"High scores for nearly each department"

No small talk here, straight to the review

Gameplay: 8/10
The gameplay was quite good. The liberation missions were fun but at times predictable, but still it added an uncanny twist to the game. If you ask me Capcom pulled this game off, with the missions that you can play with other navis instead of just Megaman.

Storyline: 7/10
The whole storyline was quite intense and every scenario is worth watching. How Capcom described and showed the way the internet was taken over was rather interesting. Twists in the plotline also kept the plot lively and interesting. However, the ending was somewhat unbelievable and how the villain was apprehended was also somewhat cliched.

Graphics: 8/10 and 4/10
I've rated the graphics twice for a reason. The first one stands for the animation of the graphics, the color texture, tone, pixellation yadda yadda and the second one for the design. The animation was very good compared to most GBA games with smooth and even colour and hardly noticeable pixels. BUT... the design was awful, if you ask me compared to Megaman Battle Network 4. Although the panels on the battle screen looked more like the original MMBN, I preferred the MMBN 4 panels. The sanctuary panels looked plain ugly and the final boss looked like something from an old Viking movie.

Or maybe I just hate MMBN 3/2/1 art.

Music/Sound: 9/10
The music was a great improvement from MMBN 4. In MMBN 4, we had annoying repetitive, really high pitched music. Crisis music from MMBN 4 can burn your ears off. In MMBN 5, they've earned back their kudos. The crisis music is far better and calmer to one's earlobes. It is also played less. The timing of the songs was great but changed frequently if you kept entering different areas in the real world or just finished deleting a virus. That factor and the sound effects were the only two things which prevented the music section from getting a 10. The sounds were somewhat corny and reminded me of old Gameboy Mario games.

Characters: 9/10
Characters from this game were quite original. Each of them had a different variety of clothing and looks. My only criticism is that sometimes, the characters could not be seen clearly enough. For one scenario, I thought a girl was an overly large peanut...

Translation: 9/10
After the translation fiasco which was MMBN 4, MMBN 5 amends nearly everything. Near every sentence in the storyline made sense. The only few problems are that they tend to abbreviate words and descriptions making them harder to understand.

Everything else: 8/10
Wide varieties of chips, interesting soul unisons and tonnes more.

Overall:
Great game overall, I would rate this game just a nose hair behind the classics such as Final Fantasy series and the countless Mario games since the storylines could have been a bit longer and the graphics design a bit more detailed.

Rent or Buy:
Buy. Hands down.

Note: These views are all in my opinion so don't go ranting about how much you hate me since I criticized MMBN 5.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/08/05