Mega Man Battle Network 5 - Third Play

Okay, I’m kind of getting into this game. Last week I was overwhelmed by the depth and tried to give you a feel for its complexity. This week I took a different approach and hardly made an attempt to get my head around every single detail. Instead, I buzzed through and let my instincts guide me. As a result, I found quite a few elements that were more appealing to me.

The storyline has finally begun to show honest to goodness plot elements and I’m intrigued to find out what happens next. It’s almost enough to make me overlook that I’m being reminded to look both ways before crossing the street. Wandering around and fighting random battles as I try to get my head around these maps is also becoming less agonizing as eight-year-old Scott is being resurrected to spastically mash buttons in sub-second response times to fire off MegaMan’s multiple weapons.

As more characters enter the game, liberation missions (described in my first Play Rating), are becoming more interesting. I enjoy having more than two characters with which to plan a turn’s attack. My allies make it more interesting by not only having a special attack they use in addition to chips in battle, but also by each having different abilities to clear away enemy-occupied squares. For example, one of my navis can take out enemies in six squares at a time while another can clear away a square without putting himself in danger. Finally, I’ve also been able to level up enough now that it’s not a complete joke to complete a mission within the “extra credit” number of rounds.

I also really like the Navi customizer, which is a graphical tool you can use to upgrade Mega Man. It is a 4×4 grid with a “command line” running through the third row. Throughout the game you pick up various customizer “programs,” which are Tetris-like blocks in different shapes and sizes that, when placed correctly in the customizer, provide Mega Man with additional hit points, a more powerful gun, and other sorts of power-ups. There are a number of restrictions that determine how you can and can’t place your various pieces into the customizer, which adds a little bit of a puzzle element to the game as you make tradeoffs to try to fit as many pieces as possible within the grid while also making room for the most powerful upgrades.

Unfortunately, there are some translation issues that really mess up this game. In my second Play Rating, I mentioned that many of the battle chips are poorly described. That problem has only become worse as the chips’ functionality has become more complex. In addition, sometimes they just get words wrong. One of my puzzle tasks was to make it through a maze of clouds by finding programs that could clear away the clouds for me. Each program could only clear a certain number of clouds, but would tell me where the next cloud clearing program was. One of these programs told me the next stop to hit was “ahead” of a gold cloud. I finally found the program I was looking for “behind” the gold cloud, but that was after two hours that would have made even the strongest gamer weep.

The music hasn’t changed much since my first Play Rating. It’s starting to get tedious, but I can’t turn down the sound because you absolutely cannot fight these battles without the sounds telling you when your gun is charged and when you are able to pick up more chips. As a result, I’m going to have to take my music rating down a notch. MMBN5 still comes out a winner in this Play Rating, though, because as I said above, the story’s improving and I’m channeling my eight-year-old self and little Scotty is telling me between sips of Mountain Dew that gameplay needs to be rated higher as well.