A great debut for a series on (at the time) a new gaming console.
Review 81
Released: October 30, 2001
Developer: Capcom
Game Genre: RPG
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone) -Comic Mischief
Opening Thoughts:
First of all, I’ve added an ESRB Rating to my review template. Mega Man was released early in the Gameboy Advance’s lifespan. Companies were still testing the GBA’s advanced graphical and gameplay qualities, and so the previews for Battle Network were mixed.
Story
The story doesn’t disappoint. You control Lan, who lives sometime in the future. The story starts out easy, with Lan going to school, and “netbattling” his friends. Everybody has a Personal Input Terminal (PET) in the future, and using it, they can explore the net. Lan’s PET is Mega Man. The story progresses as an evil federation called the WWW begins their plan to delete the world. It’s up to Lan and Mega Man to save the world.
Gameplay
An interesting battle system mixed with the intrigue of a futuristic approach to internet usage makes the gameplay great. The only downside of the game is the incredibly difficult and confusing “dungeon” play. It is very hard to find your way around the net in some places, and the dungeons almost have to be finished in one go or you will forget where you were at. That happened to me a lot. It sometimes took me hours of playing to get through one dungeon because I would turn it off and end up having to start in the middle. Not easy. This is actually almost balanced out by a really easy time outside of battling and traveling the net. When traveling the real world, the story progresses easily.
Graphics
Colorful graphics make the best of the Gameboy Advance. Mega Man was an early release and it beats most of the newer games.
Durability
The game makes excellent use of length (took me 16 hours and 44 minutes to beat, not including all the times I died hand had to go back to a spot I’d saved at (save every 2 minutes, by the way, to be safe)) and has 175 battle chips you can collect. If you can collect 174, you unlock the ability to travel farther into the net and battle another boss to collect the 175th.
The only downside is that traveling the net gets boring in some of the tougher dungeons.
Final Thoughts:
Capcom’s first release on the Gameboy Advance was an absolute success. Play the game. If you do get bored in one of the tough dungeons, keep playing on my word that the storyline is worth it.