izigame.me

MegaMan Battle Network is one of those rare gems that just never seem to come along often enough. I fondly remember enjoying it on Game Boy Advance. It is essentially a mini deckbuilder with RPG action elements. If that sounds lame, give it a try and you could be surprised.
While the battles, especially random encounters, get a bit grindy and mundane after a while, that's where collecting chips and figuring out strategies come into play. If you find yourself losing a lot, it's probably because you're downleveled and need to grind a little bit, or because you're missing out on some of the cooler features of how battles work.
This first entry in the series doesn't exactly hold your hand and show you how to do program advances, but I highly recommend figuring it out, otherwise you'll be grinding your way all the way to the final boss, and it's one heck of a grind doing things the hard way. Hint: Talk to everyone. Yes, it's an RPG, you may have to explore and chat a lot. If you still can't figure it out, just look it up online--but it's always more fun to figure things out for yourself, isn't it?
The puzzling dungeon designs are about 50% interesting and 50% tortured. I suppose they would be too easy without random encounters interrupting you the moment you're about to make a discovery or the tiniest bit of progress, only to kill you and realize you haven't saved. Thankfully the lack of autosave is fixed in later entries in this series. All I can say is, save after doing anything you don't want to have to do again.
Navigating the network can also be a little frustrating, as the network map is very convoluted and confusing. Do yourself a favor and draw a map. Otherwise you'll be lost, and with random encounters, being lost and constantly interrupted is a very bad combination. At certain points I was really hoping for something like Pokemon's "Repel" spray to at least let me get to the other side of the maze so I can figure out what to do.
Apparently later games in the series which I've not tried yet are better in a lot of ways. This first entry has its own unique charm and it's where the series began, so I'm not one to discredit it simply because it's not as good. I do like the legacy collection and recommend looking around in the meta-game menus a bit because you'll find at least one very useful surprise there too.
The music is good enough that it doesn't wear too much on the ear even after you've heard it a lot. You'll be too focused on the battling to think much about the music. The battles get more hectic and intense and really keep you on your toes.
Looking forward to playing through the rest of the collection.