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Derpy Review #92: Megaman Battle Network 4 (Blue Moon specifically) and Chip Challenge (kind of review) (Had to split the review into two parts, also, spoilers, obviously)

(Part 1 of the review)

Micro: When we started this marathon of Megaman games, I've had said several times prior to this particular marathon that I haven't played every games the blue bomber has in the entire franchises that has excited, and so I've always been curious to try the ones I haven't played, particular the Battle Network series and the Star Force series since I never played the latter ones game yet. And so far, I think that, despite some parts here and there with each game that has something that I don't like, I've overall had a pleasant time enjoying the games as well as like the characters and Navi designs a lot, so I'll give those points to Battle Network over the Classic games as of right now. However, when starting this marathon, there has been one particular game that I've been the most curious of, as well as very concern about the most when it came to this series, and that being the topic of this review, Megaman Battle Network 4.

Scale: I would like to make a sarcastic joke about the game being good, but let's be honest, even before playing the game, anyone who talks about this series have a general view of this particular game in that it was the very game that really hit Battle Network the hardest to the point of plummeting the series' value that it was a miracle that there was two sequels instead of just one.

Shekra: I wouldn't go to that extension-

Micro: That's because you try to be the nicer between you and me when it comes to giving a game criticism.

Scale: Even though you both seem to constantly flip flop on who's nicer when one gives a game flack.

Shekra: We usually do that with games we really like the most or dislike contrast to the other, but moving back to the topic in hand. We should try to rewind a bit to before Megaman Battle Network 4's release. After the major success to Battle Network 3, the series gain some major popularity, though I think it has more in line of other adaptation of the Battle Network series. The series popularity more or less raised no thanks to the anime, Megaman NT Warriors, which Battle Network 4 did took some inspiration from, for the lack of a better word to say, since some things in the game took from the anime, which I don't know for sure what that would be given we haven't watch the show at all. None the less, with the rise of Battle Network's popularity, it was bound that the next game after Battle Network 3 would get more attention and sales, which it did since Battle Network 4 ironically was the most sold game of the series. I said ironically, because the game itself, well, a lot of people weren't exactly happy with the results of the game. Which wouldn't be that much of a surprise as given the common theme with each Megaman game and Battle Network especially, Capcom would pump one entry of the game every year until the developer's thumbs were worn off, and this is defiantly felt in this game. While reusing old assets aren't a stranger to video games, just look at the Yakuza game for a prime example of reusing old stuff and making it work, here, the process of trying to get each game out every year royally backfire in this game, as plenty of people do not like this game. There are people who in fact loves the game and will defend it, but if you were to look at a lot of people's favorite Battle Network game, at least with the main line games, Battle Network 4 would be at the very bottom for a good chunk of list of people's favorite game, with the first Battle Network a decent amount of time sitting above 4.

Scale: And of course, this entry is also split into two games, Red Sun and Blue Moon, though thankfully unlike the last game, this one has more difference between the two games instead of having maybe one tiny change and several extremely minor change. That said, there are still some technical issue to bring up that isn't from what is in the game already, but more what happens when you try to play this game on a Nintendo DS. Yes, for those who forgot this was a thing, there was a DS version where you could play both a GBA game and a DS game, the one series that utilize this thing the most was Pokemon as it was the only way to import Pokemon from Gen 3 to Gen 4, at least that was Shekra here said. Now why I'm bringing up the DS for Battle Network 4, its because if you play Blue Moon on the DS, there is a potential game break bug where the game will slow down to a disgusting pace that you could potentially get screw bolt over, and this problem can exist if your one of those people who loves to emulate games. Thankfully from what I did try to read up on this one issue, if you play this game one the virtual console, the problem shouldn't be there.... hopefully.

Micro: So, yeah, I think you can understand a bit as to why I was concern about this one game in particular given that, guess what, when I bought this game on the Wii U, I happen to bought Blue Moon long before I found out of the bug issue. I was really scare when I thought the bug was with one particular character, but was wrong in that assumption, but still had to worry about it in case if I do interact with that character. I said "If" for a good reason that you will know later in case you haven't played this game before. With that said, is Battle Network the worst of the Battle Network series... weelll, I'll wait until we after we beat Battle Network 6 since we haven't play those two, just so I'm not immediately breaking this game knees already. With that said, how about we get started on the review. But first, we need to do one little detour first to one game before we talk about Battle Network 4.

Scale: There's another spin off game in this series?

Shekra: There actually three, technically four if you want to count Megaman Battle Network 3 Black, however, we only got two of these spin offs since both Black and the other one are Japaneses only, though we talk a slight bit of the latter one after we talk about this spin off one. With that said, spoilers are abound!

Megaman Battle Network Chip Challenge:

Micro: Ok, so this is going to be a quick look into this game. Chip Challenge is a rather very weird yet easy to get an idea of what you are doing kind of game as you play a character. Yes, I said A character, as for the first time in the series, you get to play one of six characters in this game that being the navis, which you'll know who exactly you're playing as by picking one of the operators, four ones we're all familiar with by now, but two new characters created specifically for this game, and I think the only time these two appear in the series. The characters in question are Lan, Mayl, Dex and Chaud, so you all know which Navi you'll be picking simply by which operator you pick, but the more interesting characters is the two new ones in the game. The two new characters are a boy name Kai Todoroki who is the operator of Turboman and the second character is a girl name Mary Towa who is the operator of Ring. Yes, I said Ring and not Ringman. For whatever reason, Ring is the only character I think in the who series to be a genderswap counter part to the classic. While I was a bit surprise of this, I couldn't care much given that this series made it clear to be the counter part of the classic game without everything being very identical such as Megaman, Protoman and Roll are brothers and sister in classic yet in Battle Network the three has no "blood" relationship to each and Roll has a crush on Megaman. That said, I was confused of Ring being the counterpart to Ringman as I thought looking at her portrait alone, she would be the counterpart to Clownman since her design feels a bit more in line to that robot master, but I overthinking of this one thing.

Shekra: While you may think that this game being structure to where you pick one character out of six will make this more of a multiplayer game than the other games, you maybe wrong there as this game does give small stories of whoever you picked in the game and each one being different.

Micro: Just for the sake telling this now, we didn't put more than about a hour or two into this game, and you'll see why in a bit. As such, we only went with one and of course it was going to be one of the new characters and we went with Mary and Ring, which I'm kind of glad we did as I did enjoy this two for the short time frame we gave this game. Mary is from Netopia that is staying over Yai's place for a while, she has a poor health condition where she needs a pacemaker, she and Ring like to bicker with each other but they both mean well, and Mary's plot is more just here wanting to make friends despite her poor health.

Shekra: The other characters have plot like we said, such as Mayl wanting to get better at Net Battling to get closer to Lan, but the more interesting and to the point of this game is the gameplay, and its.... interesting to say the least.

Scale: How the game works is that you enter very small tournaments, before going into battle with the opponent, you can select up to 12 chips, with there being a tree branch structure with four column rows, as well as two chips that isn't attach to the tree branch. During the fight, the navi will pick whatever path that's next to the chip and then start fighting the opponent. So where do you exactly fit into controlling the navi? Simple, you don't. For whatever reason, the devs made it to where you have next to no control of what your navi does in combat, what the navi does next is entirely up to them and them only, with the only thing you have control in battle is what chips are going to be selected by the navi and the two chips I mentioned aren't connected, you use them when a meter is full. This mean that its a coin flip whether you win or lose the game for the most part as its practically random whether the navis hit each other or miss.

Micro: And now you know why I said we didn't put that much hours into this game cause this game play of this game is what you practically do the entire game. And from what I saw looking up some videos of the game, you really don't need to put that much strategy into this game, to the point you can go a good chunk of the game without changing chips up to Bass, cause of course he's the super boss in this game.

Shekra: I wouldn't say there isn't strategy in this game cause there is some stuff Scale left out. You are limited at the start of the game of what type of chips you can use no thanks to your low memory space, but the higher it gets the more you can use as well as better version. That said, it means that you won't fit every space with chips which means there are a good chance that the navi will pick a slot that doesn't have any chips at all. Not only that, but it should be note that in battle, each chips has, for whatever reason, have a health bar and when these chips run out, the navi can't use the chip until the match is done. Another thing to point out is that each navi has a special attack that is unique to them, which the opponent navi will use as well if given the chance. Besides that, the only other thing of note is to not use those side chips Scale mentioned, since they are one time use per match.

Scale: I think the reason for this type of game play from what I heard and try looking, was to give the player the feeling what its like to play as the operator in the Battle Network world, and if this is the case, boy I have no idea why Lan gets out of breathe when doing this besides nervousness for Megaman's sake. The game play feels more like that you find in a mobile phone game.

Micro: Yeah, I won't argue that it gets boring just watching characters doing their own thing while the player does nothing. I can still see the appeal, but not enough to want to play this game longer. If I want to play a game where the characters do their own thing while on auto pilot and I can do something else, I'd play Cookie Run Kingdom.

Scale: Will you stop playing that game already, you haven't stop for the past week.

Micro: No, I want to see everything the new update has in store, I'll stop when I want-!

Scale: Give me that, you're just stalling longer to get the marathon done and making me stay in this form even longer.

Shekra: While these two dummies are wrestling each other for the phone, about the part with the whole not controlling navi part. Well, good news and bad news, the good news is that there is a Battle Network game that at least let's you have more input of what the navi is doing, though the navi is still doing its own thing, but the game play from what I understand is more entertaining from what I heard. The game in question is call Rockman.EXE 4.5 Real Operation, no its not a different version from Battle Network 4 for whatever reason, but its supposed to be some kind of better version of Chip Challenge, the game supposedly to help expand something call Operation Battle Mode that was in 4... which is very weird considering that we haven't saw anything that did anything call Operation Battle Mode the entire time of playing the game, though it may have to do with the fact that this mode was only done if you have something call a Battle Chip Gate, which from looking it up seems to be some Tamagotchi toy thing but with Battle Network navis.

Micro: Kind of wish the game was a bit more of the game Shekra just mentioned since I was actually interest to see how the other characters' story goes, mainly to see what Turboman can do, but for the time being, I think out time is best spent on discussing the real main thing to talk about in this review, so let's hurry up and talk about Battle Network 4. And this time, we're going to talk about this game in a different way of order.

Megaman Battle Network 4 Blue Moon:

Story and character:

Micro: Oh God, I had to really think about of how to approach this game in particular as I had no idea whether to talk about the game play section first out of the way or rip the band-aid to talk about the story. Honestly, there was no winning this one. So, let's get the story out of the way first. Our story begins at a space program center with the place called... Naxa..... its going to be a long review I can tell.

Scale: We see a couple of nerds talking about space stuff before monitors started flaring up, showing that a big asteroid is heading right towards Earth.... this planet is called Earth and not something stupid like Circuitophian?

Micro: I think so, I don't recall making note of anything stupid for the planet's name.

Scale: Anyways, back to the familiar lovable dorks we've follow four games already at this point, Lan and Megaman head out to town to shop with their dad and what in the world happened to ACDC town, in fact, what happened to whole world of the game, everything looks drastically different compare to the previous games.

Shekra: Yeah, I guess when making this entry, the devs decided to make some changes to, well, a lot of things, which includes the layout of ACDC town. The town is distractedly different to the last game, the whole area is cut in halve, areas aren't in the spots they should be and there's not even the school at all. I can't say this was due to a time crunch for the devs to get the game done since it wouldn't make sense for them to make a whole new ACDC layout instead of using the same one from the last three games, but at the same, I got nothing as to why the town looks the way it is. Not only that, but the graphic is different as well in this game and you'll notice with both the sprites in the game and the character portraits whenever someone talks. Before, characters were a bit bigger and the colors tend to smoothly blend with one and the other without it being distracting, whereas now the characters are smaller, have a black out line one them. I think this was a attempt to give the characters a bit more detail on their sprites, but I can't tell if the new art style works well or not. But whatever the case is, whether you like the new one or not, you'll get used to the way things look.

Scale: I doubt that, though I more question why Dex is even in ACDC town, didn't he moved to Netopia or something in the last game?

Shekra: Best to not ask, there are a ton of things you'll be picking apart in no times.

Scale: Fine. Lan and Dr. Hikari goes to town shop for stuff before Lan finds out there's a tourney, yes that's an actual word that I had to look up to make sure it wasn't a typo, going to be held in town and.... I feel like we've been here before.

Micro: Oh wait for, you're going to be annoyed squirt.

Scale: ..... I already know the answer, but can I leave now.

Shekra: Absolutely not~

Scale: I hate you both so much.

Shekra: Love you too.

Scale: Ugh, Lan tries to go home when some commotion happens at the store. Jacking in, Megaman discovers a rather cool version of Shademan eating the energy off of the local navis before he flies off to go look for a different navi, preferably someone female. Already know its Roll's annual getting into trouble against her will o'clock, the boy head home and tries to get to Roll and already its too late as Shademan is ready to grab Roll. Good work Guts, great job as usual. Oh hey, Glyde, nice to see you too.... are you ever going to do anything in this series?

Micro: Shademan kidnaps Roll and the boys give chase after the vampire. Unfortunately, this fight is cut short as nothing Megaman does will harm this guy but Protoman cuts in to save the day to make Shademan run away before Protoman chases after him. However, during the commotion, Shademan actually drops a odd chip, which taking it to Higsby he tells us that its a Dark Chip and its something that Lan and Megaman should never use and in fact should destroy it. The reason being that its extremely dangerous and just holding it can risk corrupting the navi in contact of it... so of course Lan and Megaman pockets this thing and forgets about it for about week as we have a tournament to go to. And doing a few minor back tracking to do some quest cause nothing can be straight forward in this series, Lan and Megaman enters the tournament where our first opponent is with a little girl that has a common navi name Ponta.

Shekra: Before Micro continues this, before this tournament starts, we do get a quick scene with the scientist at Naxa, with Dr. Hikari being there as well to discuss on how to deal with the asteroid. That said, we get introduce to a new character, a Dr. Regal who's from some infamous country yet is here to help, and is obviously not the surprise villain at the eleventh hour. As such, the idea that everyone has is for the scientists are planning to use a powerful laser to shoot the asteroid to knock its trajectory off course from the planet. Well, makes more sense than making oil drillers be astronauts to plant a bomb I guess.

Scale: Moving back to the plot, Lan actually bumps into the little girl he has to face off later, and she wants to play with him, which he obliges before having to get a call from his mom to come home, as it turns out that the little girl's dad wanted to see Lan to help him with something. Turns out that the little girl has some strong spiritual powers and because of that, she accidentally made ghost navis appeared on the net and the dad wants us to exorcise them away, what in the world am I watching.

Micro: Oh trust me, it get stupider as after dealing with the ghosts, we face off the little girl and her navi, and upon beating her, it turns out the little girl is actually a ghost and is now going to the afterlife after saying bye to Lan.

Scale: .... Can I please le-

Shekra: You want to go back to being a robot?

Scale: .... This is starting to not be worth trying to get back to being a robot. Lan's next fight is with a navi name Aquaman, wait a second, I just realized that you two haven't shown me at all of what Aquaman looks like when you two force me to go to school and you two were playing this game.

Micro: Oh trust me when I say that I'm doing you a major favor in not seeing Aquaman's design the second we saw him the first time.

Many hours ago...

Shekra: OHMYGODHE'SOOOCUTE,IWANTTOHUGHIMANDCUDDLEHIMAN-!

Micro: Yeah, I think a made a good call in not dragging Scale to see this....

Back to the present....

Micro: My ears are still hurting....

Shekra: Not apologizing.

Scale: Ok, now I'm curious as to what this guy looks like now you hide him from me. Is he about as dorky looking as he looked in Classic?

Micro: We'll show you later. For now, Lan and Hub knows that they'll be facing against Aquaman and his operator, Shuko, who's... a treat to see to say the least, try to not drown from the waterworks kid, I haven't beat your ass in the tournament yet. Anways, things goes immediately wrong when Shuko steps outside and talks to her brothers, the three having a discussion with Aquaman eavesdropping into the conversation, and hearing the three talking about finally getting rid of something where Aquaman immediately thinking they're talking about him and he runs away, flooding the internet, not realizing that the kids were talking about an a washing machine... cause the guy is an idiot. So of course Megaman has to find the crybaby and tell him to knock it off with the water works, while having to deal with a oxygen met- why does a digital program need to breath air, we're in the internet for Christ's sake.

Shekra: Megaman finds Aquaman and calms him down to fix the net.

Scale: You know, if this dummy is able to flood the whole net just by crying, I hate to see what he can do if he does it on purpose.

Shekra: Oddly enough, I have to think the same now that you mentioned it. Anyways, we fight Aquaman and the boys win, however, during the fight, Megaman gets a connection to Aqualman's soul and thus gets a new ability call Soul Unison.

Scale: I'm sorry, go back on the that dumb comment of Megaman getting a connection to another program's soul?

Shekra: Um, right, so this is something we'll go more in depth with in the gameplay section, but for the reason this is happening. Remember how Hub sacrificed himself in order to save Lan, and the only reason Hub is still alive is because a part of him had manage to get lock inside a certain area that thanks to the boys' grandfather's note, Dr. Hikari was able to bring Hub back? Well, that came with a price as Hub loses a ability, however, he gains a new ability that is either as good or vastly better than the ability he lost, and that being called Soul Unison, or Double Soul in English but I'm calling it the Japanese name since Soul Unison sounds cooler.

Scale: Well, I won't argue with that. The boys next fight is with Topman and his operator, a geriatric old guy name Takumi. Stepping outside, we immediately see the very two as Takumi is trying to impress his grandson with a top, and failing, and now Topman is breaking down and the geezer storms off to fix Topman himself without any help. So of course the boy decide to help out by visiting the local retirement home club group that knows how to net battle to ask for help. And after having a dumb task of running around the net to find their navis to answer some question and I'm now seeing the general theme of this game.

Micro: Oh, its get worse, much much worse, believe me.

Scale: Right, anyways, we find the guy that can help Takumi fixing Topman, who happens to be his twin brother. Mario Takumi and Luigi Takumi here gets in a bicker match before Mario Takumi runs off with the book needed to fix Topman and we go and fight Topman, who's a bit more decent to fight than I would give him credit for. With that said, Lan and Megaman wins the tournament. One week later, the boys wonder how to get rid of the Dark chip, but before anything meaningful can happen, Mayl invites the boys over her house as she and Roll shows the boys a announcer of a theme park that will open soon and is giving some free pass, with the girls giving very subtle hints that they want the tickets so they can spend time with the boys. Unfortunately for Mayl, Lan is a Shonen protagonist and by law of being a Shonen protagonist, Lan has to be dense as diamonds to not get some obvious cue cards. That said, the boys thankfully got the tickets for the girls, but before any planning can happen, the boys' house gets attack by some intruder and rushing over they see that their mom got hit with some sleeping gas but overall ok. A note can be seen telling the boys to give back the dark chip at a location, and going there we see a generic evil navi who is promptly defeated. Before the grunt leaves, he stupidly announce that he's from a evil organization call Nebula, at least its a easier and more interesting name than WWW, who uses dark chips to corrupt the would and plunge everything in they're way to evil. As punishment for being stupid and announcing Nebula's presence, Shademan destroys him.

Micro: The next day, Lan is of to the theme park to go to his date with Mayl, but of course things can never go right as the rides for some reason aren't working and Megaman has to fix it. That said, we see the kids spending time at the park where we don't get any cut scenes of the rides before the two go to a haunted house attraction, fill with your typical creepy stuff and for some reason, references to a Konami game of all things call Boktai. In fact, for some reason, the last three Battle Network games has some deep references to Boktai where you can even get some really good chips referencing the main character and the games, and honestly, I have no answers as to why Battle Network is referencing this series at all. I didn't know this series existed at all before looking up this game, only thing I know about when doing a quick wiki search is that one of the producers of the game is Hideo mindf$%king Kojima and that itself is enough for me to wonder if its worth tracking this series down.

Shekra: Please don't, you enough game already.

Scale: This coming from the bat who recently got something with a dumb name call Doki Doki-

Shekra: Please don't call me out yet, I don't want a certain boy to get wind that he's going to be bound and tie against his will for a review far later.

Scale: Ah.... can I watch?

Shekra: No.

Scale: Meanie. Things go wrong at the park when the attraction bots start malfunctioning and now the boys have to save the day by fixing the robots by doing a dungeon, about time, where we have to do a fill in the blank and.... ok, I think I've been holding it off for a long time, but what is this dialogue in this game. Battle Network has some weird typos in previous games, but good grief, this game has by far the worst translation I ever seen to the point it can make a NES manual blush with all the bad spelling errors and awful grammar, its enough to give a English Major a heart attack.

Shekra: Yeah, remember who we keep mentioning of this game gets pump out every year? Well this is what happens when you keep pumping out games without a break and it was bound to happen to this series sooner or later. And the spelling errors and typos don't stop there, there were several times where the text box is so wrong in telling you who is talking. I counted at least five times the plathrough we did we character portraits were swap with the wrong character that it really through me off on who's talking. Example, this one moment where Lan is talking to a mafia member that we'll talk about later, and during the conversation, the dialogue was meant to be from the mafia member but oddly it shows Lan's portrait instead. Get use to this awful translation, cause its not going away anytime soon.

Micro: Yeah, which makes this dungeon a b$%ch to work with as the whole gimmick of the dungeon is to do a fill in the blank with each segement of each robot you have to deal with, but with how bad the translation is, game want you be good at ngwesh but game is bad at it. You are supposed to also read the story involving each robot in the theme park, but, good luck remembering everything and not going back and forth with the right words to the spot. Anyways, during the last robot, Megaman gets ambush by Shademan who wants the dark chip. Megaman says no and promptly blast the thing apart in front of Count Chocula here.

Scale: If these two idiots could destroy it this entire time, why did they wait this long to destroy it?

Micro: You know, I would be with you in giving the boy crap for waiting this long, but I don't think their action worked as much as they hope as during the fight with Shademan, Megaman is forced to use dark chips that mysteriously shows up in his folder. Using the dark chip immediately destroys Shademan, the bat dissolving on the spot, but before he disappears, Shademan brags that by using the dark chip, Megaman has just step into the process of being corrupted, and soon he will be joining the dark side, and it will be a matter of time before he joins Emperor Palpatine and commence order 66-, oh sorry, got my notes mixed up with something that has a better plot. Chaud enters the area to do official net battle businessmen, and I jsut realized this series really forgot that Lan is technically a official net battler since the second game. Anyways, Chaud gives us a bigger detail of why not to use the dark chip at all, explaining who Nebula is and that they could be more stupi- I mean nastier than WWW as a crime organization before he leaves, with Lan and Hub keeping his words in mind before the day ends.

Scale: The next day, another tournament is actually up and the boys of course goes to it where once again they get to face off with three opponents, but not before doing the most obvious form of padding I've seen so far in this series where you have to do a scavenger hunt for fifty points both in the real world and the network. Devs really were press for time on this one were they.

Shekra: Oh, you have no idea. Our opponent for the first match is against Burnerman and his operator, Atsuki. While Atsuki shows how much of a hot head he is, his attention is towards another hot head that is none other than Match once again. How is this guy allow to walk in public let alone participate in tournaments when he should be rotting in jail after the last stunt in the last game is beyond me, but that will have to wait as Match and his navi, using Fireman again, has a little fire match against Astuki and Burnerman, a match that is causing the whole internet to go into flame because of the two.

Scale: Is it just me, or did the internet got pathetically weaker with dealing with navis' fighting each other since the last game?

Micro: Somehow, I wouldn't doubt it, Anyways, tells hot heat dumbasses here to knock it off and fight Burnerman, who actually gave me hell when fighting him even with using his weakness, but in the end he's beaten and Lan moves on to the next round. This next round being against a generic navi name Crusher who's operator is that Mafia guy Shekra mentioned. Guy looks mean tough, but he's a freaken teddy bear that wants out of the Mafia, but his boss said no and want him to be the next boss after her, even taking away the navi to make sure. However, the old lass is unaware that her goons are planning to betray her by destroying Crusher later and getting rid of her to take place of ruling the Mafia. So, of course we have to rescue Crusher, by the worst way possible, a stealth mission where you have to go three long areas avoiding navis' gaze in a isometric game... yeaahhhh we rescue the guy and then fight him, moving on to the next round. Our next and last opponent for the tournament is actually against Metalman and Tamako, these two we actually battle against in the last game, in case you forgot we mentioned Metalman was in the last game. So it nice to see these two again... who acts like they never saw us before despite the fact you fight her in the tournament in the last game and I'm just realizing this game was written by possible idiots God help me.

Shekra: Something tells me that the crunch for time in the year it taken for this game to get released royally screw over the devs in figuring out on how to make the plot for this game given how this doesn't seem to remember stuff from previous games and more, in fact, this game only reference the fact Megaman is hub I think like once and that was with the ghost girl segment. That said, before we fight against Metalman, Tamako wants us to do a little test of spirit against her, which comprise to Megaman punching rocks against Metalman for several rounds. Thankfully the real fight against Metalman is more interesting and by fighting him, Megaman makes another connection and with it being Metalman, Megaman get the Metal soul, please wait till we get to the game play segment, we'll explain the souls part soon I promise. Lan wins the tournament and is about to leave, but before he could, Nebula strikes again and this time sends the leader's navi to deal with Megaman, the navi in question being Laserman, who has a cool design and is one of the few original navis in the series. Laserman confronts Megaman by trying to bring the dark side of Megaman out and force Megaman to fight it.

Micro: Which comprise of the darkness taking control of Aquaman who pop into to try to help Megaman but ends up being a meatier punching bag that Megaman has to deal with before knocking him out. Laserman pisses off after Aquaman's defeat and going back to normal, but before he leaves, Laserman mocks Megaman by telling him he is corrupted by the dark chip and he has a dark soul, and it would be a matter of time before he must venture off to the Kiln of the First Flame and must defeat Gwy- oh, sorry, got my notes mix with a better RPG.... I want to play Soulsborne games again...

Scale: You're doing everything you can to make me suffer in being human form, aren't you.

Micro: No, that would be Shekra.

Shekra: And I'm enjoying every second of your adorable anger towards dealing with it.

Scale: I will get you for this somehow.

Shekra: You can try. Moving on, Laserman leaves and the boys go home after winning their second tournament. Back at the subplot, the scientist get ready to laser the asteroid, but something goes wrong and the laser stops working, wonder why- its Regal for crying out loud. The idiot doesn't even try to make it subtle he's the saboteur. With their one option not working, the scientist go with plan b, which of course involves another tournament.

Micro: Yeah, I think we address the cyber elephant in the data space. When it comes to Battle Network 4, there is one major infamous fundamental thing that anyone who has played this game before, will remember the one major thing this particular game is known for, and that being that this game is just one big tournament arc game. This game literally took the one thing that happens in Battle Network three, took the worst part of that, and some expand and mutate it into this game where you do next to nothing but tournament stuff that already feels like a filler story, and give you multiple mini stories that feel like mini fillers. Now, I don't usually care if series has one main line game that is nothing but a tournament story game, granted I can't recall too many shows and games where I major portion or the whole season of the show or game is about a tournament, I think one show that did this well is Dragon Ball Z, and a game, well lack of a better example in mind would probably be some of the pokemon game, such as Sword and Shield were there wasn't much of a plot other than you participating in what feels like a big tournament where the price is to face off against the champion, that is until the final part of the game but that's a discussion for another day. The point being, some shows and games can make a tournament arc work really if they know how to do the whole concept properly. Unfortunately for us, Battle Network 4 isn't one of them, as the game is fill with multiple stories that feel like filler to the point there isn't much to talk in depth of what each one is, Hell, you're probably wondering why it feels like I'm skipping important stuff in the story with how brief we're talking about part of the game. Well, that's because I'm not skipping the important stuff in each segment like a jackass, at least none of the very important parts in comparison to either mini segements or what's happening at Naxa, the story's plot is rather that short and brief. And you'll notice that we only mentioned like one, when technically there is two dungeons so far. This game, counting from what I can tell and not including the net, has only three dungeons, and we already talk about two and you can guess where the last is. This means that this game has sooooo much backtracking to the point that it gets unbearable at times. And believe mean, the padding in this game so far is nothing compare what we are leaving out on purpose for, just wait till we get to the end to see what I'm talking about. With that said, let's get the final tournament out of the way.

Scale, Ok, right, well, after Lan gets invited to this tournament being held in Netopia, and getting the Netopia foreigner tourist hello for the second time in his life, we face off in our first match against a boy with a generic navi and these two are from.... oh you got to be kidding. Netfrica.... I just... I hate you human's sense of humor sometimes..... The boy invites us to his country to do some Easter egg hunt for a idol before the water system nearby the village goes off and we are force to fix it before rushing back to the tournament, and find out that this idiot kid was responsible before beating his navi up, moving on to something hopefully better.

Shekra: Nope, this time to probably the stupidest plot point in the whole game where our next navi is against Coldman and his operator who wants to freeze the planet's weather because he thinks the weather is too hot for him, even when he's from what looks like this world's version of Russia. Truely, we have reach cartoon level of stupidity and we haven't even confronted Nebula properly yet. Anyways, Lan and Hub fixes the machines controlling the weather and hopefully before any drastic effect could happen to the ecosystem before fighting Coldman and beating his frosty rear with the operator getting arrested. And our next and finale opponent is actually Chaude and Protoman, and probably the best story segment of the game, as it turns out that Protoman was forced to use a dark chip in order to survive a massive army of navis and is force on lockdown cause he is getting corrupted. If that wasn't bad enough, Nebula came and kidnapped Protoman and taken him to the Undernet and now we have to help Chaud rescue Protoman in the Undernet.

Micro: Too bad this segment has probably the worst gimmick in the whole game, and that's not including having to play hide and seek with three navis in the whole goddamn net to buy parts to a skateboard and take those parts to some girl navi to make the skateboard in order for us to even go to the Undernet, thanks devs. And the Undernet is defiantly different in this game, in a rather very gaudy trying to be creepy design, but you'll be forgetting it as for this part, you have to play pixel hunt at specific points of the game where you need to take Chaud's clue for where keys are to open up doors to get to deeper part of the Undernet, and this one can burn in hell as you have to do it like three times in the Undernet, and this place gets bigger and more confusing to navigate. Just use a guide at this point, lord knows you'll be doing so when it comes to that 50 point bulls$%t segment Scale mentioned a while ago. Anyways, Chaud knocks Protoman back to his sense and we actually fight Protoman in the tournament, who puts up a bigger fight than he has in the previous games as I almost lost to this guy. That said, we get the third Soul Unison thing, and that being the Proto Soul, which I honestly didn't used much at all since we are now about to enter the final part of the game as this tournament was actually a plan from Naxa to find the best Net Battler in the world and you idiots know that Lan and Megaman had saved the world three times up to this point for crying out loud, why the hell are you looking for the strongest net battler?

Scale: Technically four if you want to count Network Transmission.

Micro: Point proven. You'd think this game would try to at least remember that these two boys saved the world and give some acknowledgement about it, but at the same time, we're talking about the same game that honestly, none of the characters feel right. The plot feels rush, the main threat is more of a sub plot that you barely remember exist no thanks to all the tournaments you got to do, each round in the tournament feels like a filler episode that's already in a game where the plot feels like a filler episode, Nebula is probably the least interesting yet somehow the dumbest crime organization due to how nonthreatening the group is, at least until Laserman decides to show up and decides to give a pounding that isn't make a different navi be a sock puppet for a minute or two, and the characters are rather not very interesting to talk about, and that is probably with how much time you spent with opponents, or I should say spend whatever you have to do that involves each opponent and see if there's anything worth talking about. And frankly, the story is not worth talking about much with each character, and what really doesn't help is the mountain of back tracking and Christ does this game has a lot of back tracking and padding to the point that it feels like the devs took the worst part of backtracking in each game and stretch the whole thing to make this game.

Shekra: Yeah, I can't argue him there as there were so many times that a bunch of parts of the story slows down at a crawl, though that's mostly due to what you do in the game. As such, how about we talk about gameplay now, which I think this part might be the better part of the game.

Gameplay:

Scale: I was wanting to beg that to say its the same thing as the last game and call it a day, but unfortunately for me, this game is very different from the last game to discuss a lot of the changes. While combat is generally the same, you got your mega buster, you chips that does stuff, you got your grids, and there are enemies, you know what to do at this point. However, the custom gauge took a change for this game where unlike before, you know have seven chips, and unfortunately, this game removed the add button so now you can ask to remove chip and replace them with whatever else is in your folder. There is a reason for why this is the case, still dumb that the add option was replaced, but what we got might be potentially better, but you'll have to wait a bit. However, there is one more thing in combat that you'll immediately notice right off the bat and that is you'll see a tiny panel in the upper left corner of the screen which shows Megaman's face. This here tiny panel is Megaman's mood, and its serves as one of the replacement for the add button.

Shekra: The mood thing will sound dumb at first glance, but this thing can be pretty neat to use once you know how it works and manipulate it. How it works is simple, the mood panel will obviously display Megaman's mood, with it having several stages, with one of the stage next to impossible to get unless you get a ridiculous amount of health loss in one it. The better play in the encounter, scoring hits with both chips and navi, not getting hit, and also using the countering mechanic from the last game, which got a change as well where unlike the last game you don't get bug fragments for countering the enemy but will stun them for a moment, doing this will drastically improve Megaman's form where he'll enter full synchro, the same one that Lan and Megaman does several times in the past. In full synchro, any attacking chips you use next will now do twice the damage, and this is defiantly as busted as it sounds like, especially when you know how to do the timing for counter and will be able to chain it to break the game. That said, there is a opposite affect obviously, and that's what happens when you fail to increase Megaman's mood. Taking a lot of hits and a lot of hard hitting attack will drastically shift Hub's mood to a more anxious state, and this is the worst state to be in, as being here after a certain point of the game will start summoning dark chips.

Micro: We mentioned that dark chips are considered to be extremely dangers to the point of corrupting anything that touches it, but we haven't mentioned on what makes the chips so powerful. You see, should you decide to use the dark chips, you'll immediately notice that these attack chips are terrifyingly powerful, about to destroy even the toughest Navi in second, even turning certain navis bosses into a joke. However, there is a massive problem with dark chips and that problem being that you permanently lose health throughout the whole game and there's no way to regain them. And one of the bigger problem with these things is that if you were relying on them to steamroll the game, thinking that if you don't care of the penalties as long you beat the game, guess what, you are screwing yourself over as you can't use these chips against the final boss and you just put a gigantic handicap to yourself at a boss that is already a c$%t to fight, but more on that prick later. Needless to say, I did not use the dark chips at all as the punishment for using them to overcome some annoying challenges in this was not worth it, even though from what I found out, there is something in the game you could get that can help negate some of the negatives of the game, but even that thing is not worth getting from what I understand. Now before we talk about something else, I do need to pick some part of this game a bigger punch to the heart as there were a bunch of things that I can I didn't like too much with few minor things I do like. Said minor thing I like is that randomly in the middle of combat, treasure crystals can show up in the middle of the fight. If the crystal doesn't take one chip to the side and gets destroy by anyone by the time the fight ends, you can get bigger rewards, such as more money, bug fragments and chips. I like this thing since it helped getting money easier if I can get said money, now if only some of the encounters weren't a bastard to giving me the bird before destroying the crystals. But as for what I don't like in the game, where to begin. I think we've establish already how we think of the story so far, but the net isn't any better as well as pacing. Good Christ, this game has the worst backtracking and padding in the whole series so far. Numerous times you have to go back and forth in the net alone just to do anything far more than the last three games, and it really doesn't help that the net is not as interesting to walk around as the last game as the net for this game feels like it took a downgrade. There's no squares that were in the last two games, shortcuts are not that much useful at all, and the areas you visit are honestly annoying or boring to look at. What really hurts all this back tracking is the encounter rate is cram up to eleven in this game, Jesus Christ I hate the encounter rate in this game, and this is even with using the repel to help get rid of "weak" enemies to make running around faster, but even that doesn't seem to work when stronger enemies pop n to say hello and slaps my face when I can't run away from them. I know you are supposed to be using the returning Navi customization thing from the last game, but this thing I think took a bit of a wrong tweak to improve as while nothing about it has change, the programs you use are not exactly useful except for undershot and one program you can find that jacks up your attack power to make the fight bearably faster. And don't get me started on that skateboard thing I mentioned. You get this stupid thing way too late in the game with how little you use it, with this thing use for either shortcuts or dead ends that may have some goodies in them, but to do so, you need to buy parts from three separate navis that loves to hide in underpass and you can't really see them at all before you take these parts to another navi to make it. And one more thing, out of dozens more I can kick into the stage to talk about but best to just skip to the major points, I find this game so far the most tedious and annoying game of the series so far. I already mentioned the backtracking and the obnoxious padding this game has, without revealing the worst padding this game has yet, but I haven't mentioned that the enemies are annoying in this game to fight when you fight them. For your typical cannon fodders, these guys eat good chunk of your health, enemies that look like they should hurt suddenly beat me up like a ragdoll, some are relentless at tackling me down like I owe them money without much room to shoot them back, and you got some enemies that loves to take their time in dropping their shields down so I can hurt them regularly, as well as some enemies having attacks that can cover a good two third of my side with little room to squeeze around. Now, would I say this game has the same level of tediousness and bulls$%t as say Megaman and Bass where almost everything in that game wants you dead, eh no, the tediousness of this game is nowhere close to that game, at least not until we get to the very end of the game, but just wait even longer. That said, I think its clear that my time in the gameplay department isn't exactly as fun as the last game. Also that said, is there something I do like in the game, actually, yes, Soul Unison.

Scale: About time to talk about this one. First thing first, you've may have notice we never mentioned that style change is in this game. Well, remember when Shekra said that in order to bring Hub back a price had to be paid? Well, now you know the price, but at the same time, I think Soul Unison is about as good, if not better than style change. Soul Unison is this game's version of style change, and one that finally goes back to classic Megaman roots where the soul that you use will let you use the same abilities like as whoever the specific navi you fight, such as Aquaman, Metalman, and Protoman. There are actually a lot more navis..... and we'll talk about why we haven't mentioned them soon, but for now, the mechanics of how Soul Unison works. In order to use Soul Unison, you have to sacrifice a adjacent chip that matches the soul's element, don't worry about the sacrificing part, it just means you don't use that chip for the remaining of the battle. So to give examples, to use Aqua soul, obviously you need to use a water chip, sword chips for Proto soul, and as for Metal soul, you need to use specifically chips that can break panels from my understand. Once you do, you can now use the soul and which you now have new abilities to use. Aqua soul lets you do twice the damage with water chips, move freely on ice, and even be a nuisance against fire while a charge shot can hit two horizontal panels. Proto soul honestly I have no idea how it properly works, any sword chips you use obviously gets stronger but if you try charging the chip, something you can do with every soul, Proto soul moves you two panels forward and you use it, and I've yet to figure out on how to properly use it at all, but thankfully Proto soul has also the ability to reflect if you do a button combo. As for Metal soul, it has a charge shot where the range is pathetically one panel away, but anything that gets hit by it just gets to become a crack filling on the panel, where as regular shots from using this soul is now a automatic armor piercer and can finally shred some of the more obnoxious enemies, though keep in mind that Megaman's charge shot with the right program can be far stronger than this thing, and of course any chips that matches this soul does twice the damage. Now there is one major thing you should know about Soul unison when fighting, Soul Unison are only temporary. Each Soul can only be use once in battle, and they only last for three turns, meaning whenever you open up the folder when the custom gauge is full, so try to not go hog wild in switching Souls just to feel like it.

Shekra: Well, as long you don't open the third turn, you can keep the soul on as long as you want, though keep in mind that some Souls has weakness to elements, water being weak to elect obviously, but besides that, I honestly love Soul Unison far more style change, once you know what Navi to fight to get the soul you know what you are getting, and its not up to luck of what element you get. And I also like the part of Soul Unison harking back to Classic as whatever soul you use gets some design from the appropriate navi.

Micro: While I did like Aqua soul, I like Metal soul a lot, mainly for the the armor piercing shots, but now with the charge shot, I'm back to giving all my foes the most painful fisting of their lives before they blow up to in pain.

Scale: I'm afraid to know what he does for a living or a job that makes him want to hurt people this badly.

Shekra: Overnight retail worker.

Scale: ...... I don't get it.

Shekra: Best for you to not.

Bosses:

Shekra: Alright, soooo about the bosses in this game

Micro: You're going to either view the bosses range from piss easy of a joke to fight or annoying/ difficult for the painful of reasons with few bosses ranging in the middle, such as Metalman. And while we could do the typical in depth thing about our favorite bosses that are new and reoccurring, half of the boss you could be fighting are with generic navis you would see walking around in the past and get use to seeing them with them more or less having the same strategy of attacks. Besides that, you'll either get a cast of reoccuring navis you've fought in the past or new bosses in this game where both versions have also exclusive navis to each other while sharing navis, with the exclusive ones to each game being the one that gives you the Soul Unison. Just to give example of who you can fight in both games, in Red Sun, you can fight Gutsman, Fireman, Thunderman, Searchman, Windman, who might have one of the coolest Battle Network design in the series that made me kind of wish I was playing Red Sun more if I was lucky, and also the last exclusive being Roll of all characters. As for Blue Moon, we already mentioned halve, but here we go again, you got Aquaman, Metalman, Protoman, Woodman, Junkman, and Numberman. That's to not include the navis you do share such as Topman, Burnerman and Coldman, but you also got some other navis you can fight we didn't fought, that being Sparkman, Videoman, and Kendoman.

Scale: You already can guess what your in for with some of these navis if you fought them in the past, but some of them can have some new tricks to keep an eye out so they aren't 100% the same. But besides that, these fights, from the ones I saw, as Micro said can range from being pathetically easy to annoying, prime example for the annoying one being Coldman in that he loves to make ice blocks appear as well as try to make the stage cold, which we have two things to counter either one, but its a matter of you want to walk on ice but struggle breaking the ice or break the ice and struggle walking on ice, all while he can take pot shots at you and even make walking around difficult by breaking your side of panels. And prime example of easy would be Aquam- why did you guys block any image of this guy from me?

Shekra: Because I told Micro to as I want to see your reaction of the horror that is Aquaman in the end against your will.

Scale: .... Should I be scare of what she's planning?

Micro: Possibly.

Scale: ...... I need an adult?

Shekra: I am a adult.

Micro: Moving on, the boss fights aren't bad for the most part, but don't be surprise if you don't find the fights as fun as the last game, probably no thanks to whatever idiotic task you got shoehorned into doing just before finally fighting the boss. That said, you probably still notice that we still haven't mentioned why we left out such a large roaster of bosses you could fight in the plot summary. Well, we have a good reason as to why we haven't said it yet so please wait a bit longer, trust me, you're going to find it incredibly stupid if you haven't played this game. That said, let's hurry up with the ending of this game.

(continue to part 2)

Description

Derpy Review #92: Megaman Battle Network 4 (Blue Moon specifically) and Chip Challenge (kind of review) (Had to split the review into two parts, also, spoilers, obviously)

(Part 1 of the review)

Micro: When we started this marathon of Megaman games, I've had said several times prior to this particular marathon that I haven't played every games the blue bomber has in the entire franchises that has excited, and so I've always been curious to try the ones I haven't played, particular the Battle Network series and the Star Force series since I never played the latter ones game yet. And so far, I think that, despite some parts here and there with each game that has something that I don't like, I've overall had a pleasant time enjoying the games as well as like the characters and Navi designs a lot, so I'll give those points to Battle Network over the Classic games as of right now. However, when starting this marathon, there has been one particular game that I've been the most curious of, as well as very concern about the most when it came to this series, and that being the topic of this review, Megaman Battle Network 4.

Scale: I would like to make a sarcastic joke about the game being good, but let's be honest, even before playing the game, anyone who talks about this series have a general view of this particular game in that it was the very game that really hit Battle Network the hardest to the point of plummeting the series' value that it was a miracle that there was two sequels instead of just one.

Shekra: I wouldn't go to that extension-

Micro: That's because you try to be the nicer between you and me when it comes to giving a game criticism.

Scale: Even though you both seem to constantly flip flop on who's nicer when one gives a game flack.

Shekra: We usually do that with games we really like the most or dislike contrast to the other, but moving back to the topic in hand. We should try to rewind a bit to before Megaman Battle Network 4's release. After the major success to Battle Network 3, the series gain some major popularity, though I think it has more in line of other adaptation of the Battle Network series. The series popularity more or less raised no thanks to the anime, Megaman NT Warriors, which Battle Network 4 did took some inspiration from, for the lack of a better word to say, since some things in the game took from the anime, which I don't know for sure what that would be given we haven't watch the show at all. None the less, with the rise of Battle Network's popularity, it was bound that the next game after Battle Network 3 would get more attention and sales, which it did since Battle Network 4 ironically was the most sold game of the series. I said ironically, because the game itself, well, a lot of people weren't exactly happy with the results of the game. Which wouldn't be that much of a surprise as given the common theme with each Megaman game and Battle Network especially, Capcom would pump one entry of the game every year until the developer's thumbs were worn off, and this is defiantly felt in this game. While reusing old assets aren't a stranger to video games, just look at the Yakuza game for a prime example of reusing old stuff and making it work, here, the process of trying to get each game out every year royally backfire in this game, as plenty of people do not like this game. There are people who in fact loves the game and will defend it, but if you were to look at a lot of people's favorite Battle Network game, at least with the main line games, Battle Network 4 would be at the very bottom for a good chunk of list of people's favorite game, with the first Battle Network a decent amount of time sitting above 4.

Scale: And of course, this entry is also split into two games, Red Sun and Blue Moon, though thankfully unlike the last game, this one has more difference between the two games instead of having maybe one tiny change and several extremely minor change. That said, there are still some technical issue to bring up that isn't from what is in the game already, but more what happens when you try to play this game on a Nintendo DS. Yes, for those who forgot this was a thing, there was a DS version where you could play both a GBA game and a DS game, the one series that utilize this thing the most was Pokemon as it was the only way to import Pokemon from Gen 3 to Gen 4, at least that was Shekra here said. Now why I'm bringing up the DS for Battle Network 4, its because if you play Blue Moon on the DS, there is a potential game break bug where the game will slow down to a disgusting pace that you could potentially get screw bolt over, and this problem can exist if your one of those people who loves to emulate games. Thankfully from what I did try to read up on this one issue, if you play this game one the virtual console, the problem shouldn't be there.... hopefully.

Micro: So, yeah, I think you can understand a bit as to why I was concern about this one game in particular given that, guess what, when I bought this game on the Wii U, I happen to bought Blue Moon long before I found out of the bug issue. I was really scare when I thought the bug was with one particular character, but was wrong in that assumption, but still had to worry about it in case if I do interact with that character. I said "If" for a good reason that you will know later in case you haven't played this game before. With that said, is Battle Network the worst of the Battle Network series... weelll, I'll wait until we after we beat Battle Network 6 since we haven't play those two, just so I'm not immediately breaking this game knees already. With that said, how about we get started on the review. But first, we need to do one little detour first to one game before we talk about Battle Network 4.

Scale: There's another spin off game in this series?

Shekra: There actually three, technically four if you want to count Megaman Battle Network 3 Black, however, we only got two of these spin offs since both Black and the other one are Japaneses only, though we talk a slight bit of the latter one after we talk about this spin off one. With that said, spoilers are abound!

Megaman Battle Network Chip Challenge:

Micro: Ok, so this is going to be a quick look into this game. Chip Challenge is a rather very weird yet easy to get an idea of what you are doing kind of game as you play a character. Yes, I said A character, as for the first time in the series, you get to play one of six characters in this game that being the navis, which you'll know who exactly you're playing as by picking one of the operators, four ones we're all familiar with by now, but two new characters created specifically for this game, and I think the only time these two appear in the series. The characters in question are Lan, Mayl, Dex and Chaud, so you all know which Navi you'll be picking simply by which operator you pick, but the more interesting characters is the two new ones in the game. The two new characters are a boy name Kai Todoroki who is the operator of Turboman and the second character is a girl name Mary Towa who is the operator of Ring. Yes, I said Ring and not Ringman. For whatever reason, Ring is the only character I think in the who series to be a genderswap counter part to the classic. While I was a bit surprise of this, I couldn't care much given that this series made it clear to be the counter part of the classic game without everything being very identical such as Megaman, Protoman and Roll are brothers and sister in classic yet in Battle Network the three has no "blood" relationship to each and Roll has a crush on Megaman. That said, I was confused of Ring being the counterpart to Ringman as I thought looking at her portrait alone, she would be the counterpart to Clownman since her design feels a bit more in line to that robot master, but I overthinking of this one thing.

Shekra: While you may think that this game being structure to where you pick one character out of six will make this more of a multiplayer game than the other games, you maybe wrong there as this game does give small stories of whoever you picked in the game and each one being different.

Micro: Just for the sake telling this now, we didn't put more than about a hour or two into this game, and you'll see why in a bit. As such, we only went with one and of course it was going to be one of the new characters and we went with Mary and Ring, which I'm kind of glad we did as I did enjoy this two for the short time frame we gave this game. Mary is from Netopia that is staying over Yai's place for a while, she has a poor health condition where she needs a pacemaker, she and Ring like to bicker with each other but they both mean well, and Mary's plot is more just here wanting to make friends despite her poor health.

Shekra: The other characters have plot like we said, such as Mayl wanting to get better at Net Battling to get closer to Lan, but the more interesting and to the point of this game is the gameplay, and its.... interesting to say the least.

Scale: How the game works is that you enter very small tournaments, before going into battle with the opponent, you can select up to 12 chips, with there being a tree branch structure with four column rows, as well as two chips that isn't attach to the tree branch. During the fight, the navi will pick whatever path that's next to the chip and then start fighting the opponent. So where do you exactly fit into controlling the navi? Simple, you don't. For whatever reason, the devs made it to where you have next to no control of what your navi does in combat, what the navi does next is entirely up to them and them only, with the only thing you have control in battle is what chips are going to be selected by the navi and the two chips I mentioned aren't connected, you use them when a meter is full. This mean that its a coin flip whether you win or lose the game for the most part as its practically random whether the navis hit each other or miss.

Micro: And now you know why I said we didn't put that much hours into this game cause this game play of this game is what you practically do the entire game. And from what I saw looking up some videos of the game, you really don't need to put that much strategy into this game, to the point you can go a good chunk of the game without changing chips up to Bass, cause of course he's the super boss in this game.

Shekra: I wouldn't say there isn't strategy in this game cause there is some stuff Scale left out. You are limited at the start of the game of what type of chips you can use no thanks to your low memory space, but the higher it gets the more you can use as well as better version. That said, it means that you won't fit every space with chips which means there are a good chance that the navi will pick a slot that doesn't have any chips at all. Not only that, but it should be note that in battle, each chips has, for whatever reason, have a health bar and when these chips run out, the navi can't use the chip until the match is done. Another thing to point out is that each navi has a special attack that is unique to them, which the opponent navi will use as well if given the chance. Besides that, the only other thing of note is to not use those side chips Scale mentioned, since they are one time use per match.

Scale: I think the reason for this type of game play from what I heard and try looking, was to give the player the feeling what its like to play as the operator in the Battle Network world, and if this is the case, boy I have no idea why Lan gets out of breathe when doing this besides nervousness for Megaman's sake. The game play feels more like that you find in a mobile phone game.

Micro: Yeah, I won't argue that it gets boring just watching characters doing their own thing while the player does nothing. I can still see the appeal, but not enough to want to play this game longer. If I want to play a game where the characters do their own thing while on auto pilot and I can do something else, I'd play Cookie Run Kingdom.

Scale: Will you stop playing that game already, you haven't stop for the past week.

Micro: No, I want to see everything the new update has in store, I'll stop when I want-!

Scale: Give me that, you're just stalling longer to get the marathon done and making me stay in this form even longer.

Shekra: While these two dummies are wrestling each other for the phone, about the part with the whole not controlling navi part. Well, good news and bad news, the good news is that there is a Battle Network game that at least let's you have more input of what the navi is doing, though the navi is still doing its own thing, but the game play from what I understand is more entertaining from what I heard. The game in question is call Rockman.EXE 4.5 Real Operation, no its not a different version from Battle Network 4 for whatever reason, but its supposed to be some kind of better version of Chip Challenge, the game supposedly to help expand something call Operation Battle Mode that was in 4... which is very weird considering that we haven't saw anything that did anything call Operation Battle Mode the entire time of playing the game, though it may have to do with the fact that this mode was only done if you have something call a Battle Chip Gate, which from looking it up seems to be some Tamagotchi toy thing but with Battle Network navis.

Micro: Kind of wish the game was a bit more of the game Shekra just mentioned since I was actually interest to see how the other characters' story goes, mainly to see what Turboman can do, but for the time being, I think out time is best spent on discussing the real main thing to talk about in this review, so let's hurry up and talk about Battle Network 4. And this time, we're going to talk about this game in a different way of order.

Megaman Battle Network 4 Blue Moon:

Story and character:

Micro: Oh God, I had to really think about of how to approach this game in particular as I had no idea whether to talk about the game play section first out of the way or rip the band-aid to talk about the story. Honestly, there was no winning this one. So, let's get the story out of the way first. Our story begins at a space program center with the place called... Naxa..... its going to be a long review I can tell.

Scale: We see a couple of nerds talking about space stuff before monitors started flaring up, showing that a big asteroid is heading right towards Earth.... this planet is called Earth and not something stupid like Circuitophian?

Micro: I think so, I don't recall making note of anything stupid for the planet's name.

Scale: Anyways, back to the familiar lovable dorks we've follow four games already at this point, Lan and Megaman head out to town to shop with their dad and what in the world happened to ACDC town, in fact, what happened to whole world of the game, everything looks drastically different compare to the previous games.

Shekra: Yeah, I guess when making this entry, the devs decided to make some changes to, well, a lot of things, which includes the layout of ACDC town. The town is distractedly different to the last game, the whole area is cut in halve, areas aren't in the spots they should be and there's not even the school at all. I can't say this was due to a time crunch for the devs to get the game done since it wouldn't make sense for them to make a whole new ACDC layout instead of using the same one from the last three games, but at the same, I got nothing as to why the town looks the way it is. Not only that, but the graphic is different as well in this game and you'll notice with both the sprites in the game and the character portraits whenever someone talks. Before, characters were a bit bigger and the colors tend to smoothly blend with one and the other without it being distracting, whereas now the characters are smaller, have a black out line one them. I think this was a attempt to give the characters a bit more detail on their sprites, but I can't tell if the new art style works well or not. But whatever the case is, whether you like the new one or not, you'll get used to the way things look.

Scale: I doubt that, though I more question why Dex is even in ACDC town, didn't he moved to Netopia or something in the last game?

Shekra: Best to not ask, there are a ton of things you'll be picking apart in no times.

Scale: Fine. Lan and Dr. Hikari goes to town shop for stuff before Lan finds out there's a tourney, yes that's an actual word that I had to look up to make sure it wasn't a typo, going to be held in town and.... I feel like we've been here before.

Micro: Oh wait for, you're going to be annoyed squirt.

Scale: ..... I already know the answer, but can I leave now.

Shekra: Absolutely not~

Scale: I hate you both so much.

Shekra: Love you too.

Scale: Ugh, Lan tries to go home when some commotion happens at the store. Jacking in, Megaman discovers a rather cool version of Shademan eating the energy off of the local navis before he flies off to go look for a different navi, preferably someone female. Already know its Roll's annual getting into trouble against her will o'clock, the boy head home and tries to get to Roll and already its too late as Shademan is ready to grab Roll. Good work Guts, great job as usual. Oh hey, Glyde, nice to see you too.... are you ever going to do anything in this series?

Micro: Shademan kidnaps Roll and the boys give chase after the vampire. Unfortunately, this fight is cut short as nothing Megaman does will harm this guy but Protoman cuts in to save the day to make Shademan run away before Protoman chases after him. However, during the commotion, Shademan actually drops a odd chip, which taking it to Higsby he tells us that its a Dark Chip and its something that Lan and Megaman should never use and in fact should destroy it. The reason being that its extremely dangerous and just holding it can risk corrupting the navi in contact of it... so of course Lan and Megaman pockets this thing and forgets about it for about week as we have a tournament to go to. And doing a few minor back tracking to do some quest cause nothing can be straight forward in this series, Lan and Megaman enters the tournament where our first opponent is with a little girl that has a common navi name Ponta.

Shekra: Before Micro continues this, before this tournament starts, we do get a quick scene with the scientist at Naxa, with Dr. Hikari being there as well to discuss on how to deal with the asteroid. That said, we get introduce to a new character, a Dr. Regal who's from some infamous country yet is here to help, and is obviously not the surprise villain at the eleventh hour. As such, the idea that everyone has is for the scientists are planning to use a powerful laser to shoot the asteroid to knock its trajectory off course from the planet. Well, makes more sense than making oil drillers be astronauts to plant a bomb I guess.

Scale: Moving back to the plot, Lan actually bumps into the little girl he has to face off later, and she wants to play with him, which he obliges before having to get a call from his mom to come home, as it turns out that the little girl's dad wanted to see Lan to help him with something. Turns out that the little girl has some strong spiritual powers and because of that, she accidentally made ghost navis appeared on the net and the dad wants us to exorcise them away, what in the world am I watching.

Micro: Oh trust me, it get stupider as after dealing with the ghosts, we face off the little girl and her navi, and upon beating her, it turns out the little girl is actually a ghost and is now going to the afterlife after saying bye to Lan.

Scale: .... Can I please le-

Shekra: You want to go back to being a robot?

Scale: .... This is starting to not be worth trying to get back to being a robot. Lan's next fight is with a navi name Aquaman, wait a second, I just realized that you two haven't shown me at all of what Aquaman looks like when you two force me to go to school and you two were playing this game.

Micro: Oh trust me when I say that I'm doing you a major favor in not seeing Aquaman's design the second we saw him the first time.

Many hours ago...

Shekra: OHMYGODHE'SOOOCUTE,IWANTTOHUGHIMANDCUDDLEHIMAN-!

Micro: Yeah, I think a made a good call in not dragging Scale to see this....

Back to the present....

Micro: My ears are still hurting....

Shekra: Not apologizing.

Scale: Ok, now I'm curious as to what this guy looks like now you hide him from me. Is he about as dorky looking as he looked in Classic?

Micro: We'll show you later. For now, Lan and Hub knows that they'll be facing against Aquaman and his operator, Shuko, who's... a treat to see to say the least, try to not drown from the waterworks kid, I haven't beat your ass in the tournament yet. Anways, things goes immediately wrong when Shuko steps outside and talks to her brothers, the three having a discussion with Aquaman eavesdropping into the conversation, and hearing the three talking about finally getting rid of something where Aquaman immediately thinking they're talking about him and he runs away, flooding the internet, not realizing that the kids were talking about an a washing machine... cause the guy is an idiot. So of course Megaman has to find the crybaby and tell him to knock it off with the water works, while having to deal with a oxygen met- why does a digital program need to breath air, we're in the internet for Christ's sake.

Shekra: Megaman finds Aquaman and calms him down to fix the net.

Scale: You know, if this dummy is able to flood the whole net just by crying, I hate to see what he can do if he does it on purpose.

Shekra: Oddly enough, I have to think the same now that you mentioned it. Anyways, we fight Aquaman and the boys win, however, during the fight, Megaman gets a connection to Aqualman's soul and thus gets a new ability call Soul Unison.

Scale: I'm sorry, go back on the that dumb comment of Megaman getting a connection to another program's soul?

Shekra: Um, right, so this is something we'll go more in depth with in the gameplay section, but for the reason this is happening. Remember how Hub sacrificed himself in order to save Lan, and the only reason Hub is still alive is because a part of him had manage to get lock inside a certain area that thanks to the boys' grandfather's note, Dr. Hikari was able to bring Hub back? Well, that came with a price as Hub loses a ability, however, he gains a new ability that is either as good or vastly better than the ability he lost, and that being called Soul Unison, or Double Soul in English but I'm calling it the Japanese name since Soul Unison sounds cooler.

Scale: Well, I won't argue with that. The boys next fight is with Topman and his operator, a geriatric old guy name Takumi. Stepping outside, we immediately see the very two as Takumi is trying to impress his grandson with a top, and failing, and now Topman is breaking down and the geezer storms off to fix Topman himself without any help. So of course the boy decide to help out by visiting the local retirement home club group that knows how to net battle to ask for help. And after having a dumb task of running around the net to find their navis to answer some question and I'm now seeing the general theme of this game.

Micro: Oh, its get worse, much much worse, believe me.

Scale: Right, anyways, we find the guy that can help Takumi fixing Topman, who happens to be his twin brother. Mario Takumi and Luigi Takumi here gets in a bicker match before Mario Takumi runs off with the book needed to fix Topman and we go and fight Topman, who's a bit more decent to fight than I would give him credit for. With that said, Lan and Megaman wins the tournament. One week later, the boys wonder how to get rid of the Dark chip, but before anything meaningful can happen, Mayl invites the boys over her house as she and Roll shows the boys a announcer of a theme park that will open soon and is giving some free pass, with the girls giving very subtle hints that they want the tickets so they can spend time with the boys. Unfortunately for Mayl, Lan is a Shonen protagonist and by law of being a Shonen protagonist, Lan has to be dense as diamonds to not get some obvious cue cards. That said, the boys thankfully got the tickets for the girls, but before any planning can happen, the boys' house gets attack by some intruder and rushing over they see that their mom got hit with some sleeping gas but overall ok. A note can be seen telling the boys to give back the dark chip at a location, and going there we see a generic evil navi who is promptly defeated. Before the grunt leaves, he stupidly announce that he's from a evil organization call Nebula, at least its a easier and more interesting name than WWW, who uses dark chips to corrupt the would and plunge everything in they're way to evil. As punishment for being stupid and announcing Nebula's presence, Shademan destroys him.

Micro: The next day, Lan is of to the theme park to go to his date with Mayl, but of course things can never go right as the rides for some reason aren't working and Megaman has to fix it. That said, we see the kids spending time at the park where we don't get any cut scenes of the rides before the two go to a haunted house attraction, fill with your typical creepy stuff and for some reason, references to a Konami game of all things call Boktai. In fact, for some reason, the last three Battle Network games has some deep references to Boktai where you can even get some really good chips referencing the main character and the games, and honestly, I have no answers as to why Battle Network is referencing this series at all. I didn't know this series existed at all before looking up this game, only thing I know about when doing a quick wiki search is that one of the producers of the game is Hideo mindf$%king Kojima and that itself is enough for me to wonder if its worth tracking this series down.

Shekra: Please don't, you enough game already.

Scale: This coming from the bat who recently got something with a dumb name call Doki Doki-

Shekra: Please don't call me out yet, I don't want a certain boy to get wind that he's going to be bound and tie against his will for a review far later.

Scale: Ah.... can I watch?

Shekra: No.

Scale: Meanie. Things go wrong at the park when the attraction bots start malfunctioning and now the boys have to save the day by fixing the robots by doing a dungeon, about time, where we have to do a fill in the blank and.... ok, I think I've been holding it off for a long time, but what is this dialogue in this game. Battle Network has some weird typos in previous games, but good grief, this game has by far the worst translation I ever seen to the point it can make a NES manual blush with all the bad spelling errors and awful grammar, its enough to give a English Major a heart attack.

Shekra: Yeah, remember who we keep mentioning of this game gets pump out every year? Well this is what happens when you keep pumping out games without a break and it was bound to happen to this series sooner or later. And the spelling errors and typos don't stop there, there were several times where the text box is so wrong in telling you who is talking. I counted at least five times the plathrough we did we character portraits were swap with the wrong character that it really through me off on who's talking. Example, this one moment where Lan is talking to a mafia member that we'll talk about later, and during the conversation, the dialogue was meant to be from the mafia member but oddly it shows Lan's portrait instead. Get use to this awful translation, cause its not going away anytime soon.

Micro: Yeah, which makes this dungeon a b$%ch to work with as the whole gimmick of the dungeon is to do a fill in the blank with each segement of each robot you have to deal with, but with how bad the translation is, game want you be good at ngwesh but game is bad at it. You are supposed to also read the story involving each robot in the theme park, but, good luck remembering everything and not going back and forth with the right words to the spot. Anyways, during the last robot, Megaman gets ambush by Shademan who wants the dark chip. Megaman says no and promptly blast the thing apart in front of Count Chocula here.

Scale: If these two idiots could destroy it this entire time, why did they wait this long to destroy it?

Micro: You know, I would be with you in giving the boy crap for waiting this long, but I don't think their action worked as much as they hope as during the fight with Shademan, Megaman is forced to use dark chips that mysteriously shows up in his folder. Using the dark chip immediately destroys Shademan, the bat dissolving on the spot, but before he disappears, Shademan brags that by using the dark chip, Megaman has just step into the process of being corrupted, and soon he will be joining the dark side, and it will be a matter of time before he joins Emperor Palpatine and commence order 66-, oh sorry, got my notes mixed up with something that has a better plot. Chaud enters the area to do official net battle businessmen, and I jsut realized this series really forgot that Lan is technically a official net battler since the second game. Anyways, Chaud gives us a bigger detail of why not to use the dark chip at all, explaining who Nebula is and that they could be more stupi- I mean nastier than WWW as a crime organization before he leaves, with Lan and Hub keeping his words in mind before the day ends.

Scale: The next day, another tournament is actually up and the boys of course goes to it where once again they get to face off with three opponents, but not before doing the most obvious form of padding I've seen so far in this series where you have to do a scavenger hunt for fifty points both in the real world and the network. Devs really were press for time on this one were they.

Shekra: Oh, you have no idea. Our opponent for the first match is against Burnerman and his operator, Atsuki. While Atsuki shows how much of a hot head he is, his attention is towards another hot head that is none other than Match once again. How is this guy allow to walk in public let alone participate in tournaments when he should be rotting in jail after the last stunt in the last game is beyond me, but that will have to wait as Match and his navi, using Fireman again, has a little fire match against Astuki and Burnerman, a match that is causing the whole internet to go into flame because of the two.

Scale: Is it just me, or did the internet got pathetically weaker with dealing with navis' fighting each other since the last game?

Micro: Somehow, I wouldn't doubt it, Anyways, tells hot heat dumbasses here to knock it off and fight Burnerman, who actually gave me hell when fighting him even with using his weakness, but in the end he's beaten and Lan moves on to the next round. This next round being against a generic navi name Crusher who's operator is that Mafia guy Shekra mentioned. Guy looks mean tough, but he's a freaken teddy bear that wants out of the Mafia, but his boss said no and want him to be the next boss after her, even taking away the navi to make sure. However, the old lass is unaware that her goons are planning to betray her by destroying Crusher later and getting rid of her to take place of ruling the Mafia. So, of course we have to rescue Crusher, by the worst way possible, a stealth mission where you have to go three long areas avoiding navis' gaze in a isometric game... yeaahhhh we rescue the guy and then fight him, moving on to the next round. Our next and last opponent for the tournament is actually against Metalman and Tamako, these two we actually battle against in the last game, in case you forgot we mentioned Metalman was in the last game. So it nice to see these two again... who acts like they never saw us before despite the fact you fight her in the tournament in the last game and I'm just realizing this game was written by possible idiots God help me.

Shekra: Something tells me that the crunch for time in the year it taken for this game to get released royally screw over the devs in figuring out on how to make the plot for this game given how this doesn't seem to remember stuff from previous games and more, in fact, this game only reference the fact Megaman is hub I think like once and that was with the ghost girl segment. That said, before we fight against Metalman, Tamako wants us to do a little test of spirit against her, which comprise to Megaman punching rocks against Metalman for several rounds. Thankfully the real fight against Metalman is more interesting and by fighting him, Megaman makes another connection and with it being Metalman, Megaman get the Metal soul, please wait till we get to the game play segment, we'll explain the souls part soon I promise. Lan wins the tournament and is about to leave, but before he could, Nebula strikes again and this time sends the leader's navi to deal with Megaman, the navi in question being Laserman, who has a cool design and is one of the few original navis in the series. Laserman confronts Megaman by trying to bring the dark side of Megaman out and force Megaman to fight it.

Micro: Which comprise of the darkness taking control of Aquaman who pop into to try to help Megaman but ends up being a meatier punching bag that Megaman has to deal with before knocking him out. Laserman pisses off after Aquaman's defeat and going back to normal, but before he leaves, Laserman mocks Megaman by telling him he is corrupted by the dark chip and he has a dark soul, and it would be a matter of time before he must venture off to the Kiln of the First Flame and must defeat Gwy- oh, sorry, got my notes mix with a better RPG.... I want to play Soulsborne games again...

Scale: You're doing everything you can to make me suffer in being human form, aren't you.

Micro: No, that would be Shekra.

Shekra: And I'm enjoying every second of your adorable anger towards dealing with it.

Scale: I will get you for this somehow.

Shekra: You can try. Moving on, Laserman leaves and the boys go home after winning their second tournament. Back at the subplot, the scientist get ready to laser the asteroid, but something goes wrong and the laser stops working, wonder why- its Regal for crying out loud. The idiot doesn't even try to make it subtle he's the saboteur. With their one option not working, the scientist go with plan b, which of course involves another tournament.

Micro: Yeah, I think we address the cyber elephant in the data space. When it comes to Battle Network 4, there is one major infamous fundamental thing that anyone who has played this game before, will remember the one major thing this particular game is known for, and that being that this game is just one big tournament arc game. This game literally took the one thing that happens in Battle Network three, took the worst part of that, and some expand and mutate it into this game where you do next to nothing but tournament stuff that already feels like a filler story, and give you multiple mini stories that feel like mini fillers. Now, I don't usually care if series has one main line game that is nothing but a tournament story game, granted I can't recall too many shows and games where I major portion or the whole season of the show or game is about a tournament, I think one show that did this well is Dragon Ball Z, and a game, well lack of a better example in mind would probably be some of the pokemon game, such as Sword and Shield were there wasn't much of a plot other than you participating in what feels like a big tournament where the price is to face off against the champion, that is until the final part of the game but that's a discussion for another day. The point being, some shows and games can make a tournament arc work really if they know how to do the whole concept properly. Unfortunately for us, Battle Network 4 isn't one of them, as the game is fill with multiple stories that feel like filler to the point there isn't much to talk in depth of what each one is, Hell, you're probably wondering why it feels like I'm skipping important stuff in the story with how brief we're talking about part of the game. Well, that's because I'm not skipping the important stuff in each segment like a jackass, at least none of the very important parts in comparison to either mini segements or what's happening at Naxa, the story's plot is rather that short and brief. And you'll notice that we only mentioned like one, when technically there is two dungeons so far. This game, counting from what I can tell and not including the net, has only three dungeons, and we already talk about two and you can guess where the last is. This means that this game has sooooo much backtracking to the point that it gets unbearable at times. And believe mean, the padding in this game so far is nothing compare what we are leaving out on purpose for, just wait till we get to the end to see what I'm talking about. With that said, let's get the final tournament out of the way.

Scale, Ok, right, well, after Lan gets invited to this tournament being held in Netopia, and getting the Netopia foreigner tourist hello for the second time in his life, we face off in our first match against a boy with a generic navi and these two are from.... oh you got to be kidding. Netfrica.... I just... I hate you human's sense of humor sometimes..... The boy invites us to his country to do some Easter egg hunt for a idol before the water system nearby the village goes off and we are force to fix it before rushing back to the tournament, and find out that this idiot kid was responsible before beating his navi up, moving on to something hopefully better.

Shekra: Nope, this time to probably the stupidest plot point in the whole game where our next navi is against Coldman and his operator who wants to freeze the planet's weather because he thinks the weather is too hot for him, even when he's from what looks like this world's version of Russia. Truely, we have reach cartoon level of stupidity and we haven't even confronted Nebula properly yet. Anyways, Lan and Hub fixes the machines controlling the weather and hopefully before any drastic effect could happen to the ecosystem before fighting Coldman and beating his frosty rear with the operator getting arrested. And our next and finale opponent is actually Chaude and Protoman, and probably the best story segment of the game, as it turns out that Protoman was forced to use a dark chip in order to survive a massive army of navis and is force on lockdown cause he is getting corrupted. If that wasn't bad enough, Nebula came and kidnapped Protoman and taken him to the Undernet and now we have to help Chaud rescue Protoman in the Undernet.

Micro: Too bad this segment has probably the worst gimmick in the whole game, and that's not including having to play hide and seek with three navis in the whole goddamn net to buy parts to a skateboard and take those parts to some girl navi to make the skateboard in order for us to even go to the Undernet, thanks devs. And the Undernet is defiantly different in this game, in a rather very gaudy trying to be creepy design, but you'll be forgetting it as for this part, you have to play pixel hunt at specific points of the game where you need to take Chaud's clue for where keys are to open up doors to get to deeper part of the Undernet, and this one can burn in hell as you have to do it like three times in the Undernet, and this place gets bigger and more confusing to navigate. Just use a guide at this point, lord knows you'll be doing so when it comes to that 50 point bulls$%t segment Scale mentioned a while ago. Anyways, Chaud knocks Protoman back to his sense and we actually fight Protoman in the tournament, who puts up a bigger fight than he has in the previous games as I almost lost to this guy. That said, we get the third Soul Unison thing, and that being the Proto Soul, which I honestly didn't used much at all since we are now about to enter the final part of the game as this tournament was actually a plan from Naxa to find the best Net Battler in the world and you idiots know that Lan and Megaman had saved the world three times up to this point for crying out loud, why the hell are you looking for the strongest net battler?

Scale: Technically four if you want to count Network Transmission.

Micro: Point proven. You'd think this game would try to at least remember that these two boys saved the world and give some acknowledgement about it, but at the same time, we're talking about the same game that honestly, none of the characters feel right. The plot feels rush, the main threat is more of a sub plot that you barely remember exist no thanks to all the tournaments you got to do, each round in the tournament feels like a filler episode that's already in a game where the plot feels like a filler episode, Nebula is probably the least interesting yet somehow the dumbest crime organization due to how nonthreatening the group is, at least until Laserman decides to show up and decides to give a pounding that isn't make a different navi be a sock puppet for a minute or two, and the characters are rather not very interesting to talk about, and that is probably with how much time you spent with opponents, or I should say spend whatever you have to do that involves each opponent and see if there's anything worth talking about. And frankly, the story is not worth talking about much with each character, and what really doesn't help is the mountain of back tracking and Christ does this game has a lot of back tracking and padding to the point that it feels like the devs took the worst part of backtracking in each game and stretch the whole thing to make this game.

Shekra: Yeah, I can't argue him there as there were so many times that a bunch of parts of the story slows down at a crawl, though that's mostly due to what you do in the game. As such, how about we talk about gameplay now, which I think this part might be the better part of the game.

Gameplay:

Scale: I was wanting to beg that to say its the same thing as the last game and call it a day, but unfortunately for me, this game is very different from the last game to discuss a lot of the changes. While combat is generally the same, you got your mega buster, you chips that does stuff, you got your grids, and there are enemies, you know what to do at this point. However, the custom gauge took a change for this game where unlike before, you know have seven chips, and unfortunately, this game removed the add button so now you can ask to remove chip and replace them with whatever else is in your folder. There is a reason for why this is the case, still dumb that the add option was replaced, but what we got might be potentially better, but you'll have to wait a bit. However, there is one more thing in combat that you'll immediately notice right off the bat and that is you'll see a tiny panel in the upper left corner of the screen which shows Megaman's face. This here tiny panel is Megaman's mood, and its serves as one of the replacement for the add button.

Shekra: The mood thing will sound dumb at first glance, but this thing can be pretty neat to use once you know how it works and manipulate it. How it works is simple, the mood panel will obviously display Megaman's mood, with it having several stages, with one of the stage next to impossible to get unless you get a ridiculous amount of health loss in one it. The better play in the encounter, scoring hits with both chips and navi, not getting hit, and also using the countering mechanic from the last game, which got a change as well where unlike the last game you don't get bug fragments for countering the enemy but will stun them for a moment, doing this will drastically improve Megaman's form where he'll enter full synchro, the same one that Lan and Megaman does several times in the past. In full synchro, any attacking chips you use next will now do twice the damage, and this is defiantly as busted as it sounds like, especially when you know how to do the timing for counter and will be able to chain it to break the game. That said, there is a opposite affect obviously, and that's what happens when you fail to increase Megaman's mood. Taking a lot of hits and a lot of hard hitting attack will drastically shift Hub's mood to a more anxious state, and this is the worst state to be in, as being here after a certain point of the game will start summoning dark chips.

Micro: We mentioned that dark chips are considered to be extremely dangers to the point of corrupting anything that touches it, but we haven't mentioned on what makes the chips so powerful. You see, should you decide to use the dark chips, you'll immediately notice that these attack chips are terrifyingly powerful, about to destroy even the toughest Navi in second, even turning certain navis bosses into a joke. However, there is a massive problem with dark chips and that problem being that you permanently lose health throughout the whole game and there's no way to regain them. And one of the bigger problem with these things is that if you were relying on them to steamroll the game, thinking that if you don't care of the penalties as long you beat the game, guess what, you are screwing yourself over as you can't use these chips against the final boss and you just put a gigantic handicap to yourself at a boss that is already a c$%t to fight, but more on that prick later. Needless to say, I did not use the dark chips at all as the punishment for using them to overcome some annoying challenges in this was not worth it, even though from what I found out, there is something in the game you could get that can help negate some of the negatives of the game, but even that thing is not worth getting from what I understand. Now before we talk about something else, I do need to pick some part of this game a bigger punch to the heart as there were a bunch of things that I can I didn't like too much with few minor things I do like. Said minor thing I like is that randomly in the middle of combat, treasure crystals can show up in the middle of the fight. If the crystal doesn't take one chip to the side and gets destroy by anyone by the time the fight ends, you can get bigger rewards, such as more money, bug fragments and chips. I like this thing since it helped getting money easier if I can get said money, now if only some of the encounters weren't a bastard to giving me the bird before destroying the crystals. But as for what I don't like in the game, where to begin. I think we've establish already how we think of the story so far, but the net isn't any better as well as pacing. Good Christ, this game has the worst backtracking and padding in the whole series so far. Numerous times you have to go back and forth in the net alone just to do anything far more than the last three games, and it really doesn't help that the net is not as interesting to walk around as the last game as the net for this game feels like it took a downgrade. There's no squares that were in the last two games, shortcuts are not that much useful at all, and the areas you visit are honestly annoying or boring to look at. What really hurts all this back tracking is the encounter rate is cram up to eleven in this game, Jesus Christ I hate the encounter rate in this game, and this is even with using the repel to help get rid of "weak" enemies to make running around faster, but even that doesn't seem to work when stronger enemies pop n to say hello and slaps my face when I can't run away from them. I know you are supposed to be using the returning Navi customization thing from the last game, but this thing I think took a bit of a wrong tweak to improve as while nothing about it has change, the programs you use are not exactly useful except for undershot and one program you can find that jacks up your attack power to make the fight bearably faster. And don't get me started on that skateboard thing I mentioned. You get this stupid thing way too late in the game with how little you use it, with this thing use for either shortcuts or dead ends that may have some goodies in them, but to do so, you need to buy parts from three separate navis that loves to hide in underpass and you can't really see them at all before you take these parts to another navi to make it. And one more thing, out of dozens more I can kick into the stage to talk about but best to just skip to the major points, I find this game so far the most tedious and annoying game of the series so far. I already mentioned the backtracking and the obnoxious padding this game has, without revealing the worst padding this game has yet, but I haven't mentioned that the enemies are annoying in this game to fight when you fight them. For your typical cannon fodders, these guys eat good chunk of your health, enemies that look like they should hurt suddenly beat me up like a ragdoll, some are relentless at tackling me down like I owe them money without much room to shoot them back, and you got some enemies that loves to take their time in dropping their shields down so I can hurt them regularly, as well as some enemies having attacks that can cover a good two third of my side with little room to squeeze around. Now, would I say this game has the same level of tediousness and bulls$%t as say Megaman and Bass where almost everything in that game wants you dead, eh no, the tediousness of this game is nowhere close to that game, at least not until we get to the very end of the game, but just wait even longer. That said, I think its clear that my time in the gameplay department isn't exactly as fun as the last game. Also that said, is there something I do like in the game, actually, yes, Soul Unison.

Scale: About time to talk about this one. First thing first, you've may have notice we never mentioned that style change is in this game. Well, remember when Shekra said that in order to bring Hub back a price had to be paid? Well, now you know the price, but at the same time, I think Soul Unison is about as good, if not better than style change. Soul Unison is this game's version of style change, and one that finally goes back to classic Megaman roots where the soul that you use will let you use the same abilities like as whoever the specific navi you fight, such as Aquaman, Metalman, and Protoman. There are actually a lot more navis..... and we'll talk about why we haven't mentioned them soon, but for now, the mechanics of how Soul Unison works. In order to use Soul Unison, you have to sacrifice a adjacent chip that matches the soul's element, don't worry about the sacrificing part, it just means you don't use that chip for the remaining of the battle. So to give examples, to use Aqua soul, obviously you need to use a water chip, sword chips for Proto soul, and as for Metal soul, you need to use specifically chips that can break panels from my understand. Once you do, you can now use the soul and which you now have new abilities to use. Aqua soul lets you do twice the damage with water chips, move freely on ice, and even be a nuisance against fire while a charge shot can hit two horizontal panels. Proto soul honestly I have no idea how it properly works, any sword chips you use obviously gets stronger but if you try charging the chip, something you can do with every soul, Proto soul moves you two panels forward and you use it, and I've yet to figure out on how to properly use it at all, but thankfully Proto soul has also the ability to reflect if you do a button combo. As for Metal soul, it has a charge shot where the range is pathetically one panel away, but anything that gets hit by it just gets to become a crack filling on the panel, where as regular shots from using this soul is now a automatic armor piercer and can finally shred some of the more obnoxious enemies, though keep in mind that Megaman's charge shot with the right program can be far stronger than this thing, and of course any chips that matches this soul does twice the damage. Now there is one major thing you should know about Soul unison when fighting, Soul Unison are only temporary. Each Soul can only be use once in battle, and they only last for three turns, meaning whenever you open up the folder when the custom gauge is full, so try to not go hog wild in switching Souls just to feel like it.

Shekra: Well, as long you don't open the third turn, you can keep the soul on as long as you want, though keep in mind that some Souls has weakness to elements, water being weak to elect obviously, but besides that, I honestly love Soul Unison far more style change, once you know what Navi to fight to get the soul you know what you are getting, and its not up to luck of what element you get. And I also like the part of Soul Unison harking back to Classic as whatever soul you use gets some design from the appropriate navi.

Micro: While I did like Aqua soul, I like Metal soul a lot, mainly for the the armor piercing shots, but now with the charge shot, I'm back to giving all my foes the most painful fisting of their lives before they blow up to in pain.

Scale: I'm afraid to know what he does for a living or a job that makes him want to hurt people this badly.

Shekra: Overnight retail worker.

Scale: ...... I don't get it.

Shekra: Best for you to not.

Bosses:

Shekra: Alright, soooo about the bosses in this game

Micro: You're going to either view the bosses range from piss easy of a joke to fight or annoying/ difficult for the painful of reasons with few bosses ranging in the middle, such as Metalman. And while we could do the typical in depth thing about our favorite bosses that are new and reoccurring, half of the boss you could be fighting are with generic navis you would see walking around in the past and get use to seeing them with them more or less having the same strategy of attacks. Besides that, you'll either get a cast of reoccuring navis you've fought in the past or new bosses in this game where both versions have also exclusive navis to each other while sharing navis, with the exclusive ones to each game being the one that gives you the Soul Unison. Just to give example of who you can fight in both games, in Red Sun, you can fight Gutsman, Fireman, Thunderman, Searchman, Windman, who might have one of the coolest Battle Network design in the series that made me kind of wish I was playing Red Sun more if I was lucky, and also the last exclusive being Roll of all characters. As for Blue Moon, we already mentioned halve, but here we go again, you got Aquaman, Metalman, Protoman, Woodman, Junkman, and Numberman. That's to not include the navis you do share such as Topman, Burnerman and Coldman, but you also got some other navis you can fight we didn't fought, that being Sparkman, Videoman, and Kendoman.

Scale: You already can guess what your in for with some of these navis if you fought them in the past, but some of them can have some new tricks to keep an eye out so they aren't 100% the same. But besides that, these fights, from the ones I saw, as Micro said can range from being pathetically easy to annoying, prime example for the annoying one being Coldman in that he loves to make ice blocks appear as well as try to make the stage cold, which we have two things to counter either one, but its a matter of you want to walk on ice but struggle breaking the ice or break the ice and struggle walking on ice, all while he can take pot shots at you and even make walking around difficult by breaking your side of panels. And prime example of easy would be Aquam- why did you guys block any image of this guy from me?

Shekra: Because I told Micro to as I want to see your reaction of the horror that is Aquaman in the end against your will.

Scale: .... Should I be scare of what she's planning?

Micro: Possibly.

Scale: ...... I need an adult?

Shekra: I am a adult.

Micro: Moving on, the boss fights aren't bad for the most part, but don't be surprise if you don't find the fights as fun as the last game, probably no thanks to whatever idiotic task you got shoehorned into doing just before finally fighting the boss. That said, you probably still notice that we still haven't mentioned why we left out such a large roaster of bosses you could fight in the plot summary. Well, we have a good reason as to why we haven't said it yet so please wait a bit longer, trust me, you're going to find it incredibly stupid if you haven't played this game. That said, let's hurry up with the ending of this game.

(continue to part 2)