Dropped Game Discussions – Megaman Zero and XZ collection

Been a long time since I've done one of these, so an explanation. Dropped Game Discussions are when I make a choice to skip a game I'm playing and forgo a proper review, but still, give you what amounts to some first impressions and a bit of additional commentary and explanation as to why I am not giving the game a full review.

There are two big reasons for that with this collection, the first being I have so much more anime and games either finishing up or releasing, and Megaman is a bit low on my priority list. Especially since there are six games in total, meaning the time sink for this one, including replaying very similar games in succession, makes it hard to justify making this one a priority review.

The second reason is I quickly built up a strong bias against this game, and it's not really the game's fault. See, I went into this looking forward to playing me some more Megaman X, the SNES games were some of my favorite platformers of all time. And while we still get a kind of Platformer, it feels more like a Metroidvania style of game then it does a Megaman X game. Even though there are things I could praise about it, I have a hard time bringing myself to even want to keep laying it as it is nothing like what I was wanting out of it. This makes giving the game a fair shot and in turn a fair review, a bit of a challenge. If there was going to be a game I'd have to sideline in favor of other releases coming out, it makes the most sense for it to be this one.

All that aside, a bit of my first impression is these games, just aesthetically, do not look good. Comparing even the SNES games to these they feel like a huge downgrade in terms of how good the sprites look. The backdrops look fantastic, but the sprites are terrible. Controls are largely fine, specifically in the ZX games, but the Zero one (I only played a bit of the first of each series, just for the record) feels a bit stiff like it wasn't doing what I wanted it to when I wanted. It's something I think would get better as I got the hang of the game, however, so it's nothing game-breaking.

Overall the games seem fine enough, but what I got so far doesn't feel like they were must-buys, or even something worth much of a look outside of nostalgia if you played them on their original handheld releases back in the day and what to give them a go on a bigger screen.

Also, as a reminder, with the coming Steem Hardfork into Hive, my posts will be going up on HIVE as well. The account name should still be the same, so I hope to see all of you over there as well!