Board 8 > Zone of the Enders

(+) Yeah! (+)

Great in a "Kojima" way or genuinely great?

Is this best played in the HD Collection?

From what I've heard the first is mediocre but the second is great. Not sure which version is best though.

The GBA game is also a surprisingly good SRPG.

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The first isn't great or even good by any metric.

The second is probably the best mecha game ever made.

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ZOE2 is impossible not to enjoy. The anime stuff is weird and you can take it or leave it, but everything else is peak Kojima quality.

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Basically what the other two said.
HD collection, hmm. I remember hearing there were some issues somewhere.

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HD Collection best just for that new opening

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzGMTql4oWo

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ZoE1 isn't like offensively terrible or anything, but it's pretty limited in scope especially compared to the standards expected for a full price game at the time. It's only a few hours long, ends on a cliffhanger, and has fairly limited replay value. There's only three basic enemy types, most of the area maps are pretty similar to one another, and despite the short length there's a fair amount of backtracking so it isn't any surprise it got a pretty negative reaction when it was released (and having a younger mc, who objects to fighting and frequently says as much doesn't help either as many players would see that as being weak/whiny/not masculine enough kind of like the complaints about Raiden compared to Snake). Since it's short and you can get it cheap now, or bundled with the sequel it wouldn't hurt to give it a shot but you wouldn't really be missing anything if you decided to skip it and read a summary/watch an lp instead either.

ZoE2 is a major improvement in gameplay, with more variety in missions and environments/setpieces and is definitely worth playing.

also adding a +1 for the GBA game. It's more or less Super Robot Wars with a goofy real time critical hit mechanic (that you can turn off if you don't like it). The story/characters are pretty solid too (much better in those regards than the main games, ZoE2 in particular being more about the action/spectacle) if not straying too far from what you'd expect from your typical mecha animu.

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Meh in a Kojima way

ZoE was great, and i never understood the hate. I can only assume a lot of people that would normally not have played the game based on its aesthetic and gameplay loop bought it for the MGS2 demo, and then unsurprisingly didn't enjoy the game itself.

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