The best Mega Man games you probably haven’t played yet | Full Review - Mega Man Battle Network

Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection is a bundle of unconventional RPG-style Mega Man games set in a separate universe from the main Mega Man stories.

🟩Pros

+Unique gameplay mechanics, especially the combat

+An unconventional but refreshing take on the Mega Man series, even for today's standards

+Six main games resulting into 10 total titles in one bundle

+Added new features like an HD filter, multiplayer, and artwork gallery

🟥Cons

-Even if it is a grand compilation, the price is asking a lot for a nearly 20 year old retro game series

-No 3:2 black bar option for filling out the rest of the screen

Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection is a grand compilation of the six-part Mega Man Battle Network games (including the dual iterations of 3, 4, 5, and 6) that were originally released way back in the 2000s for the Game Boy Advance, now ported and remastered for newer gen consoles – Switch, Playstation, and PC. With three games comprising each forming two Volumes.

Set in an alternate universe

The Mega Man Battle Network games, or Battle Network for short, takes place in a distant future where the digital world has taken over people’s daily lives. Players take on the role of the fifth-grader Lan Hikari, a young boy who is the operator of an online Avatar called MegaMan.EXE.

These online avatars called NetNavi are effectively AI assistants that also function as avatars for their human operators, doing various tasks, including acting as anti-virus measures. In this case, Lan Hikari's avatar is MegaMan.EXE. Together, they will battle and delete viruses and other NetNavis that threaten the Internet.

Pokemon inspirations

Aside from being a game primarily designed for handheld at the time, the game could essentially be described as a “Pokemon-ized” version of the Mega Man franchise and features a gameplay that is much more closer to the Pokemon than being an actual side-scrolling action game like the mainline Mega Man games. However, the gameplay of Pokemon and Battle Network are still so different that it would be a huge disservice to Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection if I just leave it at that description.

Gameplay Analysis

The gameplay of Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection features two main components. The part where players control Lan Hikari and roam around the real world, and the dungeon crawling part where players control his avatar, MegaMan.EXE instead and roam inside the digital world full of viruses and other avatars. While the RPG-esque gameplay of Pokemon is somewhat resembled here, it turns itself into a whole new unique experience by incorporating hacker culture and The Matrix influences— themes that have just recently reached heights in the early 2000s as well.

Internet of things

Since almost every aspect in this distant future is connected and powered by computers and the internet, almost every electronic device in the real world is accessible by MegaMan.EXE too, including appliances and trivial things, and they do have their own digital space that is in essence another dungeon to crawl into.

The story of the six games all follow Lan Hikari and his avatar MegaMan.EXE, against varying cyberthreats, both new and recurring, and has remained mostly consistent in tone and writing. Everything boils down to stopping a powerful cyberthreat from enacting their evil goals, while continuously providing lore, history, and increasingly evolving gameplay mechanics for each iteration.

As with the nature of the digital world, the more advanced the technology, the same goes with the dangers that come into play. As such, to aid these NetNavi avatars in their anti-virus work, “battle chips” have been invented as a means to protect avatars and to allow them to inflict a lot of damage.

Unconventional combat mechanics

The combat of Battle Network is the most unique aspect of this game series, which involves players controlling MegaMan.EXE in random combat encounters with the battles taking place in a 6x3 grid. Players move MegaMan around the tiles in real-time to dodge enemy attacks and launch their own attacks. This whole dynamic is pretty basic at first glance, but the addition of so-called “battle chips” into the equation made all the difference.

You’d think the format is fully real-time here, but it's actually turn-based in the grand scheme of things. Before the battles start, players must strategize which battle chips to bring in (from a randomized pool) which will represent the different abilities and moves available for real-time use, aside from the basic attack. After a while, you are allowed to bring in new chips for use again, forming the “turns” of the combat system. This basically comprises the deck building aspect of the game.

Deck building before it was cool

There are different types of chips, and taken randomly from the player’s entire pool. From that random selection, players will have to select the actual chips they bring in, with some strict rules — either they are all the same, or they contain the same code. These chips mostly constitute the main damage dealers in combat.

The basic attack works, but its not meant as a main damage dealer and you’ll find its damage very underwhelming to use in most encounters — unless you turn on the Buster max mode, which is a cheat setting that makes the damage an instant kill for all enemies.

I found the rules for selecting the chips are mainly restrictive at first, because you can only bring in either duplicate chips or chips with the same code (which rarely happens more than 2 times), but after some time, it actually adds a lot of depth to the deck building element, making players think about different synergies and potential combinations with the chip codes. Resulting in some amazing combination of chips to use, despite the randomized nature.

This change in style actually shocked me, as while I have known and played Mega Man games since I was a child, I have only played the mainline games so far and these were action-packed side-scrolling platformers, far from the turn-based, deck building, Pokemon-ized gameplay of Battle Network. Despite this, I’m actually having a blast playing this almost 20 year old game series.

A consistent, but still evolving experience

All six games follow this gameplay format, with some slight changes to the formula per iteration but never really revolutionizing anything. For example, Battle Network 2 adds the ability to change Mega Man’s style — meaning his weaponry and elemental affinity, another example is Battle Network 6’s BeastOut ability allowing Mega Man to turn into a more powerful beast form ala-Power Rangers. The biggest change so far in the series was Battle Network 4’s  change in artstyle.

Additional "remastered" features

And as if over a hundred hours of content isn’t enough, the game also adds a multiplayer PVP mode focusing on the unique deck building and 6x3 grid combat, with a ranked game mode and battle chip trading to boot, a nice cherry on top with a viewable gallery and music player commemorating all the content they’ve done throughout the series.

Players can also activate a high-resolution filter to eliminate the retro blockiness, but in my opinion just makes the game look ugly and worse than the native retro graphics. The game maintains the same GBA 3:2 ratio aspect ratio and instead inserts Mega Man backgrounds for the remaining screen space, with no option for black bars.

Conclusion:

Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection is the definitive experience of the Battle Network series, now playable for modern gaming devices. It features unconventional gameplay mechanics compared to the usual Mega Man offering that we all know, but it's the very thing that makes it unique and stand out from the rest of the franchise. Even for this bundle, the full AAA price of $60 is asking a lot, but If you are a fan of Mega Man and/or don’t mind retro graphics, this game is worth a try.