[MAJOR SPOILERS for all 3 games!] Your thoughts on the Blaster Master Zero Trilogy as a whole?

[TouyaShiro]

Before you ask, no, I'm not talking about the compilation - I'm talking about the games themselves. I wanted to make this thread so I could see if you guys had any thoughts about the games as a whole - gameplay, comparisons/nods to previous Blaster Master titles, the overall plot... That sort of thing. After having finished Blaster Master Zero 3 for myself, I have a lot of my own that I wanted to talk about, though I'm not sure if I want to put them all in the one post. For the time being, though, we'll go with these thoughts.

I like that in all three titles, there are factors that are consistent across them. Specifically, both of the ones I'm going to list are to do with the Accel Blast and its successors; First, they will always kill the Skeleton Boss and its successors/variants in one hit, your opportunity to do so in BMZ2 and BMZ3 being the rematch with Cerbeboss and Metal Cerbeboss, respectively. This also extends to the Top View section against Metal Cerbeboss, where you are able to charge the Elemental Blaster to finish it off - the only Top View variation of a weapon that originated from a Blasting Again reference.

Likewise, the final boss in the true ending of every single game features one opportunity for you to charge and then fire the Accel Blast, allowing you to finish them off in style after wearing them down;

• BMZ1 - Once you rescue Eve from the cockpit, you are free to charge and then blast Invem SOPHIA with SOPHIA Zero's Accel Blast. (I hear that doing so beforehand is a really bad idea, though...)
  
• BMZ2 - Once Drolrevo Mastro goes into overdrive, it becomes invincible and fires a set pattern of attacks with increased power, after which it powers down significantly and becomes a grey colour, giving you an opportunity to wail on it. If you have Full Accel Blast charged to maximum (including the extra shots to fully empower the sphere and properly fully charge it), unleashing it at the moment Drolrevo Mastro powers down will instantly kill it.
  
• BMZ3 (Kane, to stop Jason) - Once SOPHIA-J1's life bar is taken down and forces the sequence where it uses Final Accel Blast in normal space, you have an opportunity to unleash the Accel Blast if you picked it up in the ??? Area, which will break SOPHIA-J1's shield and deplete the rest of its life bar in an instant. The timing for this is pretty tight; if you miss your opportunity the fight continues as normal, and unlike the other two examples, Accel Blast can be interrupted if not launched in time like SOPHIA III's version in BMZ1 (and unlike SOPHIA Zero, whose use of the weapon cannot be interrupted by damage). On top of that, I'm almost certain that it charges even slower, meaning your one and only chance to use this weapon is at that very moment.

I love details like this so much. Definitely not the first thing you think of when it comes to consistent patterns, but I appreciate it nonetheless as - at least for me - it induces a sense of familiarity, and also developed some instinct within me to immediately search for those consistencies with this latest entry.

[Edulcorante]

Probably the only and most solid series made by Inticreates, can't say I love all the games because I think 3 is just ok, but it's still a good series overall.

BMZ1 is really good, never heard about Blaster Master when I played but it was a great game to start with.
Story and characters were well developed for a simple anime-like game, it was fun to read the dialogues between Jason and Eve. Soundtrack is good too.
Gameplay is really good but I think the pacing is kinda slow in the top-down sections because you're constantly waiting for cycles to progress safely. It isn't difficult, just boring. Speaking of which, the extra modes are bad, especially Destroyer Mode.
Anyway, it was a simple and short game but a good one.

I LOVE BMZ2, everything is so much better than the first one to me and with the expection of Divido's side-view sections and some Planetoids' dungeons, I personally had a lot of fun.
Counter Blast was a great addition and all the top-down sections and boss fights were so much more dynamic, I loved it. Difficulty was also nice, not too easy but also not hard.
I like how the game doesn't need backtracking except for the sidequests and even then it's not that big of a deal, exploration in this game feels great.
Soundtrack is amazing, story and characters were also great (except for Kanna) and some of them were really well developed. That ending gave me goosebumps too, it was insane seeing it for the first time.
Such an awesome game, I really love it, made the think that Inti still can make masterpieces.

BMZ3 has a lot of issues, it's the usual "Inticreates tries too much and fails 95% of the time".
Exploration is not fun, the difficulty of most bosses is just too artificial, they tried to "balance" it with Life Guards but it just made things worse, SF dungeons are a huge hit or miss and they miss a lot, some if not most of the areas are just a mess and/or not fun at all.
Speaking of balancing, nerfing the Crusher Shot or whatever just to make a stronger version of it that uses SP was the most ????? thing this game threw at me at the beginning. I'm tired of them making this "risk/reward" bs because it just doesn't work.
I'm not a fan of how the game forces you to use all your subweapons. Not that I think they shouldn't make them useful but, if I could make a comparison, there's a good way to make them op and useful like MM9 and then there's just they being tools that you are forced to use like in ZXA. I don't know if this makes sense lol but to me it does.
However the game has it's good points too, soundtrack is good, although some musics didn't grow on me; story starts lame but things get a lot better at the ending and there were amazing fights, like Rising Garuda and... yeah, I think it's just Rising Garuda.
The ending is great although a bit too over-the-top.
Overall, it's not a great game like the other 2 but, in the end, it was still a good conclusion to the series. Compared to games like MMZ4, the Gunvolt series and CotM2, this game actually isn't that bad.
Although I think it's just too expensive here in Brazil, I wish Inti added regional pricing.

Sorry for the long text btw lmao

[TouyaShiro]

Hohohoho, there's a lot of thoughts gathered already. And don't worry about it being a huge wall of text; perhaps just space it out a bit better so it's a bit more readable, haha.

On that note, prepare for MY huge wall of text with my thoughts on the series as a whole, now that I've had a bit of time to think about it... It won't cover everything, but it'll cover what I think is important to mention for me, personally. (And I probably should have put these down as the first post...)

Brief story thoughts

Overall, I like all three of them in ascending order, I think. Perhaps I don't have too much to say on the overall plot other than gawking at how much crazier it got as the games continued, but I personally love how much they incorporated elements of the previous Blaster Master titles into this new one.

I can't help but notice how much they loved referencing Blaster Master: Blasting Again in this, though, cause the references to that game in particular escalated with each game - BMZ1 included the first usable instance of the Accel Blast, the duo of Roddy and Elfie are the former pilot & support droid of NORA MA-02 ANDREIA as seen in BMZ2's true ending (and also featuring a cutscene use of the Accel Blast, like in Blasting Again), and... well, BMZ3 now features pretty much the entire rest of its narrative in some fashion - Lightning Beings, two children named Roddy and Elfie that are the offspring of Jason and Eve (in this case named in honour of the fallen ANDREIA crew), and heck, even a reference to the untimely death of Eve and Jason that kicks off the plot of Blasting Again via Leibniz's comment.

Gameplay thoughts - BMZ1

In terms of the gameplay, I tend to prioritise that more overall in terms of my experience with games, so I have a lot more to say in this regard - usually about the core gameplay mechanics more than anything else.

Starting with BMZ1, I liked it, but I felt like I really couldn't be free to use my sub weapons in Side View all that often as EVERYTHING was tied to SP - hover, alternate main cannon fire, and sub weapons. Sure, enemies dropped pickups to keep that topped up, and it automatically recharged slowly on its own, but Side View mechanics weren't the most satisfying for me, personally. It makes me wish that the game mechanics were more akin to the way SOPHIA Zero was, beyond Area 9 and Unlimited Mode.

BMZ1's Top View was arguably even worse as a late sub weapon is utterly broken and not at all balanced (despite the 1-use limit), and Wave is the only gun level you need for the most part - which kinda got rid of the whole point of having every Gun Level be a unique weapon with different uses.

Gameplay thoughts - BMZ2

BMZ2 felt much more fun for me mechanically, and though everything in Side View still used the same SP bar, the way it functioned was something I liked more compared to before. No more automatic recharge, but now you have the Gaia System, and perhaps more importantly you can extend it with SP Up power-ups, so using sub weapons felt a lot more free thanks to these changes. Though I stuck to the G-Crusher Shot for the most part, I appreciated what they decided to do with the main cannon this time around - even if there weren't all that many types compared to the first game.

BMZ2 Top View was a HUGE step up for me personally between the Blast Counter system and fun weapon interactions, and while it ultimately meant the Wave was nerfed as the Wide Blaster, everything - the sub weapons, each Gun Level type, and all three Blast Counters - had a chance to shine in this game somewhere, IMO. The fact that you weren't stuck with that infernal peashooter at the lowest Gun Level was also a huge bonus for me, too.

Gameplay thoughts - BMZ3

Mechanically, BMZ3 I think is the best of all three games, personally, though there are definitely some noticeable changes which prevent certain things from becoming too overpowered. In Side View, the Dual SP System means you're much more free to use both sub weapons and main cannon types - helpful for the players who liked mashing G-Crusher Shot as-is rather than use the alternate cannon types in BMZ2 (which, spoiler alert, was definitely me) due to now having an upgraded version of said regular shot alongside two alternative cannon types which cover different enemy weaknesses, and also helpful for sub weapons especially since there's some pretty costly ones this time around, or at least it felt that way to me in the early game.

Counteracting this, they fixed the behaviour where doing a Recoil Jump would reset your height and allow full Gaia System activation; now you have to actually land to reset it if you used Hover at any point in the air, which perhaps is something that irks me only because I abused this a lot in BMZ2 (and clearly someone at Inti Creates noticed). Personally, I felt like the areas were designed pretty nicely (for the most part) to allow you to recharge adequately with max height, so it ultimately this fix to the post-hover behaviour of the Gaia System didn't bother me all that much.

Top View of BMZ3... Though once again I hardly ever used the sub weapons for most things, the fact that you always have 5 different weapons available at all times is very nice as it means you'll always have access to the right weapon for each encounter. Good luck learning each enemy weakness under pressure, though, and because Sophia Force drones don't have such weaknesses, just... good luck, lmao.

Meanwhile, the Multi-Counter System is SO satisfying to get right, especially when certain mods are picked up which allow you to be really stylish about it, but counteracting that is the nerf - and that's mostly on player skill, I feel like, as mistiming your counter means you won't be able to use it for a while, to prevent people from spamming the button for easy counters akin to how the old system worked (which makes sense since the CP Gauge does not go down on a failed Blast Counter unlike the last game).

Exploration & map structure

Now, another side to these thoughts on the series... Perhaps I'm not the best judge on exploration, especially as this is actually one of the few Metroidvania style games I've ever played, but I personally haven't ever felt it drag too much aside from a few times where I got stuck trying to through certain areas in an attempt to figure out whether or not it is even possible to go there for longer than necessary. With all that being said, I feel like I have some sort of idea as to how people would judge this game's exploration...

In my opinion, the exploration aspect of these games is judged based on the area design, how it feels to navigate them, and whether or not people prefer the worlds and dungeons being connected or disconnected, particularly when it comes to BMZ2 since it's sometimes a point of contention for some compared to the original Blaster Master and BMZ1.

BMZ3 I daresay has much more of a sense of connection and coherence compared to BMZ2, too, since you don't need to go through a world map or Planetoids, though the areas themselves aren't always directly connected like your typical Metroidvania (doing so via the Area Gates instead to transport over to new areas, and also travelling to one of BMZ2's planets via Warp Gate & Access Key and not just sticking to the planet Sophia). Of course, it's not immediately obvious to everyone that Area Gates differ from regular Retry Points and offer new areas to go (since the very first one you cross is actually right before a boss which you need to beat instead), but to me, at least, it undoubtedly feels more like the Blaster Master formula than BMZ2 did.

I think the funny thing is that my interactions with certain people who are themselves Blaster Master fans are taking to BMZ3 a lot more than they did BMZ2, particularly because of the exploration aspect, and I feel like that's largely because of that last point in my previous paragraph where it feels more like a proper Metroidvania in terms of map structure, compared to BMZ2 which felt disconnected due to its world map system.