Mega Man Battle Network 4

Nearly universally reviled among fans, Battle Network 4 is a game that tried to mix up the formula a little bit and the fans hated it. I can't blame Capcom for trying some new things, they were trying to keep the series from getting too stale, a problem the Mega Man games continually face as the developers get comfortable with it. Some fans are just mercilessly unforgivable however and can only function in terms of absolutes about whether a game is good or bad. Especially the annoying ones who think their funny doing the whole "AGNERY GAEM REVIEWR!" Worse yet are the ones who set up blogs being all to apologetic to their favorite series... wait...

Battle Network 4 is one of those games that for every interesting point about it, it has a negative point to counter it. When something interesting comes up, it's never implemented in a way for the player to enjoy it. I think a lot of ideas in Battle Network 4 had merit but were poorly executed. I didn't really even think the game was all that bad my first playthrough of it, but Battle Network 4 is strangely built around actually getting more tedious on repeat playthroughs. More on that in a bit.

New Features

• Style Change is out, Double Soul is in.
• Navi Chips come in 3 versions, normal, SP and DS.
• Introduction of the Full Syncro and emotion system.
• Introduction of Dark Chips and the Dark/Light System
• New Game + isn't just a feature, it's a requirement
• The Add button has been removed as well as two custom slots.

Story
Many people hate this game's story. Admittedly it isn't very good, but not many Mega Man games have a good narrative. The real strange thing about this game however is that the main story is pretty much sub plot most of the game.

An giant asteroid is heading for Earth and the scientists at NAXA are worried about an impact and they hire the top scientists in the world to assist them in destroying it. Among them are Lan's father Dr. Hikari and Dr. Regal, another revered top scientist.

Meanwhile, Lan is out one day when a tournament is announced for Net Battlers. Excited he starts to head home when suddenly a Navi named ShadeMan.exe starts attacking net navi's and kidnaps Roll. Lan sends MegaMan after him but his attacks are ineffective. ShadeMan takes off and leaves behind a mysterious Battle Chip.

Lan and MegaMan take the chip to Higsby who tells them it's a rare Dark Chip, a chip that gives the Navi large amounts of power but drains away their personality data. It's addictive to Navi's and extremely dangerous. He tells Lan and MegaMan it is there responsibility to make sure the chip doesn't fall in the wrong hands.

MegaMan and Lan head to the first tournament where they deal with a slightly randomized series of scenarios where Lan and MegaMan have to help the Navi they are facing in some way or another, such as getting TopMan's operator to reunite with his family, find Dex's kidnapped brother, or finding AquaMan.exe after he goes missing. They win the tournament and MegaMan gains a new ability called Double Soul where he combines powers with another Navi's soul data.

Anyway, after beating the tournament Lan's mother is knocked out cold and a threatening note is left for Lan demanding he bring the Dark Chip to a heel navi. The Navi is working for a group called Nebula and he attacks MegaMan. Since that was a stupid idea, MegaMan and Lan ending up keeping the Dark Chip anyway.

Mayl asks Lan out on a date to the amusement park (aren't they like 11?) and a bunch of the machines go out of control. Behind it is ShadeMan, and with no way to damage him, Lan's last resort is to use a Dark Chip. You have no choice in this matter, even if you should be able to wipe the floor with ShadeMan in new game++++. ShadeMan is destroyed, but now that Lan had used a Dark Chip, he is concerned about MegaMan's well being... not so concerned that he can't enter the next tournament of course!

Just like the last tournament, Lan and MegaMan solve all the misfit Navi's stupid problems from environmental terrorism to cooking contests to quitting the mafia (I am completely serious). Lan wins the tournament, MegaMan gets a new Double Soul, and Lan is qualified to enter another tournament in Netopia. Off we go!

In Netopia Lan solves more problems ranging from the cheering up the lonely JunkMan, training with Mr. Famous and KendoMan and even saving Chaud and ProtoMan from Nebula who was corrupted by the Dark Chips. Lan wins this tournament and is contacted by NAXA who put up the tournament to find the best Navi they could to launch into space to stop the asteroid. Don't roll your eyes just yet...

It turns out Dr. Regal is the head of Nebula and attempts to take MegaMan out. Assuming he was successful, he sends his own Navi after the asteroid so Nebula can use it to take over the world. MegaMan and Lan show up at the last second and send MegaMan into space after him. There, MegaMan defeats Regal's Navi LaserMan, and then he has to face... his dark side? Huh? Yeah whatever, you beat Dark MegaMan and come to the asteroid which... hold on to your hats here... is a Navi from outer space named Duo.exe who is going to destroy the Earth because it's too evil. With Duo's first official reappearance since Mega Man 8, it became clear that Capcom was hell bent on writing the worst story ever. Whenever Duo shows up, you know it's going to suck.

MegaMan beats Duo who pretty much then decides Earth can live for now, but MegaMan still has to physically stop the damn thing. Summoning all the power of the people of Earth, he does by turning a wheel... yeah whatever.

Blah blah blah, Dr. Regal turns out to be Dr. Wily's kid and is evil for the sake of being evil. I'm not being snark, that's pretty much the explanation he gives. Then he decides he rather take his chances with a plunge into the ocean instead of being arrested and jumps off the platform to his presumed death. Yeah, I'm sure we'll never see him again. The credits roll.

Post Game Content

Because you cannot collect everything in your first playthrough, you are forced to play the game twice more in New Game + which is at a harder difficulty in order to unlock this extra crap.

Essentially, MegaMan and Lan find a statue that looks just like Bass in the Undernet. Just as they approach it, the statue comes to life and it really is Bass and he seems mad about getting his ass kicked in Battle Network 3. Luckily for us, the silly bastard traded his Life Aura for stronger attacks and he's a pussy now compared to what he once was. Down he goes and Bass tells MegaMan that he's going to run off to get stronger and make his soul darker. Whatever bitch, just leave.

We're not quite done yet as MegaMan stumbles upon a strange hole in the ground of the Undernet that won't let him through unless you collect 5 Evil Mega Chips from a few side quests and gauntlet style battles. They're all a pain in the ass but after you do them, you gain access. Inside MegaMan finds a bunch of mirrors that make him challenge all of your version of the game's Dark Side Navi's. At the end of the mirrors, one last one brings out MegaMan's dark side again which is more powerful than ever! Kick it's ass and MegaMan's light side will reward you with the Hub Patch Navi Customizer Part.

Oh yeah, now Bass will show up again more powerful as a random encounter, but you won't get any more story out of it. You can finally shelf this game.

Hey... lets talk about something the story did that was good. Lan for what it's worth is mentioned to be doing his homework and waking up on time. Hey! That's character development from the last game carrying over! At least we have continuity!

Aesthetics
For this game, Studio 2 decided to remake the art assets. The sprites are a bit smaller and have sharper outlines and everyone has a new character portrait. I like the new character portraits the other new sprites I feel don't really push the series any further in the graphical department. I don't think they are particularly worse than the old sprites or better really. They're just different.

The various stages I have to say are probably some of the nicest looking in the series, including the real world environments that send Lan all across the globe. They're all visually interesting and diverse and since the game forces you to replay it, you won't necessarily see them all the first run through either.

We've got some real interesting character design reworks. TopMan is a cranky old man for instance and BurnerMan and SparkMan both make appearances. Of course then we have a few weird ones like VideoMan but it's nowhere near as bad as the Tornado Tonion shit going on in the X series.

By far the coolest looking addition to this series are the double souls. Although effectively cumbersome in use, seeing MegaMan merge with FireMan, GutsMan, ProtoMan or even Roll just looks awesome as his new form is a bit of a mixture between the two characters. It's a really cool effect.

Sound
The main theme has changed considerably and I don't think it's as good as the original. Not that it's particularly bad, I just think the original is so much better. We have some other decent tracks as well but there's quite a bit you've already heard before. I just don't have much to say here.

Design
On paper you have good ideas for this game. Increasing replay value is a good idea! Increasing replay value through forced repetition is tedious and annoying!

Stripping away the story your game play elements are like this. Dungeon, randomized tournament scenarios, dungeon, randomized tournament scenarios, randomized tournament scenarios, final dungeon. It's actually an extremely short game in terms of starting the game until the final credit rolls, giving you about 10 hours or so. If you cut out the cutscenes and know exactly what to do you can cut it to about 4 hours or so. Trust me, you'll be speed running this shit to collect what you missed on each sequential playthrough.

Why would you replay this game? Many reasons. As I said, the scenarios are slightly randomized. There are a few that you'll get the first time you play them guaranteed, but mostly the game will cycle through different ones for you so you'll face different opponents in the tournaments. You'll need to do this to collect all the double soul forms which I'll explain in a minute. In addition to this each playthrough the game increases the difficulty by adding higher level versions of the same viruses. These viruses drop different battle chips, so in order to collect all the battle chips, you need to play through the game a minimum of 3 times. Not only that, but the Blue Mystery Data items also change depending on if you collected them or not the last playthrough and some Battle Chips can only be gotten this way. Adding to that, HP-Memories and some Navi Customizer Blocks are only found on replaying the game as well, so you cannot max out Mega Man's stats the first run through.

I'm not convinced this is necessarily a bad thing at first glance. Replaying the game and continuing to make progress is an interesting mechanic and the different tournament scenarios keep things from getting completely repetitive. That said, the rest of the game is not so much fun to replay over and over. The dungeons in this game are some of the most boring in the series and even though they're relatively short, they are by far the most dreaded portions of the game. It gets so boring you'll have to put your brain into auto pilot mode to stand it. Worse yet, if you want to access the hidden areas of the game, collecting everything is required. Although for what it's worth the game isn't so bad on one playthrough, but it gets incredibly tedious as you are forced to replay it for true completion.

As far as the tournament scenarios, some of them range from pretty cool, such as a fight against Roll for the first time, to needlessly long such as the BurnerMan scenario, to just FUCKING HORRIBLE, such as the Bomb Ball or whatever the fuck it's called mini game that is based off complete fucking chance and you have to do it almost every god damn play through. UGH I HATE THAT MINIGAME, FUCK THE DESIGNERS FOR MAKING IT!

Let's talk about some of the new elements of this game however. First we have the new Full Syncro and Emotion system. During the course of play, MegaMan's emotional state will be displayed to the player. If you play him poorly, letting him get hit a lot, MegaMan will become anxious and later in the game Dark Chips will try to tempt you by offering almost guaranteed victories in desperate situations at the expense of a permanent 2hp loss every time you use it. If you keep using it over and over again, eventually MegaMan will become addicted to the Dark Chips, and they'll show up more often and sometimes you can even lose control of him altogether. Power comes at a price.

On the other hand, if you do well with MegaMan and counter the enemy at certain times, you'll enter Full Syncro Mode, which will double the attack power of your next attack. Get lucky and time this up with a Program Advance and you'll devastate any foe. Also if you refuse to use dark chips after a while, MegaMan will no longer get anxious, but instead get angry when he's hit. The angry emotion is just like Full Syncro, giving your next attack double damage. Fuck yes! This system works well and carried over to Battle Network 5, and was tweaked a bit for Battle Network 6.

Then there's Double Soul... which is a really cumbersome. The way it works is you need to find a chip that a soul is compatible with and then sacrifice it to merge with the soul. This lasts for 3 turns and gives you a few trade offs, usually increasing certain chips power, giving you an elemental weakness and a new buster. The problem is most of the time the trade off just isn't worth putting chips into your folder for it unless you build specifically around certain souls. Proto Soul for example is pretty helpful and easy to use because sword chips are a dime a dozen, and turning your Buster into essentially a reusable widesword attack helps in the three turns you have. Other souls like Junk Soul which requires rock cubes and the like aren't quite as worth the effort.

Not to mention that you won't get all the souls on your first playthrough so you may not even be able to realize the power of them until you get to a point where you can make use of multiple powers in a single folder.

For what it's worth the action is decent, and Duo is a fuck ton easier than Alpha that's for god damn sure. It should be noted that program advances have become a bit more cumbersome in folder building than previous games. The Life Sword is flexible for a unicode folder and will last you a while but don't expect any game breakers like Gater unless you work your ass off for Pile Driver.

In a bit of pocket book mercy, you do not need to own both games to reach the end game. The differences in versions feature different double souls and different giga cards as well as a couple of exclusive scenarios...at least I think on that last version. I've never gotten Mr. Match's scenario to show up in the Blue Moon version, but I haven't played the Red Sun version as much as Blue Moon to be able to list each scenario.

Playability
If this is your first Battle Network game, expect the learning curve difficulties as mentioned in the previous games but this game as a whole is much easier than the last entry. If you're a veteran, you'll have to adjust your folder building strategies to account for the lack of style change and the new Double Soul features. It does take some getting used to.

Extras

• Which version should you get? It really depends on which Double Souls you'll want to get used to. Red Sun features GutsSoul, FireSoul, WindSoul, RollSoul, ThunderSoul and SearchSoul. Blue Moon has AquaSoul, NumberSoul, MetalSoul, WoodSoul, JunkSoul and ProtoSoul. Each soul has it's own unique abilities and while I can't speak for much on the Red Sun souls, on the whole I've found ProtoSoul and NumberSoul the only souls worth investing in.
• There is a horrible glitch that will freeze your game in the Blue Moon version if you play it on a DS. During WoodMan's story when you get to the Park Area section where wooden pillars attack you, the game will freeze when you come out of an encounter. This doesn't happen if you play on a GBA, but if you're stuck there, try using a sneakrun and hoping to get lucky.
• The Airhockey chips are vicious and will fuck up small viruses. Using this in conjunction with AreaGrab will wreck Navi's as well and almost always throw you into Full Syncro. Lance is also a great chip for this.
• The game asks for you to enter your initials for the purposes of the multiplayer tournaments you can setup. Being to late to take advantage of this feature, I don't know much about it.
• When you beat a boss in the tournament they'll appear again somewhere on the internet. Kill them there and they'll be a random encounter in SP form. The SP card you gain from them will be more powerful depending on how fast you can beat them, and if you beat them in less than 10 seconds they will be at their max power. The game saves your records and lets you compete with friends over times.

On Wikipedia, Battle Network 4 is labeled the Black Sheep of the series, so I guess the author of that never played Battle Network 5. If you don't take the opportunity to go for total completion of this game, I think you'll find it on par with Battle Network 1, but it is still a step backwards in the series. Making you replay most of the boring parts of this game are what really highlight the flaws of it though.

Playthroughs
N/A