Upon revisiting this game, it holds up surprisingly well and is filled with so much soul. NPC dialogue updates constantly, the pixel art is some of the best, and the unique gameplay holds up quite well. Being the first in the series there's a lot that gets polished later on, and some things in this game really do need that polish. The encounter rate and inability to escape can be frustrating and the internet desperately needs to be made less confusing to walk around in.

Still though, the game oozes personality and fun. The uniqueness of it elevates it above some of its peers at the time that just tried to tepeat the basic rpg formula. It's a unique experience worth checking out for sure.

I really, really wish I enjoyed this game, but so many flaws hold me back from having a good time. The world of this game is so full of charm, with each location featuring a plethora of npcs with unique dialogue. It’s just such a fun and bright world to walk around in, even if it isn’t massive in its scope. Each of the characters you encounter have plenty of personality, with unique dialogue that changes throughout the game. You can tell a lot of heart was put into this little near-future world. The story isn’t anything super ground-breaking, boiling down to a villain of the week boss controlled by a group of cyber terrorists known as the WWW (just one of the many dated internet lingo used in this game). It’s a fairly simple premise but it works well for what it set out to achieve. Overall I did enjoy the atmosphere of this game, with all of its early 2000s internet charm.

Where this game really loses me is in the battle network. Fights take place as random encounters whenever you’re hooked into the internet. Mega Man Battle Network is a real time action RPG taking place on a 3x9 grid, split between you and your enemy. For combat, you’re given a basic attack, along with a random assortment of chips in your collection. For what it’s worth, this game’s combat was certainly ambitious, there wasn’t anything quite like it. However, this series’ first entry feels like they were still finding their footing. Most of the battles in this game feature braindead AI that you can easily take out once you memorize their patterns, and with the ridiculously high encounter rate you’re sure to remember most of them. However, some of these fights are made artificially hard by giving some enemies busted damage output, like an enemy that places invisible mines on your stage that WILL instakill you on contact. Believe it or not, most of the boss fights are even less eventful, with even easier patterns to memorize. Barely any of these fights were memorable, which is a shame because the combat system offers so much potential. The chips are pretty fun to collect, it’s always exciting to test out new moves. However, some chips only spawn from enemies at an absurdly low rate. Part of the game is locked behind collecting enough chips, and the grid for them was miserable.

Perhaps my least favorite part of this game is the dungeon design. Early dungeons aren’t too bad, with puzzles that are actually kind of rewarding to solve. However, the high encounter rate can really get frustrating. Additionally, you can’t run away from battles until you draw an escape chip from your folder. What makes this worse is the lack of an in game map. You can call me a cheater for looking up dungeon maps, but having to fight 10 or so battles walking down a path only to meet a dead end is just not fun. Later dungeons become even more convoluted. The ElecMan stage revolves trial and error guessing with an extremely strict timer, and the removal of healing after battle. This dungeon was just miserable and killed my motivation to complete the game.

Overall, I’m really not sure if I can recommend this game. I certainly had fun with what I played at points, but the awful dungeon design and forgettable combat really left a bad impression on me. While I haven’t checked out the later games, they apparently fix many of the issues I had, so I’ll definitely be checking them out. On top of that, One Step From Eden is a lovely game that expands on the Battle Network formula as a roguelike. I’ve had infinitely more fun with that game than I had with this.

Mega Man Battle Network is the most imaginative take on the Mega Man series so far; the RPG spin-off, unrelated to the rest of the Mega Man series, is set in an alternate universe where cloud technology connects all of us, instead of robotics. As such, Mega Man's main character is a middle-schooler named Lan Hikari, who owns a "NetNavi" named "Mega Man.EXE" a sentient online avatar.

The series is received a shonen adaptation and is one of the few games inspired by the direct popularity of Pokémon. The game features slice-of-life elements following Lan Hikari and his friends through many scenarios; school trips, camping, carnivals, until havok happens. The story unfolds in a similar fashion to an episodic anime series, until the climax at the end of the game. Each of its characters has its own NetNavi with a unique personality and design, including the villains, whose NetNavi are counterparts to the original series' robot masters, the characters are rich in dialogue, which made us attached to many of its characters by the end of the series.

Mega Man can collect his own items, called "Battle Chips" by battling viruses on the internet. Mega Man Battle Network had a lot of work put into its gameplay system to make it stand out as unique, featuring a 3 by 6 arena where each NetNavi uses a deck and an assortment of cards to fight in real-time; its battle system inspired many more indie games to follow in its genre.

Mega Man games are always interesting in the fact they take a concept and run with it for several games to see how it works and just kinda make a franchise out of it. Mega Man Battle Network being a lot of people's introduction to Mega Man, really helps establish it's own type of gameplay and world that honestly I think other Mega Man games would envy. With classic being very based and simple, the X series being more dark and gritty, and even the legends series being more cheerful and full of adventure, each Mega Man game before Battle Network really helped establish it's own tone for their respect franchise, within said franchise.

What is perhaps more interesting about Battle Network despite it's gameplay being widely different, is how it manages to have a lot of the same tones of all the previous Mega Man games and just make it work. Battle Network honestly has some darker themes that are hidden in it's cheery nature, but largely it works because how well the world gets established. The enemies in Battle Network are colorful and cool looking, but often you see exactly how much they effect the real world, and honestly really helps with the stake being so high. It's a little jarring to see Lan, as a 5th grader, take on a whole terrorist organization, but ultimately it's written well enough to not be too out there.

All the characters are a good baseline for the start of the franchise, and the gameplay is even better when it comes to being built on. While a lot of the game takes getting used to, and trying to figure out how to optimize everything will take a while, it at least has enough there to feel refreshing and rewarding for the time you put into this game. There are some problems with directions though, and often if you misinterpret or do things in the incorrect order the game won't tell what to do next. It's not enough to ruin the game, but it happens a lot more often than it should, and with the way the game looks with it's isometric view doesn't do it any favors. Overall Mega Man Battle Network is a great start to a franchise, and one I'm happy to have played.

This was the first game I've played that felt like a genuinely better experience on emulator. There is a good amount of tedious stuff like unnecessary overworld movement and trial and error stuff in the high encounter-rate areas. I think the game assumes you'll save a lot and that's a lot more viable with save states; also, I ended up using speedup for the backtracking stuff and the last couple dungeons. The deckbuilding, battles, and enemies are fun to fight but it can be pretty ruthless at times.