Mega Man Battle Network 4 Red Sun

"Megaman Battle Network fans, prepare to be disappointed."

Update: After playing the game a bit more and getting over the horrible story, I realized the game isn't SO bad, and that I was a bit too harsh with the old score.

Megaman Battle Network 4, a game I've been anticipating for months after I beat the spectacular Megaman Battle Network 3. I'm not going into the history of the previous games, as you shouldn't be reading this if you haven't played them. And I'm not saying that because of the plot, just that they were much better games. What went wrong with this one?

Now, Capcom isn't known for intriguing plots in their games, but what they did for this game was just horrible. They didn't even try. An asteroid is coming to destroy the earth and.. yeah that's great. Really, it doesn't matter. What you have for a story is 3 tournaments. And in the tournaments you fight random people, determined at the beginning of the game. The fun thing is that you not only have to fight the navis in the tournament, you have to get your nose into their operator's business. Every match ends up with you having to do a mission involving your opponent. These range from being sent to find people on the internet and getting items from them (usually without a clue where to find them), or finding people in the real world and talking to them. Sometimes there will be mini-games and what not. Some people may find them fun, I don't. People will agree on one thing though, and that's that these scenarios are annoying. And they're all random. Of course, you'll have fun playing through all of them when you play the game 3 times. Yes, instead of giving us a good plot, Capcom decided to make 3 tournaments with random scenarios and make us play through the game 3 times. Oh and the game increases in difficulty everytime you start a new game+. I don't like it, but that's just my opinion, as I know some people like harder games. Oh,and the souls you get will be random, except for the first one (Guts in Red, Aqua in Blue), so you'll have to play 3 times to get them all. Let's talk about souls, shall we?

Souls, the fun and new way to battle. Except not. For those unfamiliar with souls, when Megaman's soul resonates with another Navi's soul, he gets to unite with their soul in battle. This grants Megaman some pretty nice abilities, depending on the soul. Roll Soul for example, lets you recover 10% of your max hp everytime you use a chip. Megaman's charge shot becomes a Roll Arrow that does 30 damage, and if a navi has any chips on them, they'll be destroyed. The souls also change Megaman's look. For more info on souls, there's an FAQ all about them. Now, the thing is you have to sacrifice a chip that's the same element as the soul. Using Roll Soul for example, you have to sacrifice a recovery chip to use it. Too bad you can't use your regular chip to do it (preset chip that always appears at the start of every battle). If you have a good folder however, this isn't much a of problem. It is kind of hard to get good chips though, when they removed the add button. There was no reason to remove such a helpful feature. Another thing about souls is that they last for only 3 measily turns. Then you're back to regular Megaman. The styles were much more useful in the other games, as they were semi-permanent, and you got them depending on your play style. Here, you get souls randomly. I had to wait till my third game to get Wind Soul, the only soul I really wanted.

Another new feature to battling is Dark Chips. When Megaman's getting beaten up badly in a battle, he can select a Dark Chip from where chips #9 and #10 should be (there's only a white space normally). In exchange for using these things though, Megaman permanently loses 1HP from his max. Not cool. Also, if you didn't manage to kill the enemy with the dark chip, Megaman will have glitches in the battle, such as moving forward for no reason, to HP draining, to whatever. Eventually if you use a lot of dark chips, Megaman's soul will be tainted with darkness and you'll be able to use Dark Chips as you please. You'll also not be able to use chips that are light, and won't be able to use souls. The bad outweighs the good, and this deters people from using the dark chips. A good idea, executed poorly. The Dark Chips could have been a great basis for a
story, but instead they're just there.

One last thing about battles is folder building. Each game offered more customization then the last, but that stopped with this game. All chips have been limited to only 3 codes. The fun of making folders is gone, and we're left with unoriginal folders using the same chips (Gun Del Sol, anyone?). By your first playthrough, you'll most likely still be using cannon chips, as finding useful ones in useful codes is hard.

The music and graphics in this game are okay. And just that. There's pointless changes of course. The main theme from the first 3 games is removed entirely. Also, ACDC town has been remodeled for no reason. Let's throw continuity out the window here people, and have Dex living in ACDC even though they made such a big deal out of him moving in the 3rd game.

In short, this game was just put together. A lazy piece of work to get some quick cash. You don't really need to play the game to know that though. I mean, 2 versions of the same game, with only a few differences between them?. Then there's the e-reader support, which is only in Japan right now. And then there's the linking with Megaman Zero 3 to get a secret chip in this game. Oh and then there's all the spelling errors; "What a polite young man she was!". There's lots more where that came from. Along with the lack of story, annoyance of random scenarios and random souls, this game isn't all that great. I'd say that MMBN5 would probably be good, but knowing Capcom, I wouldn't put it past them.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 07/10/04, Updated 08/07/04