Mega Man Battle Network 3 White

"MegaMan... Hurried"

When I first picked up MegaMan Battle Network 3, I was extremely excited. The past Battle Network games I had enjoyed throughly. After talking to the Target Clerk, unwrapping the game, and putting it into my GBA, and playing it... I can say, it fell flat.

The first thing I will discuss is MegaMan Battle Network 1 and 2. MMBN1 and 2 were both overlooked games. They features Great storylines, great battles, and great fun! I enjoyed them both, and infact on a 13 hour car trip, I played MMBN2 6 hours straight.

So, how does MMBN3 compare? Badly. The only minor bad part about 1 and 2 were the scavnger hunts, and thats saying alot, since I gave Wind Waker a 9. The problem with the scavnger hunts were that not only would you have to take criss-crossing paths throughout the net, you would have to face random battles while searching the net. It seems CapCom has taken everything about MMBN 1 and 2, and made it into a game titled ''MegaMan Battle Network 3.''

So, why did I give this game a 7? I gave MMBN3 a 7 because it's a great game. It is filled with a fun story, great graphics, music and sound, and great length and gameplay.

Let me start out by introducing the MegaMan Battle Network Series. You play as two people, someone in the real world(Lan) and someone in the Cyber World(MegaMan). See, it is the year 200X, and everybody has a PET(PErsonal Terminal), each PET is an advanced Cell-phone type thing. It's a phone, web browser, E-mailer, and other things. You can spend Netcash on it and look at textbooks. Each PET has something called a Net Navi, it's a personality in your PET. Lan's is MegaMan.

Using MegaMan you can jack into everything. Most items in the world(TV's, Phones, Blackboards) all have Jack in Ports, where MegaMan can explore. You can move MegaMan around after jacking in. There he can find items, talk to programs(Robots who run the item), and fight. Each fight takes place on a 6x6 grid, 3x3 is red, and the other half is blue. Here you can move around and move your MegaBuster, which is fairly weak, but is used while your custom guage fills up. When the guage fills up, you get to pick a chip(or more), this chip helps MegaMan(eg: Cannon deals 40 damage). The game is one of them most original games I have ever played.

The game's storyline is great. It is filled with twists and turns. Many times I was shocked to find something out, which would've been fairly obvious if I followed the clues. The game's storyline is sure to pleae.

So how do the graphics add up. The graphics, are very interesting. Many times, you'll find yourself looking at a very interesting background in certain areas. For Example, in the Zoo, golden monkey shillouhette's spin, and when they turn over, they're actually elephants. It's hard to explain, but all the backgrounds look great. Each area has it's own background and style of paths. The paths have great details, and are all 3-d. Another new thing to the gakme is something called a mainstreet. The Mainstreet shows you the way to the CyberSquare(A place to shop, talk, post on message boards, etc.). It was a good idea. The rest of the graphics look exactly as they should, if not better. MegaMan and other important Navi's are fully customized, but NPC navi's that play no vital part are in three forms.

The music and SFX in this game get the job done. Some music is good, some is great. Some will be in your head, others will not. The music fits each area perfectly, the Beach music sounds nice and well... beachy. One of my favorite parts in the games is when the music goes silent, it builds up tension. The SFX are also nice. MegaMan's buster gives a short sound when it shoots, and some chips make different noises when they work. It sounds like it should.

Music, SFX, and graphics are nice in this game. They pull the game together, but the best part is gameplay. My biggest beef in this game is that the game begins as an adventure and turns into a scavenger hunt. The first place this is seen is when you try out the preliminaries for a netbattle competition. All three 30-hour taking tasks at different points throughout the game are the same. Find this data around the net. Another time you see this is when you work for somebody, or when you help some kid in the hospital. After doing this a few times, it finally comes out to ''Let the damn kid die, I am not searching the internet again!''. It sounds cruel, but thats what it is. The other parts of the game are great though. Going through levels each with a puzzle. The school level has you searching through the level for different keys to open doors. The puzzles as with the sacvenger hunts seem rushed, unlike in the past ones. For example, the hospital level has you turning fire chips into fire to burn down things(This is the first game hat adds feeling to the cyber world). It's interesting, but not as great as with in MMBN2 where you had to figure out riddles to crack a code.

The controls in the game are great. Nothing really ever changes, except when switching between the real world and cyber world.

The final thing to discuss is length and difficuly. As with the other games, this game is long and hard(No pun intended). The riddles will keep you guessing, and the enemies will keep you fighting, both mix in to create a faboulous game. The game in all lasts probobly from 20 - 30 hrs(Extremely long for a GBA game, as most X-Box, PS2, and GCN games are on avg 30 hrs.), and won't get tiresome(although the scavenger hunts might makes you stop and continue some other time). The game is hard, and you will probobly get quite a number of gameovers.

So whats my final word and score? The game scores a 7/10 for a great game, yet hurried at times. The scavenger hunts seem as though the game designers said screw it, and made levels out of finding data. The Navi customizer is a Great tool, yet frustrating at times when some programs are neccessary, and deciding whether or not to put an ATK1 or a Charge1. You should definitely buy this game AFTER playing no 1 and 2. 2 is the best in my opinion, but 1 and 3 arent games that deserve less then a 7 score.
Final Word: The game is a great buy, yet hurried, if you have played the padt two and liked them. If you didnt like the past two, then forget about these.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/21/03, Updated 07/21/03