Jack in! Shinta returns to cyberworld RPG’s, with Capcom’s re-imagining of the megaman series as AI companions to squishy Humans instead of Robots!
RPG Hell: Megaman Battle Network 1 (1/2) by ShintaReviews
RPG Hell: Megaman Battle Network 1 (2/2) by ShintaReviews
Ugh... The Megaman Battle Network series! I have a sort of love and hate relationship with this series franchise. On one hand I like the story and the characters, on the other I despise the grinding gameplay which doesn't yield enough rewards, plus no maps to navigate the oh so confusing routes in the digital world, though future installments rectify this problem but not by much.
ReplyDeleteI haven't watch the anime version, is it any good?
Also, I think the series's sequel, the Starforce series, is a much better game than the Battle Network series in terms of story and gameplay. Unfortunately the Starforce series is really short lived, just like the Legends series, DAMN YOU CAPCOM!!!!
So are you going to review the entire Battle Network series? I would love to see that, maybe even the anime series or the Starforce series.
It gets really good during axess and Stream, yes. Beast/Beast+ has it's moments, but it started to lose it's luster by then, esepcailly since Beast+ moved more to comical slice-of-life stories after the zero arc...'least until they brought in Cache.exe from the Mobile game.
DeleteI did mention the issues with chip grinding and you're right, they didn't really fix that until the number trader and the millions/Chip-gaining navi customizer programs...which is why I don't exactly see cheating the chips as really 'wrong'. The gamefaqs board has mostly fixed the map issue, they have .PNG images of the entire games maps.
Starforce...yeah, those were not exactly well-received since they nixed Program advances and most of the mobility and flexibility of the prior battle system and other gameplay revisions when what hampered a lot of people was the repetetive rut the BN/SF timeline had fallen into by that point. That series mostly ended from low sales. I will be getting to them in turn, and yes I'm doing all the imported battle network RPG's...and network transmission. I'll explain NT in time.
Any plans on doing an overview of the Battle Network anime during this run through? There's certainly plenty to talk about there as well despite it going in a completly different direction from the games (such as basically turning into an animated Sentai series in Stream and the fact that for some reason the whole Hub aspect of Megaman's origins being completly removed in both the anime and manga adaptions
ReplyDeleteMore kamen Rider than full-on Sentai series, but yeah; it did pretty much become a henshin hero series starting with axess.
DeleteAnd I'll likely talk about Axess/Stream during BN4 and BN5 for a compare/contrast in the execustion of the darkchip/darkloid conflict. I MIGHT review the program of light and darkness as I really like that film, or possibly an overview of the manga.
Though the Manga DID reference Saito/Hub's existence a few times, but due to the condensation of the story Ryu takamisaki didn't have the time to get into it. I feel he was more focused on fleshing out Bass.exe, to everyone's pleasure as he definitely utilized Bass.exe Best out of the three media continuity's.
No argument there. A minor correction though, Chaud Blaze was only his name in the dub of the anime and the English translation of the manga that used the same title and many of the names from that dub. In the English games his name is Eugene Chaud (which is supposed to be pronounced "showed" as in the French word for hot).
Deletegod i love this subseries, though i've never read the manga, how was it?
ReplyDeletei do howeve have a question what was bass.ex's deal both in this game and in the anime?(seriousley, i still don't get how bass.exe's origins work in the anime), though, then again he's a bad-ass so i don't care. wish i could say the same for zero.exe, thank god they got coronel.exe right
Very good if very condensed, actually. BN3 and The manga got into it, but essentially he was framed for the actions of Alpha (BN3's final boss) due to his immense strength and getability program, and after being heavily injured ended up in the undernet. His creator, Doctor Cossak was imprisoned for the incident until they figured out it was alpha, but by the time he got out Bass believed Cossak had betrayed him, and with other programs hunting him down for the incident came to hate humanity; his only goal now being to grow stronger and to survive. It's really pretty tragic.
DeleteAnd yeah, the Anime didn't really know what to do with Bass. Good setup, decent background followups, but when they tried to get him on an arc in Stream...they pretty much botched it outside of the slur rivalry.
yea, on the manga thing, i remember that on your stram of battle network 3 you mentioned that due to the manga being kinda delayed, they ended up having to kinda mix plots from one game to the following/previous one, so guess it's not very condensed, but mega condensed, then again, if somebody took the best parts of the manga, anime and the games, we could provably have the best version of the story
Deleteloved the amv at the end, heck i have not even seen some of those seens from the anime due to not being able to find the full thing on line, what season was the world getting digitized from? i want to try find it, also be somewhere has to be my fav song in the series, plz talk about it when u do or before battle network 5 double team, the japanese version of the game uses it in the games opening
ReplyDeleteThank You, and of Course! I've kept "Be Somewhere" on my Mp3 Player for over 10 years, it's a fantastic song!
DeleteThe Digitalized world thing was From The third Series/Season, Stream and the Movie "The program of light and Darkness." Thing with Stream is...it builds on a LOT from prior seasons, so while you can pretty much skip Season 1 and not be lost...less-so moving on from that, so seeing the essential episodes of Axess is something of a prerequisite.
As for episodes, beleive it or not, Try checking on youtube, as they are up there. I know a few fansubs groups have popped up in the last few years to re-sub the series from Wolf-pack Productions original fansubs of the series. WPP was...well...decent for the time in the mid 00's, but garbage by current standards. TV Nihon, who I regularly use for subs for my Toku Reviews, Did a few episodes of Axess back in the day but weren't able to continue the project due to other commitments (their Library is over 3000 Episodes and movies, hard to fault that), and the few they subbed were considered to blow WPP out of the water.
And yeah, I intend to do Double Team DS when I get there, I JUST sent in a DS to get a capture card installed, as You CANNOT emulate BN5DS due to a game glitch that effects all of the current emulators.