As a fan of both Mega Man and RPGs the Mega Man Battle Network series has always interested me from afar, but the combination of being on a handheld, which as mentioned before on this site just was never my thing, and seeing cards involved just put me off. So when the full Battle Network series of games got a big compilation release a year or two ago just as I was in my RPG renaissance the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. So it’s time to dip my toe in the Battle Network series and see if I want to return to the waters down the line…
Background:
You’ll see this text box more than once during the game, just to warn you…
Mega Man Battle Network was released exclusively on the GameBoy Advance on March 21st 2001 in Japan, followed by October 31st 2001 in the States and November 30th 2001 in Europe. It came digitally to the (no longer active…) Wii U store in 2014 before being released as part of the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection released on PS4, Nintendo Switch and PC on April 14th 2023 worldwide.
It also got a full remake for the Nintendo DS called “Rockman.EXE: Operation Shooting Star” but that was only released in Japan back in 2009 and doesn’t have the best reputation, for whatever reason.
While the Mega Man series at this point already had base Mega Man, Mega Man X and Mega Man Legends all still getting releases in some form or fashion it might seem odd to do yet another spin-off (and the first in a completely different timeline) but the popularity of card games like Yu-Gi-Oh! and the Pokémon CCG were sky high and CAPCOM wanted a piece of the pie so Battle Network was designed with that audience in mind, complete with a familiar Earth setting and human main characters.
Gameplay:
Mega Man.EXE successfully destroys a fish! Hooray!
The game is split between two worlds: the real world, where you control main character Lan as he attends school, deals with bullies, meets his always-busy Dad and buys collectables at his local shop; and the Online world, where Lan controls his NetNavi “MegaMan.EXE” and can exchange emails (where two NetNavis literally meet up and exchange letters with each other), access databases and battle with each other, either friendly battles or fighting off viruses or even NetNavis controlled by real world terrorist organisation WWW (“World Three”) The real world stuff is just walking around, talking to NPCs and buying “chips” which I’ll get to in a bit, but otherwise it’s where you do all the talking parts of quests, with a surprisingly paltry two side quests in the whole game, from what I can tell (and not counting rematches or optional one-off matches with boss-level foes)
The online world however is where the meat of the game is. You control MegaMan.EXE through various dungeons that represent the digital workings of buildings and devices as well as a vast network of connected paths that represent that new-fangled internet thing (seriously, I loved the early 00s idea of the internet that’s so present in the game) The combat is the more unique thing about the Battle Network series and wasn’t as card-based as I’d always assumed. Basically you do indeed collect a portfolio of cards, or “Chips”, that correspond to attacks you can do, as well as temporary stat boosts for attack and defense, to destroy part of the opponent’s playing field and summonable allies that include the NetNavis you’ve previously defeated, if you snagged their Chips in a rematch. Combat takes place on a 6×3 grid, with half your playable area and half the CPUs allowing you to only move within a 3×3 space. You randomly draw a selection of your Battle Chips at the start of the round and once you use one you have to wait a while until you can use a second as well as draw new chips and although you have a basic blaster that you can fire while waiting it doesn’t do much damage so you do find yourself moving up and down the three rows dodging and waiting for the chance to use a Chip again.
Mega Man.EXE successfully summons a fish! Hooray!
There can be multiple enemies on the other side of the grid but beyond bosses most of them just have a single attack so it’s not to bad to keep them at bay, though if you’ve only drawn close range weapons (that can only hit enemies that are on the row closest to your grid) and say, healing items then you have to waste a turn or two re-drawing Chips before you can hit any enemies further away, but such is the way when balancing your deck, or um, “Chip Folder”. The Chips also have elements in Normal, Fire, Water, Electric, and Wood which can give you extra damage if a foe is weak to an element or no damage if they’re immune to it, you can create powerful “Program Advances” (by which I assume they mean Advance Programs surely…?) by combining several chips in a row during battle, and each Chip has a letter code as well, which… look at that point I kind of zoned out, but I’m sure they do something good if you want to go deep with the system. It took a little while to get my head around enough to win tougher battles but once I did it was fun, getting new Chips from defeating enemies and then figuring out if it was worth putting it into rotation was quite addictive. Not addictive enough to go for 100% or anything stupid, but still addictive.
I will say as a negative though that some dungeons were quite dull and repetitive. They had an interesting gimmick that then became a lot less interesting as it went on, and the fact that the random encounter rate was quite high didn’t help. Thankfully in the Legacy Collection version you can turn on a mode to make the Mega Buster essentially one-shot enemies, so while trying to figure out where I’d gotten lost I turned that on so I didn’t have to worry about the random battles while trying to orient myself, then turning it off when I’d found my way. It’s another quality of life thing like the XP multiplier in the Final Fantast Pixel Remasters, it doesn’t feel like cheating as much as fast-forwarding through some of the old-fashioned grindier aspects now I don’t have anywhere near as much free time. In the original game there was online battles, or at the very least battles via the link cable anyway, as well as Chip Trading, and thanks to the wonders of modern technology both of those things are still here, plus exclusive Chips that were previously only available in Japanese promotional offers and such are unlocked in the Legacy Collection version as well.
Overall I found the mix of light RPG aspects, card collecting and a unique battle system a fun time, and the Saturday morning cartoon script along with the pleasant visuals and music wrapped the package up nicely.
Graphics and Sound:
Roll.EXE off to deliver some mail to Mayl!
The graphics are good for a relatively early GBA title. Nice sprite work, especially in battles.
The music is good too, the main ACDC Town theme got stuck in my head for weeks even after completing it, though whether that was because I just heard it so much or whether it was actually good I can’t tell you…
Story:
I BEG YOUR PARDON! I will not- Oh wait, I see. Sorry.
The story focuses on Lan Hikari, a school kid in ACDC town whose Dad is a famous scientist specialising in NetNavis, including creating Lan’s NetNavi MegaMan.EXE. While living his normal life a terrorist organisation known as World Three, but written as “WWW”, is threatening to take ACDC Town and the world as a whole offline. The majority of the game sees Lan coming up against a member of WWW in his regular life, from a school teacher to a water plant worker and later just unpleasant people attacking a lovely dinner he and his parents were attending. While fighting off the WWW NetNavis Lan comes across professional NetBattler Eugene Chaud and his ProtoMan.EXE, who resents the amateur getting in the way of his professional work but of course slowly lowers his defences and becomes an ally.
Spoilers for a 25-year-old GBA game…
No matter which universe, Dr. Wily be Wilyn’!
In the end WWW’s leader Dr. Wily reveals that he wanted to create robots but Lan’s grandfather created NetNavis instead and all the funding was redirected to that, so I guess that’s where this timeline diverts from the regular one, though obviously it does in many other ways as well… Anyway, Wily has created the NetNavi/Virus program known as the “LifeVirus” that will wipe out the Net for good so he can resume creating robots, but Lan manages to break into WWW’s HQ and confront Wily’s LifeVirus within the Net. There Lan / MegaMan.EXE struggle until it’s revealed by Lan’s Dad that a special “Hub.bat” file could save them but will change MegaMan. They install it anyway and we find out that, get this, Lan was actually one of two twins with his brother called Hub but Hub died prematurely so their father digitised his son’s mind and created MegaMan.EXE from Hub’s mind data, making MegaMan.EXE Lan’s previously unknown dead brother recreated as a NetNavi. Yep! Their bond now stronger than ever Lan and his “brother” defeat Wily and wipeout the LifeVirus. This leads to a happy reunion back at ACDC Town.
Spoilers for a 25-year-old GBA game end here…
As far as stories go it was mostly fine, very reminiscent of the original Pokémon cartoon-ised anime in tone and episodic structure, at least until the batshit crazy ending anyway…
Thoughts Now:
This invisible dungeon was a real low-light of the game… great way to end the review, me. Nice work!
The first Mega Man Battle Network was a fun and relatively short play through that had some unique combat ideas and an addictive collect-a-thon aspect, but some dungeons were quite dull (thankfully mitigated by the modern assists…) and the story never rose beyond “harmless cartoon fun”, which is admittedly the tone they were going for, so not really a complaint. I will definitely at least play Battle Network 2 at some point, but as for this? I doubt I’ll come back to it, especially with five other new entries waiting in the same package…
Hogan Reviews 