Mega Man Battle Network

"All your base are belong to us."

Real quote from the game up there. Programmer's jokes rule ^_^.This is a wonderful game, and probably always will be, even after several sequels come out, which at the time of this writing MMBN2 is coming out very soon. Anyway, on with the review...

Gameplay -

An innovative system. Basically, you fight in two 3x3 grids, with one being red (you) and the other being blue (the enemies). You move around on this grid, firing your buster, which is fairly weak, at enemies...this may sound bad...but it's not, because you have ''battle chips'' which are special attacks that are so powerful because even the weakest does 6x the damage of a fully powered (not charged) up buster shot. However, they're a one shot deal, and you have only 30 in any given battle, only 5 of them at any time able to be taken out of your folder and put into Megaman's hands. However, there are strict rules about choosing more than one chip: It has to be either the same chip, or a chip with the same ''code'', which is a letter from A-Z that is used only for this purpose and trading (people that want to trade with you ingame usually ask for a specific chip for a specific code.) Anyway, these chips vary from strictly damaging, to complete and total invulnerability for a small time period. About things other than the battles, you basically have two worlds; In one you are Lan Hikari, a fifth grader with an awesome NetNavi...and in the other, you are Lan's PET NetNavi, Megaman.EXE. A PET is a small device you can ''jack in'' with to most technological things (no dirty jokes, thanks, they've been made enough). Most PETs have a NetNavi, which is the PET's avatar inside the cyber world.

10/10

Graphics -

Smooth, bright, easy on the eye...I'm sorry I can't give anything better than that, but I don't usually judge games by graphics, and therefore am not putting in any long comments about the eye-candy. However, they're wonderful, so they get a 10/10.

10/10

Story -

You are, as I said, Lan Hikari, who has Megaman.EXE as his NetNavi...most NetNavis, in this day and age, are equipped to be able to bust viruses, as the threat of viruses is getting overwhelming...Anything connected to the internet isn't safe anymore, and almost everything else has been tampered with and had viruses put in...It's a takeover.

Control -

Oh, man, easy to move Megaman.EXE on the grid, easy to move him in cyber space, easy to move Lan in real space...The only time control really suffers is when you're sliding on ice...Then again I suppose it's supposed to suffer there...

10/10

Sound/Music -

The sound effects are sharp, very much so, and very good. Especially with headphones, because the GBA speaker SUCKS. Music suffers because basically, you have 5 music themes that you'll hear a lot: Town, Cyber world, the obligatory Danger theme, Battle, and Boss.

9/10

To buy or rent -

For those skeptics out there, rent it (but isn't that always true? ) But for RPG fanatics or Megaman fans (or both) MMBN is a buy, and I'm sure its sequel will be too.

Fred out.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 06/07/02, Updated 06/07/02