Mega Man Battle Network 3 Blue

"C:\My Documents\Reviews\MegaMan3BN.exe"

Hey, look, it's another Mega Man game!

At this point, the box leapt off the shelf and forced me to make a purchase, resulting in my two-year ownership of Mega Man: Battle Network 3 (White Edition). Would I suggest other people to buy it, too? Maybe…if you can stand a large quantity of “if's” and “but's.”

Mega Man has been everywhere, almost as much as Mario: Kart racing, Soccer, 3D action, and of course, 2D platforming. When the Game Boy Advance was released, a Japanese game called “Rockman Exe” created a new breed of Mega Man: the RPG. Sure, it's a good idea on paper. But Capcom simply can't be trusted with any new IP's any more.

The series is up to its 6th installment, and the seventh is coming to the DS in 3D. How many do we need? Not enough for this dumb, ham-fisted attempt to be like the Pokémon games and make two versions. The two differ in only several key ways, such as whether you fight a fire boss or an ice boss, or what power you get during a cutscene. It's absolutely useless, and it's really just one of many reasons why to just stay out of the Battle Network series in the first place: they ain't going anywhere.

What makes this series of games so similar, you ask? RPG's are played for their story most of the time, right? What you're reading for most of this game is a bunch of bratty kids in a script that doesn't deserve to be made into a boring TV show (which has been done). There's no real plotline to connect it all, besides a Team Rocket-esque group out to hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete and blow up "all teh internets and there 4um peons" (me included). The rest of it is meaningless battling and visiting.

Lan--a delicious pun as well as the main character--has a little device that holds a virtual dude named Mega Man, who is somehow his brother as well (not explained at all in the sequels, by the way). They have some really ugly friends who like to duel with these little people, forcing them to battle, fight viruses, take down corrupt organizations, and so on. Then Mega Man goes rampant, summons the Pfhor, and invades the Marathon…oh, wait, wrong game.

But here's the thing: I just don't care. These little kids run around their home town, doing random, miscellaneous things while those above them over the screen are forced to wipe the saliva off their lips. The bad guys have no motive; they just feel like taking over the world on Thursday, perhaps. Heck, throw Captain Jack Sparrow in the whole mess and it'd be even more ridiculous; it probably wouldn't take anything away from the already meaningless "brah brah brah yuk yuk blah blah" nonsense. It's such a boring and useless premise that I'm just kind of disappointed that the developers didn't decide to just not even do a story at all.

Well, if they stuck it all together and called it a game, there might as well be some gameplay, right? Actually, the battle system is really fun, but it gets really old after a while. So old, in fact, that halfway through the game you realize, “Hey, I'm not having fun.” And that's when you just go /wrist and blow off the world, playing your World of Warcraft or whatever you do in your basement. It's not bad, but it's not that enjoyable to play.

The battle system is well designed. You are given a little grid that you move Mega Man around, and your enemies have another one adjacent to yours. Then you shoot and blast each other over the grids (no crossing the middle line) using your blaster and your little chips. Think of your chips as a deck of cards in a trading card game, where you get advanced shots and super powers, and then it all fits together. For the first few hours, this game is so much fun to play and blast your virus enemies to bits…

…And then the volume of the random encounters sets in, and you realize…”I'll be doing this again and again and again and again…for a good two hours at a time with the exact same enemies…” And then the battle system reveals itself as a monotonous, too complex weight that presses down on you with every random encounter. And there are way too many of those. It gets so annoying that it was the main reason that I stopped playing: the battle system got sickening after prolonged overdose.

The roaming segments aren't much better, though they follow the usual RPG paradigm. You walk around, talking to people, fighting random things, checking random objects, doing whatever the story deems necessary for the brats' survival in cyberland. The world is okay, but the isometric viewpoint is a little annoying for navigation purposes (like when you have to squeeze through a narrow passage). It's not always a problem, but it is irritating.

And that's the biggest problem with this game: everything has a little flaw that makes it too hard to stomach. The story has bad writing; the gameplay is poor after the first three hours, yadda yadda yadda. There is nothing worse than playing a mediocre RPG, because you are going to be doing that thing for hours on end.

At least it's long, if you can stomach such doings. The game clocks in at a little over twenty hours--give or take depending on your playing style. There's also a multiplayer of sorts where you battle and trade, but it's also something that gets old fast, and it needs multiple copies of only the third game. So, yeah, don't bother. The single player will get you far, though, with collecting aspects, optional quests, and lots of secrets to uncover.

Well, does it look good at least? Eh, for the GBA it does look nice. It all has a distinct 3D effect that gives a little bit of personality, and a lot of bright colors compliment the dark, small screen of the Game Boy. It's enjoyable as far as graphics go; fire it up on a DS, however, and the game does show its simplicity once everything is illuminated.

Is it bad? Heck no. For the aging system it's a nice piece of work: it does the system justice. Is it perfect? No, the isometric, 3D view makes it harder to move (as said before) and some things just don't quite look right in the effect. It's an awkward combination of 3D and 2D that just doesn't always work out for the style that the developers chose. There's also a very large lack of any "blammo", neat effects that most RPG's have, one of those “Whoa” moments. Mega Man has mostly boring areas filled with some mildly interesting looking people.

How about the sound? Average for the GBA, which is fairly bad for this day and age. It doesn't do a whole lot of movement…or really anything, really, so think Animal Crossing with a Game Boy Color sound. The battles do pick up, I'm exaggerating, but it is very dull and uninviting. It's one of those "why even bother" games where you just mute the sound and move on with your adventuring and virus blocking.

Mega Man Battle Network 3 is a “huh.” It's a “Really?” and a “WTH??” The game seems like such a cool idea, and then you go to play it…and it just falls flat. It's not horrible, but it's not a good game. If you see it cheap, pick an edition of the series somewhere, but don't expect the next coming of handhelds. Besides, if Norton and Symantec Anti-Virus keep up their work, we'll be overrun by viruses long before this future can take place. This Mega Man? Not so Mega.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 08/10/07