Mega Man Battle Network 5: Team Protoman

"Sinking into darkness"

I'm a fan of Megaman games, and I'm always eager to at least try any newly released Megaman games. True, this game is still in Japanese only, but that doesn't stop me from trying this game far enough, and frankly...

Plot: 7/10

This game is overall about some evil guy named Dr. Regal who tries to envelope the world in darkness, and it's up to Lan, Megaman.EXE and their allies to stop him. A classic kind of plot, which gets even better with the classic style of people, that is, bad guys are bad, good guys are good, etc.

Gameplay: 3/10

Like the previous EXE games, the basic play of the game is this: You have a folder or two, and you can fill each with chips (the series' weapon) of your choice, and there you have your weapons to choose randomly during battle. There is a beautiful amount of chip variety in this game, even compared to the previous EXE games. And like the previous EXE games, there is a system called PA, where if in your chip selection during battle you choose multiple chips in a certain order, they will merge and become a more powerful weapon, and this system has been EXE gamers' fundamental assault unit from the start of the series.

As a sequel, this game carries over most features in EXE 4.
1) You have a system called Full Synchro, where if you hit an enemy when they're just about to attack, they will be stunned, and your next attack chip will double in power. However, getting hit during Full Sync mode will end that mode, and your weapons will all revert to normal. Oh, the Full Sync status carries over from normal battle to normal battle.
2) Another carryover is the Soul Unison system. Like how it was back in EXE 4, you sacrifice one battlechip to literally become a different kind of fighter to beat up the enemies for a short while.
3) Lastly, there's the Dark Chips, which are just another type of weapon with insane power but serious, irreversible drawback. Oh, and these Dark Chips can also be sacrificed to score a Chaos Unison, the darker, harder to use but more powerful type of Soul Unison.

This game looks promising with all those things, unfortunately, EXE 5 just doesn't live up as a good game. First, the exploration mode, where you wander around the environment while not in battle, is extremely fault intolerant. One wrong step and either you lose something you need or you'll have to start over. This, without a doubt, is downright frustrating, especially when you're in need of finishing an area quick because you have no time to use recovery items.

If that's not enough, take a look at the enemies. Like EXE 4, each type of enemy have 3 levels, each level having 2 sub-level. Every level of enemy can give you battlechip that represent their attack, and the stronger the enemy, the stronger the chip they give. That is what you think. The enemies grow powerful exponentially while your battlechips grow like a big fat turtle, which means you will be having serious problem tackling higher level enemies because your weapons just can't do enough damage, while they can kill you in one or two hits. Sure, you have PAs to make powerful weapons. But unlike previous EXE games, you are limited to 1 PA per battle, which is just an idiot idea in the eyes of EXE players since the weapons in this game is already weak.

Next in line of the frustration is the Liberate Mission. This is a supposedly snazzy feature in which you play strategy and action in limited time with up to 5 fighters (navis) during one mission. Look at the keyword: limited time. During every battle in Liberate Mission, you only have 3 STRICT turns to kill all enemies to win the battle and advance. In short, if the battlechip you need the most doesn't show up in three turns, you will not win. And the difficulty level of these missions grow exponentially as well, like, the fifth or sixth mission will be way tougher than the second or third one. Actually, Liberate Mission is indeed cool in one way that you can play as different Navis, but the luck restriction is just enough to negate this cool feature.

From my observation, Capcom seems to force the players to focus on Full Sync or Dark Chip, both will win battles with ease but very hard to use or very costly. Such enforcement is already wrong in too many ways, and the luck restriction in Liberate Missions just make things worse. Capcom, what were you thinking?

Playability: 5/10

This game may seem tame in the beginning, but after a while, it will be unplayable by beginners, so leave it to the experts.

Visual: 7/10

The playable characters' sprites and animiations are fine, albeit silly in some ways. But since each type of enemy has 6 different looks, this game scores terrible in terms of graphics creativity.

Audio: 9/10

This is the only part where the game's good at. The tunes are great, and the sound effects are fine.

Replay Value: 4/10

There is no such thing as different modes in this game, and considering that it's just hell long, there's no need to replay it no matter what.

Overall:

I actually like EXE games, but EXE 5's very, very poor gameplay aspect just can't make me like the game to such a good degree. Capcom, just kill the EXE series... it just can't live any longer.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 12/30/04, Updated 01/14/05