Mega Man Battle Network 3 White

"Jack In!! Megaman, Execute!"

MegaMan Battle Network 3 (MMBN3)Is MegaMan's latest adventure on the GameBoy Advance. If you have played the previous games, and enjoyed them, this game will not dissappoint you. MMBN is Capcom's attempt at making MegaMan into an RPG, and so far they have been doing it right!

Story 7/10
The story is pretty simple, it starts off with the WWW (The World 3)attempting to collect Tetra Codes for some unknown reason but whatever they are planning cant be good. Along the way you will enter into the N1-Grand Prix which is a tournament for NetNavis to battle it out to see who is the strongest.

Gameplay 9/10
Overall excellent gameplay. If your new to the series ill explain how the system works. The RPG genre has seen nothing like this ever. You get into a random battle and you get Battle Chips which allow MegaMan access to extremely strong attacks. When you run out of battle chips you can use your trusty buster. Instead of simply relying on stats to determine how much damage you will do, how often you will evade etc. you will be mostly controlling all of that yourself. If you want to evade an attack, you will have to move out of the way instead of hoping it will miss you.
The Navi Customizer which is new to the series in this game allows you to customize MegaMan to your own personal preference. It allows you to give him more HP if you want or even to make his buster stronger if you feel the need.
The Style System is back again and this time they added a few new ones including Ground, Shadow, and Bug Styles. The styles allow MegaMan to do certain things he could normally not do such as improve his buster strength, or start out with more chips. The style system has changed slightly though. Instead of leveling up every once in awhile you will be given a Navi Customizer program to enhance MegaMan. You can also only have one style at a time in this game which is a decrease from the last one which was at two

Graphics 6/10
If you have played the predecessors you wont see many changes. Its the same engine which means that MegaMan will be using the same sprite as will the enemies that are from the predecessors. The graphics have not improved at all which is not always a bad thing (I personally love the sprite MegaMan uses when he is in battle) but it would be nice to see a different sprite every once in awhile.

Sound 9/10
For a GameBoy Advance game I found myself enjoying the music quite a lot. The battle music is not bad and the boss battle music is one of my favorites. The sound effects are crisp and clean. I find myself humming some of the tunes occasionally

Difficulty 6/10
If you have played the other ones you should be pretty competent with the battle system and its not very difficult. If you have not played the other ones you should catch on rather quickly and even if you did not, you should have a general idea of what you need to do and how you have to do it

Buy or Rent
Buy Buy Buy! This is a great game even if you are new to the series. Of course strongly recommend that you play the predecessors first so the story is more enriching, but if you feel the need to skip go right ahead. This game will put you up to date with everything without leaving you totally clueless

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/22/03, Updated 07/22/03