Mega Man Battle Network

The Good
Well, what you'd except from a Megaman game. But that time it isn't a platformer any longer.... I cannot really class this in any game category, but I think qualify this of an "Action RPG" is the closest I can think off. Where to begin ? You take the control of Lan Hikari, a young boy, and his "navi", that is nothing but the great Megaman. The story is pretty odd, but still fun. By "odd", I mean that a lot of thing are a nonsense, but actually it work well in the game. Just let me explain myself. It works just as a normal RPG, but a "character" becomes a "navi", a "monster" become a "virus", a magic become a "battlechip", treasure chest becomes "mystery data", battles become "virus busting", dungeons become "internet", but it still is basically the same as an usual RPG. So yeah, you don't fight in the real world, but in the internet trough any electrical engine you found in the real world, and you "jack in" to enter to the net, and then you control Megaman, and you fight viruses. Usually, viruses from the net will cause trouble in the real world. This is confusing, but it is finely fun once in practice.

Now, let's talk about the game itself. It has graphics in isometric fashion, making it looking 2.5 dimensional. All graphics are fairly done for an early GBA game, even if people faces are sometimes hilarious. The music is very good, and you'll most certainly like it a lot.

But the real strong point of the game is the battle system. It has in fact lot of both strategy and action. You control Megaman on a 3x3 gird that faces monsters that have their own 3x3 gird, making the battlefield 6x3 in total. Then you can pick up to five battlechips randomly selected from your "folder" to fight monsters and fight directly with your mega-buster. Later in the game, you'll be able to load attacks. The number of techniques and strategies the game are really countless. You want challenge ? You won't get any game more challenging in the world. The game isn't too hard, but it is really challenging. What is the difference, may you ask ? I mean that there are a lot of very hard sidequests and optional bosses featured, but just finish the game is doable (while far from easy). A fun fact is that, at the end of the battle, you got a "hunting range" in function of how fast and how well you fought. You can get ranges 1-10 and S (1 is the worst, S the best). Beating bosses in row S seems a real challenge (you have to do it in less than 15 seconds and witout getteing hit !)

The Bad
The only two annoying things is that the game was disappointingly short (without doing the sidequests), and that is sometimes really goes suddenly very hard for some stupid reason (for example you do have unappropriated battlechips in your "folder" and you cannot fight some tough monster with the battlechip you got). Because of the number of possible strategies, your head will sometimes explode while searching how to beat a boss or even a single monster. And the sidequests and optional bosses I mentioned are a bit too hard.... her for me at least. Beat all bosses in row S seems a real challenge.

On another note, you can save anywhere, and I once managed to avoid battles or traps by saving each steps... it sometimes is the only way to avoid tedious hard monsters. This problems occurs with near-every portable game, trough, so it isn't an actual flaw.

The Bottom Line
Battle Network is a very fun and addictive game. To enjoy fully of the game, you have to not suck at reflexes as I do, and you'll probably found a lot of fun in this game.