stage designs that are much easier to play through. On the other hand, Model A transforming into various bosses was far more situational and gimmicky compared to the Biometals in the first game. Some fans argue that ZXA streamlined the Metroidvania concept out altogether and lost some of the unique value ZX had as a result; others firmly believe that Advent only worked because it removed some of those very elements.
  • One of the biggest divides between ZX and Advent, however, is on the story; mainly, the decision to have Advent follow two new protagonists with ZX's protagonists showing up in a supporting mentor role. Some like it for showing off a Master-Apprentice Chain, showing that Vent/Aile have become Older and Wiser since their own adventure and still having relevance to the story without taking away from Ashe/Grey's own arcs, and still building on what was shown in ZX (particularly the Foreshadowing on Aile's route to the greater "Game of Destiny"). Others dislike it for not addressing several lingering points from ZX (like the question of Ciel's survival) and effectively rendering the Guardians and other Biometals Demoted to Extra to give screentime to the Hunters and Model A. A big part of the divide especially seems to depend on whether you believe Grey/Ashe's stories are compelling enough as a follow-up rather than a continuation of Aile/Vent's.
• Crazy Is Cool:
  • Prometheus. He's an Ax-Crazy Blood Knight who uses a laser scythe with a cool design and is probably the most over-the-top villain in the series.
  • Fans also see Vulturon as this. A headbanging robotic vulture skeleton who uses a guitar for a weapon. Not crazy enough? He can use said guitar to reanimate discarded metal, thereby creating zombie robots. And he does use that guitar for performances...usually to aforementioned zombie robots. His quirky rocker personality helps a lot.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Much like Charlie, Giro has amassed a sizable fanbase despite only being in the first few stages of ZX before getting killed by Serpent and turned into a Cyber-Elf.
  • The fandom has gradually taken quite the liking to Prometheus and Pandora. And if anything, when they were discovered to be Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds and then subsequently owned by Albert (in the span of five minutes or so, no less), their popularity among the fandom hit critical mass. For some, that was Albert's Moral Event Horizon.
  • Of the Advent cast, Vulturon is the most popular boss by far due to being a skeletal vulture who fights with The Power of Rock, his Idle Animation showing him headbanging, and being one of the few Pseudoroids who is not a complete Jerkass and actually encourages Grey/Ashe upon being defeated.
• Fanon: According to Master Albert, Model A is named after him. However, due to the colors of Model A, its A-Trans ability, and its generally childish personality when compared to the other Biometals, many fans feel that there are too many similarities for it to be merely a coincidence and assume that Albert was lying and that Model A is Model Axl after all.
• Fan-Disliked Explanation:
  • When Makoto Yabe claimed that the dark spandex the characters wear is actually intended to be their skin, the fandom reacted divisively. This means that characters with open jackets or no pants are — by our standards — showing off bare chests and pelvises. For some this has turned the way they look at every character on its head, and others just try to ignore it.
  • As previously mentioned, there are some fans who dislike that Model A stands for Model Albert in canon, when it is so clearly a meta reference to Axl. This leads to many Fanon explanations that try to connect Axl to Model A, despite lore statements otherwise.
• Faux Symbolism:
  • The names of all the Biometal users in Advent. While Atlas, Helios/Aeolus, Siarnaq, Tethys/Thetis, Prometheus and Pandora were all supposed to be Saturnian moons, when you look at them in the context of Greek Mythology, they appear to be a random collection of Titans and other mythological figures with no other real meanings behind their names.
  • Also, the Sage Trinity has nothing to do with a Trinity, God, or Christianity. Apparently, they are named that just because there is three of them and it's just a translation choice anyway (their Japanese name translates to the connotation-free "Three Sages").
  • Siarnaq is actually the name of a giant from Inuit Mythology.
  • Also noteworthy is the fact Homer often referred to Helios as Titan or Hyperion — both moons of Saturn.
  • Prometheus was the Titan who stole the secret of fire from the gods to accelerate mankind's evolution. The character in question here is self-explanatory in that regard, especially when it's revealed he was the first Mega Man created by Master Albert after the man turned himself into one, of course and meant to be the first step in his plan to evolve mankind.
  • Pandora's Box was a legendary artefact that reputedly brought mass ruin upon the land in which it was opened. Pandora here turns out to be suppressing her true persona and agenda. She is outwardly calm and emotionless, but reveals herself to have an insane, vengeful side when the player gives her that extra push. Pandora herself was also the first human woman created by the gods, just like how Pandora was the first female Mega Man.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Model ZX's Rolling Attack slash, which can bypass Mercy Invincibility and deal continuous damage as Vent/Aile's still spinning. And after that, you can still follow up with your standard triple slash.
  • Model P's kunai spam is murder against enemies without Mercy Invincibility.
  • Model H's tornado attack, which can hit multiple times and also can pass through Mercy Invincibility if the tornado hits the weak point. Try to do it with a fire boss: Superior element + multi-hitting + attacking the weak point = Overkill. The downside, though, is that you'll get Lv. 1 Victory, so you'd better do that in the boss rush. Unfortunately, it was later nerfed in ZXA, the attack instead generating two tornadoes that fly forward and only hit once.
  • Chronoforce's Time Bomb which persists even if you A-Trans into another form. Its only downside is that it uses a lot of weapon energy, but that's generally not a problem as the best use of Time Bomb is to follow it up hard hitting forms like Models ZX and F and hacking/blasting away. Notably, Master Albert himself can counter your Time Bomb with his own in his final phase, which can be avoided if you use it while he's in the middle of another attack.
  • Model F gets a pair of Knuckle Busters that deal more damage per shot each and can be more easily spammed together than Model ZX/A's Buster, and F is the only Model in either game capable of firing both its weapons straight up. The Model's main gimmick, though, is Buster Edit, which allows you to direct shots to maneuver over obstacles and terrain or make it easier to hit enemies other Models have trouble reaching. What this adds up to is Model F being able to obliterate most enemies from any direction it chooses, without getting in harm's way or using up weapon energy. It's only real weakness is that you can't run and shoot with the Knuckle Busters at the same time, but Model F's aforementioned firepower and versatility is such that it can be worked around.
• Goddamned Boss: Thetis makes sure to fight you underwater where he has such an edge it's almost unnatural, and he employs constant hit-and-run tactics while you're trying to keep your footing (on the three tiny ledges they give you) above a Bottomless Pit. The only form capable of circumnavigating this is Chronoforce thanks to the aquatic nature of the battlefield being tailor-made to it, but both of them being ice means the fight will last longer than with a fire character and Thetis will take Chronoforce out first thanks to aforementioned hit-and-run tactics getting around the form's shielding and having a larger health pool. Gate tried similar cheap tactics in X6, but Thetis perfects it. Have fun with all this on Hard Node and Boss Survival, by the way!
• Harsher in Hindsight: The Kamen Rider comparisons, since the "ZX" in the title brings to mind Kamen Rider ZX, which didn't get a chance to continue the story started in the film. Kind of like what happened to the series after Advent.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Master Albert's goal: exterminating the whole population, leaving the "worthy" ones alive to prosper, using a superweapon called Ouroboros. He's seen to be a highly-capable Magnificent Bastard who has a strong god complex, to boot. Now try to compare that to another Albert. ^note Advent precedes RE5 by a margin of about 2 years.
    Both games also feature two gun-slinging protagonists — one male and one female, and at one point in the game, they have to fight the protagonist from a previous game.
  • Advent featured an unlockable mini-game, Mega Man a, all in 8-bit, styled after the original series of games. A few months later, Mega Man 9 was released, in all its retraux glory.
  • Given how similar the first game feels to Kamen Rider, one can't help but wonder which KR series had the most influence on the game overall. However, Double Megamerge brings to mind a way of transforming that Kamen Rider would end up using roughly 3 years later, and repeated again in yet another series where a single person transforms using 2 different power sources gained from the monsters 11 years later.
  • Prometheus has a Grim Reaper motif, wields a Sinister Scythe which he also spins, creates fire, and is considered one of the highlights of both games. Too bad he doesn't also have a wolf motif...
• Jerkass Woobie: Prometheus and Pandora. Their childhood was, to say the least, horrible ^note They had to suffer through centuries of anguish from Master Albert, including being forcibly and permanently Megamerged with Model W, and are also strongly implied to have had other Mega Men participate in the Game of Destiny (thus causing casualties assumed to be in the hundreds of thousands range) only because Albert forced them to due to their intentionally short lifespans, which could only be marginally extended by coming back to Albert for maintenance checks and they want revenge for their suffering. They don't quite succeed (with Albert being a Magnificent Bastard and all), and end up as Albert's Unwitting Pawns. Even Grey and Ashe feel pity for them, and would have tried to save them if they had the chance. Even so, they held nothing but contempt for the rest of the world, and while their actions do guide the heroes toward defeating Serpent and Albert, there was no kindness in their cruel actions. Their only concern was themselves and each other; everything else was just a liability in their eyes. This includes their younger brother Grey, who spends Advent as an amnesiac kid swept up in events he wants no part in.
• Just Here for Godzilla: A good portion of ZX fans are just here for the Biometals, which allow them to take on the forms and abilities of their favorite characters from the Zero series.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Ashe has been shipped with Vent, Grey, Prometheus, and Atlas.
• Love to Hate: Prometheus and Pandora. Their lines, designs, boss battles, boss music, backstory, and heinous actions make them easily the most recognizable villains in the series.
• Moe: How a good portion of the fanbase sees Pandora especially when she and Prometheus are revealed as characters who need a really, really big hug.
• Moral Event Horizon: While Serpent's murder of Giro was what cemented his villainy, it turns out he had actually crossed the MEH before the game had even started: People are kidnapped by Slither Inc. during the uprisings and held captive. Serpent then preys on their fears to involuntarily transform them into Cyber Elves, which are then absorbed by Model W as sustenance.
• Narm:
  • The first game's MegaCorp and its corrupt CEO tend to be well-respected in the community. Standard stuff, right? Except that the man's name is Serpent, and his company's name is Slither Inc..
  • Advent's voice acting suffers from voice compression due to the DS sound files and can be rather stilted, leading to several scenes falling flat. Granted, it is a step up from several previous attempts^note In fact, X's X7 voice actor, Peter van Gomm, is Grey and has drastically improved from that game. This one is actually addressed in the Legacy Collection, which includes the option to toggle between the original audio and a "Mastered Voice Track" option with cleaner un-compressed audio.
  • When Albert's revealed to be the Big Bad partway through Advent, he dramatically starts to float away out the window and just stays there for several seconds - and then drops like a rock in less than a quarter of a second, disappearing into the surrounding city below. The lack of noise from the fast motion and the long camera shot just make it seem like he remembered that physics exists like a cartoon character in the middle of his big moment. That or he simply wanted to Troll the heroes.
  • Albert's true body also doesn't help matters. Throughout the game he's taller than Ashe and Gray and seems quite intimidating for his Black Eyes of Crazy. Then Pandora and Prometheus force him to use his real body, which by comparison looks like a pink-haired midget in a straitjacket with a full-sized head, while keeping his Large Ham deep voice the entire time. Yes, really.
• Narm Charm:
  • Activating a Biometal in the Japanese version prompts a cry from "R.O.C.K. On!" from your character. Woolsey'd to "Megamerge" in English.
  • Advent's voice acting is rather stilted at times, but Prometheus puts so much energy and emotion into emoting that every sentence he speaks manages to spark a certain charm, especially when he gets going.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The fact that the power plant in Area E in the original game is not only harvesting power from Cyber-Elves, but has a gigantic biomechanical beating heart in the center of it.
  • Serpent's plan of using Model W to gain ultimate power? Intentionally killing people in Maverick Raids, and then cultivating their Cyber-Elves (which are effectively people's souls at this point in the series) to be driven to terror and despair so they can be fed to Model W. All for the sake of gaining power from the Biometal. Albert's machinations seem moderately sane by comparison.
  • Siarnaq is an incredibly creepy character as well, being the only Reploid in the whole franchise to actually talk in a Machine Monotone, not to mention the only enemy Mega Man in Advent with no indication of what his motivation is for winning the Game of Destiny. His biometal form is downright sinister compared to the other Mega Men, and even to Phantom and Model PX, complete with Glowing Eyes of Doom and a hunched over stance. And then there's his sudden Evil Laugh in the Japanese version if he beats you.
• Player Punch:
  • Giro is established as a nice, protective guy, before Serpent killed him off.
  • Not only does Albert kill off Prometheus and Pandora, but he steals their DNA with his A-Trans, meaning you can't mimic their forms. The bastard!
• Polished Port: As with the YMMV page for the Zero series, the Zero/ZX Legacy Collection is the definitive way to play these games. Aside from the Casual Scenario mode and Save Assist feature, and the ZX games get a special treatment with multiple screen layouts to re-orientate the games' dual-screens. The Zero/ZX Legacy Collection also features higher resolution FMV sequences and the mastered audio for voiceovers for the ZX series, allowing the voice acting to be heard without compression.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The mission system is completely antithetical to the first game's Metroidvania world design. Instead of just allowing the player to explore the map and deal with Pseudoroid threats as they stumble onto them, the game forces the player to go to the nearest Transerver, pick a specific Area to track down and complete before anything else, even though they might not even know where that area is at the outset^note Your only clue would be to search for a colored door matching a key card in your possession. The first four areas leading to the first halves of the Biometals are locked behind yellow-card doors, and completing one of those will give you a new colored key card (green after Area E, blue after Area F, red after Area G, and purple after Area H) that accesses the area where the second Pseudoroid holding the other half of the Biometal is. You can ask around town for hints on where to go, but if you're not paying attention you can rush through the dialogue options too fast. And even if the player stumbles onto an Area that's part of a different mission, they're not allowed to progress through it, and the player is forced to backtrack to the nearest Transerver and abort their current mission...which counts as a game over, which boots the player back to the Guardian HQ Transerver and erases any map data they've collected since taking the mission. Hope you memorized the way back! Advent, mercifully, does away with this mechanic entirely.
  • Speaking of the map system and navigation in the first game, the game lists each major outdoor "screen" as a segment of an Area and these Areas interconnect in the aforementioned Metroidvania style. The problem? There're almost no indicators that an Area can lead to somewhere else until you find an unmarked door that takes you there. Many doors don't have Area markings overhead, and it's all too easy to stonewall legitimate game progression by running past a door without realizing it, as there is no sub-map system to better figure out the Area layouts. And all the Transerver missions do is tell you to go to an Area, that's it. Even looking up the completed map chart online just shows lines telling you these Areas connect to others, making the map near-useless in a game encouraging exploration! For extremely obvious reasons and due to massive fan backlash, Advent streamlined the interconnected areas by including an overworld map that pinpointed areas you needed to go to while also showing the general layout of each area, how they could connect with each other, and the option to activate Warp Points in each area that would let you teleport there at will once you unlocked it.
  • Level 4 Victories from the first game. The idea is that the bosses have a weak point that you are supposed to try to avoid hitting or you will damage the Biometal and must pay E-crystals or attempt the Level 4 Victory again once the boss respawns to get the full weapon energy gauge. This is easier said than done, as most bosses have their weak points placed in very easy-to-hit areas where you must either wait for them to strike a certain pose that removes the risk of hitting their weak point and/or very carefully time and aim your attacks to avoid hitting their weak point. From a gameplay perspective, it's very frustrating as exasperated players may just take the lower ranking for expediency whereas perfectionists will restart over and over again. The second game thankfully goes for a less pivotal ranking system.
  • Expert Mode in Advent turns Warp Points from being inoffensive into ineffectual. In Beginner Mode, it doesn't take any E-Crystals to activate them. In Normal Mode, it takes 100 instead. That can be a little awkward early on but you'll quickly get to the point you can set up every Warp Point as you pass it. Expert Mode, meanwhile, jacks the cost up to 500 E-Crystals, meaning that you'll barely be able to activate only the ones adjacent to bosses. Oh by the way, there are 40 Warp Points in the game that require E-Crystals to activate (the other five are activated for free), so what works out to a total cost of 4,000 E-Crystals in Normal Mode, which is an amount that you'll easily come up with just by going through the plot, suddenly bloats to 20,000 instead. Enjoy that.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Advent has a few things going for it that makes it more difficult than its predecessor. While some bosses are, as a whole, a bit less threatening than the ones from ZX (Buckfire and Vulturon really can't threaten you that much), the majority of the bosses are tougher overall. The leading reason for this, beyond having expansive abilities, is that it's much harder to cheese them in this game. The various Guardians have been given a Balance Buff; weapon energy regenerates, but H and P's quick-kill abilities have been gimped significantly, and while ZX gets two new attacks, both the ZX Buster and the ZX Saber's charged attacks require energy. While L has arguably gotten stronger (Since both Ashe and Grey get a better ability than "ice platform") and F is largely the same, the fact H and P got nerfed in particular means you actually need to sit around and put effort into dodging the attacks bosses throw at you, which as a whole are more difficult than the ZX Psuedoroid attacks. Additionally, levels have been made both longer and harder, and because you get the Guardian Biometal A-Trans data at a semi-set rate (you always get F, then P, then either H or L) the levels can actually incorporate sections built around specific characters, and some of these sections (especially Model P's in Vulturon's stage) can be really tough and require outside-the-box tactics.
• Signature Scene: If one scene sticks out in the duology above the rest, it's the entirety of the Undersea Volcano stage from Advent. Not only is it a fantastic level that sees Ashe or Grey tear their way to the center of Albert's facility, it ends with what many consider to be the single best boss fight in the ZX games, if not just outright a top contender for the entire series, with the Prometheus and Pandora double-team placed against such greats as Omega, Lumine, and Reaper Sigma. That's followed by the ultimate master stroke by Albert himself, where he turns the tables against everyone in the building and sets up the final level of the game. All of this is punctuated by amazing voice work on the part of Prometheus' and Albert's voice actors as they chew apart every last bit of the scenery.
• Spiritual Licensee:
  • The first game is probably the best Kamen Rider game that isn't a fighting game or a mass brawler.
  • The second game is also the best kind of Ben 10 game that has both gameplay depth and character variety.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Advent's boss theme's guitar line sounds similar to the chiptune line in The Protomen's Due Vendetta. (Advent came out in 2007 while the Protomen song in question came out in 2003.)
• That One Achievement:
  • Several Level 4 victory attempts can be pretty tough:
    • Flammole's weaknesses are his arms. His arms make up the majority of his sprite. We're talking like 75% of it. In addition, the only times his arms aren't vulnerable is when he's stationary (from the front) and when he's in the process of digging into the ground. The problem? He's only stationary for a brief moment in between his attacks, meaning hitting him without damaging his arms requires quick action and very precise timing. Taking a shot after the long flamethrower attack is out of the question, so your only openings are as he finishes firing the four exploding fireballs and while he's digging (Firing around the moment his digging in soundclip plays is about right). It gets worse once you bring him down to half health, as his AI seems to ditch digging in favor of his EX attack, where he pulls out Fefnir's EX attack from Mega Man Zero 2. He is briefly vulnerable when he finishes the attack, but his arms are near-level with his head, so taking the shot can be the difference between finishing him off, missing and sitting through more attacks, or ruining your level 4 victory.
    • Fistleo's weakness is his freaking head. A majority of your attacks will hit his head and he has some hard-to-dodge attacks. On top of that: the bastard can heal, and he does it frequently. So you have to constantly be on the attack to keep his health down. If you're going for a Level 4 victory, this means you have little time to make sure his weak point is out of your attack range before striking. Bonus pain if you're playing on Hard. ^note A trick involving Model HX's triple combo makes Fistleo pathetically easy compared to Flammole, as the combo doesn't hit his head if you use it with your back facing him; and in Overdrive it hits for massive damage. See here. You may want to have clean pants standing by.
    • Protectos' only non-weakness is his tiny head (and only from the front) and it's way too easy to shoot just slightly downwards by accident and hit any other part of his body. At least you can bait him into always dropping down to the bottom level in order to make shooting him in the face easy.
    • You know what's so much fun? Purprill moving his arm erratically just as you're about to strike his feet, thus invalidating the last minute or so of combat as you accidentally attack his weak point. Take all the waiting problems with Flammole with the nigh-random chance of striking Fistleo's head and you get why Purprill is just plain annoying to get a level 4 victory on. He actually leaves his head and feet open a lot of the time, but the problem is that the guy is so erratic that he can just decide to wave his arms around and ruin everything.
  • Moving forward to Advent, you have Vulturon's Gold Medal, which requires you to knock him out using nothing but Model A's Giga Crush attack. Problem: Not only does that attack soak your entire Biometal gauge, but it'll still soak the entire thing regardless of how many pickups you've gotten to increase the gauge's maximum capacity, which does not increase the regeneration rate. So the more of them you've picked up by the time you go for this Medal, the longer it's going to take to pull this one off. If you have all of them, well, good luck with that. Salt in the wound is that he's prone to sporadic invincibility, so mistiming your attacks will drag things out even longer. The only consolation is that damage against his summoned flunkies doesn't count, so you're free to destroy them in whatever way you find most convenient.
  • Buckfire's Gold Medal tasks you with defeating with Model P solely using the Touch Screen. Not too challenging when playing on the DS, but if you're playing on the Legacy Collection (which doesn't have a Touch Screen), it can be a massive pain trying to grapple with the clunky controls while still trying to dodge Buckfire's attacks.
  • Bizarrely enough, Argoyle & Ugoyle's toughest to earn medal is the bronze one, where you have to take both out at the same time with Model A's Giga Crush. You'd think this would be easy because the Giga Crush does a lot of damage, but in this case it's much harder than it seems because the Giga Crush does 1 point of damage at a time, and the medal only drops if they both die at exactly the same time, not from the same Giga Crush. To pull this off you have to heavily damage them both, then switch to Model H to check their individual health bars, and then try to match them as best as you can before launching the Giga Crush. Conversely, the gold medal requirement is for them to both die to Buckfire's Double Tomahawk, which is easier health wise because despite the move being harder to line up, it does more than 1 point of damage at once, meaning so long as their health bars are low enough it should still count.
  • Hedgeshock's Silver Medal (finish her off by knocking one of her summoned rat minions into her) is highly annoying to achieve, as you can only do it with Model F's punch attack. You practically have to get the stars to align to pull it off. There's the RNG of Hedgeshock doing the summon at all, the RNG of where she is in the room when it happens, the fact that the rats only last about 3 seconds before self destructing, they're quite fast and love to dash into you, and the double whammy of Model F's punch being both slow to charge up and tending to go right over the heads of the small rats. And also the fact that even if you do manage to punch one, they tend to go in an upwards arc and go over Hedgeshock anyway. Hope you brought sub tanks.
  • Queenbee's Gold Medal (only ever damage her, without doing damage to her hive) requires patience and good timing. The best way to do it is to get good at timing it so that when she hovers down to her lowest altitude, jump as high as you can and then dash straight up with Model H and unleash a charged tornado at her when you're at your apex. You also have to make sure you aren't too close, otherwise your saber's hitbox will hit her hive. This one is also completely dependent on how many openings she decides to give you.
• That One Attack:
  • Prometheus's skull flame attack where he summons skulls at the corners of the screen that fire at you simultaneously, requiring tricky maneuvering to avoid. Mitigated a bit by the fact that the skulls can be destroyed.
  • Serpent's (2nd form) flame attack can also be pretty rough. With him firing off four flaming rocks that stay on the ground while slow falling flames fill the entire screen and home in on you.
  • Aeolus's EX attack, where he slowly floats down and summons two spinning orbs that produce three tendrils of electricity. Two problems with this attack. The first one is the tell. It's pretty obvious when he's pulling the attack out, but the first time he does it, the player will get hit, absolutely, no questions asked, because there's no indication not to stand off to the sides, you simply need to know. If you're standing to the side of the one Aeolus isn't floating towards, you might be able to intuit that you need to dash into the middle, but it's unlikely. The other problem with the attack is the deceptive timing; the 'fans' that form from these orbs spin relatively fast, but not so fast that you want to constantly dash. You need to find a rhythm for the attack, and that can be a crapshoot.
• That One Level:
  • The latter half of Area K is almost nothing but one long mad dash to the end against an Advancing Wall of Instant-Death Lava, in hallways jam-packed with enemies and lava geysers that will also kill you in one hit. The lava flow is also insanely fast (to the point that the only way through is to just tank all enemy damage and rush past them) unless you take a detour through another room with a rising lava floor to get to a computer that slows down the lava flow. Said lava flow also makes any return trips for pick-ups and sidequests equally hellish.
  • The Floating Ruins in Advent. Lots of time is spent precariously standing over Bottomless Pits, and some of the most obnoxious Goddamn Bats in the game are lying in wait to knock you into them at every opportunity. And for the cherry on top, this is the level where the Pulse Cannons are located, which fire super-fast, unavoidable laser blasts at Grey/Ashe if they jump while in their range that do no damage themselves, but disable the jump ability for a short period of time (and by extension every ability that relies on jumping, such as Queenbee's flight, Vultron's hover, or even Model H's air dash, with the sole exception being Model H's falling glide).
  • The Ouroboros stage. There are blocks that can be destroyed and then regenerating. If you're standing on the block's space when it fully regenerates, you die. There's also spiked regenerating blocks and Bottomless Pits right under them. Oh, and this part (Ouroboros-3) is right after the Boss Rush and right before the Final Boss room.
• That One Sidequest:
  • The Area K subtank. The fact that you can't get it on Hard Mode counts as mercy.
  • The Area L Sub Tank as well. It's much easier than Area K's, but it involves nearly 40 minutes of running back and forth to Area L, going through (at least part of) the stage 6 freaking times, to pick up items for NPCs. There is even a bit of Guide Dang It! to boot, since you are not told just where these items are or that your reward will change if you keep doing it enough times until Rose almost off-handedly mentions that she managed to make a new item with the Energy Pack and sent it to the transerver for you. Not helping is Area L's location, being that the door to L-1 is halfway through Area H with no convenient way to get to it even if Purprill isn't around.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: In Advent, the three Hunters who were on Ashe's team in the beginning (Nicol, Lazarus, and Red) have unique armored sprites and voiced dialogue, and a unique quest to Ashe from Nicol has her locating where the latter two ended up after Prometheus attacked them and the Raider airship crashed. Despite this, and even some dialogue where they promise to help her again, nothing comes of it aside from 200 E-Crystals for completing the quest and them standing around as NPCs in Hunter's Camp. They don't even show up as a unique instance to replace Billy and his two Hunters during the prelude to the Very Definitely Final Dungeon despite it being more personally appropriate for this trio to do it for Ashe while Billy has more ties to Grey.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • From ZX, the very idea of the Human(oid) protagonist and Form. Whether you're Vent or Aile, the only thing it really does is take away all forms of self-defense, let you skirt by security systems unharmed, talk to people safely in the city, and crawl where no Biometal form can reach. Which is near-entirely for side-mission items, extra goodies, and the occasional pace-breaking stop to continue. In terms of the story, despite being the first playable human protagonists in the mainline franchise, the story doesn't even really focus on that at all and instead doubles down on becoming a Mega Man to save the world while overcoming their personal issues about it and little else. Which is fine for a story, and a complete waste of the potential of a different perspective into the world than the Robot or Reploid norm. At the very least, Advent gave the Humanoid (or Reploid, in Gray's case) form a basic buster to fight with, but then it made its NPCs ignore whether you were transformed or not besides side-commentary here or there.
  • From Advent, the Game of Destiny itself. All of the Mega Men are being pitted against each other in order to determine the strongest of them. This could have made for an interesting mechanic, with enemies who were just as much against each other as they are against the player. Sadly, the game never really follows through on this premise. The other Mega Men never really act against one another on-screen, and ultimately choose to gang-up on Grey/Ashe at the climax upon deciding they need to go if any of them want to have a shot of having their victory. Though given Albert and Thomas already stacked the deck of the game in their favor, it's very likely they really didn't have much of a choice of it either.
• Too Cool to Live: Another point for Giro on the list of Zero similarities. Unlike Zero, however, he doesn't get better (although he does become a Cyber Elf).
• Too Good to Last: The fact that this game set up a mystery about what happened to Ciel in ZX and one heck of a final twist and an obvious Sequel Hook in Advent, but got the same fate as Mega Man Legends stands to reason that Capcom took issue with something. Even worse, Legends almost made a comeback, but ZX has remained comatose and may stay that way for who knows how long, especially since everyone that worked at Capcom who were behind the third game's cancellation have already left the company.
• Unfortunate Character Design: Rospark has a large metal horn protruding from a very unfortunate place◊ when he's in his unfolded form. The fact that he's a flamboyant Sissy Villain with lots of creepy dialogue to spare for Grey doesn't help matters, either.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Struck everyone who was paying attention to Advent previews with respect to Atlas and Tethys (see Tomboyish Name for one of the reasons). The first images of the enemy Mega Men showed them in armored form, so fans had no clue that Atlas was a "she" and Thetis was a "he." It did not help that their Japanese names (Atlas remained unchanged, while Thetis was Tethys) were that of a Titan and Titaness, respectively. Likewise, their Biometals were a man and a woman. Thankfully, this was rectified by gameplay videos and subsequent artwork, but the Fan Nicknames of "Reverse Trap" and "Trap" would stick.
• Woolseyism: "Rebirth Of Crystallized Knowlege" is changed to "Meta-Encapsulated Granule Awareness" (and, by extension, Rock On to Megamerge).

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