Mega Man Battle Network 5: Team Protoman

"Another addition to the MegaMan Battle Network series that is welcomed with open arms. A must have for any MMBN fan"

This is the fifth installment of the MegaMan BN series. This version is 'Team Protoman', which is slightly different from Team Colonel. The Soul Unisons are different, as is the general story and certain reward chips. I got this one first before I bought MegaMan Battle Network: Double Team for the DS. If you own a DS and like the series I'd recommend it. You can transfer things over from the GBA version as well. But anyway on with the review.

Story: 6/10

The MMBN games were never high up there in story. It's the general cliche 'Oh my god there's a new evil guy lose, we have to stop him Megaman!' type story. Basically Lan and his friends go to visit his dad at SciLab, cause he has something he wanted to show them. Before he can do that, the lab is attacked and everyones knocked out. Lan's dad is kidnapped, and his friends PET's were taken away. By some luck Lan wasn't seen, so he kept his. You basically try to get your dad back. Protoman meets you, and you go around forming a team to stop Nebula. Not really anything great

Gameplay: 10/10

This is where the series shines. Although it looks simple, the game is actually very difficult, and adds alot of replay value to it. Battles basically start off with you have three rows and three columns of blocks on the left side of the screen that are blue. Then three rows and three columns on the enemies side that are red. The D-Pad lets you move around these rows. Using the Custom Menu, you can select 5 different battle chips to use. You can only stack chips when A) Their the same code, B) their the same chip but different code, or C) if you just place one chip and then abunch of * coded chips, which have no code restrictions. You can use * chips to also stack more chips if scenario A occurs. That won't work with Scenario B however. Anyway after you select your chips, which you can only have a maximum of 30 of in your battle folder at anytime by the way, you enter battle. You can move around, as your enemy can. One button lets you use the chips you selected, and the other lets you fire off Buster Shots. You can charge your buster to do more damage.

The thing about this Battle System that makes it great is all the possibilites that can occur. You can use different chips that can put things in your favor. You can Area Steal, which will take the front most row from the enemy for a certain period of time. You can use an Area chip, which changes the area of the field, making certain elemental chips do more damage. Soul Unisons are back, and in Team Protoman version their extremely powerful when combined with a specialized folder. Dark Chips are back as well, and this time their better. Their actual chips this time that can be placed in your folder. You can use them regularly if you wish, but everytime you do you lose 1 max HP, permanently. You also lose some Karma, which if its too low, will not allow you to use SP chips or Soul Unisons. However, they can also be used for Chaos Unisons. Chaos Unisons are similar to Soul Unisons, except they only last 1 turn no matter what. But a charged buster attack of whatever chip it is you sacrificed to perform the Chaos Unison, will use that very same chip! So if you Chaos Unison with a Dark Sword and become Dark Protoman, a charge buster lets out a Dark Sword each time. But, there is a catch to this. When you initially charge your buster, it'll turn purple first for a second. After this, if your still charging, it'll start shifting between green and purple. If you let go of it when its purple, it'll do the chip attack. If you let go at green, you turn back to normal Megaman, and a Dark Megaman appears on the enemies side and starts attacking you. You don't lose any max HP or karma from Chaos Unisons though, so it makes putting Dark Chips in your folder a good idea.

A new addition to this game is Liberation Missions. Basically its a strategic game where Megaman, Protoman, and whatever other allies you have try to free an area from Nebulas grasp. To do this you need to defeat the main Dark Navi whose in charge of the area. It's not that easy though. There are numerous amount of Dark Panels, monsters, and Dark Holes in between you two. Attempting to Liberate a Dark Panel or Dark Hole brings whatever Navi your controlling into a battle. You have only 3 turns to win, or else the panel remains the same. If you can manage to destroy all the enemies in 1 turn, you get a 1 Turn Liberation message. Then all the other Dark Panels around you get liberated as a bonus, so the better you are at the game the more it benefits you. Also, all Dark Holes must be liberated before you reach the boss. The boss is surrounded by impossible-to-cross Dark Panels, and they only become regular Dark Panels after all Dark Holes are destroyed. All Dark Holes spawn some special mini-boss type monster, which move around on Dark Panels. If your nearby one they can use a special attack to damage your party.

Now, as difficult as this sounds, its not. You control not only Megaman, but Protoman and many other teammates that join you along the way. Each have their VERY OWN special abilities that can make the tasks easier. Megaman has a Long Sword ability, which will liberated two forward panels if you successful win the battle with the forward one. Protoman was Wide Sword, which liberates a row of 3 panels infront of him if he wins one battle. Each of these abilities cost Order Points, which you can find in Item Panels across the map. Item Panels are Dark Panels with grayish boxes on them, and give you an item after battle. There are also gold bonus panels, which can give you either Battle Chips, Full Health, Invincibility to all your party members for 1 turn, damage the closest enemy, or Order Points. Finally, if you complete the Mission in a certain amount of turns, you get special battlechip rewards :D! These range from MegaChips of the Dark Navi you just defeated(ShadeMan S or ShadeMan SP S for example), to other special types of chips.

Basically the gameplay owns. That's a quick summary of this whole thing >.>

Replay Value:

Very high. There's still lots to do even after beating the normal game, you can make a great folder and play against a friend in battle. You can trade with a Team Colonel version to get special exclusive chips(you can't trade Soul Unisons between the two >.>). You can replay Liberation Missions even after you've beaten them, so you can try to beat it within the given amount of turns to try and get multiple copies of the Chip Rewards.

Conclusion:

If you've never played the series before, I highly suggest getting this game. Although the Style system from MMBN3 is gone(my favorite one from the series :D), it's still an excellent game, and definitely worth the purchase if your a MMBN fan. It fixed all the things wrong with MMBN4 and made other things better in the process.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/01/06