I expect to be bashed, because I’ve never really addressed this yet. I guess it was that fear of being bashed in the first place, by elitists or folks who obsess with classic games. I personally am neither of those things. Oh, and I don’t know if anything got worse or better in the sequels that came out of this game. I only played the first one.
Near the end of October in 2001, Capcom released a mega man spin off game to North American game-boy-advances. It had previously been released in Japan during March, and would come to be released in Europe by November. The game was titled Mega Man: Battle Network.



The game revolved around a boy named Lan, and his virtual companion, Mega man. It was set in the future, quite obviously. There was technology and shit and mega man was virtual and whatever.. The story was meh, I didn’t really care for it. The gameplay is where everything excelled. Once you get in the game, and get on the battle field, you start to have fun.



The battle field consisted of 18 tiles, split up into two 9 tile sides. One side was for Mega Man, the other was for your enemies. The basic attack was the Buster, a wee little pea shooter that causes not as much damage as another attack would, but was still fun to use while you were waiting for a good Battle Chip. Battle Chips are the things that mix up the game play. They would power up MM with weapons, summons or effects that changed the opponent or battle field. You could hold up to 30 at a time, and different chips were dealt to you like a hand in a card game. You could use all the ‘cards’ in your hand, then get some more, or if you don’t like your cards, you can put em’ all back in the folder and get a new hand. This really was a key element to the game. Sometimes, enemies could use them too. You would earn battle chips over time by picking them up from enemies, buying them, or entering two chips into a machine and getting 1 better chip in return. As you’ve probably already realized, this is nothing like the original series.
As for cons, this game could do worse. The story is blah, and there is a lot of talking. A lot. The worse part is, you often have to run around as Lan or even Megaman, and the objective was really not very clear at times. I often got lost in a dungeon(yes, the game has them)or not know what to do, and just gave up playing for a few days. Moments like that can kill the experience for you. Which is a real shame, ‘cause like I’ve said, the combat is damn fun.



Now, why do I think this game is better then the game it spun off of? Of course I think the game play is better. But besides that… simply put, accessibility. Anyone who is anyone knows the Mega man games are fucking hard as my father’s dick. But this game is easy to jump in. It does get very hard later on, but the learning curve is flat, and either way, by that time, you’ll be strong enough and have enough good battle chips to survive. As Anthony Burch himself said once before in a video about MM9, Megaman is about memory and knowing when something is going to come so you can know whether or not to make that jump, whether or not to move there or bother killing that enemy, shit like that. I don’t, no, I cant see why people could call that fun. Yes, the end result is fun and kind of satisfying to know ‘wow, I just beat this game’. But the ride there is bound to be frustrating. I like to play games to have fun, not just to walk out of a game glad that I beat it. I don’t go for achievements if they are too far out of my reach, I always choose the easiest difficulty, and I always dumb down the A.I. because it’s about having fun and that’s what I always plan to do. Call me a pussy, I’m just getting the most out of my 60 bucks, the way I want to.
None of this is fact, it’s all opinion. That’s cool if you like to play the MM games, I don’t want to assault your thoughts. I still think BN is a much better game, though.