I’ll admit it, I haven’t so much as played a Mega Man game through since the early nineties. Even though the series kept growing and evolving, my interest in the rapidly declining franchise hit a low point. Around Mega Man 5, I threw in the towel. Mega Man X, which is still revered as one of the pinnacles of gaming—yeah, I skipped it. Years of “Mavericks,” and “Cyber Elves,” and anything else were avoided. Then, I saw Mega Man ZX.

Mega Man ZX… The name is an exercise in abstraction, giving not much of a clue as to how it relates to the series. A load of doe-eyed anime children run across the cover of the game with a display gaudy enough to make someone turn away. So why should you look past the ugly outer layer and take a chance on Mega Man ZX? Because under that outer shell lies a delicious delicacy that has went unexplored until now.

Exploration…one of the first things you’ll notice about this new adventure is the nonlinear feel given via a world built like a modern 2D Castlevania. Long gone are the days of choosing a boss stage via a gallery of rogues, running on the linear path to them, and taking them out. Instead, the protagonist takes missions anywhere in the world that a data station resides, finds their way to the zone where the mission is based in, and execute whatever task is needed. Sometimes you’ll find yourself simply trying to survive in an elementally affected environment, sometimes the focus will be on rescuing people. Any way you cut it, the missions are a bit more varied than the old search and destroy method. Of course, your final goal is still to kill off a boss and take their powers.

When you find a boss, the first instinct will be to blast away and take them down as quickly as possible. Due to the game’s design, that’s not the best decision. Within every boss is a Biometal, the source of their powers and subsequently their weak point. Every effort should be made to avoid shooting that spot, as damage to it will downgrade its power. It’s an inverse relationship: the more damage it takes, the more you’ll have to pay to get it back to full strength. Until the HX Biometal is received, it’s all but impossible to know where not to shoot. When you use the HX mod, however, the bottom screen displays the specific weak spot on bosses—an important tool in helping to save you headaches down the road.

In ZX, every new weapon is unique in its ways and how it can help you get the most out of the game. For example HX, in addition to revealing weak points, makes your character into an aerial fighting machine that wields dual sabers and has a multitude of moves to help in air superiority. For those of us who remember the series from its roots though, most likely the first boss to go down will be the one who tosses around fire. FX is a beast to fight, but the rewards are great. Your character sprite fully transforms with every Biometal, but FX is something special. Huge and red with yellow horns and throwing around projectiles from two huge blasters arms akimbo, FX not only doubles your firepower but also makes you look like a legitimate threat. Combine that with its touchscreen ability to draw out paths for the flamethrower attack and a mighty punching melee attack when ammo is depleted…well. The franchise has obviously evolved out of the days of simple palette swaps.

Environments are equally as polished. Just in the early game, the adventure will take you from a forested area, to an abandoned amusement park, to a burning city. Every area is beautiful, with some of the best usage of colors and a few spots where the parallax is nothing short of amazing. Level designs are somewhere between Metroid/Castlevania and traditional Mega Man, with plenty of platforming and bottomless pits, but also several places that can’t be explored the first time around. One of the better examples is, again, that burning city. Once you finish off the boss, the fire subsides. Areas open up, more opportunities to open up further areas come up, and the game expands organically.

However, it is in this world design that Mega Man ZX both succeeds and fails. While it allows for exploration and plenty of replay value, I still don’t understand the deal behind not having a traditional room map available. Instead of that, the game has tiny roadsigns here and there that direct you towards where the route to the next area may be—but if you can’t find the right branch, the game gets frustrating to navigate. Trial and error eventually leads to memorization of locations, but until that happens, you’re left with a bit of a tough time trying to find the next mission objective.

Mega Man ZX features some amazing production values, great game design, and even some inventive and sensible usage of the dual screen format. Outside of the somewhat confusing world map, I just can’t think of a single complaint about the game—it’s solid on every front, excelling in a few key places. Here’s to hoping the ZX franchise keeps up the pace this one has set.