Mega Man Battle Network

"Action, Adventure, or an RPG game?"

A weird mix of action, adventure, and RPG, Mega Man Battle Network is a fun but short game that can also be used to link up and play other people.

The plot by itself is a little boring (hook up to the net in the game, beat the bad guys) and a bit of a rip off from the Pokemon games. You control a young boy by the name of Lan and his cyber PET program Mega Man and must stop an evil organization whose goal is to take control of the net and the world by using their own PET programs.

Ho-Hum.

The game features smooth, clear, and bright graphics (unlike some other Gameboy Advance games) and so-so music. In the net/dungeon levels the backgrounds look kind of psychedelic, with wavy patterns and changing colors. Truthfully I never thought I'd see this level of graphics on a handheld unit.

While Lan the game play is mainly like an RPG with out the fighting: go talk to people and find out what's happening to advance the story line. This never gets too involved, so don't shy away from this game if you don't like really complex RPG's.

As Mega Man the gameplay is mostly as an adventure or action game. The computer network you fight in is really more like a dungeon, with random battle encounters. There are puzzles along the way you'll have to solve like frozen floors that you can't stop on and areas that don't have any real path so you look like your walking on nothing, but again these are never too hard and you should be able to figure it out without much trouble. As Mega Man you have a level, but it is just a reflection of how powerful you have made Mega Man by upgrading him with power ups. This thankfully means that you don't get experience points, so you do not have to waste hour after hour mindlessly level building like standard RPGs.

The battle system is where this game is the most fun.When you encounter an enemy (random, RPG style) you will be on a field of squares, 3 x 6. The field reminds me of a strategy game but you move around on the squares in real time. Half the field is yours and half belongs to the enemies. You can't move onto the other side but you can use weapons to 'steal' squares or even break them, thus limiting the enemies movements. This makes for typically fast and fun fights with you trying to dodge enemies and using the best weapons to take them down as fast as possible. Why fast? Because you get a ranking after every battle. The better the ranking, the better the prize (either an amount of money or a weapon).

The majority of your time will be spent looking for 'battle chips' the secondary weapons that you use in battle. You have an active amount of thirty battle chips you carry into battle, where the game lets you pick from a random five to use, normally one at a time. The battle chips get reused so you never have to buy or find new copies, though you'll want to find extra of the best battle chips. You get battle chips mainly by beating the corresponding enemy, while getting a good ranking. This can be a little bit tedious at times, as the enemies don't always drop battle chips, but is still a lot better and faster then level building in your normal RPG.

This is yet another area of the game where Capcom decided to rip off Nintendo's Pokemon games. There are 175 chips in the game (which you can trade with other players), but the 176th chip isn't in the game. Yep, Capcom decided people like being tortured by the fact that the coolest battle chip can't be fairly gotten in the game itself, but must be gotten like Mew of Pokemon fame -- by the company. So be ready to break out the cheat devices. At least Capcom didn't make two versions of the same game with battle chips missing in each version, but present in the opposite one.

There are truly only two bad things about this game. The first is that you can only save one game at a time. This, of course, greatly limits replay if you like to have a saved game that you can pick up and use to play against other people. The second problem comes from the challenge level. Simply put: there isn't much of it. Sure you might be stumped on where to go next or how to beat the latest boss, but that shouldn't stop you for more then twenty minutes at best. I beat the last boss (therefore supposedly the most powerful) without any problems the second time I played against him, without reading or hearing any strategies for fighting him from other people.

So if you want a fast and fun game on the go, this is it....

Just don't expect Mega Man done Final Fantasy style.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/11/01, Updated 11/11/01