to make this review remotely interesting... but I'll give it a shot. Rockman.exe N1 Battle was originally released for the Wonderswan Color and then ported to the Game Boy Advanced for release internationally. It was developed by Inti Creates who had Mega Man Zero under their belts and were working on Zero 2 at the time as well. Keiji Inafune was over there at the time so keep that in mind before you blame the lack of quality for his missing presence over any past or future Mega Man title.This is not a good game. How bad is it? IGN called it "possibly the worst game to bear the Mega Man name." Obviously IGN's never played the DOS games and Command Mission wouldn't come out till next year, but this isn't too far off. I mean, Battle Network is already walking a fine line getting action loving Mega Man fans into RPG territory, but this game goes that extra step and takes just about all interaction out of play.
Story
Some time after Battle Network 3 Yai holds a tournament and everyone enters it. You can play one of 8 characters, from Lan and MegaMan to Chaud and ProtoMan to even Mayl and Roll. The story changes somewhat depending on who you play, but essentially some hacker is screwing with the tournament and the Navi's and Chaud and Protoman stop him. The next half of the game deals with tracking down Bass and fighting him.I'll be honest with you, this game is so fucking boring I've never completed it and generally burn out after maybe 1/5th the way through. It's just not fun enough to see how it ends. If you're really curios, gamefaqs has a script up for most of the characters.
Aesthetics
Pretty much everything is ripped straight outta Battle Network 1-3. What is there to
compliment about reused stuff I've already seen put to better use?Sound
Sigh, I wasn't listening... hold on let me double check...
Ok, yeah, it has original music but it consists mostly of your typical uninteresting menu music. The in battle music is pretty "meh" too. The Battle Network theme is no where to be found either.
Design
On paper you might have something with this game. It kinda sounds like something along the lines of Magic: The Gathering. Not my cup of tea, but the audience is there. But where as that game has the players build a deck to aid their strategy while they make choices during the course of the game... this one pretty much has you build your deck out right and then roll the dice to see if it works.The way the game works is you front load your strategy and then basically watch the game tell you if you got lucky enough with your probability. Even this wouldn't be so terrible if the game wasn't so slow and boring. Tapping "a" over and over again watching the messages scroll by while you're waiting for the combat to just end so you can do something again just is not fun. This game could benefit from some sort of "skip combat with the solved outcome" feature. I mean, how long could it take for the computer to calculate the outcome without any input from the player?
Now you can technically interact with the system by inserting one of two chips of your choosing any time into the fight with a certain chance that they'll fail, but often these chips are weaker than all the others and half the time I never even use em myself. Your strategy has to be setup before you start the match or you will lose.
Even if you could tolerate the sheer amount of time you will spend watch
ing the game go back and forth between itself while you wait to see if you win, the game hits you with another shitter. The availability of the chips you can get is mostly random, and you simply won't get enough in the way of variety and power for a very long time to come up with any sort of complex strategy. Not to mention the game puts a very very hard cap on what you can work with that barely lightens up as the game goes on, restricting your thinking to even smaller battle plans.Basically you've got to work up a strategy in a game that won't let you strategies and then enter the game portion that won't let you play it. Suddenly a somewhat interesting premise of this game has turned to shit.
The game features a multiplayer mode and since not only can you choose different characters to play as, you can unlock more navi's to choose for your attack plan there is a potential here to have some real diverse setups and matches. But think about it, even if we took away that the fact that this game is 6 years old and barely anyone has a copy of it... which Battle Network game would you rather play multiplayer in? The crown Jewel of the series to most players in Battle Network 3? The, at the time, brand new Battle Network 4? Or this piece of shit that isn't any fun to begin with? If you bought this game you made a mistake, if you didn't take it back you have poor judgment, and if you expect someone else to want to play it with you you're just a fool.
Playability
You don't play this game I'm afraid. Ok, I'm being superfluous in my exaggeration here, but it
really is the crux of this games problem. Yeah, there is some strategy here to be used and really the learning curve for it isn't that bad... its just getting to the point where this game is any fun enough to bother with. I'd have more fun tapping my controller to an episode of the cartoon than playing this game and that's its playability problem.Extras
- Battle Network 4 has some hidden codes for this game lying around in it.
- This is the last game to use this art assets in the Battle Network series.
- Something I did enjoy about this game? If you play as Mayl in the beginning Lan acts like such a dumb spoiled brat kid towards her it's just fucking hilarious! He gives her his umbrella then runs off to play in the rain like a happy retard. I said Lan was a one dimensional character, I didn't say I didn't like him.
Despite what IGN says, this isn't the worst Mega Man game ever made, but it certainly contends for the most boring. It'd win to if Command Mission wasn't ever made. Lots of games suck because the developers don't give them the proper care or because the publishers rush out an unfinished product. This game sucks because it was very poorly thought out. Chalk up a black mark on Inti Creates mostly good record.
Playthroughs
Nobody in their right mind would want to play this game, let alone watch it.
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