Mega Man Battle Network 2

Battle Network 1 was a flawed game, but introduced a brand new and fun combat engine and unique gameplay style. A sequel seemed inevitable but Jesus Christ, Capcom pumped out a new one within the same year! As much of a disaster as this could have been, Battle Network 2 proved to be a very good entry in the series, improving upon every aspect of Battle Network 1 and introducing a lot of new elements. Much tedium was removed without taking away to much of the necessary exploration and strategy elements set by the first.

New Features

• MegaMan.exe can run from battles by pressing the "L" button, thank god.
• MegaMan.exe no longer refills his energy automatically after combat, you need to refill it either in combat or with the new subchips system.
• Subchips are introduced and do a variety of things, from healing the player, allowing them to avoid most combat encounters, locate certain enemies and untrap and unlock certain items.
• The pickups in the Network series (called Mystery Data) are color coded. Blue Mystery Datas are one time pick ups that usually contain a battle card or HP-Memory, Green's are randomly generated, and Purple's are locked requiring a subchip to get. They usually have the best items.
• Style Changes introduced!
• The Battle Chip library now keeps track of program advances.
• The post game content has been expanded upon and the game now keeps track of your post game achievements.
• This game features a hidden Hard Mode... although it's not worth your time.
• Bug Fragments are introduced in this game. You collect them and buy certain chips with them.

Story

Since the fall of the WWW in Battle Network 1, a new group has risen calling themselves Gospel and they're off committing their own brand of crimes. Lan on the other hand gets news of the Netbattle Officials holding trials to allow people to become City Netbattlers. Lan and MegaMan still seem to find themselves in the wrong spot at the wrong time, but as they become more recognized

Lan stops attempted bombings of a Dam, an out of control airplane, and saves his friend Yai from a terrorist attack on her own property. Eventually the City Battler position Lan obtains puts him in a more active role in combating Gospel and eventually he locates their head quarters, a radio active building. Lan, having the best parents in the world, goes in to stop the criminals. There, he finds out the leader of Gospel is building a "Super Navi" named Bass who he plans to copy and use to take over the world. Lan and MegaMan take out Bass and the leader of Gospel turns out to be a little kid. The kid, named Sean, flips out and infuses Bass with more energy, transforming him into a giant monster creature (who resembles Treble from the Classic Series). The monster goes out of control and turns up the radiation to extremely dangerous levels and Lan passes out.

Not wanting to miss out on this games bullshit quota, MegaMan.exe syncs himself to Lan's heart so Lan can control him that way... what?

Ok whatever, they beat Gospel, find out Sean had a shitty child hood but he'll reform after paying his debt to society. Lan and his friends go on a barbecue where Lan's father tells Lan that someone was manipulating Sean all along and he wasn't really the one who created Bass. Just then, Lan's teacher Ms. Mari shows up and asks if everyone did their home work. Uh-oh! Lan and MegaMan were too busy to get it done! Cue a corny sit-com laugh track.

The credits roll and then we see the "Real Bass" destroy one of his copies. He curses the humans and vows that one day they will feel his judgment! Dun dun dun!

Post-game content has a little side story of it's own. While out browsing the Undernet (the evil part of the internet, you know where furries live) Lan and MegaMan find a mysterious part of the internet. They go inside and are acosted by a series of guardians, PharaoMan, NapalmMan and PlanetMan. When they reach PlanetMan, he informs them that these trials were to find new members for WWW! Whaaaaa? PlanetMan offers them a position, but of course Lan and MegaMan reject him. After they destroy PlanetMan, MegaMan makes his way out and is confronted by the real Bass.exe. Bass had been watching MegaMan and wants to test his strength. They fight and beat him, but Bass promises the next time he won't hold back. Get used to Bass saying that...

I believe most post-game content in this series is non-canon, although it's hard to say for some of the games.

Aesthetics

While the sprites used for our main cast are mostly the same, the whole game appears a bit sharper and more defined. The environments are more varied and the internet looks a hell of a lot better, varying in it's own looks for the different countries. Bass himself is a little tweaked in appearance since this is his first official introduction and his sprite is brighter than the last game.

There's a lot more animations in this game and MegaMan's different style changes all have unique touches that look real good. Once again the high light of the game is the character design.

There isn't much else to say though as the over all looks of the game didn't change much within the year that the game was developed.

Sound

The theme starts out again with a hard hitting drum and carries the main them over from the first game. A lot of tracks are reused but there are unique tracks for new areas as the game calls for them. I take back my sentiment that the main theme wouldn't be overused as the last few sequences of the climax go ape shit with it. It's still enjoyable but they really don't even try to save it...

Everything else sounds decent as well, with electric sounds going zap, water making bubbly sounds and fire blazing. None of it's amazing but its hard to get anything sounding good out of the Game Boy Advance. I'll try not to harp on this point though.

Design

The main core of gameplay is the same but with more polish. I won't cover the basics anymore so lets get straight into what makes this game work.

First off, we can run, big improvement. This combined with the subchips help in mitigating the combat which can get tedious really fast. Subchips also heal up MegaMan, meaning you need to be a bit more careful this time around although this doesn't hurt the game at all.

The biggest change here is the introduction of style changes. Through out the game MegaMan's appearance and abilities will change based on your play style. If you use a lot of chips, you'll receive the Custom Style which will increase the number of chips you can use. Stick with your Buster, you'll get the Guts style to increase that. If you find yourself using defensive chips then the shield style will protect you. Use a lot of Navi chips and the team style will increase the number of them you can carry. They each come with a random elemental effect, allowing you increased damage against some elements and you taking more damage from others. You don't have to use it for when the situation calls for it, but you'll be finding it all to useful to avoid using. Even if you don't like your style, you can level it up or wait for a new one.

Some of the stages are better this time around, but others are just boring or annoying. The Mother stage is fantastic, asking you to solve riddles to advance and the Gas Stage has you taking your time to utilize the environment. The Airplane and Bomb stages are more or less mazes in disguise and the castle stage is a nice pain in the ass as it steals your money and makes you restart the damn thing over and over. Traveling through the internet is about a thousand times easier with the place of short cuts and teleports through out the web. As a whole this one is designed better overall as it benefits from having the time needed to recognize the flaws with its predecessor.

More side-quests have been introduced with the jobs system where people will ask you to do jobs for them. In battle network 1, there were hardly any side quests.

Post game content has changed to keep track of your efforts in collecting all the battle chips, program advances and even some multiplayer achievements. New chips have been introduced as well under the * code which will work with any other code, giving the player more options to work with when building a folder.

Other changes involve attempts of balancing the folder system. Now you can only have 5 of the same type of card instead of 10. This was probably done for multiplayer more than single player, but they went ahead and introduced a bunch of new game breaking program advances so it's almost a moot point anyway.

Playability
Not much new to say here. As I said in the last review, the problem is the learning curve. This game is a bit harder than the last one as well, so if you didn't figure out the basics of folder building before, you better this time.

Extras

• There is a hidden style in this game called Hubstyle. You need to S-rank all the V3 Navi's, including Bass. The next time a style change occurs, you'll gain Hubstyle. It'll only show up once, but you gain all the benefits of the other styles without an element.
• Want some quick cash? Go to Undernet 5 and save in front of any of the green mystery datas. Open it up and reload if it doesn't give you 50,000 zennys. This will help you buy everything you need as you can keep doing it.
• Unfortunately there aren't many people left in the world still playing this game to trade with. Luckily you can use a glitch to duplicate some of your better chips after you beat the game. Detailed here.
• An easy and devastating folder to build is the Gater folder. Wind G, Fan G, and Gate G to unleash 900 points of damage across the field. This one won't beat Bass though, for that, try a folder built around the Bodyguard PA and add some +30 attack chips. That'll fuck him up.
• Speaking of PA folders, the custom style makes them so much easier to use, so I recommend you go for that style.
• Wood Style + GrassStage = regenerating health. You can exploit this even further in the next game.

Battle Network 2 is a huge improvement over Battle Network 1 but 3 tends to get the most praise as the story actually has a few well written sections to it. Still there's nothing wrong with this game that someone not dead set against changing the Mega Man play style won't enjoy. Of course if you hate Battle Network because it really isn't like most Mega Man games, this one won't change your mind.

Playthroughs
N/A