TMMN Reviews: Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection

It’s been more than 20 years since Mega Man Battle Network first landed on the scene, and word is that Capcom wanted to celebrate that two-decade milestone in a timely fashion, but that had to be put off just a bit due to a virus bigger than anything MegaMan and Lan have ever had to bust. But here we are, two years on and on the cusp of the release of Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection, which brings all of the mainline titles together in one package for the first time.

The Games

The Mega Man Battle Network series is a separate timeline/universe from the Classic/X/Zero/ZX/Legends timeline/universe we presumably all know and love. But, if you’re familiar exclusively with that timeline, here’s the gist:

Mega Man Battle Network follows a boy named Lan Hikari in a world where everything is connected through online networking. With his NetNavi (Net Navigator) MegaMan.EXE and his friends, he collects and uses a variety of Battle Chips and programs to fight viruses, solve problems, and help fight NetCrimes, such as those perpetrated by the nefarious WWW organization, led by Mr. Ld. Dr. (pick one) Wily.

The gameplay is an action role playing game which follows Lan in the “real” overworld, and MegaMan through the Cyberworld, where he deals with random encounters which lead to fights on a 6×3 grid. Action takes place mostly in real time, save for when your Custom gauge fills, allowing you to choose a new set of Battle Chips to send MegaMan to use in his fight. The nature of these battles changes slightly as the series goes from one entry to the next, with mechanics changing or being added, such as Style Changes and Double Soul.

As always, this collection is here to bring together all the mainline entries in the series together — that means no Mega Man Network Transmission, no Mega Man Battle Chip Challenge, no Phantom of Network. With the exception of the first game, if it doesn’t have a number in its title, it ain’t here. And before any of you wiseguys ask, no, 4.5 Real Operation isn’t here, either.

No, we’re just dealing with the six core Mega Man Battle Network games for the Game Boy Advance here. On the upside, every game that has two versions (read: most of them) has both included here, bringing the total to a technical ten titanic titles to tackle.

However, they are distributed a little oddly, as the collection is broken up into two volumes. Volume 1 (with the red version of the game’s key art) contains Mega Man Battle Network, Mega Man Battle Network 2, Mega Man Battle Network 3 White, and Mega Man Battle Network 3 Blue (Black in the Japanese version). Volume 2 contains Mega Man Battle Network 4 Red Sun, Mega Man Battle Network 4 Blue Moon, Mega Man Battle Network 5 Team ProtoMan, Mega Man Battle Network 5 Team Colonel, Mega Man Battle Network 6 Cybeast Gregar, and Mega Man Battle Network 6 Cybeast Falzar (whew!).

You might notice that since the first two games only have a single version each, that leaves the two collections looking a little lopsided, especially as they cost the same price if you purchase them individually through digital distribution methods.

Also, as noted above, these are all strictly the Game Boy Advance versions, so no Operation Shooting Star or Double Team DS here. Unfortunately, this means that you’re not getting the arguably more definitive versions of the first and fifth games, respectively, with their quality of life improvements and additional features/content.

But don’t write this collection off just yet on account of that, as it has quite a few new tricks and features of its own to make it worth a look for any fan of the Mega Man Battle Network series.

The Collection

This one is another in-house production — or at least, so we thought. Teaming with Capcom on this release is Neobards Entertainment, who have also worked on such titles as RE:Verse, Silent Hill f, the recent Resident Evil remakes, Resident Evil VII, Marvel’s Avengers, Onimusha Warlords, REsistance, Resident Evil Origins Collection, and the Devil May Cry HD Collection. What did they do here? No idea! I mean, the credits note things like programming and such, but where Capcom’s involvement ends and theirs begins remains a mystery for the moment.

As was the case with Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection before it, the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection occupies kind of a strange space compared to many of its contemporary collections, as all of the games here were designed to be played on screens much, much smaller than anything you’re likely to be running this collection on. As a result, you may want to play around with the four different screen size options a little bit to find the size that feels most comfortable for you (I felt like “Medium” worked well on my HDTV).

Further accentuating the viewing options are the filters. Well, filter. You can play with regular pixels, or a more smoothed-out look. Nothing like CRT-style filters here, though, probably due to the games not running on a CRT (though that didn’t stop them last time). Well, unless you had a Game Boy Player, I guess. In any case, it’s not here. Meanwhile, the volume levels of the background music and sound effects are individually adjustable.

In an interesting twist, however, some visuals have been enhanced. Now the title screens have a nice, high-resolution logo, and the text has been changed to more of a standard HD typeface font. Incidentally, the title screens for the collections are really nice, high-res sort of “jacking in” animations that remind me of stuff like Tetris Effect or Rez.

Speaking of jacking in, the collection’s main menu treats whatever screen you’re playing on as one big PET, as MegaMan.EXE himself appears to accompany you on your journey. Andrew Francis reprises his role as the Blue Bomber from MegaMan NT Warrior, and you can make him speak whenever you like by press the L bumper/button on your controller. He even gets a few extra lines if you manage to get the downloadable content which reskins him as Hub Style (Vol. 1) or Dark MegaMan (Vol. 2), and has some lines he’ll deliver depending on the time of day, such as asking if you’re getting tired when it’s late at night.

You can change the language he speaks as well (not to mention the voice speaking it), but there are no subtitles for him, so unless you understand the spoken language (and aren’t hard of hearing), then you won’t have any idea what he’s saying. That said, the language selection affects the entire package: most of the menu text, the game logos, the title screen, and even the games themselves.

Other features include a variety of borders you can set from the main menu (they don’t change according to the game you’re playing here), and button configurations. You can’t customize the controls however you like, though, with only three settings available, with your choice reflected in the in-game prompts and instructions. Most consoles these days do allow changes to be made at the system level, and in the case of the Steam version, there is keyboard support as well, and you’re free to map the buttons however you like there.

Bonuses found in the Gallery include some pretty extensive collections of art from each game featured in the respective volume. Mystery Data provides more art, this time from many of those games we mentioned that aren’t included in the collection, as well as other promotions. Music Player features soundtracks for each title, plus some music that’s exclusive to the collection. Curiously, the full track listing presented ahead of release doesn’t seem to be available right now; hopefully they’ll be added when the game launches. One pre-release graphic did say, “Some bonuses may be made available separately at a later date,” so perhaps that’s what they meant.

Elsewhere in the Gallery are more gameplay-relevant features. The first is Trophies, which are the in-game achievement system, and the other is Download Chips and, in Volume 2, Patch Cards. Download Chips show the different Battle Chips that were available through special events held in Japan, which you can download to your file once per playthrough, while Patch Cards are cards that get assigned to specific “addresses” and allow you to alter various gameplay elements. These include adding to MegaMan’s HP total, changing what the result of a charge shot will be, or activating Double Souls early and making them your default form. These can be activated from the “MegaMan” menu within each title, but in the Gallery, you can click on each to view some beautiful high-resolution versions of each chip or card’s art.

Moving on to the gameplay itself, it’s actually shocking the number of features from previous entries that have gone missing here. There is only one save file per title (which carries over between languages), with no save states, nor rewind functionality. This unfortunately means that there has been little done to mitigate one of my biggest pet (no pun intended) peeves from the original releases: the final boss grind.

To be quite up front about it, I enjoy these games, but I’m not as good at them as I am most other Mega Man series. And when you reach the final boss, there’s a bit of a jump in difficulty, meaning this tends to be where I wind up seeing the vast majority of my Game Over screens.

When you reach the final boss of a game, there’s a final place where you can save, then they make you run further along a map with more cutscenes, I think random encounters in some cases. When you reach a cutscene, the game slowly fades out, then fades back in to the exact same spot, and it either plays out or you press a button to skip it. Then it fades out and fades back in again. Then you go on to the final boss, and then fade out and then fade in to another cut scene, then on to fight the boss. When you die, you don’t get a chance to continue or retry; it boots you back to the title screen with whatever loading goes on there, then you have to reload and do all that over again just to fight the final boss again.

Granted, I seem to be in the minority on this, but I’ve always found it a huge pain, and it’s why I haven’t actually finished most of the games in the series for myself (hooray for endings on YouTube and such, though). I’d be more inclined to keep at it if I could just get right back in there, but that’s not the case. I was really hoping that Save States or Rewind, or heck, even a Fast Forward function would save the day for me here, but alas, it’s not to be.

Capcom did include a new “MaxBuster” function, which can be turned on or off at any time and basically amps the MegaBuster up to do 100 points of damage with each shot (though ironically, charge shots make it weaker). This is good if, as they put it, you just want to focus on the story (or make it more like the cartoon, where MegaMan basically one-shots everything). It is kinda fun to waste viruses and NetNavis alike in no time with it, but if you want a straight-up, square fight with the final boss without all the drudgery (like I do)? Sorry, it looks like we’re out of luck.

Incidentally, for those just looking to enjoy the story, turning off random encounters would have been really nice as well. They can really get in the way of performing even the most simple of tasks the game gives you. The MaxBuster helps keep them brief, but it can only do so much on its own.

Finally, for those wondering: the English scripts seem to have remained intact and virtually untouched, for good and for ill. There’s some new stuff added in the sixth game for the Boktai content, but otherwise, every typo, meme, and cringe moment (there’s even a warning as you load up the game) is here. That said, with these games all being based on the Japanese originals, other content cut from international releases is restored here as well.

In Conclusion

Despite my personal grievances with the final bosses of the games, I can’t think of a better way to play these games today. At least, in single player mode.

I’ll be honest, I don’t know much about the meta with these games, and I don’t think I’ve even played the multiplayer before. I know some glitches and tricks have been fixed, or made to work in single-player mode but not online, but I couldn’t give a firsthand account of what’s been changed or what does and doesn’t work anymore. Plus, the online environment pre-release isn’t the most ideal for checking on how well that mode works.

If you’re in it for the single player game, this is an easy recommendation — it’s easier and cheaper than hunting down the old hardware and games, especially now that the Nintendo Wii U eShop is closed for business (and to get everything there, you’d have to pay more, anyway), and to be honest? It probably beats the original experience in most cases, as well. The added content is nothing to sneeze at, either, bringing to us the kind of stuff we could only read about on message boards, or have to learn a whole new language for.

But if the metagame, glitches, and how they affect multiplayer is more your concern, I strongly recommend checking out our Mega News-man ShadowRock’s coverage of the game over on his channel.

Online Addendum:

Since the game’s official release, I’ve given the Nintendo Switch Online play a shot, and… it’s as mixed as a mixed bag can get.

I’m not a professional online Mega Man Battle Network player, so I’m still not able to give you the full nitty-gritty, but I can tell you that in my experience, online play can vary wildly depending on a few factors. One being that some games are just more popular than others. I was able to easily find matches in the first game, for instance, but not so much the fourth.

And when I did get connected? It could get a bit laggy. Sometimes, it worked as expected, but other times, there was definite input lag as I tried to move from one square to another. It was never what I’d call “unplayable,” but could fall short of ideal. These fluctuations would all be during the same matches, mind you.

I’ve heard some people are doing work with the Steam version to make it run better online, but as far as console goes, if online is your top priority, you might want to steer clear of those versions. Otherwise, I stand by what I said in my review with regards to the single-player.

Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection is available April 14th, 2023 on Nintendo Switch (version played for this review), PlayStation 4, and Steam (but to my great disappointment, not Xbox). The whole thing can be purchased physically for $59.99 USD, or individually as digital downloads for $39.99 USD each. A copy was provided by Capcom for this review.