It's kind of wild rexperiencing the black sheep of your childhood favorite franchise and really seeing all the issues stem up. As someone who admittedly frequents *Chan boards for older game discussion, I've always seen the obvious negative disdain for 4, so coming onto here and seeing such a mixed reception is rather validating. Still after both a current and ongoing playthrough, it's really interesting to see what exactly Capcom got wrong with this entry, and really elevates the other titles in the franchise for things many would had taken for granted, and in my opinion that alone at least makes BN4 worth experiencing. But nearing the end of my 2nd playthrough I just really wanted to record my thoughts and really articulate what's wrong with this game.
Acknowledging the positives first and foremost, it's still Battle Network. The gameplay loop, despite some issues in this one, still holds really strong. The netnavi still have amazing designs, animations are great, for better or worse the formula hasn't been shaken up that much which is possibly the mentality Capcom had with the games up to this point. Versus and the free tournament feature are also pretty nice, moreso with the latest Switch release having online capabilities.
And now to nitpick and complain. There isn't a whole lot of good TO say here, and I imagine if this were someone's first game in the franchise for whatever reason, there would be nothing but disdain, and nearly everything here is fumbled, but the easiest target first would be the soundtrack, which admittedly has never been a series strong suit. There are combat tracks which are generally nice, but a lot of the overworld themes are just absolutely painful. Dendome definitely stands out for such an irritating pager ringing start and I dread ever having to go there, it's just mixed overall which admittedly is to be expected when they develop completely new OST's for their annual releases of these game boy games.
I commented on how it's still Battle Network, yet there are a lot of issues to the combat and starting with a lot of the new mechanics introduced. Gone are the style changes introduced in 2 and expanded upon in 3 and in their place are double souls, temporary forms you can obtain by sacrificing chips of specific types which is really cool on paper, middling to outright terrible in execution. You don't start with the form so already having to throw away a chip just to activate the form feels bad, meaning delving into double souls means you're already neutering your deck by either throwing away one of your cards or stunting a combo. This wouldn't be an issue in itself, but another issue with double souls is a lack of scaling. Each soul will do a set amount of damage, and it varies drastically, but for most souls they'll fall off drastically in damage and utility, and only serve as a net negative overall. For the easiest example, the aqua soul will always do 20 damage, which is great early but by mid and even late game where your buster can hit harder and fire faster on enemies even the aqua soul would be good against, it becomes a completely wasted form. This is a severe balance issue that's reprimanded in the next entry, but having a bulk of forms become a hindrance is such a massive oversight that becomes all the more apparent the more you play. And yeah some souls do have utility you can rely on, like junk soul recycling some used chips or number soul giving you 10 chips to work with per turn, but the balance discrepancy is still there, and building around some souls is much easier said than done, especially once you're deep into your 2nd playthrough.
Speaking of undercooked new features are dark chips, very powerful chips that will drain your max health for the rest of the game on use with no way to circumvent it, and other than becoming a sort of meme amongst discussion, really serve no purpose in indulging. Not only is there no way to circumvent the effects, and not only do you have to be on critical health just to gain access to them, but there's more than enough ways to supplement similar damage and protective numbers. It's an addition that just feels pointless and barely expanded on, and is potentially the biggest reason why the add feature was cut, meaning you can no longer cycle some chips in to easily find your combos for some extended fights... of course there is ONE reason why you would rely on the dark powers, but it isn't a good one.
Chip selection sucks compared to previous entry, and deck building just feels worse compared to previous and later entries. The general rule to making a good in-game BN deck is to stick to as few codes as possible, but during your first few playthroughs your options are stunted, and building around 1 or 2 codes leaves you with a ton of garbage you're stuck with, and no I'm not expecting some omni game killing folder similar to guts shoot an hour in, but it's just the complete inverse here, forcing me to rely on either lifesword and varswords, or air hockey's and boomerangs with a splash of assorted asterisk cards for most of my playthrough, and while yeah my options will expand once I get to post game after 2 or 3 playthroughs, but that's a good 30-40 hours in before the consistency and variety really start coming in, and you're not hamstrung into relying on really bad chip decks, which admittedly is where the dark chips might come into play, since even with one of the few consistent strategies, some fights can be rather rough.
So let's just make an overview on the gameplay changes here. Chip folders will be bad and stunted because most options are locked behind new game plus, and you have less options overall because the game expects you to utilize double souls and dark chips in some capacity. Double souls either fall off to the point of being literally useless or require ample amount of late game chips to even consider a build around. Dark chips are an overall net negative, will never come up if you're staying healthy health-wise, and would only come up in a practical sense because the chip selection early is really bad. All without mentioning the biggest issue the game has, and these are all issues that continually feed into one another, and it's so amazing because no other game in the franchise has these kinds of problems at this magnitude. And yeah you can turn your brain off, not consider any of this, and just use chips that look cool, but more than likely you'll be struggling on a lot of fights in the FIRST playthrough, especially if you're still rather green to the series.
The story is another gigantic mess even if it does have its own charming sparks here or there. Characters still act like they normally would, there's a ton of fun flavor text, and some references to other individuals like the Hideo Kojima stand-in (kind of subtle) and the Boktai series. (not nearly as subtle) The primary issue is the game is more or less filler in the worst way possible, and does ample amounts of damage to the gameplay in turn. To put it shortly, it's a tournament arc they somehow fumbled tremendously, which is genuinely a first for me in any sort of medium. You have 3 seperate tournaments where you see your opponent, and perform a side quest involving them, many of which involve you backtracking through the net, performing some unrelated minigame, or usually a mix of both. It takes the concept of a tournament and one of the more enjoyable segments of BN3 and turns it into a slog, and these make up most of the game. The core plot more or less happens at the start and at the end, and the rest are randomly generated tournaments that incentivize you to run through NG+ to endure every scenario. And worst yet are the optional navi fights and double soul forms locked behind these, and you will not have access to every unique navi fight until you've beaten the game 3 times. This isn't including secret navis or hidden boss fights, but regular content.
And I've mentioned it several times, but genuinely it is the worst part of the game, unique to Battle Network 4, and that is New Game+. Multiple boss fights are locked behind NG+. Tons of chips are locked behind NG+. The post game dungeon isn't accessible until you beat the game 3 times. And having to run through so many of these terrible and repetitive side quests with wonky new mechanics and a very skewed and admittedly terrible selection of chips just creates an ouroboros of issues that just endlessly feed into one another, and many might not even get past the first playthrough after the initial lukewarm experience it gives.
The biggest sin this game commits is serving no purpose. There's nothing in the story that adds to the plot before and after, and even if it's still Battle Network, there are 8 much better options for you to invest time into. I've lowered the rating about 3 times now writing this out and that stings because this is a franchise I absolutely adore and one I would recommend to people.
Just skip 4.
Acknowledging the positives first and foremost, it's still Battle Network. The gameplay loop, despite some issues in this one, still holds really strong. The netnavi still have amazing designs, animations are great, for better or worse the formula hasn't been shaken up that much which is possibly the mentality Capcom had with the games up to this point. Versus and the free tournament feature are also pretty nice, moreso with the latest Switch release having online capabilities.
And now to nitpick and complain. There isn't a whole lot of good TO say here, and I imagine if this were someone's first game in the franchise for whatever reason, there would be nothing but disdain, and nearly everything here is fumbled, but the easiest target first would be the soundtrack, which admittedly has never been a series strong suit. There are combat tracks which are generally nice, but a lot of the overworld themes are just absolutely painful. Dendome definitely stands out for such an irritating pager ringing start and I dread ever having to go there, it's just mixed overall which admittedly is to be expected when they develop completely new OST's for their annual releases of these game boy games.
I commented on how it's still Battle Network, yet there are a lot of issues to the combat and starting with a lot of the new mechanics introduced. Gone are the style changes introduced in 2 and expanded upon in 3 and in their place are double souls, temporary forms you can obtain by sacrificing chips of specific types which is really cool on paper, middling to outright terrible in execution. You don't start with the form so already having to throw away a chip just to activate the form feels bad, meaning delving into double souls means you're already neutering your deck by either throwing away one of your cards or stunting a combo. This wouldn't be an issue in itself, but another issue with double souls is a lack of scaling. Each soul will do a set amount of damage, and it varies drastically, but for most souls they'll fall off drastically in damage and utility, and only serve as a net negative overall. For the easiest example, the aqua soul will always do 20 damage, which is great early but by mid and even late game where your buster can hit harder and fire faster on enemies even the aqua soul would be good against, it becomes a completely wasted form. This is a severe balance issue that's reprimanded in the next entry, but having a bulk of forms become a hindrance is such a massive oversight that becomes all the more apparent the more you play. And yeah some souls do have utility you can rely on, like junk soul recycling some used chips or number soul giving you 10 chips to work with per turn, but the balance discrepancy is still there, and building around some souls is much easier said than done, especially once you're deep into your 2nd playthrough.
Speaking of undercooked new features are dark chips, very powerful chips that will drain your max health for the rest of the game on use with no way to circumvent it, and other than becoming a sort of meme amongst discussion, really serve no purpose in indulging. Not only is there no way to circumvent the effects, and not only do you have to be on critical health just to gain access to them, but there's more than enough ways to supplement similar damage and protective numbers. It's an addition that just feels pointless and barely expanded on, and is potentially the biggest reason why the add feature was cut, meaning you can no longer cycle some chips in to easily find your combos for some extended fights... of course there is ONE reason why you would rely on the dark powers, but it isn't a good one.
Chip selection sucks compared to previous entry, and deck building just feels worse compared to previous and later entries. The general rule to making a good in-game BN deck is to stick to as few codes as possible, but during your first few playthroughs your options are stunted, and building around 1 or 2 codes leaves you with a ton of garbage you're stuck with, and no I'm not expecting some omni game killing folder similar to guts shoot an hour in, but it's just the complete inverse here, forcing me to rely on either lifesword and varswords, or air hockey's and boomerangs with a splash of assorted asterisk cards for most of my playthrough, and while yeah my options will expand once I get to post game after 2 or 3 playthroughs, but that's a good 30-40 hours in before the consistency and variety really start coming in, and you're not hamstrung into relying on really bad chip decks, which admittedly is where the dark chips might come into play, since even with one of the few consistent strategies, some fights can be rather rough.
So let's just make an overview on the gameplay changes here. Chip folders will be bad and stunted because most options are locked behind new game plus, and you have less options overall because the game expects you to utilize double souls and dark chips in some capacity. Double souls either fall off to the point of being literally useless or require ample amount of late game chips to even consider a build around. Dark chips are an overall net negative, will never come up if you're staying healthy health-wise, and would only come up in a practical sense because the chip selection early is really bad. All without mentioning the biggest issue the game has, and these are all issues that continually feed into one another, and it's so amazing because no other game in the franchise has these kinds of problems at this magnitude. And yeah you can turn your brain off, not consider any of this, and just use chips that look cool, but more than likely you'll be struggling on a lot of fights in the FIRST playthrough, especially if you're still rather green to the series.
The story is another gigantic mess even if it does have its own charming sparks here or there. Characters still act like they normally would, there's a ton of fun flavor text, and some references to other individuals like the Hideo Kojima stand-in (kind of subtle) and the Boktai series. (not nearly as subtle) The primary issue is the game is more or less filler in the worst way possible, and does ample amounts of damage to the gameplay in turn. To put it shortly, it's a tournament arc they somehow fumbled tremendously, which is genuinely a first for me in any sort of medium. You have 3 seperate tournaments where you see your opponent, and perform a side quest involving them, many of which involve you backtracking through the net, performing some unrelated minigame, or usually a mix of both. It takes the concept of a tournament and one of the more enjoyable segments of BN3 and turns it into a slog, and these make up most of the game. The core plot more or less happens at the start and at the end, and the rest are randomly generated tournaments that incentivize you to run through NG+ to endure every scenario. And worst yet are the optional navi fights and double soul forms locked behind these, and you will not have access to every unique navi fight until you've beaten the game 3 times. This isn't including secret navis or hidden boss fights, but regular content.
And I've mentioned it several times, but genuinely it is the worst part of the game, unique to Battle Network 4, and that is New Game+. Multiple boss fights are locked behind NG+. Tons of chips are locked behind NG+. The post game dungeon isn't accessible until you beat the game 3 times. And having to run through so many of these terrible and repetitive side quests with wonky new mechanics and a very skewed and admittedly terrible selection of chips just creates an ouroboros of issues that just endlessly feed into one another, and many might not even get past the first playthrough after the initial lukewarm experience it gives.
The biggest sin this game commits is serving no purpose. There's nothing in the story that adds to the plot before and after, and even if it's still Battle Network, there are 8 much better options for you to invest time into. I've lowered the rating about 3 times now writing this out and that stings because this is a franchise I absolutely adore and one I would recommend to people.
Just skip 4.