izigame.me

This review is going to be in 3 parts. The first will be directed at people new to the series, the second at everyone, and third at existing MMBN fans.
Before getting to that though, I'm just going to start with my opinion: yes I recommend it, but I'm a MMBN fan so of course I would say that, I want people to get this game so that Capcom could see this be popular and make a new game, so the rest of this review is just trying to be informative.
Part 1: For New People
The Mega Man Battle Network games were a collection of action RPGs (mostly) for the GBA games. This collection and the simultaneously released Vol 2 contain all of the 6 numbered entries (all except the first two entries were split into 2 versions like Pokemon, hence the "10 games" in marketing). This collection contains the first 3, and vol. 2 contains 4-6.
The gameplay is a little difficult to describe. Combat takes place on a 6x3 grid, where the left 3x3 is where you can move around, and the right 3x3 is where your enemies can move. 5 battle chips are drawn from your deck of 30, which you select based on shared letter (think "suit" of card) and shared chip type. You battle for 9 seconds, where you can move on the grid, use your chips, and/or your (relatively weak) megabuster. after which you can choose to return to chip selection, and repeat until the enemy is defeated. This system is expanded upon as the game goes on and becomes increasingly nuanced and complex (the final entry supports a robust PvP meta, for example), but these basics are upheld.
This system would later go on to inspire One Step from Eden. Unlike One Step from Eden, however, this game isn't a rougelike. There is a set story, involving Lan Hikari in the real world, who operates Mega Man.exe, his Net Navi, in the cyberworld, in their fight against viruses and a (game-dependent) terrorist organization. Generally Lan moves in the real world, finds a place for Mega Man to "jack-in" and enter either a local network or the internet. On the internet, battles come from in the form of random encounters.
The game's stories aren't really their strong point. It is mostly typical shounen fare, often hindered by awkward localization with numerous typos (particularly in BN 4). Most of the fun is derived from improving your chip folder and skills as you fight ever stronger navis. The games have a lot of mechanical depth, particularly the later entries, which lets players spend a lot time tinkering with folder set-up.
In general, 1 and 4 are considered to be the weakest games. 1 is janky in the way that first entries often are, and 4 suffers from a series of poor design decisions and a particularly atrocious translation effort. 3 and 6 are generally considered the highlights. 3 for its post-game and varied settings, and 6 for its gameplay and PvP. Playing the games in order is recommended, but if you aren't enjoying 1, you can try skipping to 6 to see if the series is for you at all. Or 3 if you only have this collection. Speaking of which, this bundle is $40 for the first 3 games, and the other is also $40, but you can get both for $60 if you get the bundle, which you probably should if you think you'll like these games.
Some tips:
1) Buster Max mode is basically a "cheat" mode that puts your base buster power to 100 and can let you breeze through the games. Keep this in mind if this is something you are interested in, even if just for speeding up grinding.
2) If you are struggling and don't want to resort to the above, try reducing the number of letter codes in your folder. Putting a bunch of powerful chips is great and all, butt if you are only getting one chip each turn, you are going to be much less effective.
3) The Rockman Exe Zone has a very helpful wiki that is well organized if you ever want to consult a resource.
Part 2: For Everyone
This collection has added online support with a (simplistic) ranked system for battling other players. Not all of the games are balanced, but 6 in particular is balanced in a way which has lead a competitive scene existing for it (and has had decent-sized following for several years now). I expect that to continue in this collection once people have gotten themselves solid collections of chips to participate in it.
Also new to the collection are the ability to gain "download chips" which were Japanese only event chips at a press of a button. Similarly, one can use "patch cards" which were Japanese-only E-reader cards which were used for a variety of things. Mega Man is also voiced in the title screen, and will have a variety of things to say depending on the circumstances when playing the game. You can look at a variety of artwork and promotion material for the games, and listen to music from the games (and see achievements linked to the Steam achievements).
Part 3: For Existing MMBN Fans
The in game changes are relatively minor. Ever game has a "buster-max" mode which lets you put your base megabuster damage to 100 if you want to just skip through some tedious parts of the games. The text has been replaced from the pixelated ones with new high resolution ones. The games are all based on the JP versions, so there isn't any cut content (well, except Botkai Crossover battles in 6 and Beast Gate content), so there is more content than the GBA Western release. You can change languages in the option menu on the same save, which can be nice for those learning Japanese and/or Chinese. There is a filter option which starts as on by default, but you can turn it off (I personally do). There are also borders you can select around the game, but there is no "no border" option for those of you who do not like it. Some bugs were patched out, and some were kept in single-player but patched out of PvP battles. Enumerating which were are beyond the scope of this review, but you can check out fan communities for detailed info if you are interested, like Rockman exe corner and Team Battle Network.
Some bugs have been introduced, however. A minor visual one involving sprites looking like they are standing on the player character is somewhat common. More seriously, the MMBN6 Virus Battler rewards currently are set to the ones from the western GBA release which is problematic, so you should change your language to Japanese when doing it until that is fixed.
Another minor annoyance is with the soundtrack currently being a mono version of it, rather than Stereo which was in the GBA games. I imagine there will be a fan patch for this in the near future. Another is that the game used Denuvo. However, Capcom usually removes it a year or two after release, if previous releases are anything to go by, so it probably won't be permanent.