If you manage to bear a somewhat weird start, once the game picks up it gets hard to let go of it before the end. (LONG)
When I first heard of this game, I thought it would take us back to good old-school Megaman, just like I used to play when I was a child, only with a new make-up. I was obviously wrong. People have been complaining for a while now that the Megaman series (namely, the Megaman X spin-off, since the main series seems to be as good as dead) never add anything new to its new installments (that is, up to Megaman X6). Megaman Network Transmission seems to be Capcom's answer to that. Is it a good answer? Read on to find out.
I'm not really a big fan of this Megaman Network spin-off. I've never played any of the GBA games, although I watched a few episodes from the Anime and it's pretty easy to get the jist of it: the main character is not Megaman, but a boy named Lan. Megaman "lives" in a cyberword (only called the Net), which most humans seem to be pretty hooked up into. Think of the internet shown in many, many movies that are set in a near future. Megaman (an all the old foes and friends, for that matter) are Navi's, assistants that help humans to navigate this futuristic internet. As you must have imagined, Megaman is Lan's Navi. And together, they put out some fires that emerge on the Net.
The game opens up with a pretty looking cutscene, which I eventually found out that is the ending of the first Megaman Network Battle. The game seems to expect the player to have some previous knowledge in the Network universe, throwing references to the GBA games every now and then but that it will not make the player confused or anything, because this game plot is very simple and these references are pretty understandable even if you haven't played any of the GBA games like myself.
GRAPHICS/PRESENTATION
The cel-shading rendered characters look nice all the time, as the explosion and lightning effects, they're nice but subtle. The background is pretty lame in the beginning, but they get better as you progress (as the whole game do). Overall, Network Transmission is a pretty looking game, but it won't just blow you away. It doesn't seem to try to be a game that stands out for its looks while looking nice at the same time and the game does just that.
The menus and the Map work, but there's nothing special to them. You probably could say that to the game's overall presentation, weren't it for the cutscenes, which look nice, but they are so few and so short that it even becomes somewhat disappointing. Not even the ending has an special cutscene or anything, just textboxes wrapping up the story. Talking about that, the story serve for its purposes. If you wanted a thick plot, you'd be playing an RPG, not a side-scrolling action game. It doesn't get in the way, but it's there and it's ok. My only real complaint is that the dialogs are way, way too childish. The events take place between Megaman Network Battle 1 and 2 for the GBA and maybe for those who played those games, it could mean something more, but as a stand-alone, it serves for no purpose other than keep the flow of the game, which it does nicely.
SOUND
When it comes to sound, NT doesn't live up to its predecessors. The voice acting is in Japanese, which is nice, but there isn't all that much spoken dialog in the game. The music is cool, the themes for the stages are good (except for the Net, which can be pretty annoying), but they are not that "it's so good I could cry" or "it's so good that we should join and make a band and play only this game's soundtrack", things that previous Megaman did to people. You'll eventually catch yourself humming some stage theme when you're not playing, but there are very few stage themes that will do that to you.
The sound effects are pretty ordinary. No weapon firing sound will stand out and a few ones sound plain ridiculous that it even becomes funny. Don't worry, you won't be using any ridiculous sounding weapon for too long, but just don't expect to be overwhelmed by Network Transmission sound, because you won't. GAMEPLAY/LASTING VALUE/EXTRA
The beginning is quite confusing and may turn away some not-so-determined players. You start the game in the "real world", where you can mess around with the menu. Right from the get-go, you realise that there are some customization, but it isn't as complex as the games in the X series. Shortly after, you get to "jack into the net", which is the real side-scrolling action occurs. You come into a scenery trying to mimic the insides of a computer, all green-toned with flashes and hexagonal-shaped objects in the background, among other abstract high-tech stuff. Nothing that the Megaman series haven't done before. Here the player comes the biggest twist in gameplay: you no longer have to aquire weapons from bosses, Megaman has 137 "battle chips", each one a different weapon, from which he gets to pick up to 5 in the beginning of each level. Of course, only a handful of these chips are available right off the bat, and you have to find the rest of the as the game progresses, be it beating bosses, be it looking for it at those hard-to-get places. The ugly side of this new system is that the 5 weapons that will appear in the beginning of each level come from a list you make with 20 weapons before entering the level (called "folder", it can be redone during the level) from which these 5 are picked up RANDOMLY, which can be a real pain before you get used to overcoming your challenges with the weaponry the game simply throws at you. At least, you can choose one chip that will always appear in or custom screen, as long as you have "ammo" for it. Talking about it, each weapon has it, which is cumulative. For instance, in the very beginning of the game, if you pick the battle chip "Cannon", you get only to shoot about ten times before its ammo runs out, only to be replenished if you leave the level (here's a little nice twist: you can leave levels that you HAVEN'T completed this time). But as you progress, finding floating objects called "mystery data" and killing viruses (regular enemies) quickly will raise this limit. And being that in the beginning the Mega-buster is completely useless, you will need this extra ammo. Towards the end of the game, you will have and actual powerful Mega-buster and hardly ever will rely on the chips again, unless they have some different property (Cure, Shield or Double Jump). And what if you run outta ammo for all your 5 weapons, you ask? There's a bar, called the "custom bar", that fills up constantly. When it's full, you can press Z anytime and the weapon selection menu (called the Custom Menu) will come up and you lose your current weapons in order to choose from a new array of random selected weapons. Of course, weapons you currently have can reappear and oftenly will, but you can't count on that as guaranteed and the ammo will not be filled up unless you leave the level. A nice tip is, if in the beginning of the level you decide to pick, for instance, only 2 weapons, when you call the Custom Menu the first time, you get to choose among 8 weapons. And if this time you don't pick all 5 weapons again, next time you call the Menu, you get an even larger selection of weapons, that can grow up to 10 out of the 20 weapons in your folder, given that you don't die in the process. There's also the Program Advance. In order to activate a Program Advance, you must select specific chips in a specific order from your custom menu. Unfortunately, I only achieved one out of 14 P.A.'s during the whole game (Cannon+HiCannon+M-Cannon), and can't say much more about it, but along the game you will recieve info about it.
In time you will learn to work with this system (which was target of a lot of bad criticisim when this game was realised) and it turns out to be a lot of fun. The beginning is pretty hard and sometimes frustrating, being that the Mega-buster is crap and most of your weapons are either crappy or low on ammo. But as the game progresses and you begin to aquire new weapons, that steep difficulty gets lighter and although there will be a few harder bits along the way, the game is never as hard as it is in the beginning and it gets so easy that blasting through the final bosses will be a breeze.
As far as level design goes, it starts off pretty weird. You will beat two bosses on the Net and realise that its structure is pretty different from previous Megaman games: although they are in two different areas, the design, music and background for both areas are the same (that techno-junk previously mentioned) and these areas are even intertwined. But when you're about to lose it and turn the game off, calling it a heresy to the Megaman name, four new areas open up. And these are the Cyberworlds, with their traditional themes, isolated from each other. And from there, the game starts to follow the basic Megaman formula, and that's when the game starts to go from mild interesting to great. Of course, the overall Net is still there and there are a lot of places that you can't reach in the beginning, begging you to come back later. And after opening these Cyberworlds, having the Net, that huge environment full of secrets, there, it itself begins to feel a lot cooler. And from there on, more traditional levels keep opening up, as well as new areas on the Net.
The levels in general have a fair difficulty, some being harder than others, but by the end of the game, you will be blasting through new levels just out of sheer instinct. Some of them are a direct throwback to their NES counterparts: Quickman's level has those dreadful lasers (although it's nowhere as hard as it was in Megaman 2), Iceman's and the appearing and disappering ice blocks, Starman's level has no gravity and spikes all over the place, Gravityman's reversed gravity arrows, Elecman's level also has similarities with his' in Megaman 1 and so on. But most levels have new concepts, although the theme is quite the same we've seem a million times before and yet, never seems tiresome. And there are some mixed stuff, like Shadowman's level, where there's a bit with those carts on trails like Gutsman's level from Megaman 1, or Clownman's level that bears some resemblance with Springman's level in Megaman 7. In my opinion, it's a hell of an adition to the game. In the end, you'll face Gutsman, Fireman, Iceman, Quickman, Brightman, Needleman, Swordman, Gravityman, Starman, Pharaohman and Shadowman, as well as Protoman (optional fight), Zero, a Firewall and the Life Virus (last boss). Excluding the overall Net, the game has 11 areas, and took me about 16 hours to beat it, although the clock on my last save says 13:01. It probably would be around 13:40 if you could save after beating the game.
In adition to beating the game, you can collect all 137 (I have 112 at this time) different chips and max them out (I have 683), collect money and buy subchips (they have a similar function to the Energy tanks in the traditional Megaman), max out your HP (940) and MP (232) but there's not much else to do. I'll try to max everything out, but I suppose I won't put much effort to it.
CLOSING COMMENTS
Network Transmission is a nice looking, ok sounding game with a very good flow. But it's strengh lies in its gameplay. Once you get used to it and start taking advantage of it, you won't be able to stop playing 'till you reach the end. The only downside of the gameplay is that a game that starts very hard gradually becomes easier and easier, up to the point that took me only two lives to beat the last boss. And after you beat the game, there won't be that much to do. But believe me, you will have A LOT of fun until that. I don't know whether this game will appeal non-Megaman fans or not, but Megaman fans are sure to have a hell of a time.
PS
It ocurred me a few times during the early parts of the game that instead of throwing random weapons at you, maybe the game could let you select freely from a larger array (the 20 weapons would be fine) and present you with more specific situations where you must figure out what weapon to use. The game does that quite often, with enemies with stronger and weaker spots, but maybe, with a larger array, Akira could delve deeper in this idea. Unfortunately the game was realised over three years ago, and if no follow-up came up 'till now, it's likely that none will ever come up, but it would be a nice idea for a supposed Network Transmission 2.