Jack In and Get Ready To RIDE!!!

As I had previously stated in another review, I love MegaMan. I even tolerated MegaMan Legends (64) which certainly wasn't impressive. However, the new stylized playing, new, improved graphics and enhanced powers make MegaMan Battle Network a perfect new piece to the collection! Basically, you play as two people, Lan(Local Access Network-it's a pun) Hikari, a popular 5th grader, and his friend and computer program-assistant: MegaMan.exe. In the not too distant future, everybody has what is called a "Personal Terminal" (PET) for reading e-mails, going into electronics for maintainance, phone calls, and even what they call a Net Navi(gator). MegaMan.Exe is Lan's Net Navi, and is skilled in a new area called "Virus Busting". Virus Busting is now common place in Lan's world because as technology improved so did the viruses and computer hackers, and viruses have a virtual "body" so to speak. Lan, though lazy in school, has a big heart and finds it his destiny to stop the viruses an a criminal originization called World Three (or the "WWW"). Okay, not exactly the most original plot ever, but it still is fresh here.

GamePlay: Addictive. Strongly addictive. Playing in either the Cyber World, Real World, or the Battle Zones is always fun. The real world is lead by Lan and his group of close friends, Mayl, Dex, Yai, and Chaud. The cyber world it is up to MegaMan.exe, Roll.exe, Gutsman.exe, Glyde.exe (who doesn't show up nearly as much as the others) and ProtoMan.exe to protect and fight for. The Battle Zone is made of a 6x3 grid, 3x3 is yours and 3x3 is the virus/evil Navi's. Here, you can use the B button and fire your buster, which will be used alot. You can also gather "Chips" from trades, shops, and busted viruses to use in combat. Not all chips attack, but most do. Using A button in the battle after the chips are selected, uses them in the order of which you did select them. MegaMan.exe only takes up one square of his 3x3 and most enemies do too, but there are some enormous bosses that can take up many, and occasionally holes, cracks, lava, and ice cover parts of the battle field. Certain chips can also cut off pieces of yours, or your enemies' battle fields. The battle goes until someone is deleted, and afterwards MegaMan.exe's HP is restored.

graphics: Considering it was the first shot, it was amazing. MegaMan, Roll, GutsMan, and ProtoMan (along with many other memorable characters) look very different from their original characters, but not too much. It's only really noticable at first, afterwards they look pretty natural. The net has, what in some circles might be considered, a tie-dye-esque wallpaper in certain places. Others look interesting, but all are based on the certain part of the net and who owns it. (Lan's has soccar balls, Dex's has rice balls, etc). Each chip has its own unique design and purpous, along with excellent animations on MegaMan.exe and his foes with their unique powers as well.

Music/SFX: Being an RPG-based game, sometimes the music slips to the back of your mind, but it's still there. The music, like all the MegaMan games, is incredibly catchy and has their own different musics, such as boss music, exploration music, normal battle music, and tranquil, docile music. It's impossible to generalize them for each song is unique, and beautiful in its own right. The sound effects are most noticable when you use a special chip, for instance the common "Canon" chip lets off a sudden "BOOM" sound, the swords make a "Slash" noise and when an enemy or MegaMan.exe is hit it sounds like your striking against metal. MegaMan.exe's buster sounds tremendously different than it has in the past, but it fits very well with a sudden, low "ptew" sort of noise.

Replay: There are many chips to get (I believe there are 175, but I could be wrong) and after that, there are boss "shadows" (as I have dubbed them) that can be re-fought throughout the net, and three bosses that don't even become available until after the final boss dies! Even after all of that is done, you can always start over for nostolgics! This is indeed a great game worthy of a buy!