Battle Network 5: Double Team DS Addendum

A little more than half a year ago, I reviewed Battle Network 5 for the Gameboy Advance. I had finished both Team Protoman and Team Colonel, but I pretty much phoned in Double Team DS. I had assumed the game was largely unchanged with a few graphical additions and some new music. While this is mostly true, the game does feature a few new gameplay additions as well, which I neglected to mention. There isn't enough there to review the entire game over again, as the story, graphics, and level design is mostly unchanged, but I felt like pointing out some of the changes and how they affect my impressions of the game.

The biggest change to Battle Network 5 is the addition of Team Navi's and the Party Customizer. Early on in the game, ProtoMan and Chaud (or Baryl and Colonel) hand you a new device hooked on to Lan's homepage that allows him to add another Navi to his PET. This allows you to call upon other navi's aid during combat, or switch to them altogether. Navis come in all shapes and sizes, and you'll unlock them as you progress normally. Your team members have special abilities, such as ProtoMan jumping in to attack with a wide sword every now and again, and Gyro man using the Fan chip during combat.

Most of the abilities are pretty useless, but you'll find something you want out of the available choices, and being able to switch to another navi with full HP when MegaMan's in a jam is really helpful, especially when fighting somebody like Bass. Occasionally they'll get in your way and screw up combos and what not, but you can turn them off at any time. This whole ability certainly pulls back some of the tedium of wandering around, but it doesn't work in dungeons or liberation missions.

In addition to this, you can also obtain an item from the NumberMan trader that allows you to switch two team navi's from the different versions in the middle of a liberation mission. That means if you'd rather have ShadowMan over GyroMan, or KnightMan over MagnetMan, it's as easy as selecting a menu option.

Other changes include a few extra character portraits, some shoe horned DS minigames, bonuses for slotting into the gameboy advance other Battle Network games, and a tie in with Boktai. None of these things are very interesting, though the extra portraits were appreciated.

All and all though, it does little to alleviate the major problem with Battle Network 5, the limited folder options. You're just plain stuck with a pretty bad folder the whole way through the game, without a hell of a lot you can do without sacrificing power or versatility. You really have to play any Battle Network game except 4 to understand how precious having a wide range of chips is to one of these games.

In addition to this, you can't even trade chips between versions on the same DS! Talk about killing a selling point! Double Team DS is certainly more enjoyable than the gameboy advance versions, but the game overall is still a big turd on the whole series.

On the chopping block

There's been a fair amount of Mega Man news lately and I think it's worth sharing my thoughts on some things.

First, Capcom community leader, Seth Killian leaks that there are some cool ideas heading our way in the Mega Man department. Speculation doesn't go on for very long before a patent hits the US Patent Office for Mega Man Universe.

The fans reactions vary all over the place with even more speculation, ranging from "I'll never buy this crap again," to, "I'm so excited I can't breathe anymore!" Without anything to go on, everyone begins digging hard to find out what's up with Mega Man Universe. Is it a new series? Is it a new type of game? Does it take place somewhere else? How does it tie into the rest of the franchise?

While this is going on, a Korean game surfaces, Mega Man Online. The details aren't very laid out just yet, but it appears to be a 2D Side Scrolling MMO, starring X and Zero. This game so far is only slated for Asian markets, excluding Japan. Is this Mega Man Universe? The words "Universe" and "MMO" certainly go together, but would Capcom file a US Patent for a game that currently has no plans to be released states side?

Capcom is asking about potential US interest in the title right now, but there aren't any plans yet. It has me wondering... could Mega Man Universe be something else? I guess they could be going with an early plan B and it could be, but you'd think if that was the case, they'd put "X" in the title at least. Interesting note, a few weeks before Mega Man Online surfaced, Inafune said X9 would not be the next X game. Was this cause he already knew this game was on the way.

While this rolls around, the Mega Man fan movie is finally completed, to mixed, but generally positive reviews among the fans. I haven't seen it yet, but it's on my todo list.

Udon meanwhile announces they'll be translating a Battle Network art book, similar to the Mega Man Complete Works, slated for November, which has me pretty excited!
And finally, released Tuesday was the Zero Collection for DS, which I have always considered the strongest series in the franchise.
What a hell of a lot of news huh?

We should get a lot of answers in a few days at the Japanese Summer World Hobby Fair, which has been a decent send off for new Mega Man games the past few years. My initial thoughts were that Mega Man Universe might be the name of the US release for Operation Shooting Star, but this idea isn't a new "rad concept" but more of the same, if anything. I'm also skeptical that Mega Man Online is Universe, for the reasons listed above, plus the fact that the game is being done by a team outside of Capcom, meaning that the Star Force/Battle Network team should be free to be working on something. But of course, that means if Mega Man Universe isn't Mega Man Online, then just what the hell is it? I guess we'll just have to wait and see, but I suspect we'll know in a week or two.
As for me, I've been doing a few things here and there. First off, I've been watching a Fan Sub of Rockman.exe, and have seen some notable difference of which I have a small post planned for in the future. In addition to this, I'm thinking about reviewing Battle Network 5 Double Team, as I recently played it a bit more extensively, and think it is different enough from the initial release of the game to cover more than I originally thought. Zero Collections is on my list of things to buy this week as well, so expect a review on that in the future, and possibly a review on the Mega Man fan movie.

Possibly Good News for a US Operation Shooting Star Release?

Kotaku has a story about soaring profits at Capcom, thanks in part to Operation Shooting Star among other high profile Capcom franchises. The stories I had read about Operation Shooting Star had the game in the bargain bins after a month, but it looks like Capcom has managed to turn a nice profit with the price drop after all.

As you might be aware, there are currently no plans to bring Operation Shooting Star to America or Europe, but I think these new sales numbers are a good sign for English speaking Mega Man fans. Being how the game is relatively inexpensive to make, it stands to reason Capcom could turn a profit in the US as well, but I think Capcom is going to wait until after Mega Man 10 comes out in March before making any new moves with the RPG section of the series.

Mega Man 10 is practically a foregone conclusion to be a block buster, and there is no doubt that the release is going to generate some buzz among all gamers, long time fans, lost nostalgic gamers, and new comers alike. A good time for OSS to hit would be right in the wake of when Mega Man 10's sales start to decline, a good month or two after release. This would be right at the height of Mega Man's popularity again, and a close follow up with Zero Collections would have the blue bomber churning out cash all year long. After that, Capcom will likely pursue Star Force 4 or Battle Network 7, or possibly OSS 2 (god help us if it's the last one).

I was right about Zero collections, and probably half right about Mega Man 10, so I'm going to make a prediction about Operation Shooting Star. Operation Shooting Star will receive a US release after Mega Man 10, and possibly after Zero Collections. In the wake of its release, we'll know what direction the RPG section of Mega Man will be going afterwords. While I'm at it, I think Zero Collections will be good news for ZX 3 as well, and I personally think this is what Inafune was talking about when he said he wanted to go a new direction with Mega Man in the live broadcast. We'll see though.

Read more at Protodude's blog.

The Future of Battle Network

If it hadn't been for Operation Shooting Star, I'd have written this article a while ago. Because of the disappointing sales of Star Force, Battle Network is getting a second wind, and I for one am a bit disappointed with this turn of events myself.

Gameplay wise Battle Network is enjoyable, but I find Star Force more polished myself. My main complaint is the story to Battle Network games are just god awful on average. The future of Battle Network for now looks to be in re-releases, so we won't even have any new stories for a while. What I'd like to do right now since Battle Network's future is pretty apparent, is compare it to Star Force.

I hate to say it, but this really comes off as a rant against Battle Network and less about the future of the series. Skip the block quoted text if you rather just read my thoughts on Battle Network's actual future.

Let's look at what the series are about. Star Force would have you believe the theme is about the power of friendship with the Brother Bands and link power, but it's about more than that. It's about growing up and taking responsibility. Geo goes from a scared kid who runs from his problems to confronting them like an adult and even taking on the problems of others. It's about family as Geo loses his father and Omega-Xis sort of takes on that role as a father figure. It's about compassion as Omega-Xis goes from a hard boiled uncaring self-centered alien to learning to care about others as he develops a bond with Geo.

What is Battle Network about? Ugh? At best, this one does try the power of friendship TM, if you ignore that 90% of the time Lan and Mega Man's friends are completely useless and actually do quite a bit to hinder Lan's progress. Lans always rescuing his incompetent buddies and damn is he quick to put MegaMan, his brother, in danger, even for really trivial battles. Lan and Chaud sort of develop a friendship as part of their rivalry, but Chaud kind of acts like a dick the whole series and even in the last game he doesn't appear to trust Lan's judgment all that much.

Lan is hardly ever challenged on the emotional level. Everyone loves the ending of Battle Network 3 because it's the only time Lan has any development at all. He has charisma, but he's not very deep, and neither are the other characters.

Mayl plays the love interest and she's so heavy-handedly overt about her feelings to Lan she's just comically unrealistic and a good chunk of her dialog is either the damsel in distress or gushing over Lan. She most directly compares to Sonia. Sonia is confident in the way she feels about Geo, but her attitude towards him has a little bit more teasing. In the first game shes as emotionally broken as Geo and looks to him for strength which explains why she develops an interest in him. Compare this to Lan who usually treats Mayl like shit in the typical school age gender war fashion. Sonia isn't a damsel in distress like Mayl either and actually could be considered Geo's side kick in combat.

Dex is exactly like Lan in every way, obsessed with food and Net Battling, except, unlike Lan, Dex isn't very successful about it. I don't even see what the point of Dex's character is, as he adds nothing towards the story. His counterpart, Bud, is a little more complex. In the first two games Bud is trying to be the strong tough guy, but he's actually vulnerable to the will of the villains. He probably shows the most support for Geo out of all his friends, but his interaction with Taurus causes Bud to become a liability that by the third game he eventually takes under control and uses his power to help out.

Yai is there only to make stupid jokes about how rich her family is and Roll and Glyde do absolutely nothing the entire series except get captured constantly. Star Force has a few pointless characters as well, as Zack and Harp might as well be props they're so uninteresting.

Then you have Lan's parents. Where to start? Could these people be any more horrible? Lan's father is either sending Lan head first into dangerous terrorists lairs or he isn't there at all. He also enjoys playing god in the abomination of science and ethics in the creation that is MegaMan.exe. His mother, good god, she is so worthless and oblivious it makes you wonder how the hell Lan survived childhood.

Geo's parents are so much better written. His father is missing and is protrayed almost like a deity to Geo, and his mother is quite sympathetic. She's trying to be strong for her son who is going through some severe depression but she also has her own emotional baggage from losing her husband. This really comes to a head in Star Force 3 where she is desperately afraid of losing Geo who has been lying to her about where he is going and what he is doing. Geo doesn't get her consent to go to these dangerous places and actively hides what he is doing from her. When she does find out his identity as MegaMan, she reluctantly lets him fight for the Earth's future as, A. he's the Earth's only hope, and B. Geo basically has super powers to protect him. I ask you what is keeping Lan from getting a bullet in the head other than the villains mass incompetence?

Finally there's Luna, Geo's other love interest. She's incredibly ambitious, and her insecurity comes off arrogance. Deep down though you can see she really cares about her friends, and especially cares about Geo, but she's deeply afraid to let him see that. She comes from a wealthy family like Yai does, but her being rich isn't the only thing about her character. If anything, the reason Luna is rich is to highlight her deep loneliness from having neglectful parents with high expectations. She is complex but endearing like most of the Star Force characters, something the Battle Network characters really lack.

You've also got Chaud, ProtoMan, Bass, the other villains and the like but none of these roles are particularly strong enough to carry the series.

It could be the reason that Battle Network is a hit and Star Force isn't is because Star Force quite frankly is a bit more mature. Battle Network appeals to a younger audience not concerned with the themes of Star Force, where as Star Force appeals to an audience that quite frankly, probably is old enough to recognize the milking of a cash cow when they see it. I guess it's just caught in a bad spot for its demographic. In any case, I expect the DS port of Battle Network 3 to sell like hot cakes to long time fans.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Battle Network, and I really don't hate the characters in that series. I just think Star Force is much better. Battle Network is mindless, but entertaining. Star Force has a heart to it though, and that's why I prefer it.

As to where the series will go from here, well it already ended in Battle Network 6. What is likely to happen is we'll see a slew of Battle Network ports to the DS if it goes over well. Capcom has started Re-Airing the old Battle Network Anime in Japan and the merchandising machine may start anew. If Operation Shooting Star takes off in the states as well, we could see the return of Mega Man NT Warrior, or even possibly the series that were never dubbed, such as Stream, Beast and Beast+. I wouldn't get your hopes up, but at least Axess will probably get a DVD release soon.

If the game continues on after Battle Network 6, Patch, Lan's son, will probably become the protagonist and likely along with MegaMan.exe as his navi. I don't see where this story can go and still be interesting personally, as Patch is probably just going to be a carbon copy of Lan, and I'm not sure it makes sense for Patch to be saving the world when Lan should still be capable of doing so. Still no point in bad mouthing the potential for a story that only has vague concepts on it so far and might not even happen.

Rockman.Exe: Operation Shooting Star

This is a port of Mega Man Battle Network 1 to the Nintendo DS with a handful of new features and a new scenario involving Geo Stelar, the protagonist from the Mega Man Star Force series. Essentially expect the same game from the Game Boy Advance, except the addition of Subchips and running which alone greatly improve the game. The scenario involving Geo comes up late in the game, right before the very last part of the game, and from what I've seen, the game is identical otherwise. There hasn't been much improvement in graphics nor have the real tedious levels of Battle Network 1 been changed.

What you do get, is the ability to play as Geo and Omega-Xis, who come with their own assortment of Battle Cards, a shield, and Omega-Xis' lock on ability. The game also features a multiplayer Colosseum game similar to Star Force 2.

There hasn't been anything said about a US release date just yet, but it's likely we'll see this game over here in a few months. I'll hold off my judgment on it until then, but I have to admit I'm disappointed at the missed opportunity Capcom is making by making this game primarily a port.

Imagine if you will if the time traveling aspect of this game was not a side scenario, but actually the main focus of the game. The game starts out exactly like Battle Network 1, but events keep changing from the original game, weird distortions to the whole universe start happening, and eventually we run into Geo early on instead of towards the end. Geo explains the whole distortion of time-line events to Lan, and suddenly the game takes a rapid turn as Lan, MegaMan.exe, Geo and Omega-Xis have to work together to restore the time-line to its original form to save the future. Think Back to the Future here. Time Traveling stories can really fuck up a long running series, but they can be a lot of fun too.

Then imagine beating the game, initially never actually playing as Geo. Suddenly we unlock a new mode, where the player stars as Geo Stelar and the game unravels from his perspective. Let's take it a step further and even have the battle engine from Star Force control how we use Geo, letting us have the best of both worlds of Battle Network and Star Force. This I think would have made the game much more interesting and much more anticipated than it is right now. This would give a genuinely new game and it would borrow a lot of elements and resources from Battle Network 1 which could have even freed up some development time.

As it stands though, it looks like the people who will get the most out of Operation Shooting Star are those that never played Battle Network 1, and that's disappointing to those of us that have already played it.

Mega Man Battle Network 6

In general I don't think most of the Battle Network games are that fun. I mean they have their moments and I certainly enjoy the game enough to finish them but the game can get real old real fast after a while and I don't see myself replaying any of these games any time soon... with the exception of this one. Battle Network 6 is everything the Battle Network games were working to be, it has nearly perfected everything the previous games were trying to achieve. This game is fun the whole way through and dare I say that it's good enough to consider the purchase of both versions for yourself. It's a shame it came at the end of the series instead of the beginning but what a wonderful send off it was.

The Battle Network series has had quite a few evolutions in it's time. The start of the series introduced a new concept, the second game toned down the tedium, the third game pushed through a decent story and the fourth and fifth games tinkered with opening the world up more through double soul and controlling other Navi's. Finally we get to 6, that takes all the lessons learned and pushes the series to its fullest potential. If you stopped playing these games after 4 or 5 you've really missed out. Most fans either have 3 or 6 as their favorite and generally if 6 isn't your favorite, it's right next to 3 and vice versa.

New Features

• Double Soul has been replaced with the Cross System
• You can unlock and control other Navi's at just about any time.
• Beast-Out added, the main feature of this game.

Story
We start at Lan's school one day when Lan has a sad announcement to make to the class. His dad has been relocated to Central City and Lan and his family are moving away. Everyone's sad to see Lan go, yadda yadda yadda, we start playing in Central City. His first day in Central City Lan saves a girl from a crazed robotic dog and she thanks him and runs off. This girl is important later.

Lan heads to school to meet his new teacher and class mates but one of the other kids is kind of a dick. We're introduced to the Copy-Roids, or blank robot machines you can use to upload your Net Navi to and the Copy-Roid will assume the form of the Navi, without weapons of course. For the first time ever, MegaMan gets to walk around the real world.

After this the dick head kid named Mick throws a tantrum. He wants to rough Lan up a bit and an evil Net Navi shows up named BlastMan convinces him to set the school on fire and Mick goes from stupid punk kid to stupid punk criminal in a matter of seconds. Well I guess his setting the school on fire to teach Lan a lesson about... something "prank" gets out of hand and BlastMan refuses to listen to Mick. Lan goes in and stops him and everyone has a good laugh while Mick gets detention for nearly blowing up the school... ha ha ha... ha?

Anyway we learn about two giant cyber beasts named Gregar and Falzar which had a legendary battle that nearly destroyed the internet and they created a big fat crater in the middle of it. Baryl, from the last game, is reviving the WWW in order to capture the Cybeasts and use them for ill gotten gains.

Lan goes through a few scenarios before discovering the new WWW's plan. The Cybeasts reawaken on the net and CircusMan captures and absorbs one of them. MegaMan isn't strong enough to take the other Cybeast and figures the only way to save the net is to absorb it himself, much to Lan's protests. MegaMan absorbs the beast and it causes him to morph into whichever Cybeast your version contains and he flips out and goes on a rampage. Using one of his friends Navi's, Lan manages to get MegaMan back under control and Lan's dad helps MegaMan manage the Cybeast. Their concern is however that MegaMan could one day be beyond helping and they'd have to delete him.

The game begins to unravel with a conspiracy involving Mayor Cain of the city, Lan's teacher, the girl he saved who keeps showing up (named Iris) and Dr. Wily who turns out to be pulling Baryl's strings. There's a lot of plot twists in this game for a Battle Network game really. Anyway Chaud shows up at some point and arrests Mayor Cain for his crimes using a new spiffy cloak throwing animation. Anyway, Wily plans to use the Copy-Roids to use the Cybeasts to attack the real world, and Iris turns out to be a Net Navi who used to be a part of Colonel (Baryl's Net Navi).

Lan convinces Baryl to betray Dr. Wily and Colonel and Iris go to battle one of the Cybeast (the version you aren't playing) and MegaMan takes on the other Cybeast. They all defeat their Cybeast opposition, but MegaMan's Cybeast fuses with him again and is just about to go on a rampage. Iris and Colonel, fuse together to save MegaMan and then self destruct to destroy the Cybeasts once and for all. The place starts exploding... again... for no reason... and Lan tells Dr. Wily that he needs to atone for his crimes and if he does, maybe he'll be able to get back to researching. Everyone escapes the blast, even Dr. Wily later and we come to the final ending for Mega Man Battle Network.

We get an epilogue to the series. Lan moves back to ACDC and Dr. Wily reforms and furthers the research of the Internet with huge advancements. Baryl is never seen again, but we know he survives because he gives Lan the Copy-Roid that Iris was using for MegaMan to live out the life he never had as Hub. Twenty years later all the characters lives have gone on to better things. Dex became Mayor, Yai went on to run her fathers company, Chaud became an international Net Official, the new characters did shit no one cares about, and Lan and Mayl married and had a child named Patch. Lan would go on to become a Net Scientist himself like his father and MegaMan would stay by his side, brother and friend. Peace would last the world... for about 200 years or so... but that's another story entirely.

While definitely not a Pulitzer winner, Battle Network 6's story is satisfying even if it's convoluted, and it's good to see every loose end tied up in a nice bow... wait a second...

Post Game Content

Yeah almost forgot we have just a couple more guys to take care of. Since this is the last game after all, it wouldn't be right to let it go without one last Net Battle between the two rivals of Chaud and Lan. ProtoMan has been powered up to ungodly levels of difficult, but MegaMan has the power of the Cybeasts under his belt. Don't forget to show Chaud just why he is number 2.

Next up is something that actually can happen somewhere in the middle of the game if you go exploring in the wrong places. MegaMan and Lan come across a strange grave in the Cyberworld. It reads "Here lies the god of destruction." God of destruction? Who's that wonder Lan and MegaMan. The grave then fucking explodes and guess who shows up? I really hope you got your HP-Memories because Bass ain't fucking around anymore. "WHO DARE DISTURBS MY SLUMBER!" Well Bass already hates MegaMan's guts and they get into a fight. Bass loses but he decides to retreat for now and build up his power.

Later, in the real post game content, MegaMan and Lan come across a Cyber Graveyard... yeah... All the graves say the names of just about every Navi in this game and in a few others. How odd since many of them are still alive. MegaMan and Lan then come up to a blank grave. "Why is this grave blank?" says MegaMan. "BECAUSE IT'S YOURS MEGAMAN!" shouts Bass. Fuck...

Fight him again and Bass thinks he's getting cheated because MegaMan is using the power of the Cybeasts. He runs off with a scheme to end this once and for all.

Later while hanging around in the crater left by Falzar and Gregar, Bass shows up again. By this point MegaMan and Lan are just about like "leave us the fuck alone Bass, shit!" but Bass does something unexpected. He extracts the Cybeast from MegaMan and now you have to face a Cybeast Powered up Mega Man DS... shit. After that grueling fight you'll probably be hurting, and at that point, Bass is now ready to fuck you up. YOU SUNOFABITCH! Bass gives probably the most cheesy, yet awesome lines in the series. "I WILL REDUCE YOU TO THE ONE'S AND ZERO'S FROM WHENCE YOU CAME!" Well it's time to finish this once and for all, and Bass' bullshit trick of kicking you while you're down isn't going to stop him from getting his ass handed to him. Bass screams that if he's going to be deleted he'll take you with him, and then explodes. Lan wonders if Bass is truly gone once and for all being how he seems to show up without rhyme or reason. MegaMan basically says if he shows up again they'll just have to kick his ass again. Lan agrees and they get themselves Bass' Giga chip.

Don't worry Lan, Bass never shows up again! Unless they make Battle Network 7 which might happen if Operation Shooting Star goes well. Anyway folks that's Battle Network for now... and perhaps forever.

Aesthetics
We're in completely new settings from the previous games and they all have their interesting points, especially the Cyberworld which feel more like cities in an alternate plane of existence more than previous games where they just feel like filler points to hit the player with random encounters. You'll see Cyber Cafes... in the very literal sense, tree's, statues... um... plumbing? The network stages range from a nasty weathered storm to a wooden forest network.

In the real world Lan visits an aquarium a floating city and a court house made out of trees and the series has noticeably evolved from it's roots.

On the character design section we've lost Double Soul but gained the Cross System which is nearly functionally and visually the same thing. Just like in previous games MegaMan combines his form with that of another Net Navi and it tries to blend the results. On top of this you have the Beast-Out ability in which MegaMan lets out an animal like roar and morphs to take on the beasts shape. While this is cool enough, you can also combine it with the Cross System to have Crossed Beast Outs which blend the three elements (MegaMan, Cybeast and Net Navi) together and they just look very good.

I should note that while these designs are cool looking, the game has done little to advance graphically, but it's not the number of colors in your pallet, it's how you use them.

Sound
This game has a new title theme from 4 and 5 but it's still not as good as the original 3 games. There's a few tracks I dig on here, such as BlastMan's level theme and the ACDC town's theme has been tweaked a bit but overall I have to give the whole sound track a "meh". Adequate, but not memorable. On the sound effects department there aren't many things different from the other games except the roar MegaMan gives from Beast-Out which is pretty cool.

Design
The network stages are some of the best in the series. There's a decent gimmick for each stage and while the isometric Pacman stage is kind of a pain in the ass, the minigame involving the Judge Tree is pretty fun... albeit really easy.

Let's talk about the changes this time. The main problems with Double Soul was that you really had to build your folder around it to make use of it, and it wasn't very flexible for different situations because you'd have to build a new folder to use a new Double Soul and it could become a pain in the ass to manage. Cross System is essentially Double Soul, but flexible. You do not need a sacrificial chip and can use Cross System at any time, meaning no more waiting for certain chips to show up to make use of it. You can also take advantage of all your Cross System forms at any time.

Next up you have Beast-Out, which I suppose is functionally the same as Cross System except much more powerful. Beast-Out has MegaMan form with his games Cybeast and powers him up. If you want, you can even combine the Cross System forms with Beast-Out to get a third form that takes advantage of both abilities. This game caters to more action with these forms than previous games, but a lot of them take advantage of your chip abilities too so strategy will still come in to play.

On top of this, once you unlock a Cross System form, you can play as that Navi at just about any time afterwords. To tell you the truth it isn't all that useful as none of the Navi's are as powerful as MegaMan himself and you'll only need them when the game either forces you through the story or to unlock a door somewhere but it is a more interesting use of the other characters as compared to Battle Network 5's use.

The folder building system is a bit tweaked now. You can hold a number of the same chips based on their MB value. I can't recall the exact values off hand and didn't find it personally a hindrance in any way. Fans I've talked to feel this is the best way to balance the system. In addition to this, you can tag two cards together so if one shows up so will the other one, allowing you to come up with a devastating combo.

One last thing on design. The Battle Network games can be a pain in the ass with regards to their maze like mapping. It has gotten better over time, Battle Network 4 hardly had any real maze layouts until you got to the Undernet. This game is probably the best about toning down the mazeyness of the maps and in fact later on you can buy items to get yourself short cuts to cut off even more time when you backtrack. Quite handy.


Playability
Unlike the other games, you could probably pick up and play this one no problem. Even though the learning curve is still there, it's not even as harsh. Beast-Out makes a lot of tough situations a breeze, but I would say the final bosses of this game (Bass excluded) are a fucking joke compared to even the easier final bosses of the series. Even powered up they aren't that hard and one strategy for Gregar works well enough just using the Cross System and your buster. This game isn't terribly challenging, but none the less fun.

Extras

• Money isn't quite as hard to get in this game if you keep up on the jobs when they become available. Make sure you invest as much as you can when the one Navi asks you for a loan.
• Falzar is probably the easier game simply because TenguMan's Cross form and Falzar's Beast-Out both give you AirShoes which I have to say is the handiest ability to have on call. Gregar's form is pretty cool though and I found to be more damaging personally, SlashMan's Cross System as well is also quite powerful. Honestly though, the game is fun enough and the experience is different enough to warrant buying both games if you so desire.
• Talk to the Cyber Cafe owners and buy their coffee just about every time you're passing through the area. Eventually they'll give you a prize for being a regular customer.

Battle Network 6 is the best game in the series hands down. If you never have played a Battle Network game, this is the one to play and its much easier to pick up compared to the rest of them. This one is worth trying out even if you don't like Battle Network all that much. I like three, but I think every thing came together much better in 6, and 6 doesn't have that annoying as shit press program that 3 does.

Playthroughs
N/A

Mega Man Battle Network 5

At one point in time I didn't ever think there was a way you could screw up Battle Network. 4 had some really annoying points to it sure, but only it only got really bad when you had to push yourself past the end game to the post end game. Yes, Battle Network 4.5 had some real potential to be painful, but I think it had some cool ideas in it as well. I just didn't think there was a way to make the game out right horrible.

Certainly you could reduce its quality amongst the series, screw up balancing, give out some really crummy chips and program advances, write a really bad story... well I guess bad stories are par for the course in Battle Network anyway. Battle Network 5 proved me wrong however, and it showed me you can easily fuck up a Battle Network game. All it takes is to have a boring situation take way to fucking long. On paper Battle Network 5 doesn't even sound like it would be that bad and has a lot of ideas that have merit but end up being really fucking boring. Battle Network 4 seemed unaware of how tedious it was making the game, Battle Network 5 on the other hand just revels in it.

There are three versions of this game. The Game Boy advance games contain slightly different stories and characters while the DS offers both versions of the game with new music a few voice clips and a few other features that you'll probably discover as this is the only version available on the market these days.

Story
Lan leads a pretty modest life for someone who literally saved the world last game. One day Lan and his friends get called down to Sci Lab to see something Lan's father had been working on when Nebula operatives attack the Lab with knock out gas. They kidnap Lan's father Yuichiro and Roll, GutsMan and Glyde, Lan's friends Navis. They would have taken MegaMan, had Lan not luckily been an inconvenient ten steps away from them all.

Anyway Dr. Regal is alive and has a new scheme to take over the world using Yuichiro's knowledge of his father's work. Meanwhile Lan gets an E-mail telling him to head down to Sci Lab about his father. There he sees Chaud... or actually he sees Baryl... or actually it depends on which version you have but essentially for either game you switch the roles of Baryl and Chaud when needed. Since Baryl is the new guy though and plays a pretty big part in Battle Network 6 I think Team Colonel is the canon version but it doesn't matter either way.

Chaud/Colonel are building a team to combat Nebula and want Lan to join because complex military operations are always best suited for children. Nebula has completely fucked up the internet and covered it with Darkloid excrement, and Lan will be playing cop/janitor in cleaning it up. Chaud/Baryl give Lan ProtoMan/Colonel and Lan goes out and takes part in what will become a very overplayed, very long, and very boring minigame that will take up the most of the game.

During the game of course we have the interchangable scenario chapters where Lan ends up recruiting new members to his team based on which ever version you're playing. Princess Pride/KnightMan, Dark Miyabi/ShadowMan, Ding/TomahawkMan, Higsby/NumberMan and Ribitta/ToadMan for team Colonel, and Tesla Magnus/MagnetMan, Charlie Airstar/GyroMan, Fyrefox/NapalmMan, Raika/SearchMan and Jasmine/Meddy for team Protoman. Since Lan's friends Navi's are kidnapped, don't expect jack shit from them.

At some point during the story MegaMan gets kidnapped and corrupted by Nebula's dark chips and his team saves him and brings him back. Then ProtoMan/Colonel get kidnapped and corrupted to and you do the same thing to them. These are really the only two interesting scenarios and seeing as how they are almost carbon copies of each other with roles reversed, they could have been better.

Eventually we find out about Dr. Hikari and Dr. Wily's old research on something called SoulNet which would link all human's hearts and minds together, but they never completed their research. Regal's plan is to finish SoulNet, link all human minds together, then introduce a virus named Nebula Grey into the mix to fuck everyone up basically and create a world of chaos because Regal is evil... I guess cause someone's gotta be the bad guy?

MegaMan defeats Nebula Grey with "The Power of Friendship" TM and SoulNet goes down. Regal's volcano base starts to blow up and everyone runs out except Yuichiro and Regal, and Yuichiro tells Regal to attone for his crimes and work for a better world blah blah blah, and he passes out. Then Dr. Wily shows up (he's Regal's Daddy) and he overloads SoulNet so it'll fuck up Regal's brain so he won't remember the past ten years of his evil crimes. Wily is doing this because he doesn't want Regal to follow in his footsteps as a criminal mastermind? Did he do it as a loving father or just because he hates the competition?

Anyway Lan get's his friends PET's back and Baryl (not Chaud, we know who Chaud is) breaks up the team and heads to parts unknown. Dr. Regal gets a job at Sci Lab and reforms from his evil ways. Yuichiro talks about how the new generation will have to build strong bonds and build world peace and that the new generation is in good hands and blah blah blah philosophical crap roll credits.

Post Game

Nebula may be gone but their shit is still floating around the net. Lan reassembles the team to clean up the rest of it. Afterwords he heads to the furthest reaches of Nebula's network to find a mysterious portal Guess who comes out? What's up Bass? You fight Bass, leave and come back, then you can fight a powered up Nebula Grey, then leave and come back and you can fight MegaMan's dark soul powered up, then leave and come back again to fight Bass' final form. Doing this is such an incredible pain in the ass because you have to go through a timed boss gauntlet each time, hence why I didn't feel like getting a screenshot of Bass this go round because... god fuck that shit.

Aesthetics
I suppose I'm grading two different games here really. We've got the DS enhanced version and the regular versions. We'll get the regular games out of the way first.

There hasn't been a lot of growth in this series graphics and the internet stages are pretty dull in color for the most part. The real world locations feel a lot smaller than the game would try to pretend they are and I don't find them as interesting as the last game.

We got a whole host of new characters and Double Souls to look at for each version which are pretty interesting. Shadow Soul is one of the few I use, and the screenshot of it shows how cool MegaMan looks in it.

The DS version doesn't add much in the way of graphical enhancements. We get a refined GUI with MegaMan rendered out for us on the bottom screen and a few interesting animations and still shots in the introduction but that's about it. The bulk of the games graphics are just ported straight over from the GBA games.

Sound
Pretty decent sound track but nothing that blows me away. I still think they should have stuck to the original theme through out the series. The DS version features a number of remixed tracks with higher sound quality and they sound much better there. It also has a few voice samples that get repeated until you want to strangle Lan but they sound interesting the first time you hear them. The voice actors they got sound close to the same as the NT Warrior North American voice actors but it isn't them. Be warned though if you've never seen NT Warrior (and who could blame you for not watching it) you'll be in for a bit of a shock to learn how... um... distinct Lan's voice is for an 11 year old. It's not like it's a bad voice like say Mega Man 8, but it'll probably grate on your nerves after hearing "JACK IN!" for the one millionth time.

Design
So we've got Double Soul which works exactly the same way it did last time. MegaMan takes the form of another NetNavi to have some enhanced powers. Unlike Mega Man classic's universe however, not ever character besides MegaMan is a villain, so the next logical step if you think about it is to let the player try out some other Navi's. Well that's not a bad idea at all!

But hey, why stop there? Why not add a whole new minigame that's kind of like a strategy game where we can use a team of these Navi's. Ok, why not? Now let's take our strategy game, add some ludicrous restrictions to it, make each segment of it take fucking forever, and have the player do it about 900 times!

You now have what is wrong with Battle Network 5 in a nutshell. There are other stuff I could get on about this game like how the dungeons are some of the most annoying in the series and how you have to run through some of them multiple times, I could get into how most of the double souls are useless and some of your Navi team mates are even more useless, I could bring up some of the balancing issues that went into this game absolutely killing most program advance folders, but no, what is wrong with this game are these pain in the ass Liberation Missions.

Basically you have a grid of infected tiles. To remove the infection you have to clear a virus battle in 3 rounds with the terrain altered depending on how you've setup the grid. With some characters, this is a cake walk, with others, such as NumberMan, it's an incredible pain in the ass. And since the game wants you to be pretty damn quick about it to get some of the special chips for beating the stage in a certain number of turns, often times the terrain is not in your favor. There are few things more frustrating than having to take down Dominerds on cracked tiles in 3 turns when MegaMan is the only one you can give air shoes. Some of these segments are really fucking long too, and just drag the game on way to long.

This game loves it's tedium and even the post game content has it's share of these places which can take up to an hour or so to clear, and if you're really unlucky, much longer. Even if you clear these things once and for all the tedium isn't over if you want to fight Bass, MegaMan DS or Nebula Grey 2.0. Doing this requires a timed boss rush fight you must do every time you want to fight any of these bosses, and the game damn near requires you to be perfect to do any of that.

On top of this, we have new battle chip rules. You may only perform a program advance once per battle. No more stocking up on Life Swords and the like so adjust your folder building techniques. If you look past all of this tedium the game hasn't changed in any other significant way and you might enjoy it, but I didn't have any fun with this one.

Choosing between the two games just leaves you with a different team mostly with the story substituting characters where appropriate. Their motivations may slightly change to reflect their character, but their actions will stay the same. I personally found Team Colonel's giga chips and Double Souls more useful however. You're probably going to pick up the DS version which has both games, but I recommend going through Team Colonel's adventure over Team Protoman's.

Playability
The one program advance per battle rule is a killer, but I want to clarify that it is one program advance of a certain type. So for instance you could do Life Sword once in battle and then follow it up with Zeta Cannon in the same battle, but you could not perform Life Sword twice in a single battle.

More than ever though this game wants you to set strategies for different situations and build folders for each one. You'll want a Navi fighting folder, a virus busting folder and probably a Liberation Mission folder.

This game is definitely on the easy side as far as these games are concerned though.

Extras

• Want some easy zenny? Cosmoman's Liberation mission has 1800 Zenny right at the start of it. Just grab it and restart the mission over and over.
• Nebula Grey's strategy involves him wrecking your ability to move around by destroying the ground below you. Give yourself some Airshoes however and the guys a cake walk. Shadow Soul works wonders on him as well.
• One of my general strategies for Battle Network is to set an Invis* chip as my standard chip. That way it'll come up every fight and you'll be safe while you get your bearings.
• Area Steal plus Airhockey fucks bosses up, except for Nebula Grey.
• You can save during a Liberation mission and they don't have a time limit so don't torture yourself playing them for to long like I did.

Battle Network 5 is easily the worst of the series because it slowly drains all the fun out of the game. I like the combat engine as much as anyone but it doesn't prop the game up by itself and the more restrictions you put on it the harder it is to enjoy it. Battle Network 5 is a game that can bore you quickly and then asks you to stick around much longer than you want to be there. The DS version has bells and whistles attached, but it's still the same boring game. You're not missing anything by skipping this one. Do not miss out on Battle Network 6 though!

Playthroughs
N/A

Rockman.exe 4.5 Real Operation

When I first heard about Rockman.exe 4.5 I was a bit put off by the fact that it was never released in the US. I mean, it sucks we didn't get the cell phone games yeah, but you can't blame Capcom when the market for cell phone games here just isn't as big. What's their excuse for this game then? It's a Game Boy Advanced game for Christ's sake, the market is here for a Battle Network game! What were they thinking not releas... wait... this one has nothing to do with the other games? It's also really gimmicky? Hmm...

I can't come out and say that American's should be disappointed that this game never made it over here but then again I can't say we shouldn't be. I've played this game a little bit, and I like some of the concepts about it, but I can also see a lot of potential flaws in it. Since this game's in Japanese and pretty much requires you to do a lot of reading I can't get really far enough in the game to make a good judgment on it or not for sure. This won't be too much of a review because I can't get far enough into the game, but I'll write up what I know.

The concept behind Real Operation is kind of interesting. A standard Battle Network game you control Lan and MegaMan as an outside force, the standard position of the player. You move Lan around in the real world for the plot and MegaMan in the cyberworld for the game. Although we are controlling the both characters, we aren't really taking on the full role either of those characters are taking. As Lan, we come up with the chips we want to carry and use but we don't actually work with MegaMan in combat, we just control him. As MegaMan we move around in combat and hope that Lan will load up the chips we need at the right time.

This game serves the gameplay in half and now we take the full role of the Navi Operator while MegaMan fills plays his full role as the Navi. Basically MegaMan operates independantly of our behavior, trying to dodge and attack enemies on his own based on our advice and the chips we load him. Granted, the chips are chosen randomly out of our folder, but we can quickly shuffle them around to generally get the chips we want during combat when we want them. For this game, we interact with MegaMan instead of control him. We tell him which enemy we want his focus to be on and what distance he should keep himself, we tell him when to shoot and when to block but ultimately he makes the choice when to execute these maneuvers and we help out with battle chips.

So we come to the focus of this game. First, this isn't about Lan and MegaMan, in fact Lan's not in it at all. You play as MegaMan's operator (or whichever Navi you choose, among them Roll, GutsMan, NumberMan, ElecMan, Bass and much more). MegaMan will talk to you, ask you questions about yourself and try to form a relationship with you as his partner... or you know, as much a relationship as you can get with a video game character. That's the point of this game though, it's trying to give the player the feeling of an operator from the Battle Network games and the unique take on it is kind of cool, turning your Game Boy Advanced into the PET of the series. And since you can choose different Navi's to operate, each with their own personality and abilities, there are all kinds of opportunities for game play experiences that haven't been achieved before.

There are potential problems with this setup though. After all, we're relying on good scripting to keep MegaMan from jumping head first into enemy projectiles and even though your influence and strategy can minimize this, you can't always prevent it. It's just not as reliable as moving MegaMan yourself and while I can't say for sure that most combat would be difficult for this to come up, I can imagine the frustration a player would have when MegaMan stupidly gets himself deleted against a fight like Bass or something.

While there are no "real world" segments of this game, the rest of it is your typical Rockman.exe fare. Run through the Cyberworld, fight viruses, collect items and battle chips. You can unlock extra Navi's to play as and can only access certain areas with certain Navis. There are also a few minigames here and there to keep you busy, but I wouldn't know too much about those.

Aesthetics wise it looks like every Cyberworld in battle network, and I haven't gotten far enough to really judge the maps. What is cool though in the sound department are the remixes of the old characters themes into this game. Bass, Protoman, MetalMan, GutsMan all have themes you'll recognize, but I can't get far enough to hear any of them in game.

If Battle Network ever gets an anniversary type of collection, I hope they bother to translate this game as I think it has some potential to be a lot of fun, even if it's frustrating. Someone was working on a translation patch for American players and even got out a beta, but as far as I know the project is on hold, the beta patch is severely unfinished and it causes the damn game to crash some times. If this game never does make it stateside though hopefully a real effort will be made by fans to translate it. For now, all of us non-Japanese speaking gamers will have to wait.

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