YMMV / Blaster Master Zero II

• Best Known for the Fanservice: A more minor example, but it isn't too hard to find people who know the game only for Kanna and Eve's new design.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Kanna quickly got popular the moment she appeared in the trailer for obvious reasons. Her goofy yet kind personality players saw when the game came out only made this stronger.
• Even Better Sequel: Zero received enormous praise for being faithful to the NES original and improving upon it in almost every way, but had some minor flaws such as lack of difficulty and not-very-well-thought-out weapon balancing. Zero II adds Sequel Difficulty Spike and improved weapon balancing, in addition to greatly expanding the game's scope and introducing a memorable cast of supporting characters to a more in-depth storyline. It also helps that unlike the first one, this one isn't based on any previous game in the series, meaning it was a lot more free to do what it wanted. This also extends to EX Characters. While the first game had EX Characters with significant gameplay changes on Top-down segments, they have even more gameplay variety on side-scrolling parts with one example being Copen who can destroy things as efficiently on foot as he can while piloting G-LOLA.
• Fan Nickname: The Empress's D-Attacker is commonly called "Dragon Wagon" by the fans.
• Fridge Brilliance: Why is Kanna so childlike and immature compared to her fellow Metal Attacker pilots? Well, for one thing, Kenwood grew her on Planet Stranga, so she may actually be actually a child, despite her very mature physique. Secondly, she's the guardian of Planet Stranga... whose native biosphere is lethally toxic to mutants. Most of the mutants on Stranga are pushovers outside of the rainbow-colored wasp-like mutants. Until she was faced by GARUDA, Kanna had probably never actually battled a genuinely threatening opponent in her life! Of course she doesn't treat the mutant invasion as seriously as the others do!
• Game-Breaker: Folks who thought Gunvolt was busted in Zero have yet to see what Copen can do. Between maintaining just about all his effectiveness even in side scrolling levels, both in powerful subweapons and his ability to treat the law of gravity like a polite suggestion, he can easily get power ups that Jason has to work through half a planet to get and has subweapons in the side scrolling stages that largely render the tank redundant (save for going between planets and adventuring in deeper Stranga) to the point where two guys from the guys at the official "hanging at inti HQ" stream suggest Jason is actually hard mode compared to him. The lack of G-Lola on landing means Planade-G can trip people up and Drolrevo Mastro has no instant win button, but every other boss is cake.
• Growing the Beard: Zero did a fantastic job of recapturing the feel of the original NES game, but still had a few issues. This game expanded upon the gameplay formula and lore a great deal, feeling like a true modern successor to the original game while still forging its own identity.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Both I and II have their Golden Endings in which either Jason or Eve would make an implied Love Confession to the other before the credits rolled. Fast forward to the route to the golden ending of III, and she actually confesses her feelings to him before leaving, and after he catches up to her, they end up Happily Married and have two kids named Roddy and Elfie, after ANDREIA's MA pilot and support droid who let Eve save Jason in this game's true ending.
• Heartwarming Moments: The final moments in the Golden Ending. Eve saves Jason after defeating Drolrevo with help from the MA pilots they met throughout their journey. After Jason defeats Drolrevo Mastro, Eve's mutant infection is stopped and no longer malignant, and on their way to Sophia, after Jason thanks Eve for coming to his rescue, mirroring I's golden ending, she proceeds with her implied Love Confession to him.
  Eve: I have something I want to tell you-
• Nightmare Fuel: Unlike Jason spinning before collapsing when he dies in the overworld on foot which is almost comedic, Eve just plain disintegrates when she dies.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: The requirement for the True Ending is much more lenient in Zero II. In the previous title, every single addition for SOPHIA-III was necessary in order to obtain the True Ending, and the game was designed in a way that getting all of those pretty amounted to playing the game to 100% exploration. In Zero II, all you need is to complete the rather simple side-quests presented by all three fellow Metal Attackers to earn 3 items needed by the end of the game, a few areas and upgrades not necessary to complete the aforementioned quests can be completely skipped and the True Ending can still be achieved.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: On the other side of the coin, Zero II pulls considerably fewer punches than its predecessor when it comes to general difficulty. Enemies are plentiful and aggressive, the level design is more dynamic, and bosses are trickier and more strategic. You are very much expected to have played the previous game and liberally use the new tools offered in this game.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The bad ending, which is also a barrage of Player Punches one after the other. The aftermath of the battle against Planade-G separates Eve from Jason and all she can do is remember her journey with him while wistfully wishing to understand the bonds between the other MA Pilots and their Support Droids. Even more depressingly is the fact that Eve dies alone and full of regrets calling out for Jason. And the cherry on top of this crap-sundae? Jason also dies since he fails to defeat the Mutant Cocoon on his own. AND Earth also comes under attack from the Mutants again while Leibniz simply cackles remarking how Jason has lost everything, just like him.
  • The fates of Roddy and Elfie in this continuity, especially in that Eve is the one who finds what's left of them. In the original continuity, they were her children. Here? They're already dead, having been put up against a Mutant Cocoon far more powerful than anything their MA could hope to defeat, even being a match for SOPHIA III. It doesn't help that Elfie's particularly young appearance strongly suggests they were a Kid Hero pair. Even worse, you find Roddy's blaster... After beating a giant Dig-Rawler. In-story, one of these was enough to give Stein trouble. It's very likely Roddy was eaten before he could ever see his partner again, and his blaster is all that's left of him. At least Eve created something to remember them by in the sequel…
• That One Boss:
  • EIR will end you if you don't make good use of Burn Spark or don't learn how to dodge its speedy tackles. EIR also has a bad habit of unleashing slow projectiles that have a long-lasting explosion effect and attacking while they are on screen limiting your mobility. Now imagine Kanna actually taking the fight seriously… better yet, play Blaster Master Zero III and find out the hard way.
  • The first duel against Leibniz is the first real test of your mastery over the Top-down battles. Leibniz is very nimble, hits like a truck, and has only very brief windows of vulnerability with even briefer windows for Blast Counters. You're not getting past Leibniz simply by shooting him recklessly.
• That One Level:
  • Planetoid C-2 requires Jason to traverse multiple series of hanging ladders to reach a Life Up while dodging flamethrowers and enemy bullets. This can get pretty damn frustrating because the room for error for jumping between ladders is quite small and any mistake beyond the first set of ladders means instant death from Fall Damage; if you die, you have to retry the entire level from the beginning. And after you get the Life Up, you have to jump back across the ladders without dying (Fred cannot be used for an instant warp) in order to keep it. However, once you return to the flamethrower segment, you can simply walk along the ground and crawl through a small tunnel back to the starting point, saving yourself a lot of grief.
  • Divido is the hardest level in the game aside from the final one, and for all the wrong reasons. The main gimmick of the planet is that dimensional rifts all over the surface of the planet have caused it to split into two climates — desert and arctic. The problem is that these dimensional rifts are One Hit Kills, and their placement in the game world almost seems designed to try and screw you over, often appearing out of blind turns or coming up offscreen. Even worse, the place is a maze due to the two different climates and the dimensional barriers cutting off access between them until you've defeated the planet's midboss. The result is a deadly and incredibly unfun planet that will kill you a good dozen times if you're not careful.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • The dive module is not highly utilised at all, which might be the reason you start with it. The few areas where it's extensively used is on Planet Stranga and a few other optional planetoids.
  • The Repulsion Jack subweapon is very situational and doesn't have many applicable uses beyond some puzzle solving in Stranga and a counter against one of Garuda's attacks. It's very easy to forget you even have it after finishing all you have to do in Stranga.

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