Mega Man Battle Network 3 Blue

"A classic case of a great game hindered by repetitiveness."

Megaman Battle Network is the latest spin-off of the now stale Megaman series. After hearing great things about the series, I decided to pick up Mega Man Battle Network 3: Blue, and I have to say I am sorely disappointed.

You play as Lan, a elementary school student living in a futuristic era where the entire world revolves around the 'net. In this age, everyone owns something called a PET, these PETs are tiny little super programs, they can do everything from waking you up and planning your day, to 'netbatteling viruses. Speaking of viruses, they seem to be running rampart, the days of good 'ol Norton are over, simply running a virus scanner helps no more! Instead, you battle them... a tad inconvenient, but hey, this is a game, running Norton Anti-Virus every time something goes wrong wouldn't translate well to a game now would it?

When I first played the game, I was addicted and awestruck, this is what all GBA games should be like! But, after playing for a few mere hours I started to notice the games flaws. Namely, it's repetitiveness, but that will come later.

Firstly, for the gameplay. I love it! It has a very interesting battle system. The battles are random, non-avoidable battles(excluding items that allow you to avoid the random encounters). The battles are where the game really shines though. I never found myself running from a battle(I never even figured out how), because they were fun to do! The battle system works a little like this. You find a battle to do(random encounter). You then are put into the battle screen, the battle screen is a grid. You move Megaman around and use your blaster and such, but here is where the depth comes in, the chips. At the top of the battle screen is a small bar that slowly fills, once it is full, you are free to enter the chip menu, where you choose your real weapons, the "chips" are your real form of doing damage. You choose them, then they are assigned in the order you chose them to the A button. There are over 200 chips to use, and all of them serve their purpose.

Adding to the strategy of it all, the chips are assigned letters. If you have 2 chips of the same letter, you may select both of them, or if the chip is assigned a "*" it becomes compatible with all chips. This makes for a quite strategic battle every time, but also leads some to believe that the game hates them when they don't get the chips they want... Anyways, the sheer amount of customization in the game is also quite cool. You see, Megaman.exe can "transform" or "evolve" into different armours. When he transforms to different armours, you gain new abilities, such as rapid fire buster cannon or shields once the battle starts. There is also a cool aspect of the game they can the "NaviCust". In this "program", you use different weird shapes in a rectangle, which in turn effect your stats.

Now, the gameplay mechanics are good... but now for the flaws. It is the most repetitive game I have ever played, which leads to overall boringness. You start the game with variety, but once you get a few hours into it, you get a strange sense of deja-vu, you have done this all before... multiple times. You see, Mega Man Battle Network 3 has been hindered by the classic "go there, do that, now do it again" syndrome. The entire game revolves around going somewhere, defeating an enemy and or collecting the item, then waiting until you get your next defeat the enemy and or collect the item mission. Doing this over and over and over is boring, and essentially ruins a great game. This really comes to light when you have to scour the entire net just to find a few things, so what could just have been eliminated, taking you straight to the point, is tacked on to lengthen the game. This point of the game almost lead me to hate it, because to me, this is one of the most important parts of a game, they have to keep a variety. Sometimes I wonder how short the game would be if Capcom stopped the game when it started getting repetitive...

As for the aesthetics? They are average. All of the old environments that could be rehashed from the old games to this one, has been rehashed here. The controls are ok, for an isometric quasi-3D game that is.

Sound was another thing that burst the Megaman bubble. It also suffers from repetitiveness. After hearing the "Danger!" theme once, you have heard it over and over... and over, because it plays every time that situation arises. If Capcom had gotten off their lazy asses and remixed the music half way through the game, it would have been fine. But, they didn't, and the music gets boring because of it. The fact that the music isn't very quality in the first place doesn't make any things better.

Overall, I didn't like the game as much as other probably do, but I am awestruck to see how many people can simply overlook such major flaws. If you want a great game and can stand doing the same boring thing over and over, Megaman Battle Network 3 is your game. But, if you want a great original game that can last 20+ hours and still feel fresh, look elsewhere... far elsewhere.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 08/16/04