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Out of all the “baby’s first RPG” titles I’ve played as a child, this is the only series that’s kept me coming back. You play as a schoolboy named Lan, who sends Mega Man into the internet or local networks (dungeons) through various electronic devices where most of the meaningful gameplay happens. You go through simple isometric mazes and solve basic puzzles, pick up cash and items, and get hounded by random encounters. There’s a lot of fetch quests, repetition and archaic RPG design that may turn off a lot of people. None of that matters because Battle Network has peak Action RPG combat.
Combat is a combination of card game and action game where you dodge enemy attacks by moving on a 3x3 grid, while the enemies do the same on another 3x3 grid. You can pick at enemies with your infinite-use Mega Buster but most of your damage will come from using cards (battlechips) with various uses, from simple projectiles to functions like icing the entire stage. You start off being able to draw so many chips and every few seconds you’re able to pause the game to draw some more. Pausing constantly in an action game is usually a bad thing, but here it’s good as it lets you formulate a strategy in the chaos. Enemies have predicable attack patterns, you may think “This guy is gonna jump around twice more and then stop to shoot me, I’ll use this air chip to push him into same row as his friend, and then take them both out at once with this bomb chip!”, things may go awry and then you’ll have to improvise a new plan. As with any card game, your starting hand is randomly selected from the cards you put in your deck, this keeps encounters fresh since you’ll be readjusting on how to best deal with the enemy with whatever you’re dealt. Good deckbuilding is making sure you will never end up with a hand that’s unusable. Skillful play is directly rewarded, your combat speed/efficacy is graded and gives you better rewards at the end of combat the better you do, giving you either more money or chips. You don’t really level up traditionally, but cash is usually handy and chips are you main source of power. Even trash chips are welcome as you can use them to roll on a chip trader, which can give you basically any chip from more garbage to absurdly broken things you would otherwise need to S rank endgame level bosses for. In short, combat is fast, easy-to-understand and has a surprising amount of depth and customization for how simple it looks. Despite the problems these games have with content and balance, I would say the skeleton of this gameplay is basically perfect, and the best successor to Battle Network has cloned these fundamentals 1-to-1. Here’s a rundown of the games themselves.
Battle Network 1: The start of it all. The combat isn’t as good as its sequels but it still has the core of what makes BN combat fun. Unfortunately the game is very rough in typical first-game fashion. It’s short and the mechanics aren’t well developed. The encounter rate is insane. The overworld is a barely-navigable mess with a single tileset and it has one of the worst dungeons ever made. I wouldn’t say you should skip the game without trying it, but if you start getting frustrated with fumbling around in the dark there’s not much shame in going ahead to a much better game.
Battle Network 2: The typical Mega Man sequel where the devs nail it. The game is longer and much more polished. There’s more than one visual theme in the overworld, so it’s possible to navigate now. The combat/deckbuilding mechanics are much better and there’s a new style system where the game buffs you based on your playstyle. For example if you draw a lot of chips you’ll get the Custom style which lets you start a fight with more potential chips to draw, if you use the buster a lot you’ll get the Guts style which buffs the buster. Unfortunately it can be grindy, if you somehow end up with a style you don’t like you’ll have to fight 200+ battles to get another one. You can level up styles by fighting battles, but all it does is strengthen your charge shot. Styles are still a positive addition, giving a lot of customization and depth. BN2 also starts the series’ tendency towards surprisingly extensive post-game content. There’s a lot of collecting/grinding involved if you want to do all of it, but entire areas, sidequests and unique bosses for expert players are only found after the credits roll. This is welcome, especially when a lot of RPGs are still content with giving you one superboss, if anything at all. One problem that will stick with the series is there’s a decent amount of padding added, BN2 adds a lot of mundane fetch quests going back and forth across previously explored internet areas. One such section is atrociously bad, but for the others I’m not gonna complain too much when the game asks me to engage in more combat. All-in-all this is a great game and a big improvement over its predecessor.
Battle Network 3: BN3 takes BN2 and expands it even more. There’s a greater variety of chips, enemies and bosses. There’s a new “NaviCust” system where you place blocks (programs) down a grid to give Mega Man various benefits like a stronger buster or the ability to survive a fatal hit with 1 HP. It’s basically inventory Tetris but with your stats and I wish more games had something like it. They weren’t too sure how to implement it here though, as several parts of the internet/main quest require equipping a program to progress, forcing you to constantly swap out programs or gimp yourself by leaving on something that’s otherwise useless. Styles are back and leveling them up gives you programs for the NaviCust, so you’re encouraged to branch out instead of just sticking with one you like. BN3 is the longest in the series, but there’s also even more padding than 2, which can be grating. On the other hand, BN3 also has an insane amount of postgame content, some say it’s the second half of the game and they’re probably right. If the game were made today content of this size would be paid DLC but it’s just included in the game already, accessible only to the most dedicated players. Times have certainly changed. Unfortunately what has been consistent is Capcom’s love of scummy business practices, this is the first game in the series to have two versions ala Pokemon. Thankfully its not too bad and they’re both in Vol 1. There’s a few chips and one style exclusive to each version, Blue is a bit more favorable due to having an extra boss but otherwise you can pick your favorite color between the two. Despite its problems, BN3 is excellent and one of the best games in the GBA’s library.
I didn’t mention the story, it doesn’t matter at all. It’s episodic children's anime stuff about as meaningful as a classic Mega Man plot, but with more yelling about friendship and hearts. It’s kinda fun thinking about how insane this world and its events are. The first dungeon in the series is a program forcing an oven to spit fire. It’s weirdly prophetic as well, considering how many of the scenarios are about bad guys hacking devices that shouldn’t have been made with any internet access to begin with. But if you want Deus Ex you should look elsewhere.
For what the collection adds, you get Mega Man talking to you on the game select menu, far from necessary but it’s nice. There’s typical extras like art galleries, trophies and a music player. The music is surprisingly good for GBA games, it’s like the system’s audio capabilities were made to make bubbly techno sound good and nothing else. You can import Japanese event exclusive chips which have been basically inaccessible by official means up until now. There’s also online PVP and chip trading to help you collect them all, definitely beats a link cable.
So for Volume 1 you get a rough prototype of a game and two great games. There’s a lot of stuff here, especially if you do post game content. I’d say it’s worth it even at its base price if you value excellent combat above all else.