Mega Man ZX is a not a linear game. Neither, however, is it a non-linear game, and therein lies the rub: what kind of game, exactly, is Mega Man ZX?
Well, for starters, it's an action game, and a mission-based one at that. From your game-world exclusive spaceship (or one of a handful of transceivers on the ground), you select from a variety of missions, each of which will primarily direct you to an area that must be navigated to reach the end, where you will confront a boss in much the same way you have done in prior Mega Man titles. After choosing, you can teleport to one of those same transceivers elsewhere in the game world, providing you have discovered them already, and proceed on to your mission area. This doesn't sound so annoying in itself, and actually initially seems like an exciting change of pace for classic Mega Man players.
The problem here though, the huge annoying problem, is that the ZX masters, in their infinite robot-killin' wisdom, have decided not to tell you where anything actually is. Oh sure, you have a map, but the map is unequivocally the worst implementation of a player-navigation system I have seen in years. It works basically like this: the world is made up of separate zones which appear on your map as blocks with various names like "A-3" or "D-1". The blocks are connected to other blocks with lines, roughly indicating that you can get to that particular area by way of travelling through this one. What isn't said, however, is where exactly in the area you are, why the areas are arranged on the map the ways they are, and how one might logically expect to find an area in the first place. The "blocks" only appear on your map after you have entered them, and exits to other areas do not appear until you have passed through them.
If, then, for instance, you have accepted a mission to "investigate the happenings in C-2," you must first figure out where the C area even is, a feat rendered nigh-impossible due to the fact that the alphanumeric area-naming system is not in any way based in the realities of alphabetical or numerical order. A-3 connects to areas A-1, H-1, and H-4, and only after travelling through the H area can you reach the L area, a letter that doesn't exactly sit right next to H in the alphabet.
And that's to say nothing about the fact that many of the doors you must use sit in the background of stages, providing all sorts of weird ideas about the actual three-dimensional logistics of this world. If all of this sounds obtuse that's because it is—and I spend so much time focused on extolling the non-virtues of the map because of one very poisonous reason: The map's shortcomings seep into other areas of the game, ruining promising aspects.
The idea of a game such as this—obviously modeled on games in the Metroid and Castlevania series—not having some sort of map is initially acceptably easy to warm up to. You do a little exploring, find some bosses when you find them, take out some bad guys and stumble on some upgrades in the process. The problem there is in the mission selection system I mentioned earlier. If you've told the powers that be that you're going to go check out area E-6, and you don't have any idea where it is yet, then happen to stumble through most of area D instead and find the boss room for that area, that's too bad—there is no boss there unless you have the D-area mission "active."
In many of these circumstances, frustration compounds due to the brutal difficulty of some of the platforming and enemy-fighting sections, and that is partially because Capcom chose to stick with the tried-and-true system of "lives," which means that if you lose all of them on a mission, any progress you've made is lost and you'll start back at the last save. The problem is that after you've trekked through the nasty new sections only to find nothing, you get to move yourself all the way back out, or to the nearest sparse save point (which occasionally, but not often enough, will contain a transport module to send you back to home base) to recharge, save, or change your mission. In my case, this often resulted in my swift demise, forcing me to reload and lose the sections on my map I had revealed in the process.
So Mega Man ZX wants you to play it linearly by virtue of having you only be active on one mission at a time: that's fine - older Mega Man games handled this by putting you into that mission's area with the knowledge that you needed to fight to the end - but in ZX, you're still selecting your mission, you just need to somehow stumble on where it actually takes place, first. One might assume because of this decision that Capcom wanted to explore the non-linearity route—but again, the only thing that exploration yields is a rarely seen energy upgrade, some locked doors, and a host of dead-ends and inaccessible or empty boss rooms.
It's not all gloom and doom over in ZX-land though. The boss fights, when you actually find them, are pretty entertaining and intense in a way only Mega Man fights are. There's a lot of timing, pattern memorization, and careful wall-jumping and dashing to be done. The new weapons system is also appreciated: each boss you defeat now yields you an entirely different suit instead of a useless weapon, suits that offer you new movement abilities like the rocket jump or easy movement underwater. And there are even optional missions which serve to get you "upgrade chips" that let you do things like stop enemy bullets with a sword swing, or prevent you from getting knocked backwards. The sad thing is, again, that many players will likely be so frustrated with the navigation system that even finding where they are supposed to go to complete said optional missions will ultimately be so infuriating that many of them will go unfinished.
So what kind of game is Mega Man ZX? In the end I'm not sure even Capcom knew when they were finished designing it. It's sort of the action kind, because there's a lot of shooting, jumping, and fighting. It's sort of the adventure kind because you're free to wander about aimlessly if you're so inclined. It's not really the enjoyable kind, and it's certainly not the user-friendly kind. In the end I think it's more of the sad-but-true kind, a glimpse into grand ambitions for the stagnant Mega Man series that will unfortunately have to wait for realization in the inevitable sequels.
Well, for starters, it's an action game, and a mission-based one at that. From your game-world exclusive spaceship (or one of a handful of transceivers on the ground), you select from a variety of missions, each of which will primarily direct you to an area that must be navigated to reach the end, where you will confront a boss in much the same way you have done in prior Mega Man titles. After choosing, you can teleport to one of those same transceivers elsewhere in the game world, providing you have discovered them already, and proceed on to your mission area. This doesn't sound so annoying in itself, and actually initially seems like an exciting change of pace for classic Mega Man players.
The problem here though, the huge annoying problem, is that the ZX masters, in their infinite robot-killin' wisdom, have decided not to tell you where anything actually is. Oh sure, you have a map, but the map is unequivocally the worst implementation of a player-navigation system I have seen in years. It works basically like this: the world is made up of separate zones which appear on your map as blocks with various names like "A-3" or "D-1". The blocks are connected to other blocks with lines, roughly indicating that you can get to that particular area by way of travelling through this one. What isn't said, however, is where exactly in the area you are, why the areas are arranged on the map the ways they are, and how one might logically expect to find an area in the first place. The "blocks" only appear on your map after you have entered them, and exits to other areas do not appear until you have passed through them.
If, then, for instance, you have accepted a mission to "investigate the happenings in C-2," you must first figure out where the C area even is, a feat rendered nigh-impossible due to the fact that the alphanumeric area-naming system is not in any way based in the realities of alphabetical or numerical order. A-3 connects to areas A-1, H-1, and H-4, and only after travelling through the H area can you reach the L area, a letter that doesn't exactly sit right next to H in the alphabet.
And that's to say nothing about the fact that many of the doors you must use sit in the background of stages, providing all sorts of weird ideas about the actual three-dimensional logistics of this world. If all of this sounds obtuse that's because it is—and I spend so much time focused on extolling the non-virtues of the map because of one very poisonous reason: The map's shortcomings seep into other areas of the game, ruining promising aspects.
The idea of a game such as this—obviously modeled on games in the Metroid and Castlevania series—not having some sort of map is initially acceptably easy to warm up to. You do a little exploring, find some bosses when you find them, take out some bad guys and stumble on some upgrades in the process. The problem there is in the mission selection system I mentioned earlier. If you've told the powers that be that you're going to go check out area E-6, and you don't have any idea where it is yet, then happen to stumble through most of area D instead and find the boss room for that area, that's too bad—there is no boss there unless you have the D-area mission "active."
In many of these circumstances, frustration compounds due to the brutal difficulty of some of the platforming and enemy-fighting sections, and that is partially because Capcom chose to stick with the tried-and-true system of "lives," which means that if you lose all of them on a mission, any progress you've made is lost and you'll start back at the last save. The problem is that after you've trekked through the nasty new sections only to find nothing, you get to move yourself all the way back out, or to the nearest sparse save point (which occasionally, but not often enough, will contain a transport module to send you back to home base) to recharge, save, or change your mission. In my case, this often resulted in my swift demise, forcing me to reload and lose the sections on my map I had revealed in the process.
So Mega Man ZX wants you to play it linearly by virtue of having you only be active on one mission at a time: that's fine - older Mega Man games handled this by putting you into that mission's area with the knowledge that you needed to fight to the end - but in ZX, you're still selecting your mission, you just need to somehow stumble on where it actually takes place, first. One might assume because of this decision that Capcom wanted to explore the non-linearity route—but again, the only thing that exploration yields is a rarely seen energy upgrade, some locked doors, and a host of dead-ends and inaccessible or empty boss rooms.
It's not all gloom and doom over in ZX-land though. The boss fights, when you actually find them, are pretty entertaining and intense in a way only Mega Man fights are. There's a lot of timing, pattern memorization, and careful wall-jumping and dashing to be done. The new weapons system is also appreciated: each boss you defeat now yields you an entirely different suit instead of a useless weapon, suits that offer you new movement abilities like the rocket jump or easy movement underwater. And there are even optional missions which serve to get you "upgrade chips" that let you do things like stop enemy bullets with a sword swing, or prevent you from getting knocked backwards. The sad thing is, again, that many players will likely be so frustrated with the navigation system that even finding where they are supposed to go to complete said optional missions will ultimately be so infuriating that many of them will go unfinished.
So what kind of game is Mega Man ZX? In the end I'm not sure even Capcom knew when they were finished designing it. It's sort of the action kind, because there's a lot of shooting, jumping, and fighting. It's sort of the adventure kind because you're free to wander about aimlessly if you're so inclined. It's not really the enjoyable kind, and it's certainly not the user-friendly kind. In the end I think it's more of the sad-but-true kind, a glimpse into grand ambitions for the stagnant Mega Man series that will unfortunately have to wait for realization in the inevitable sequels.