Enjoyable, turn-based combat with surprisingly fun strategic elements, and no "twitch factor."

User Rating: 8.2 | Mega Man: Battle Chip Challenge GBA
By GibSins | Review Date:
Mega Man Battle Chip Challenge (BCC) is an enjoyable foray into turn-based combat. Just as in the previous games, the setting is a not-too-distant future where kids access the Internet using multifunctional PDA’s called “personal trainers,” or PETs. Each PET has its own personality called a “Navi.” The playable characters in BCC include the tried and true duo of Lan and his Navi, Mega Man. There are other starting combinations that should be familiar to veterans, such as Chaud and ProtoMan, or Mayl and Roll. Unlike its predecessors, BCC strictly focuses on creating a winning strategy before a single cannon is fired. Competitors create a program “deck,” that looks like a tree diagram, or tournament bracket. The first slot in the tree diagram is reserved for the Navi chip, which can be changed to fight as a different persona. The first tier of fighting chips has two empty slots. Those two slots branch into three slots in the next level of the program. Those three, second-tier slots branch into four slots in the last level. Each round, a random path is determined through this bracket. The combatants alternate evaluating the effects of their chips that lie along their respective paths through the deck. The winner is the first Navi to whittle his opponent’s hit points down to zero. By experimenting with the chips that are placed in these slots, a player can optimize his Navi’s chance for victory. Chips have a cost in megabytes to equip them within a deck. Each Navi persona has a megabyte limit for all of the chips that are inserted in its program. This mechanism prohibits the player from simply equipping his most powerful chips. The slots in the tree diagram have different statistical chances of being selected each round, so chip placement is an important consideration. There are 243 different chips that, like Pokémon, are collectible. Some chips allow for a simple attack, while others might provide a defense or even a counterattack. Chips have their own amount of hit points, and can be attacked directly. If a chip receives enough damage, it is deleted from the program deck for the remainder of the current battle (it is not permanently lost). If the random path through your deck includes an empty slot, then you forfeit your chance to perform an action during that phase. Also like Pokémon, some chips have an elemental affinity with fire, water, electricity, or wood. These elements have a rock-paper-scissors relationship with four participants: fire has a weakness to water, water is susceptible to electricity, and so on. Matching a Navi of a certain affinity to weapons of the same type provides an attack increase. Doing so while fighting an opponent who has a weakness to that type is even more effective. Each battle takes place on a “stage,” which consists of six panels arranged horizontally, three for each player. This configuration is one-third the size of a Battle Network stage, but it makes sense since you cannot move your Navi in real time. There are different types of stages: some correspond to the elements (lava, ice, aluminum, and grass). One type has holes that prevent close-up attacks like sword strikes. There are chips that can change the stage during a battle. Although it is conceivable for you to have hundreds of chips (including duplicates) in your library, only chips that have been placed in a folder are available for insertion into a deck. A folder can only hold thirty chips. Trying to determine the most effective mix of chips while allowing for as many different strategies as possible is one of the centerpieces of this game. Once the battle is enjoined, you are nearly relegated to spectator status. There are two “slot in” chips that are also available in a deck. During the fight, a progress meter gradually increases in value. It denotes the probability of successfully using one of these “slot in” chips. For example, if a Navi is close to losing all of its hit points, a successful slot-in could recover some health, if a health recovery chip was included as a slot-in chip. A slot-in attempt (successful or otherwise) resets the progress meter. Your ability to influence the outcome of a particular battle is reduced to deciding what level of risk is acceptable to attempt a slot-in. Each chip imparts its own animation to its Navi during a battle. Most of the time is spent watching these animations and reading their results, which does get repetitive. The graphics look exactly the same as the “Battle Network” series of games, including the background wallpaper effects. There is a lackluster story provided as to why you are fighting all of these battles, and the narrator’s point of view does change depending upon your selected starting character. It does reference events from a previous game, so if this is your first exposure to the Mega Man universe then you’ll have even less of a reason to care. It is also possible to fight against other peoples’ program decks. The traditional method is to go head-to-head using two Gameboy Advances and a Game Link cable. The other option is to have a friend provide you with a lengthy “code” that corresponds to her program deck. You can then enter this code into your own copy of the game. The drawback to this method is that the code-entry mechanism is clumsy, and you can’t simply fight against her program. You must produce a tournament, which has a minimum of sixteen participants (including yourself). The game includes several pre-generated tournament participants, but there is no guarantee that you’ll fight her if you use them. Fortunately, there are FAQs online that contain codes for fodder decks that are guaranteed to lose, allowing you to eventually fight against your friend’s program. Mega Man Battle Chip Challenge is definitely more of a thinking game. It isn’t terribly complicated when compared to a traditional RPG, nor does it have the time-sink elements like leveling up all of your creatures. The multiplayer possibilities give it longer legs, although the limited real time interactions stifle competition. Just like any game with collectible elements, the main motivations for pushing forward are in finding all of the chips, and in exploring their interrelations.

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