The Misadventures of Tron Bonne

Most of 98 and 99, the US went without a Mega Man game for the first time in years. While this isn't strange for 99% of other franchises, it is for Mega Man. The last game we had over here was Legends, a real departure from the main game play styles. So what do we get after all this time of waiting? A departure from the departure... a spin-off of the spin-off. Misadventures of Tron Bonne reeks of a quickly thrown together fan-servicing, cash milking, miserable pile of crap. But it isn't, no it's actually quite entertaining! Color me pleasantly surprised!

It should be noted though, that this is a Mega Man game in name only. The blue bomber only gets a cameo and a few brief easter egg mentions, and it's not even the Mega Man from this time period. Also, while this game is entertaining, it's not particularly great and has a number of flaws. What saves this game is it's charm.

As I said in my Legends review, the Bonne family is one of the most entertaining aspects of Mega Man Legends, and that is in no small part thanks to the Servbots, and this game puts you in charge of 40 of them in an assortment of mini-games. Even if each individual mini-game isn't all that good, the characters will keep you progressing through the game to it's finish.

Story
A year before the events of Mega Man Legends, the Bonne pirate family has just finished construction on their giant air ship, the Gesellschaft (that ship you blow to smithereens in Mega Man Legends). Teisel Bonne has taken a huge loan of one million Zennys from a loan shark, named Mr. Loathe, to fund the construction. One day while he and Bonne Bon are out on a dig, Mr. Loathe sends his henchmen, Glyde and the Birdbots, to kidnap them.

Tron decides to go on several criminal endeavors to raise the money to pay off the loan to Loathe, but Loathe raises the interest on her, and refuses to let them go. Loathe imprisons Tron with her brothers, and has apparently been using diggers to uncover a giant reaverbot mechlanoid called the Collosus, in which he plans to use to take over the world.

The Serbots break out the Bonnes, and take down the Collosus. They throw a party afterwords celebrating their freedom and new wealth, only to discover the Servbot who had freed Tron and her brothers had accidentally thrown away all of their treasure. Cue the sad trombone.

It's a ridiculous game, but the characters are really the highlight of this one. The Servbots are so naive and child like, and Tron is one harsh mistress to work for. Teisel, Tron, and the whole group of Servbots, play really well off each other, and despite all of the torture and bits of pure insanity, they are one loving family of pirates.

Aesthetics
No real graphical upgrades from Legends, and Tron's only 3D appearance in this game is on the cover. The graphical style this game goes for is different though, using still images to convey the majority of the story, pasted over the 3D environments. It works really well, and the artwork is top notch for these characters. There's variety in the environments and settings, such as robbing a town bank, to the under ground ruins of the ancients. It's a step up over legends, where the dungeons tend to blend together, although their aren't as many levels total.

Sound
Rob Smith and Caroly Larson reprise their roles as Teisel and Tron, and each do fantastic jobs, but the stars of the show are the Servbots. The voice acting in this game is just as good as it was in Legends, and will serve the most of what little replay value this game has.

The music is pretty relaxed and atmospheric, but nothing special. Legends had better music than this, but it's not terrible.

Design
The game is broken up into a variety of mini-games built around meeting your million zenny goal. There are three primary mini games. The first uses the combat engine from the Legends with a few bonuses, in that you get a few Servbots to assist you in your pillaging endeavors. You'll move around towns sending your yellow boys busting into houses and shaking down random characters, all while the cops are blasting at you. This part of the engine is used in most of the critical gameplay/plot elements, and how you'll deal with boss fights.

The second mini game is a first person dungeon crawler, where you'll send the Servbots to scavenge treasure and disable traps for you as an interesting subplot plays out. Interesting the first time you play it, but probably the most boring out of all the games, once you've played it once before. The Servbots are invincible, and the puzzle are overtly simplistic, robbing you of any real challenge in these sections. The only redeeming factor of these sections are the quirky characters.

The third mini game is by far the best, and could probably translate nicely to a cell phone game or something. It's a puzzle game in which Tron must move several crates off a pier on to her ship. You're limited to a set number of moves, and various crates have certain movement restrictions on them, requiring a lot of critical thinking to figure out a path. Luckily, you can bring a Servbot along to give you hints.

The Servbots themselves all have individual strengths, weaknesses and talents, and you'll have to play around with their stats to get the most out of them. Each Servbot has an Attack, Speed, Brains and Sloth rating, which you can raise through a variety of mini games and items. Most of them have a hidden talent as well, some of which will assist you in the combat sections, and others will fill minor interesting roles on your ship, such as changing the background music, or repainting your mech, the Gustave. You unlock these talents by raising their stats, or giving them items you find, and unlocking all of them will keep you busy.

While only the Puzzle game is truly fantastic, none of these games are so tedious to discourage you from playing them. If I had one complaint, it would be that the mini games to raise Servbots stats actually are a bit on the ridiculous side in difficulty. Especially the speed game, in which you must serve lunch to the Servbots rapidly, with almost no room for error.

Variety is this games strength, not playing up anything strong enough to be it's own game, but changing things up enough to keep them interesting. There's also a couple of hidden gambling games you can unlock with some effort, and you'll always have a sense of progress as you gain more money, develop better weapons, and unlock new talents. A fun game, but definitely nothing traditionally Mega Man about it.

Playability
As I said, the training games for the Servbots are stupid hard, and are hardly worth your time. Another complaint is the stats have limited use, and it's hard to distinguish how useful each stat is. I'm not entirely sure how sloth really even affects the Servbots, but the game tells you it's bad (although it has a humorous mini-game to lower it). The difference between the attack ratings is hard to measure also, and brains only seem to affect the crate moving game. Speed is definitely measurable though, as the difference between a rank 1 speed Servbot and a rank 4 speed Servbot is obvious once you see the difference. Once again, though, the speed training is incredibly difficult, so it might not be worth your time raising this stat for all your bots.

The game itself isn't particularly difficult either. Even if you have trouble with a boss fight, E-Tanks are so cheap that you can load up quite a bit before anything gives you trouble. If you wanted to, you could probably finish this game without too much upgrading either the Gustave or your Servbots, but where would the fun in that be?

Extras

• You don't have to complete all the mini-games to finish the game, so if any section is giving you trouble, just farm for Zenny in the free mission and skip them.
• At once point, you'll get to choose your favorite Servbot. They'll get an attack boost and wear a red hat. General consensus is that #27 is the best to choose, because he has a speed of 4 to start with, and will make the final levels much easier.
• Servbots Brain ratings go up from being taken on missions. Take Servbots with unknown talents with you to raise their brains up, chances are you might unlock something.
• Speaking of Brains, raise one of your appraiser Servbots brains to 4 and he'll tell you which Servbot to give which item when you show it to him.
• The rocket launcher weapon for the Gustave is pretty useless, since you can't move and shoot with it, but it is required to unlock certain areas of the free mission. If you are going to be in combat in general though, go with the Gatling Gun.
• This is the first appearance of Glyde. You might not recognize him in this form, but he gets a bit of a redesign as Glyde.exe in the battle network series, where you might be more familiar with him.

The Misadventures of Tron Bonne is an often overlooked game that is pretty enjoyable. That said, you won't miss much if you don't touch this one either. The main reason to see this game is to see why the Servbots are so popular in the Mega Man universe.

Playthroughs
Miss Tron, Miss Tron! Let's Play the Misadventures of Tron Bonne! by Outlaw Moogle and Jacobus Spades