MEGAMAN: BATTLE NETWORK 2: A Fantastic Sequel (Long read and Spoliers for BN1 and 2 below)
So I recently finished MEGAMAN: BATTLE NETWORK 2 (known in it's native Japan as BATTLE NETWORK: ROCKMAN.EXE 2) for the first time (This is my first time going through this series in general, actually). Battle Network was Capcom's attempt at modernizing Mega Man, by the 2000's when these games came out, the Internet was slowly being integrated into daily life, no longer were kids daydreaming about advanced robots saving the day, they were thinking about Internet warriors!
Capcom took note of this (and the financial success of Pokémon) and created Mega Man Battle Network, an RPG Adventure taking place in an alternate Mega Man timeline where everything has a computer, from your smoke detector to your mom's fucking purse, the computer in these things are kind of like a little neighborhood, and you can visit these little neighborhoods with a device called a Smartpho-I mean PET (Short for Personal Terminal). These things house your NetNavi, basically these little anime AI assistants that help you out and make your life easier by sending and receiving E-Mail to your friends, calling people, and do practically everything a modern smartphone can, however this has also led to a wave of NetCrime dominating the Internet, spear-headed by the criminal syndicate WWW. However, thanks to 5th grader Lan Hikari, his NetNavi MegaMan.EXE and an ever-growing colorful cast of friends and allies. The WWW has been thwarted, however a bigger and badder NetMafia is here fill the vacuum WWW left, calling itself "Gospel."
And so the adventure continues...
Onto the game itself...our last Cyber Adventure was heavily flawed but showed promise,, underneath godawful puzzles and horrendous maps was an amazing combat system that could be expanded on in future games, so does Battle Network 2 improve on Battle Network 1?
I would say yes, MegaMan Battle Network 2 is massively superior to MegaMan Battle Network 1 in pretty much every single way and here's why:
GRAPHICS AND ART STYLE: (101/100)
Not much has changed here, but I do like the updated skin colors for Lan, his mom, and the generic kid NPC in specific, the first game made them look like weird puppets so I'm glad that was fixed, some people might've not noticed, and it might've just been my TV. So here's a quick example with Lan:
(It's a slight difference, I know)
GAMEPLAY: (98/100)
Combat: (13/10)
If you played BN1, you know what to expect here, combat takes place on a 6x3, 18 square grid, MegaMan has 9 squares to himself, as do the enemies, the Mega Buster is here, but it's pathetically weak without upgrades, MegaMan's real arsenal is Lan's wide and versatile library of Battle Chips, a "deck" of "cards" that give MegaMan special abilites like a cannon, sword, and even altering of the battlefield itself to his advantage! The Combat in BN1 was good enough, but BN2 takes it to a whole new level! New chips to collect, funner bosses and there are new panels that can either hinder or help MegaMan that add extra strategy to fights. But the biggest improvement is that the boring Elemental Armors are replaced by a new system called...
"Styles!"
Depending on how you play the game, MegaMan will unlock a new Style around the 4th Chapter. The Styles are:
NORMAL STYLE:
GUTS STYLE:
CUSTOM STYLE:
TEAM STYLE (Or Brother Style in Japan):
SHIELD STYLE:
And one secret Style, HUB STYLE (Or SAITO STYLE in Japan):
Styles are really cool because the game reacts to how you play and gives you extra tools to go wild, it really feels like you can make your own MegaMan, and I love customization in games. My only compliant is that the element is randomized, they should've made the Style Change have no element, but you can buy Elemental armors like the one from the first game to further customize it.
But overall, a massive improvement on the first game
Exploration: (10/10)
It was still fun exploring the Internet, and now it's more clear what to do to progress the game, which was one of my biggest gripes with the first game
Puzzles: (7/10)
The puzzles have seen a GIANT improvement and now are actually fun to do, the first few dungeons were fun, but unfortunately, they see a dip in quality in the later half of the game, the KnightMan dungeon sees you run through a path while avoiding enemies that can steal your health and transport you to different areas, it was quite miserable, boring and repetitive, the FreezeMan Chapter is basically a string of fetch quests back to back around the entire Net at that point, which was also really boring and dull, The final dungeon before the final boss was slightly better but still boring
STORY: (88/100)
The story here was slightly better than the first game, I love Wily but >!Sean Obihiro!< has a much better motive and backstory compared to him and you just can't help but smile like a fool when everyone comes to do their best to help Lan out, my only real gripe is that the events of BN1 feel kinda forgotten, nobody mentions MegaMan's real identity as >!Hub Hikari, Lan's deceased twin!< until right before the final boss and the consequences of Lan activating >!Hub.bat, Lan taking any damage MegaMan takes!< is pretty much forgotten, which sucks because it was my favorite part of the first game's story.
Also, the devs got really diabolical for some reason and created some weird dialogue:
(Some guy also tells Lan that he should>!suck his mom's milk. How the fuck did this game get an E Rating)!<
MUSIC: (120/100)
It's impossible for a Mega Man game to have a bad soundtrack and this is no exception, the Battle Theme, Boss Theme, and Undernet themes were standouts for me personally
DIFFICULTY: (60/100)
If I had to rank BN1's difficulty, I'd give it a 50/100, but BN2 really ramps up the difficulty, you actually have to modify your setup to take advantage of bosses and their elemental weaknesses
(Also quick side note, they changed MegaMan's death animation, in the first game, it was the standard Blue Spiral explosion that you'll recognize from the Mega Man platformers, in BN2, he just turns white and fades into nothing, I like BN1's death animation better)
CONCLUSION
Overall, MEGAMAN: BATTLE NETWORK 2 improves on its predecessor in pretty much everything that matters. A tighter narrative, better gameplay, and more bombastic combat puts it leagues above Battle Network 1
FINAL SCORE: (899/1,000)
I've learnt from my lurking here that Battle Network 3 is a candidate for the best game in the series, even better combat, more chips and a Tournament arc! (I love Tournament arcs). Hell, even the devs think it's the best, when the Battle Network development staff was polled, the majority considered Battle Network 3 as the best in the series, so I feel like I'm in for a wild ride.