The Gameboy Advanced : Mega Man Battle Network 2 Review

I was just thinking... What games did I grow up loving? I sincerely wish I played more games when I was younger, as there are too many negative consequences nowadays.

I'd like to tell everyone about my favourite console -- Handheld and otherwise for my lifetime so far:

The Gameboy Advanced.

I was first introduced to this game with titles such as Dragonball Z ( Can't remember the exact title) and Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire. I loved these games, especially Pokemon, and was amazed that I could play them for free with the Visualboy Emulator.

Then came my second favourite GBA game of ALL TIME : Mega Man Battle Network 2.

As I typed that, I shivered a little.. I wish I could replay that, but I seriously don't have any time...

Ok let's do a quick review. By the way, I haven't played a battle network game since 5 or 6.. The team colonel/protoman ones.

If you've ever played a battle network game, This is pretty much a less noob friendly version with less fancy stuff than newer versions. You are Lan Hikari (I think?) and you control Megaman when you "Jack In" to electronic devices, which is seriously, pretty much anything in the game. Once you jack in, it's a virtual world where you will fight viruses in a real time grid based fight. You use abilities in the form of battle chips, which allows megaman to perform stronger attacks/ status changing moves. Megaman can fight with his gun which does 1 dmg per shot, and can be upgraded to a charged shot of 10X your gun damage, and a maximum of 10 damage for your gun. The combat is a lot about pattern memorisation and timing. Each enemy will have distinct attack and defence abilities, and different terrain is constructed in each random battle. Megaman can only be upgraded with HP bonuses, and gun damage, so the main upgrades in the game are the battle chips. You obtain these from killing enemies, gambling in the chip machine and finding them on random NPCs. More powerful chips are obviously more rare, and Bosses drop their own chip which allows you to summon them to do a signature move, For example Gutsman's Whole screen Shockwave, and Roll's Heal.

Something that totally Shocked me when I first experienced it was the encounter of a boss in a random battle on the net. The bosses you find randomly are much stronger than the version you encountered earlier in scripted story events, and drop a stronger version of the chip you obtained from the weaker version, their attack patterns are different, and the damage they deal is far greater to ensure you are challenged. If you want to get the strongest boss chip possible, it is essential to get a High rank in your fight against the boss, This means taking the least amount of time possible.

Around halfway through the story, Your megaman will take on an elemental attribute which changes his colour permanently. This attribute cannot be turned off and will give you new bonuses and weaknesses. For example, I got woodguts -- The wood element megaman. My charged shot changed into a 120 damage tornado which hit in one square 2 spaces in front of megaman. I gained the ability to heal damage while standing on grass panels, but took double damage from fire based attacks.

By far, the greatest amount of fun to be had in this game is to fight the bosses and to collect powerful battlechips. Call me a noob, call me 9 years old (which I was at the time I played this) but I found the bosses to have a very satisfying difficulty level, which forced me to try defeat the more than once before succeeding. The feeling of finally defeating a boss and watching him slowly explode before he is deleted is one of the best in gaming -- PERIOD.

One very iconic feature on the boss romps is the boss level or dungeon. Each boss will have a series of levels which megaman will have to traverse to get to each boss. This is instigated by real life obstacles stopping Lan from getting to another physical location, therefore he jacks megaman into electronic devices to clear the obstacles ahead. The boss levels are far more challenging than the normal net... The normal enemies have a good chance of deafeating you, and there are timing/platforming and puzzle portions which are truly frustrating, but the sense of elation when you finally clear it is unparalleled.

The story however isn't very good. All it does is give premise for Lan to go to different parts of the "Real World" and then battle and clear levels in the Cyber world with Megaman.

The Music is something I cannot comment on.. it has been 6 Years Since I have played this game, and I can't remember the music at all. I write all of this from memory, and I believe I've done it justice -- The memory is very good :D

This is an action RPG, and the story is far from amazing, but the wonderful battle system and gameplay more than make up for it. I have incredibly fond memories of this game and if you have time, I urge everyone to try it out. But be warned... I think I clocked in around 50 hours or so on my game file... I think I might be reviewing Golden Sun the Lost Age next --Probably my number 1 favourite GBA game EVER!! Thanks for putting up with this and reading.. if you could be bothered, I salute you <3>