Mega Man Battle Network 2

"An amazing sequel that must be experienced to be belived."

Gameplay - 10
The gameplay in this game is a little more balanced in terms of VS play because certain chips have been toned down while others have been beefed up a bit and yet, they added almost twice as many chips to the tally. While I miss being able to use the old navi chips, the new ones replace them nicely. It would be cool if they included all the navis as hidden bosses - after all their ghosts are still wandering the net, right?

My only gripe about the game is that they made it so you have to discard chips in order to add new ones but using custom or the special style make that less of an issue as you start with more chips to begin with. Talking about styles brings me to my next complaint...

The charged shot of the styles are much too weak. You see, about 30% through the game, you come across the Change.bat which allows you to change your style depending on how you battle. There are 4 Elements and 4 Playing styles. The elements are as follows: Heat, Aqua, Wood, Elec. This is all that you need to know about at this point because these are what determine your charged buster shot. You may or may not recall that in the first game, your fully leveled, fully charged Buster Shot would deal 80 damage. Not anymore. A fully charged, fully leveled Buster Shot deals a measly 25 damage. If you have the ''Site'' style, it'll deal up to 50 Damage and that's it! Your elemental shots are weak as well. I belive the most powerful among them is the Wood style but it only hits the panel 2 spaces in front of you so someone could hide at the back and take you for all you got. Just one of my personal dislikes about this installment.

Battles can now contain more varied panels such as one for magnet, one for grass(which can heal you if you are equipped with a Wood style), one for poison that hurts everyone, one for heat that damages any non heat element creature or navi and, holes in addition to the rocks from the first game. There are more that I have forgotten but you get the idea.

Story - 8
The story pciks up a few months after the first game which may make it a little harder for new gamers to pick up and know what's going on. With that said, all they would be missing out on is a few puns and story related stuff. The story propells itself forward in a much better style than the first with the inclusion of the ''Jobs'' board that you can do when the story starts to drag on or when you just feel like taking a break from what you've been doing. Sometimes, jobs must be completed to propell the story forward. The story seems to be directed towards a much younger audience than what it seems is playing this game. Younger kids aren't, to my knowledge, huge Megaman Fans but if there is a game that can grab them, it's this one with it's force fed story and collecting properties.

Audio/Video - 7
The music is a remix of the original game's tunes with some of it's own thrown in. Overall, it's pretty good but with the more techno/electronica style to it, it seems to have a much more frantic pace which at times wasn't nessicary at all. However, while in those life or death situations such as the world being destroyed, the increased pace give you more of a feel of urgency. Sound effects are a little above par for sound effects and get the job done well.

Replayability - 10
Did you ever play Pokémon? Did you like wandering around, collecting those little monsters and then leveling them up so you could battle your friends? If so, then you'll love this game for months! First, you play the game all the way through and beat the boss. Then, you play some more because you need to find the chips you didn't collect...What's this? There's an extra area opened up? A whole new internet is available? Yes! The WWW is available and includes it's own, secret navis and chips. So...You've beaten the game and collected all the chips. What now? Battle your friends and try to win some ''secret chips''! That's what. Oh! You're not going to win those chips without thinking about a strategy for your decks or learning how your friend battles. The replay in this game is phenomenal to say the least!

To buy or to rent? - Buy
I've seen someone say that you should rent this game because it's not everyone's cup of tea but if it's not what you like, you'll know within the first day and EB will take it back without question in that time so go buy it! Besides, Blockbuster doesn't seem to be renting GBA games anymore.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 06/19/02, Updated 06/19/02