Yet again, capcom shows us the megaman formula for gameboy advance still works.
The story involves Lan Hikari and megaman, once again working to save the net from evil. Chaud, official and netbattler, has anticipated a coming threat and is forming a team to counter it. Lan becomes part of the team, along with a choice few, and together will battle the evil attempting to control the net. This time however, the navis from battle network 4 are back and have begun to take over parts of the net, and Dr. Regal may not have perished………..
The gameplay is still very fun and very engaging. You roam the real world with Lan and explore the net with megaman. Using Lan, you go to many areas, like Scilab and ACDC town, where you can interact with almost everything to get explanations and sometimes various items for megaman's use. Megaman jacks into the net and navigates the many paths of cyberspace to do battle with viruses, find mystery data(money, battlechips, and bugfrags), and progress the story. The battling is still the same cool experience. You and your enemies start on a 3 x 3 area made up of 9 squares each. You can move around on these squares to delete your enemies with your buster(megaman's standard attack, capable of single or charged shots) or with battlechips. Battlechips have many different abilities used for defeating your enemies, such as cannon shots, swords, bombs, and more. The program advances(special powers used by combining 3 specific chips) are good in this game, and the chip selection is very good as well. There is one new addition to the series: liberation missions.
Liberation missions take place in parts of the net, where an evil navi has taken over. Many panels have become dark panels which means you have to return them to normal. The sources are called dark holes, which require you to fight viruses and mini-bosses at the same time. There's a catch though. To liberate a panel, you have defeat the enemies in 3 turns. When the custom gauge fills up during battle, you're automatically sent to the custom screen to pick more battlechips. The custom screen comes up twice, and when the custom gauge fills up for the third time, you fail the liberation for that panel. The liberation missions are turn-based, letting you use one teammate at a time to attempt to liberate a panel. Each teammate has a special ability that lets them clear many panels at once, but it requires order points(1 order point each time), which you can find on the field. Once per round, the leader of the navis can save the game, so if you don't do good on the next round, you can come back and try again. The goal is to liberate the dark holes, then eliminate the boss to clear the mission.
The graphics are still great for the megaman battle network series, and the environments are clear and composed very nicely. The difficulty level is good, but near the end in the undernet, you can open "doorways" to Murkland to up the difficulty level and face harder liberation missions, which is nice for people looking for a challenge.
Overall, everything flows nicely and makes for a great experience. I recommend this game to everyone! Enjoy!