YMMV / Mega Man Zero

• Anti-Climax Boss: Despite all of the buildup to him, Copy-X is a surprisingly easy final boss, especially compared to the bosses and Four Guardians you just fought again beforehand, mainly due to his predictable, easy to avoid attack patterns and lack of stamina. The second phase has a few cheap attacks at its disposal that'll kill Zero in a hurry if you let your guard down, but as a trade-off, you can defeat him with just a few fully charged Z-Saber strikes. It makes sense from a story standpoint, since it hammers home that he's an inferior copy of X.
• Breather Boss:
  • Anubis Necromancess III's attacks are relatively easy to dodge, although both the Zombies and the scepter deal a lot of damage. The technique of the crushing structures is fairly easy to avoid.
  • Fairy Leviathan is arguably the easiest of the four Guardians normally. She makes up for it later, while Fefnir actually got somewhat weaker. Harpuia in the first game, however, stands out as being a total idiot who doesn't know what to do about being hit with ice attacks. He will always respond to one with the same attack where he sends three shockwaves, one low, one high, and another one low. This takes long enough that you can build up another charge, even without a fully leveled weapon (or in Hard Mode where the Shield Boomerang is the only thing you can charge) and weave through to clock him again. Rinse, repeat, and he's down with minimal effort.
• Faux Symbolism:
  • At the end of the game, Cyber-Elf X starts projecting an image of himself in a blue robe when talking to Zero. A halo also appears above his head in this form.
  • Copy-X. If his first form full of angelic wings isn't enough, in his One-Winged Angel form, he almost literally turned into a seraphic angel. Add to the fact that he's fighting Zero, a crimson-horned reploid.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: During the "Stop The Hacking" mission, Ciel urges Zero to "Find the computer room". Shadow the Hedgehog would turn the same line into a meme a few years later.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: While all the Zero games are known for being fairly hard, the first game has it the worst due to the difficulty's interaction with the myriad of Scrappy Mechanics making it feel unfair. This contributes to why this game is considered the weakest entry in the series.
• It Was His Sled: Copy X is meant to be an endgame twist and reveal that accompanies the revelation of Cyber-Elf X, and the mysteries of why X had to "disappear" for Copy X to be made in the first place. Because of the idea of a Rogue Protagonist being so major in a series like this, the reveal was quickly spread and known, not helped by the fact that every game after treats this as a Late-Arrival Spoiler the moment anything summarizes this game's plot, complete with Mega Man Zero 3 explicitly calling Copy X by this moniker in the first stage.
• Moral Event Horizon: Copy X crossed it when he decided to unjustifiably brand several Reploids as Mavericks and have them scrapped only because he deemed them "unnecessary" and had them killed to deal with the energy shortage. This resulted in countless deaths of innocent Reploids.
• Older Than They Think: In this game, there is still a minor incentive to maintaining a high rank: entry to Ciel's room, which contains a Cyber-elf. Superficial compared to the EX Skills from the second game onwards, but a reward nonetheless.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • While the Cyber-Elf system isn't bad by itself, the game punishes the player with a lower rank for using them at all despite them being a major selling point. They also require leveling up similar to the weapon proficiency system, except grinding them is harder. Later games tone the rank punishment aspect down by only penalizing the player for using the more Game-Breaker Cyber-Elves, and finally just giving the player a modular Cyber-Elf that they can use to customize Zero's stats and abilities with via a Point Build System, with the game only penalizing if the player uses more points than the system currently allows.
  • The weapon proficiency system. Because of his memory loss Zero needs to "relearn" many basic techniques, such as his Z-Saber combo, by raising his weapons' levels. You do this by killing enemies with them. However, it's a more involved system than simply killing things, as how you kill the enemies can give you more or less EXP (e.g: killing an enemy with the second part of your slash combo gives more exp than the first part, and the third part gives more than the second, etc), and for the saber and buster there are different aspects that can be leveled separately by killing enemies in these specific ways. If you know how this system works and how to use it to your advantage, it can shorten the amount of time needed to level up your weapons significantly. However, this system is not explained by the game whatsoever and many players who don't look it up end up grinding for several minutes with every weapon to max them out. The reason for this is simply that the game is so challenging that many players feel like they need the higher weapon levels to even stand a chance.
  • The retry system is considered very frustrating, due to lives being very rare. Meaning that if you lose all your retries in a level you will need to either start from the last save point or give up the mission, and in the case of the later you don't get your retries back. Thankfully these were both improved upon in the sequels. It didn't stop it from returning in Mega Man X8 however.
  • Getting a Game Over for certain stages will make the player skip the level. This has the side-effect of rendering any items you would have obtained there Permanently Missable Content. Worse, triggering this situation on a specific mission causes you to miss out on multiple follow up missions and a boss that would normally be fought after these missions will instead attack you immediately. If you were struggling badly enough to find yourself in this situation in the first place, this boss may very well end the run right there as you're likely unequipped and/or skilled enough to fight it. Unsurprisingly, this feature was abandoned entirely from the second game onward.
• So Okay, It's Average: Zero 1 is considered weakest of the series, although most would say it's still slightly better than just average. Common criticisms include a relatively weak plot and unreasonable grinding requirements for weapon skills and cyber-elf upgrades. Speaking of cyber-elves, the fact that the game's only collectible downgrades the Hunter Rank when they're actually used is considered a Scrappy Mechanic. Overall, the game is hard to recommend stand-alone but is required to play the rest of the series. Thankfully, all of the above issues were improved upon in the sequels.
• That One Boss:
  • At the end of the second mission, you'd be fighting Aztec Falcon with minimal abilities (unless you spend a lot of time grinding somewhere else; in Hard Mode, you can't even grind), he's fought as a Time-Limit Boss, his boss room is rather narrow, and his attacks have a lot of coverage. His wings also act as his shield, making it harder to hit him when he shoots arrows from his wings.
  • Phantom compared to the other Guardians. Unlike the others, he's Non-Elemental, thus he has no weakness. You can interrupt most of the other Guardians' attacks; for Phantom, you can only intercept his Dash Attack. He also plays it nasty with said attack - if you jump over it, he'll quickly dash back to you; if you interrupt it, he may sometimes resume the attack. He also has a Doppelgänger Spin attack where, if you hit the wrong Phantom, he'll do a powerful counterattack; he might also quickly dash at you if you're close to the real him. Some temporary phantoms may appear when Phantom is using the doppelganer spin and contact with them causes big damage. During the second fight with him, he has a Kaizo Trap attack should you defeat him. In the secret fight against him in the third game, a number of his attacks are upgraded - his Fuuma Shuriken move shoots spreads of kunai multiple times, and his zigzag floating move has him spamming spreads of kunai while floating. On the other hand, given the secret fight takes place in Cyberspace, where you have unrestricted access to all of your Cyber Elves' powers, even this upgraded fighting style can be overcome much more easily.
• That One Level:
  • "Protect the Factory" is one of the most infamous missions in the series. After beating the boss - this being the only mission in the game that starts with a boss battle - you need to find and disarm 8 bombs scattered around the level. Finding the bomb locations isn't a hard task by any means, but three of them are placed in a very tricky spot - a section with floating platforms and lots of flying enemies. The main problem comes from the small field of view and inability to look around, all of which leads to constant leaps of faith and mission retries after yet another failed landing, and that means fighting the boss again.
  • Neo Arcadia Shrine, part 1. The annoying bird enemies are bad enough, but there are also Temporary Platforms that have no side grip, shoot bullets downward, leave no margin for error, and are placed above enemies which you will likely land on should you fall. There's also three bosses: Pantheon Aces, Asura Basura, and Herculious Anchus.
  • Neo Arcadia Tower due to the abundance of Spikes of Doom.
• Win Back the Crowd: The first game impressed after the disappointing Mega Man X6, and the Zero series continued to improve while the X series declined even further with X7.

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