Stick to the Battle Network series.
The game boots up, you see the Capcom logo, you press start and… you're taken to a character selection screen. Choose to play as Lan, Mayl, Dex, Chaud, Kai or Mary. I personally never heard of Kai nor Mary, so I guess they're new additions. The following 15 minutes are full of text, text and text. It seems Capcom wanted to explain the entire game in the first quarter of an hour, probably to get it over with. However boring it may be, it's needed: the game's quite complicated at first. Battle Chip Challenge introduces an entire new way of battling, the RPG element has disappeared. You don't walk around the web with your Navi anymore; instead you sign up for and battle in predefined tournaments. This means there's no more world map. Instead we're presented with a menu that contains a couple of options, most notably the option to enter certain tournaments and the option to visit Higsby's Chip Shop (where you can buy new chips, a must). Capcom's changed the actual battle style too. We now have a Program Deck. You put chips in it (limited to 10 and 2 add-ons) and that's what you battle with. Of course there's a larger storage folder, but 10 chips is all you use in battle. These 10 chips are sorted in a kind of triangle from which 4 chips are chosen every turn; your Navi will use those chips that turn. Yap, it's all random, so you better make a good deck. And yes, your Navi's the one who uses the chips, you are limited to passive tasks as inserting chips and watching. To prevent creation of a deck full of ubercards the Program Deck has an MB limit. Each chip takes up so much MB and the limit is not awfully high. New chips are obtained by defeating opponents or buying them in shops.
No new game without a multiplayer mode nowadays, (who'd want to buy a game without the option to share your achievements with others). So whoopy, Battle Chip Challenge has a multiplayer mode as well. It's actually fairly good. Send your Navi code to others so they can battle your Navi in their games, and vice-versa. Good fun and all without linking.
Story, well, each of the six characters has a different reason for entering the Battlechip GP. Chaud needs stop the WWW who try to ruin the tournament; Mary gets signed in by her Navi (Ring), Lan enters just for fun while Dex wants to beat Lan, etcetera. It's real basic and not interesting at all. Lots of words, no story. Characters lack real personality and depth. If you want to know more about the background of the whole Mega Man scene, play the Battle Network games.
I have no remarks on the graphics of the game. They're a continuation of the graphics we know from the Battle Network games. Navi's look the same, the environment looks the same (the town as well as the parts of the web you get to see), chips look the way they always do: nothing new here, nothing bad either.
The music's the style we already knew and so are the sound effects. The battle theme is awesome though. Too bad it's only 47 seconds long (yes, I've timed it) and it loops, and loops, and loops, and gets on your nerves. The menu and some other modes have different music, but all in all there's barely half a dozen of tracks in the game. Sound effects aren't more than the occasional 'pew' and 'bleep' of a Cannon or anything of the sort.
I've never really gotten into Battle Chip Challenge. The new battle system needs getting used to, and frankly it's not all that fascinating. When I buy a game I want to play it, and not sit staring at the screen half of the time while the AI does all the work. I must admit that I've never beaten the entire game. I got stuck halfway through one of the tournaments and gave up. Battle Chip Challenge just doesn't have the magic touch for me. The Battle Network series is a much more involving and rewarding experience. Capcom has tried well to innovate the Mega Man series, but this step is in the wrong direction.
~ Originally written and posted on GameFAQs: 03/12/04.
~ Edited: 08/24/08.