The other blue bomber

As a child growing up with an NES as my first console, Mega Man was kind of a big deal. While it’s been far too long to remember the details, I remember getting a MM game for my birthday and taking months to finally beat it as I was admittedly too young to easily face the challenge the games had to offer. While I did receive every NES MM game, I was able to complete a fair few of them and even though I grew up and my tastes in gaming shifted to platformers to RPGs, I still kept up with the series, Mega Man X being one of my favorite games of all time.

However, I was unable to get my hands on a GBA (I had a Game Gear instead- RIP batteries) and due to this fact, I was never able to play the spin off Mega Man Battle Network games that were getting a lot of attention at the time. Luckily, with the release of the MMBN Legacy Collection, I finally had the perfect opportunity to check out what I missed all those years ago and see if it lives up to the hype.

MegaMan.EXE, Jack In!

MSRP: $59.99
Platforms: PC, PS, NSW
Played on PC: i7 9700K, RTX 3080, 32GBs RAM
Price I’d Pay: $39.99
Played: 25~ hours
Steam Deck: Unknown status but plays perfectly without any issue.

It’s always a challenge to review a big collection of games as it’s not really feasible as a hobbyist reviewer like myself to invest the time and dedication to complete every single entry, so I decided to see if I could complete 1 or 2 of the games and put a few hours in the other titles. Unfortunately, this plan did not pan out and instead, I ended up putting a fair few hours in 1 and 3 and only a couple in the remainder, the reason for this will be made clear as I continue with the review. I wanted to be transparent in what I played as that experience was what colored my view of the collection as a whole.

Lan is a fifth grade student and with his trusty NetNavi MegaMan, he gets in and out of all manner of trouble. Together with his fellow classmates and friends, they become embroiled in a series of plots that threaten not only cyberspace, but the real world as well.

As far as the stories and characters go, I’ve not played a game in a long, long time that felt more evidently written for children than the MMBN games. This is not necessarily a bad thing as catering to your target audience makes perfect sense but I believe the best kinds of stories are those that can be enjoyed by all ages but I found very little enjoyment in the story and had a difficult time relating to any of the characters presented. I think those that have already experienced the stories as children can replay the games with fond memories in tow but as a newcomer to the series, this was not an option for me.

The latter entries did improve and introduce more interesting plot elements and characters but I never felt compelled to find out what’s next around the corner which was a must if I were to be motivated enough to slog through tedious random encounters.

There’s a solid combat system that continues to evolve over time.

In terms of the combat, most of the games except for one share the same foundation with it taking place on a grid where MegaMan can be moved around to position himself for attacks or dodge enemy fire. A meter fills that allowed me to pick out a few “cards” with various different properties and I could use them to attack, heal, block, change the grid and many other options. I was also able to shoot using the buster and while it normally dealt minimal damage, it was a good way to soften up my enemy before unleashing the killer blow using a card.

There’s an ebb and flow to the combat of having to constantly dodge enemy attacks while picking out the best cards that suit the situation and using them at the right time. Even though it’s not a complex concept and most of the encounters are quite easy, it’s a solid foundation that is added to overtime to add additional layers to the strategy like a “Parry” system where attacking the enemy right before they do can bestow additional benefits.

While I thought that the combat was perfectly fine, there was simply too much of it with an incredibly high rate of random encounters. I also found myself constantly getting lost in cyberspace where everything looks the same and there are winding paths and dead ends aplenty. Without a map and constantly being bombarded with the same random encounter with the same enemy types and placements I’ve completed a dozen times already, my patience simply ran out more than 3/4th of the way through BN 1 and I moved on to its sequel.
Luckily an item called “SneakRun” was introduced from this point on that made it so that much lower leveled enemies would not show up in random encounters, lowering the obnoxiously high encounter rate. However, this was far from a fix-all for this issue. This would have been a prime opportunity to introduce some quality of life options for this collection to either allow lowering or turning off the random encounters but the best they offered is a powerful buster that kills most random foes in one hit. Enabling that option was a bandaid to a gaping, infected wound as all it really did was take the challenge out of the encounters and made them faster but as the frequency remained the same, now they weren’t just tedious, now they were tedious AND boring.

I would say the same about the visuals with the absolutely ginormous font that looks like the first letters on the top of a eye-testing chart and only the option of having a filter on or off with no semblance of gradience. It’s a shame because there is a timeless charm to pixel art that isn’t being shown at its best light. There are also no options you’d expect from an old collection of games like a save state or rewind functionality. Outside of the addition of art, music and online modes which didn’t impact my playthrough in any way, this felt like a very barebones port.

Why have you done this, level designer?

When releasing a large collection of classic games, there is a lot that can be done to make them more accessible without compromising on the original vision of the game. Unfortunately, in the case of the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection, very little was done, resulting in a barebones port that highlights the aged nature of these GBA titles that will likely sour the taste buds of those accustomed to modern sensibilities.

Fun Tidbit: Here is an excellent resource detailing all the changes made from the original to the version in the Legacy Collection for those interested. In terms of MegaMan spin-offs, I had a much better time checking out the MMZ series which I also missed.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.