Mega Man Zero 4

This is a pretty good game, a nice game to end the Zero quadrilogy, but at the same time it's sort of its own thing. Not only is progression in this game different from the first three Zero games (with it having 8 stages available from the start), it has several new mechanics like the Zero Knuckle (which I didn't use much but was cool), and the chip crafting (which felt very misplaced in this game).

I like how ranking is completely self-managed. There aren't any special skills to pick up if you keep a high rank. It's just a score, and you can do with it what you will. I like the new method of dishing out EX Skills of having the player beat a stage while the weather is disadvantageous.

What hurts this game is the difficult spikes. The intermission stages carry a very troublesome boss. To make matters worse, after completing the fourth stage, you cannot use your crafting of Cyber-Elf upgrading and are instead forced into the first intermission level. It makes an already very tough encounter even more frustrating.

The final level is also really gruesome. It does the classic Mega Man thing of having you fight all eight bosses and then a pretty difficulty two-stage final boss. It's a little too much, a little too nasty. At that point in the game the stages were getting pretty easy but that final stage stuck out with its relentlessness.

Overall, I liked MMZ4. Maybe one day I'll try it again.