 |  | |  |
| STORY |  |
|---|
Lan and MegaMan.EXE, having just won their battle against Wily and the WWW (in Battle Network 1), are kicking back and relaxing and enjoying their days. But the news mails are now talking about a mysterious new virus, dubbed the “Zero Virus,” which affects only Navis. Lan and MegaMan go to search for a missing Roll one day, and get caught up in much more...
This is a preview only. Full coverage will (maybe eventually hopefully someday) follow.
This game is something else. It’s literally like a cross between the Battle Network series and the classic Mega Man games—right down to the slide. In fact, if you’ve never played any of the traditional Mega Man games before, you may want to check out the general strategies for the original series first, to get a basic idea of the side-scrolling platformer game genre.
There are, of course, differences; the “special weapons” of this game are Battle Chips, and as with the Game Boy Battle Network games, the method of using them can be confusing at first.
The graphics in the game are completely 3-D, sprites and all, even though the game plays like it is 2-D. And, of course, playing Battle Network in an action platformer genre is a new twist.
There’s no overworld in this game; it is a straight action title and doesn’t have the RPG-like aspects of the Game Boy Battle Network games. There’s a map which uses graphics that are styled after the GBA games, and you can view Lan’s bedroom which also looks almost straight out of the Game Boy, but you can’t walk around on the overworld the way you can in the GBA titles.
Side note: I don’t know why, but in two different game manuals, Chaud and ProtoMan.EXE are given the image of the Bug Style MegaMan...
Brief Tutorial
Battle Chips are the way to go; your cannon will be almost useless to begin with, and even fully powered up, it won’t approach the usefulness of the GBA games. Note that this game differs from its predecessors in that Battle Chips stack. This means when you equip, say, a Cannon, you are actually equipping every Cannon chip you own. The number of copies you have of a particular chip determines how many times you can fire it when you choose it. This makes it actually useful to gather lots of redundant copies of good chips.
Chips are also limited by a single global weapon energy meter, known as MP. This meter is rather inconsequential, because it regenerates. You’ll have more troubles with running out of chips than running out of energy. However it can get irritating in the middle of boss fights when you’re trying to empty your arsenal of Battle Chips in rapid succession, and you use up all your energy. So if you suddenly can’t fire a chip and you’re sure you haven’t used it up, check your MP.
You can choose up to five different groups of chips. You can pick any five you want; there are no chip codes to worry about. If you choose less than five, you will gain that many more filled slots the next time you open the menu, and again, until all of the slots are full (this resets if you die or leave the stage).
During the game, your custom gauge at the top of the screen will fill. Once it is full, you can open your Custom Screen at any time and choose new chips. Note though that any chips you’d had left before you do this go back into the pile, and are subject to the random draw again. So if you’ve got a really good set of chips, you might want to hold off on pressing Z for a while. Unused chips will get recycled through the system and become available to choose again, but you can’t predict when you will get them (except for your Regular chips). Also, all chips “recharge” when you leave a stage, so they all become available again when you jack back in.
If you pick up a chip during a stage that you currently have equipped, you can use it right away.
This game doesn’t technically have infinite continues; however your backups (extra lives) are refilled whenever you jack out. Between that and the saved games, it’s basically the same thing.
- When will this Game Hints page be finished?
I’m honestly not sure. I hate to admit it, but I’m rather thoroughly burned out on the game. And I never even finished it. Every time I try to go back to it, I play for a few minutes, get reminded as to why I stopped playing it in the first place, and very quickly find something else that I need to be doing instead.
This doesn’t mean I’ve totally given up on it though. I’ve forced myself through games that I wasn’t enjoying before (the Game Gear game comes to mind). However, I doubt that at this point I will ever add more to the review, even when I do complete the game. Reviewing the game at this point would be unfair, I feel.
This is only a first impression, not a final review. That is why none of the items have an actual rating yet.
- Play Control: N/A
- For a 3-D drawing engine, the play control isn’t all that bad. MegaMan is a little sluggish at times, particularly with ladders, but overall it’s pretty well done.
- Graphics: N/A
- The graphics are all cell-shaded and generally look quite nice. The black outlines are a little too bold, and the sprites can’t come anywhere near the level of detail that hand-drawn 2-D sprites would get at this size, but they are still well done.
- Animation: N/A
- MegaMan looks a little silly while he’s standing still, and Roll skips in place when she’s standing, for some reason. Still, most of the animations are smooth, as one would expect, and most of them do not interfere with the game play.
- Music: N/A
- A lot of the tunes are remixes of the Game Boy music, which is to be expected. But something which was more of a surprise is some of the music is actually from the original series games. For example, the stage with FireMan.EXE as the boss uses some of the bars from the NES Fire Man tune.
- Sound Effects: N/A
- Just as a note, even though this game seems to be based heavily on the “Mega Man NT Warrior” anime, the voice acting uses the Japanese anime voices, not the ones from the English translation.
- Plot: N/A
- No comment yet, since I haven’t beaten the game yet.
- Difficulty:
    (hard)
- Unfortunately, in terms of difficulty, this game combines all the worst aspects of the classic games and the GBA Battle Network titles (read more about this in one of the MegaMaster Musings). The stages are maddening, MegaMan’s Buster is near worthless, and the boss battles depend too much on getting a good random draw of chips.
- Replay Value: N/A
- No comment yet.
- Polish: N/A
- The developers did pay attention to the existing games (and anime, it seems), because a large number of the enemies and chips are taken straight from the previous games. Most of their attacks are preserved as best as possible, altering them only to fit them into a 2-D side-scrolling arena.
- Overall: N/A
- Definitely unique within the Mega Man series. I want to play through it at least once before making anything beyond initial impressions however.
- Use Battle Chips! Even though this game is modeled after the traditional Mega Man side-scrollers, unlike in the classic games, here MegaMan’s buster is very weak at the beginning. You will have a heck of a time trying to wipe out enemies with just your buster.
- You can jack out at almost any time during a stage, even if you haven’t completed the stage yet. There is no penalty for jacking out, except that you have to redo the stage from the beginning. It’s a good idea to spend some time gathering green mystery data and zenny items, then jacking out and coming back over and over again, to build up your power and obtain lots of Battle Chips. The game will become a lot easier if you do this.
- Always jack out on your last life. If you do, you will get to keep any Battle Chips that you found along the way and doing this operates about the same way as “Continue” in the classic Mega Man games. If you don’t, you lose everything you’d done and have to restart from a save, and this operates like “Continue” in the Zero series. The former is always preferable to the latter.
- Program Advances are preannounced in this game (giving you a chance to refuse them), but otherwise operate quite similarly to the GBA games. They are much easier to obtain here though, not only because there are no chip codes to worry about, but because chips that you leave behind always come back up again each time you open the Custom Screen. So if you want to get a certain Advance, just avoid using the appropriate chips and wait until the rest are drawn. Also, since you can just stand in a safe location for as long as you want and wait for the Custom Gauge to fill (over and over if necessary), you can in theory wait on a particular chip until you get it.
- You can look at your folder and change chips during a stage, but you’ll lose any chips you have equipped. It’s best to do this when your custom gauge is full.
- Fighting Bosses: The technique that works best for me is to forget the finesse and just focus on eliminating bosses as quickly as possible. The sword Battle Chips in particular are quite overpowered in this game, since they do not suffer as much from the range limitation (as you can get yourself right next to your target at any time you wish, which is unlike the GBA games). Therefore, focus on swords and other high-damage chips. Save your Program Advances for bosses. Wait on your Custom Gauge before you enter the boss room to make sure you are using optimal chips. And make sure you’re using chips (particularly swords) of the boss’s weakness whenever possible.
|  | |  |
| |
Back 
Home 
GAME HINTS
