I wouldn’t call zero a good place to start. It’s relatively high difficulty and suffers from screen crunch on the gba. If I were recommending a starting place in the series, it would either be one of the more recent megaman games (Megaman 11, perhaps) or the start of the X series (Megaman X). The series is old enough that “just start with the first ones” can be rough. Megaman 1 shows its age, and commits to a lot of NES “Nintendo hard,” so knowing if a more refined, modern take is for you before trying to dig in deeper feels valuable, to me. If you like the base games, I’d recommend playing 1-7 and then moving on to X, which 7 does some setting up for, then come back for 8-11.
If the megaman mainline games feel slow or punishing, jump straight to X, which has greatly expanded movement and a great upgrade system. Play X1-6 and then move on to Zero (1-4). X suffers from many of its games being “the last of the series” until they weren’t, but X7 and X8 are considered to be terrible and extremely mid, respectively. X6 has very mixed takes, but also sets up for the start of the zero series. Zero is followed by ZX but, frankly, those games work against their own design and I find them hard to recommend. They bring in exploratory metroidvania elements, but you end up needing to take a quest to go somewhere before going there, when you have many quests and can only do one at a time, meaning a lot of the game is just wandering searching for the one place you’re looking for, finding places for the other quests instead. Not to mention using your new abilities requires a transformation mechanic that is slow and clunky.
Damn I would love more x/zero style games. Capcom please give us elf wars. For now I’ll keep playing 30XX I guess
Zero was made for fans of the series, so it’s harder for new players. Battle Network is a different genre altogether, you’ll play it for that gameplay, not to get into the standard Megaman style.
If I’ve never played a megaman game, is megaman zero a good place to start?
I tried battle network and thought it was real neat. Would be happy to get abck into it but I understand it’s not really a “megaman” game
I wouldn’t call zero a good place to start. It’s relatively high difficulty and suffers from screen crunch on the gba. If I were recommending a starting place in the series, it would either be one of the more recent megaman games (Megaman 11, perhaps) or the start of the X series (Megaman X). The series is old enough that “just start with the first ones” can be rough. Megaman 1 shows its age, and commits to a lot of NES “Nintendo hard,” so knowing if a more refined, modern take is for you before trying to dig in deeper feels valuable, to me. If you like the base games, I’d recommend playing 1-7 and then moving on to X, which 7 does some setting up for, then come back for 8-11.
If the megaman mainline games feel slow or punishing, jump straight to X, which has greatly expanded movement and a great upgrade system. Play X1-6 and then move on to Zero (1-4). X suffers from many of its games being “the last of the series” until they weren’t, but X7 and X8 are considered to be terrible and extremely mid, respectively. X6 has very mixed takes, but also sets up for the start of the zero series. Zero is followed by ZX but, frankly, those games work against their own design and I find them hard to recommend. They bring in exploratory metroidvania elements, but you end up needing to take a quest to go somewhere before going there, when you have many quests and can only do one at a time, meaning a lot of the game is just wandering searching for the one place you’re looking for, finding places for the other quests instead. Not to mention using your new abilities requires a transformation mechanic that is slow and clunky.
Damn I would love more x/zero style games. Capcom please give us elf wars. For now I’ll keep playing 30XX I guess
Zero was made for fans of the series, so it’s harder for new players. Battle Network is a different genre altogether, you’ll play it for that gameplay, not to get into the standard Megaman style.
Battle Network is great, but honestly, I’d start with Megaman X or even the original series before Zero.
How about Megaman X4 😉