This review contains spoilers
When looking forward to embarking on a retrospective playthough of the entire Battle Network series, the entry I was most anticipating was Battle Network 3. It was the only game in the series I had previously played, but the impression it left was so remarkable as a kid that it is perhaps one of the primary influences for me loving games still today. The GBA library is replete with brilliant games that hooked a new generation of children into the medium, overflowing with veritable classics that still rank amongst the best of their respective franchises. Pokemon and Metroid, Mario and Sonic, Fire Emblem and Castlevania. Any one of these games could and have been the consecrating cornerstone of someone’s journey into gaming—but not me. There were a few other games I owned at the same time as Battle Network 3, but none absorbed as much of my time or imagination as this. It was such that I never even considered wanting to play 1 or 2 thereafter, or that there may have been a 4 or a 5 or even a 6. I played Battle Network 3 endlessly, in part because it just has so much to offer.
I spent a lot of my review of the first Battle Network game discussing the inherent qualities of the series’ premise and mechanics, but I think for what amounts to the culmination of all the developers’ efforts thus far, many of the same sentiments bear repeating. Namely, I find it valuable to pontificate on how valuable a well-paced, reasonably dense RPG fares on a handheld system. RPGs are one of the most immersive types of video games, and for a child with generally short attention spans, the pick-up-and-play nature of handheld systems is inherently more inviting. While RPGs are generally structured to favor more intensive sessions to grind out lengthy sections of gameplay, the often turn-based, preparation-heavy design of their systems can be quite conducive to a more sporadic scheduling. The benefits of both approaches work together to encourage one another, fostering the growth of a more prolonged attention span for those who lack it, while also facilitating breaks and more dispersed sessions of play. Combined with the previously discussed appeals of the series (a unique combat system, a customizable approach to fighting, an immersive science-fiction world with endearing characters and a Saturday Morning Cartoon vibe), the Battle Network games strike a perfect balance engaging mechanics that both introduce and further encourage engagement with the inherently unique qualities of a video game for the relatively uninitiated.
Those appeals remained evident when revisiting the first two games of the series, though it was clear, based on my memories, that they were still building on a foundation overflowing with potential. The first game suffered immensely from incomplete mechanics and a half-designed world which became tedious and repetitive to navigate. The second game addressed almost all the issues of the first, and expanded with new ideas that complimented the established mechanics of the games, but dropped off towards the end with needlessly convoluted navigation and a narrative conclusion that fell flat. With the third entry, it truly feels like the culmination of everything that came before. All the strides and improvement of gameplay made from 1 to 2 have been retained here, with additional refinements and new inventions to go along with them. The most noteworthy new system is the Navi Customizer, which builds upon previous games’ abilities to upgrade Meagman’s capabilities in yet another personalized approach. Where previous games merely allowed for linear power increases through upgrades found across the net, the Navi Customizer creates a system that incentivizes variety and change. The grid-based, block-oriented system of placing power ups mirrors the intricate grid-based combat system of the game, making for a more interesting as well as differentiated approach to progression and challenge throughout the game after it’s introduced. There are several points throughout the game which require certain programs be used within the Navi Customizer, requiring you to be flexible and creative with your builds.
While narrative has never been the most compelling component of the series, Battle Network 3 manages to conjure up a story that feels emotionally engaging in terms of both stakes and characters. The pacing of the story feels especially attuned to this sense of progression, starting out with familiar, locally contained scenarios before branching out into a more wide-reaching and dramatic turn. Smartly, this ratcheting of the stakes comes with a nominal increase in the difficulty of the game too, amplifying the player’s sense that the threat is not only dire for Lan and Megaman, but for them playing as the two as well. The Hospital Scenario is perhaps the best example of how the game ties difficulty and emotional stakes before straying from the traditional contained dungeon formula for subsequent sections of the game. You spend the pre-dungeon portion of the scenario befriending a young boy who is suddenly in need of intensive surgery right as the scenario’s villain strikes the hospital to acquire its specific MacGuffin. It’s a simple emotional hook, but nonetheless an effective one the writers employ with consistent success throughout the game, asking you to invest in these characters so that the stakes might resonate beyond the boilerplate save-the-world scenario these games ultimately boil down to.
Because of this, the scenarios and boss fights of Battle Network 3 are the most distinct and memorable of the series so far. When you walk away from the game you don’t just remember the design of the evil navis, or the moves they employed in combat. The scenario itself becomes an impressionable aspect of their personality, often requiring some additional overworld interaction with their calamity in order to defeat them. That isn’t to undersell the actual designs of the navis or their fights either. Judged on their own objective merits, they still come out on the top of the heap. The embrace of less humanoid navis like Desertman and Flameman creates a space for more creativity to prosper, and a wider range of what defines the bounds of a navi to begin with. The fights are memorable too, of course, with the second encounter notably continuing the trend of the previous game ratcheting up the difficulty perhaps more than the player was expecting this early in the game. Unsurprisingly, the greatest hurdle of the game comes at the end, with the final showdown against a fully powered Bass and original incarnation of the internet, Alpha. For this first time in the series, we have a final fight which can only be accurately described as brutal. The combined barrier of Bass’ signature aura shield and Alpha’s regenerating core demand the best of your deck-building skills to create a folder capable of taking both on back to back while their actual attacks constantly keep you on your feet dodging and looking for an opening to sneak large chunks of their massive health bars away. It is far and away the most difficult fights of the series so far, and despite the insane spike in difficulty, it feels neither unwarranted nor insurmountable in its challenge.
Battle Network 3 has a couple of infamous roadblocks which can halt your progression entirely, but upon revisiting the game I was happy to discover the answers to all the problems were indeed there, if a bit obtuse to uncover. It’s not really like in 2 where there were puzzles built around invisible items you needed to uncover, or annoying fetch quests which sent you back and forth across the same stretches of the internet with irritating obstacles blocking your pathways. Any similar puzzles to those in Battle Network 3 are mitigated by a smoothening of their presentation: the only notable invisible item interaction is in a directly defined location, and the comparable scenario to the Freezeman backtracking quest in 2 clearly lays out your objective from the start and allows you to clear it in whole sections at a time, eliminating any actual “backtracking” that would make it annoying to begin with. The real stopgaps of 3 are the well-known “Iceball M” quest and the ambiguous “One of Many Birds” mystery. The former has its answer very clearly stated to you in several locations, despite having no means of encountering it prior to being assigned this task. Having struggled to find this exclusive chip as a kid, I never forgot the obtuse solution all these years on, but I was very glad to discover that had I simply thought to utilize the game’s in-world hint system more liberally, I could’ve found the solution easy enough. The latter is perhaps a bit more inscrutable. It’s totally possible to never notice the solution to this puzzle during your playthrough before being presented with the task to go and find it, and even though there are NPCs who will talk with you about this hint throughout the world, I didn’t personally encounter one who explicitly laid out the solution like the chat rooms did for the Iceball M chip. Still, it was something I figured out as a kid, and something I still noticed playing today, and it’s not so unachievable that some frantic interacting with every possible object wouldn’t net you the solution more or less soon enough.
There is no greater joy than the feeling of revisiting something from your childhood and discovering it was more than just nostalgia holding your fondness for something aloft in your mind. Pillars of quality and design bear the weight of a game like Battle Network 3; a game which, perhaps more than any other, is responsible for my ardent investment in the medium today. Even after watching the credits roll, there’s still so much left to do. The substantial postgame alone offers another small adventure to dive into, this time considerably more difficult than the challenges which have come before. Several new navis to find, and an expansion of the Undernet quest first began as part of the main game. I even managed to get decently far in it as a kid, before hitting a roadblock due to my lack of understanding of Program Advances. But I think now I could tackle it, as well as all the other tasks and personal challenges the game leaves you with. S-Ranking all the navi fights, similar to that of fighting the Robot Masters in the original Mega Man games; grinding Bug Frags and searching for all the friendly viruses hiding across the net; finishing all the job requests and hunting down every rare chip in the game. A lot of this extra content is ultimately kind of tedious, but it’s a testament to the overall quality of the game and the world it creates that I find myself actively wanting to pursue these rather menial missions. Battle Network 3 offers an eminently playable and replayable experience through all its unique characteristics that even the efforts of its previous entries can’t seem to compare. It is perhaps not as innovative in its accomplishments as the previous games, with 1 laying the groundwork and conceptual inspiration for the series, while 2 instituted a number of new and interesting mechanics which became essential elements of the gameplay going forward. But what 3 accomplishes, in addition to the wonderful new features it does add, is the ultimate refinement of what the first two entries aim to achieve in their outset. It builds on the promises of its progenitors and realizes their ambitions and more, providing that perfect balance of multi-faceted gameplay and immersive world-building which makes video games such an engaging medium to begin with.
I spent a lot of my review of the first Battle Network game discussing the inherent qualities of the series’ premise and mechanics, but I think for what amounts to the culmination of all the developers’ efforts thus far, many of the same sentiments bear repeating. Namely, I find it valuable to pontificate on how valuable a well-paced, reasonably dense RPG fares on a handheld system. RPGs are one of the most immersive types of video games, and for a child with generally short attention spans, the pick-up-and-play nature of handheld systems is inherently more inviting. While RPGs are generally structured to favor more intensive sessions to grind out lengthy sections of gameplay, the often turn-based, preparation-heavy design of their systems can be quite conducive to a more sporadic scheduling. The benefits of both approaches work together to encourage one another, fostering the growth of a more prolonged attention span for those who lack it, while also facilitating breaks and more dispersed sessions of play. Combined with the previously discussed appeals of the series (a unique combat system, a customizable approach to fighting, an immersive science-fiction world with endearing characters and a Saturday Morning Cartoon vibe), the Battle Network games strike a perfect balance engaging mechanics that both introduce and further encourage engagement with the inherently unique qualities of a video game for the relatively uninitiated.
Those appeals remained evident when revisiting the first two games of the series, though it was clear, based on my memories, that they were still building on a foundation overflowing with potential. The first game suffered immensely from incomplete mechanics and a half-designed world which became tedious and repetitive to navigate. The second game addressed almost all the issues of the first, and expanded with new ideas that complimented the established mechanics of the games, but dropped off towards the end with needlessly convoluted navigation and a narrative conclusion that fell flat. With the third entry, it truly feels like the culmination of everything that came before. All the strides and improvement of gameplay made from 1 to 2 have been retained here, with additional refinements and new inventions to go along with them. The most noteworthy new system is the Navi Customizer, which builds upon previous games’ abilities to upgrade Meagman’s capabilities in yet another personalized approach. Where previous games merely allowed for linear power increases through upgrades found across the net, the Navi Customizer creates a system that incentivizes variety and change. The grid-based, block-oriented system of placing power ups mirrors the intricate grid-based combat system of the game, making for a more interesting as well as differentiated approach to progression and challenge throughout the game after it’s introduced. There are several points throughout the game which require certain programs be used within the Navi Customizer, requiring you to be flexible and creative with your builds.
While narrative has never been the most compelling component of the series, Battle Network 3 manages to conjure up a story that feels emotionally engaging in terms of both stakes and characters. The pacing of the story feels especially attuned to this sense of progression, starting out with familiar, locally contained scenarios before branching out into a more wide-reaching and dramatic turn. Smartly, this ratcheting of the stakes comes with a nominal increase in the difficulty of the game too, amplifying the player’s sense that the threat is not only dire for Lan and Megaman, but for them playing as the two as well. The Hospital Scenario is perhaps the best example of how the game ties difficulty and emotional stakes before straying from the traditional contained dungeon formula for subsequent sections of the game. You spend the pre-dungeon portion of the scenario befriending a young boy who is suddenly in need of intensive surgery right as the scenario’s villain strikes the hospital to acquire its specific MacGuffin. It’s a simple emotional hook, but nonetheless an effective one the writers employ with consistent success throughout the game, asking you to invest in these characters so that the stakes might resonate beyond the boilerplate save-the-world scenario these games ultimately boil down to.
Because of this, the scenarios and boss fights of Battle Network 3 are the most distinct and memorable of the series so far. When you walk away from the game you don’t just remember the design of the evil navis, or the moves they employed in combat. The scenario itself becomes an impressionable aspect of their personality, often requiring some additional overworld interaction with their calamity in order to defeat them. That isn’t to undersell the actual designs of the navis or their fights either. Judged on their own objective merits, they still come out on the top of the heap. The embrace of less humanoid navis like Desertman and Flameman creates a space for more creativity to prosper, and a wider range of what defines the bounds of a navi to begin with. The fights are memorable too, of course, with the second encounter notably continuing the trend of the previous game ratcheting up the difficulty perhaps more than the player was expecting this early in the game. Unsurprisingly, the greatest hurdle of the game comes at the end, with the final showdown against a fully powered Bass and original incarnation of the internet, Alpha. For this first time in the series, we have a final fight which can only be accurately described as brutal. The combined barrier of Bass’ signature aura shield and Alpha’s regenerating core demand the best of your deck-building skills to create a folder capable of taking both on back to back while their actual attacks constantly keep you on your feet dodging and looking for an opening to sneak large chunks of their massive health bars away. It is far and away the most difficult fights of the series so far, and despite the insane spike in difficulty, it feels neither unwarranted nor insurmountable in its challenge.
Battle Network 3 has a couple of infamous roadblocks which can halt your progression entirely, but upon revisiting the game I was happy to discover the answers to all the problems were indeed there, if a bit obtuse to uncover. It’s not really like in 2 where there were puzzles built around invisible items you needed to uncover, or annoying fetch quests which sent you back and forth across the same stretches of the internet with irritating obstacles blocking your pathways. Any similar puzzles to those in Battle Network 3 are mitigated by a smoothening of their presentation: the only notable invisible item interaction is in a directly defined location, and the comparable scenario to the Freezeman backtracking quest in 2 clearly lays out your objective from the start and allows you to clear it in whole sections at a time, eliminating any actual “backtracking” that would make it annoying to begin with. The real stopgaps of 3 are the well-known “Iceball M” quest and the ambiguous “One of Many Birds” mystery. The former has its answer very clearly stated to you in several locations, despite having no means of encountering it prior to being assigned this task. Having struggled to find this exclusive chip as a kid, I never forgot the obtuse solution all these years on, but I was very glad to discover that had I simply thought to utilize the game’s in-world hint system more liberally, I could’ve found the solution easy enough. The latter is perhaps a bit more inscrutable. It’s totally possible to never notice the solution to this puzzle during your playthrough before being presented with the task to go and find it, and even though there are NPCs who will talk with you about this hint throughout the world, I didn’t personally encounter one who explicitly laid out the solution like the chat rooms did for the Iceball M chip. Still, it was something I figured out as a kid, and something I still noticed playing today, and it’s not so unachievable that some frantic interacting with every possible object wouldn’t net you the solution more or less soon enough.
There is no greater joy than the feeling of revisiting something from your childhood and discovering it was more than just nostalgia holding your fondness for something aloft in your mind. Pillars of quality and design bear the weight of a game like Battle Network 3; a game which, perhaps more than any other, is responsible for my ardent investment in the medium today. Even after watching the credits roll, there’s still so much left to do. The substantial postgame alone offers another small adventure to dive into, this time considerably more difficult than the challenges which have come before. Several new navis to find, and an expansion of the Undernet quest first began as part of the main game. I even managed to get decently far in it as a kid, before hitting a roadblock due to my lack of understanding of Program Advances. But I think now I could tackle it, as well as all the other tasks and personal challenges the game leaves you with. S-Ranking all the navi fights, similar to that of fighting the Robot Masters in the original Mega Man games; grinding Bug Frags and searching for all the friendly viruses hiding across the net; finishing all the job requests and hunting down every rare chip in the game. A lot of this extra content is ultimately kind of tedious, but it’s a testament to the overall quality of the game and the world it creates that I find myself actively wanting to pursue these rather menial missions. Battle Network 3 offers an eminently playable and replayable experience through all its unique characteristics that even the efforts of its previous entries can’t seem to compare. It is perhaps not as innovative in its accomplishments as the previous games, with 1 laying the groundwork and conceptual inspiration for the series, while 2 instituted a number of new and interesting mechanics which became essential elements of the gameplay going forward. But what 3 accomplishes, in addition to the wonderful new features it does add, is the ultimate refinement of what the first two entries aim to achieve in their outset. It builds on the promises of its progenitors and realizes their ambitions and more, providing that perfect balance of multi-faceted gameplay and immersive world-building which makes video games such an engaging medium to begin with.