Played this one first before some kind of glitch broke the game right before the entrance to the final dungeon, so I just found a save file for the original GBA and beat it there. Sucks too, I had some stupid good battle chips 😔

It "fixes" the original far less than one would like to think. The map is helpful, but there's still awful backtracking, so now you can just see where you have to stupidly backtrack to. I don't care for the voice clips either. It's basically just "jacking in!" every time you jack in and 'fight good, mega man!" every time you fight but in Japanese and kind of poorly recorded, and I also don't really like the voice clips calling him "Netto-kun" and the text calling him "Lan" either. The extra mission is fine, I guess? The best I could say it wasn't too long an interruption of the main campaign. The extra half star comes from how really real fuckin nice it is to Operate Shooting Star instead of Mega Man near the endgame. Hold down the fire button to rapid fire, automatic charge shots, and that lock-on? Hoo baby. You don't even need any area grab chips! Load up on swords and these viruses are fcukin dead in the water.

Also it bears repeating, but DR GODDAMN WILY??!!?!?!?!?!?!!!!

Give it up, man.

Second GOTM finished for December 2023. Very glad I chose this version of MMBN to play, as I can't see how the GBA version would've been enjoyable in any fashion without a map. Card-based battles and grid movement was fun and felt unique, and the music was catchy, but the level design felt like it got worse as the game progressed. There were also a few arbitrary sequence of events needed to progress the story that made me feel like I had missed some steps on more than one occasion. Enjoyed the game overall, but I can see why some people refer to this as the weakest of the series.

In a weird way, even though this is a strict improvement over Battle Network 1, this game kind of makes me like BN1 even less. By implementing a bunch of QOL features, it lays bare the other problems, namely how much padding and backtracking you do for zero reason. Also, I remember the story being largely inconsequential but there are sections of the story that straight up contribute to nothing and only waste your time.

Luckily, the Star Force crossover content here is easily the best part of the game. It kind of shows how the devs found their footing once they got BN1 out the door and figured out what works and what doesn't. The writing in this section is also leagues better, it actually made me laugh a lot.