Within the early 2000s, an historic and long-forgotten period when Capcom usually launched new Mega Man video games, the corporate determined to supply not one, however two mainline Mega Man sequence on the favored Sport Boy Advance. Mega Man Zero would proceed the gameplay and storyline that the earlier motion platforming franchises have been well-known for, whereas one other sequence—Mega Man Battle Community—could be set in its personal world and observe an all-new RPG template. It was an unconventional thought, however Capcom shortly confirmed the worth of its imaginative and prescient for these video games, and now they’ve been introduced again of their best type but below the Mega Man Battle Community Assortment.
Accessible cut up throughout two volumes on the Change eShop or on a bodily cart with all 10 video games, the gathering contains the unique GBA recreation and its sequel, after which every pair of subsequent sequels. So, 3 Blue and White, 4 Pink Solar and Blue Moon, 5 Workforce Protoman and Workforce Colonel, and 6 Cybeast Gregar and Cybeast Falzar.
Mega Man Battle Community is ready within the distant future in a parallel world to the principle Mega Man timeline; right here community know-how flourished as a substitute of robotics. Everybody carries round a sophisticated gadget of their pocket known as a PET, which may deal with numerous duties akin to sending emails and making telephone calls, however most significantly homes that individual’s Internet Navi. A Internet Navi is a man-made intelligence that acts as an individual’s consultant within the digital world of the web, which right here is realized as a navigable, bodily area. Viruses on the web take the form of a bottomless onslaught of monsters that have to be saved at bay by human/Navi pairs of Netbattlers.
Every recreation follows the adventures of Lan Hikari, a spunky Netbattling child, and his Navi, Mega Man.EXE, as they get caught up in numerous plots to avoid wasting the world. Narratives are sometimes damaged up right into a sequence of small arcs that by some means tie into Lan’s faculty life, every of which culminates in a combat in opposition to one other highly effective Internet Navi and advance the general story a bit additional. Although the video games are inclined to rely just a little too closely on drained shonen tropes and overcoming all odds by way of the ‘energy of friendship’, there’s nonetheless a variety of coronary heart on the core of the writing right here.
Lan and Mega Man’s relationship is very properly fleshed out by way of all six video games, and his core forged of supporting buddies and allies provides some good texture to the storytelling because it evolves. Whether or not or not it’s the considerably adversarial friendship between Lan and his greatest buddy, Dex, or the will-they-won’t-they refined romance between him and Mayl, there are a variety of nice character-driven moments right here to humanize the narrative.
Battle Community gameplay follows an RPG-esque construction the place you discover isometric worlds as both Lan or Mega Man. Absolutely anything that makes use of know-how could be jacked into, and lots of units are immediately related to the web itself, which acts as a giant tremendous dungeon that you simply slowly uncover extra of as you progress the story. Echoing the design philosophies of the traditional Mega Man video games, the villain of every plot arc is given their very own themed dungeon, too, often that includes puzzles and environmental hazards consistent with their major gimmick. Blast Man, for instance, guidelines over a site the place firestorms can come from any path at any time. There are metal cubes positioned all through that you could conceal behind if you see one coming, and you are taking injury when you can’t dive for canopy in time.
Now and again, you’ll additionally come throughout sections of the dungeon that require some data or motion on Lan’s half in the true world. For instance, Flash Man’s dungeon is initially too darkish for Mega Man to see something in, requiring Lan to sometimes run to a close-by room to activate a light-weight swap. Whereas giving Lan one thing to do, it may generally really feel just a little compelled, though we appreciated how the dungeons often make a degree to spotlight how the duo is appearing as a workforce, fairly than simply Mega Man doing all of the heavy lifting.
Fight in Mega Man Battle Community employs an revolutionary tackle motion and deckbuilding that, except for One Step From Eden, hasn’t actually been seen in one other recreation or sequence since. Battles are randomly triggered and see you whisked away to a grid-based 6×3 battlefield; the best half of it may be traversed by viruses whereas the left half is reserved for Mega Man. Earlier than battle begins, 5 battle chips—representing assaults or help actions you possibly can take—are randomly chosen out of your chip folder and are introduced to you for choice, although the chances are fairly good you’ll solely have the ability to choose two or three at a time. Each chip has an alphabetic code hooked up to it, and you’ll solely choose chips which might be both duplicates of one another or share an alphabetic code.
When you’ve made your choice, you then shift to the motion part of battle the place you possibly can nimbly transfer between tiles on the grid to keep away from enemy assaults and line your self up for efficient photographs in your enemies. Mega Man has his trusty Megabuster for chipping away at foes, which could be charged to do a extra damaging shot, although chips will all the time be your major injury supply. Because the motion part goes on, a bar on the high of the display fills up over the course of some seconds; as soon as full, you possibly can then name up the menu to pick extra chips and repeat the cycle.
In observe, this fight system stays a superb and dynamic technique of engagement, particularly given its comparatively excessive ability ceiling. For instance, later video games enable you a window to counterattack enemies when you handle to wreck them throughout the windup animation for his or her assault, each freezing them in place and doubling your subsequent assault’s injury. And whereas it’s troublesome to construct a chip folder that outright doesn’t work, lots goes into effectively constructing decks that make the most of synergies amongst chip codes and elemental varieties alongside extra technical issues like animation timing. Constructing a correct chip folder is thus an attention-grabbing train, one which retains renewing itself, too, as you slowly amass a bigger assortment of a whole bunch of chips.
And whereas the typical virus encounter doesn’t push your expertise too exhausting, there are nonetheless loads of attention-grabbing ways in which your foes mess around with the mechanics. One enemy, for instance, assaults by putting a time bomb someplace randomly in your aspect of the battlefield, requiring that Mega Man peel off and destroy it earlier than it nukes his entire aspect. One other enemy can create holes in your aspect of the sector, limiting your means to evade different enemy assaults. Each boss may have their very own distinct gimmicks and elemental assaults, too, akin to requiring that you simply conceal behind boundaries positioned on the battlefield to keep away from a directional super-attack.
Relying on the sport you’re enjoying, there are additionally further mechanics to broaden the fight system even additional. Battle Community 5, introduces Liberation Missions, which add an SRPG-esque mode for retaking sure areas of the web from terrorists. Battle Community 6, alternatively, helps you to “Beast Out” in battle and switch Mega Man right into a half-beast model of himself that does far more injury, although you achieve this whereas working the chance of dropping management and utilizing chips and assaults randomly. We appreciated how the builders iterated on this fight system with every successive entry; it by no means misplaced its core enchantment, however each recreation brings in some attention-grabbing new concepts that actually construct it out.
The one actual disadvantage to this fight system is that it feels just like the random encounter price generally is a little too excessive. You’ll typically end up making an attempt to resolve a puzzle in a dungeon, solely to be interrupted each few seconds by one more group of simply defeated viruses. Battles sometimes take not than 30 seconds and often lower than 10 to finish, however it may nonetheless be a recurring irritation. Capcom didn’t embrace any technique of dialing down the encounter price for this re-release, nevertheless it did see match to incorporate a “Buster MAX” mode that sees your Megabuster doing 100 instances its regular injury per uncharged shot. You may toggle this on or off at will at any time, and it trivializes nearly any enemy or boss encounter, which generally is a good answer for individuals who wish to get by way of battles as painlessly as attainable.
Each Mega Man assortment up until now has had some new further mode to spherical out the package deal and Capcom has saved that going right here by together with a full-fledged on-line mode for buying and selling chips and Netbattling. For battles, you possibly can play both informal or ranked modes and decide guidelines akin to whether or not Patch Playing cards are allowed or whether or not the loser must pony up a battle chip to the winner. We didn’t get to provide this mode a strive as different gamers weren’t out there throughout the evaluation interval, however plainly this will likely be an effective way of including extra playtime to the general package deal — in case the mountain of content material being supplied in single-player by some means wasn’t sufficient.
As for presentation, these video games have stood the take a look at of time fairly properly and nonetheless look good as we speak. Although the overworld and exploration parts took a noticeable downgrade to a less complicated artwork fashion from the fourth recreation on, the futuristic environments and digital landscapes nonetheless have a particular and evocative look, whereas the virus designs are each memorable and artistic. Whether or not you’re working by way of the busy streets of Den City or rooting round within the seedy depths of the Undernet, there’s one thing fairly charming about seeing such a brilliant and optimistic tackle a futuristic society, to not point out it’s fairly cute to get a way of how some folks within the early 2000s predicted the web would possibly look sooner or later. There are additionally numerous choices you possibly can choose for altering the display dimension, selecting numerous themed borders, or including a (gross) smoothing filter if the jagged pixel edges trouble you, which provides you an honest degree of management over the way you need these video games to look as you play.
The soundtrack hasn’t held up practically in addition to the visuals, however there are nonetheless loads of memorable themes right here. Though the tinny high quality of the Sport Boy Advance sound chip is on full show right here, Capcom managed to take advantage of the {hardware} to supply some stable chiptunes, whether or not or not it’s the peaceable theme of Lan’s dwelling, ACDC City, or the extreme battle themes that play throughout the numerous battles and boss fights. It appears like a few of these tracks can get just a bit bit too repetitive, particularly those that can play in a number of situations, however most of them don’t grate too harshly.
As for supplementary content material, Capcom has included an intensive gallery of promotional and idea artwork for every recreation, alongside a music gallery for listening to unique tracks and a few remixes. Moreover, the Japanese unique Patch Playing cards (like an previous model of amiibo) can now be ‘scanned in’ from a menu in every recreation to provide you some useful goodies, and even the aspect content material tied to Konami’s Boktai sequence has been included right here. None of that is game-changing, positive, nevertheless it reveals that Capcom went the additional mile to make sure that this could current the previous video games in essentially the most feature-complete method attainable.
There’s fairly a little bit of content material to discover for individuals who actually get hooked. Every recreation could be crushed in 20-ish hours, however you possibly can simply triple that quantity or extra if you wish to see all of the content material and attain full completion in every entry. Generally this generally is a little bit of a grind—Battle Community 4 requires that you simply play by way of the entire recreation 3 times earlier than you possibly can unlock every little thing—however a lot of the post-game content material is kind of compelling. Searching down all the key chips to fill out your library, fixing esoteric puzzles, and taking up brutal superboss fights are par for the course right here, providing up loads of further problem for individuals who discovered the story too simple.
