The Quixotic Engineer

How do you turn older gamers off a beloved iconic character like Mega Man? Reimagine him as a generic anime reject? Replace Dr. Light with a cast of plucky pre-teens? Add Pokemon-like collection elements? Take all of the above and you basically have the Mega Man Battle Network series.

While you could be forgiven for dismissing the game due to its designed-by-committee visual design, I contend that beneath its surface lies a unique and intriguing battle system that’s easy to learn but difficult to master. It’s a seamless mix of real time combat and strategic deck building that allows a skilled player to defeat a challenging enemy in seconds without taking a hit.

The first MMBN game was released in 2001, back when the Internet (with a capital ‘i’) was still new, exciting and a completely legitimate setting for a video game. Mega Man is the “netnavi” of a young boy named Lan, and together they roam the web defeating viruses and battling the sinister terrorist organization known as WWW. The viruses and navis are all modelled after classic Mega Man enemies, such as Heat Man, Quick Man, Guts Man, etc. The plot and characters are typical JRPG fluff, but generally fall short of being obnoxious or annoying.

The combat takes places on a pair of adjacent 3×3 grids, with Mega Man on the left and his enemies on the right. Both are constrained to moving within their grid, and trade shots across the divide. Enemies move and fire in patterns, and the player must react accordingly while counterattacking with the classic arm cannon. However, to defeat enemies efficiently, the player must use battle chips.

Every ten seconds the game pauses and the player is presented with a selection of five chips from their folder, from which they select a handful to bring with them into battle. These chips represent a variety of offensive or defensive abilities, such as bombs, swords, shields and recovery. Multiple chips can be selected if they are of the same type or have the same letter, and some can even be combined to form stronger attacks. While this might sound overwhelming all at once, new elements are introduced gently and the whole system builds up in a logical and consistent way.

Last year I compared the MMBN series to The World Ends With You, and I still think the comparison is apt. Both games fuse action and RPG gameplay with light deck building and collection mechanics. While TWEWY was innovative and experimental, I would argue that Mega Man Battle Network unites these disparate elements in a more cohesive manner.

If you’re interested in checking out the series, I recommend starting with MMBN2. The first game was good but didn’t fully explore the potential of the mechanics it introduced. Conversely, I felt the third game added too many new elements which diluted the battle system, a trend that unfortunately persisted for the remainder of the series. In Goldilocks terms, MMBN2 is “just right”.

[This post is part of the Hidden Gems series.]