For anyone who isn't familiar with the Battle Network series (after all, there've only been about a dozen of them) we'll give you the quick rundown. If you're a seasoned veteran, skip to the next paragraph - you've read this countless times before. The Mega Man Battle Network series is a spin-off of the classic Mega Man franchise, which follows young Lan Hikari - a now-infamous "Net Battler"- through countless adventures in both the real world as a student and online as a virus busting wiz-kid. Using Mega Man as his virtual counter-part, Lan can jack-in to the Net and carry out tasks in cyber-space. The gameplay houses basic RPG elements such as random battles and story-driven gameplay, but rather than using level-ups to progress the character, Lan must find battle chips which can be sent to Mega Man during battle. The collection aspect of the game pushes the series more towards a videogame version of a customizable card game (like Magic: The Gathering) as players will have to trade, buy and battle to continuously keep their deck as powerful as possible.
Since Battle Network 6 runs on the same formula as the rest of its predecessors, players already should have a good feeling as to how the bulk of the adventure will operate. Find new chips, go on a few fetch quests, fight a rival Navi program and repeat. Unfortunately, we've found that Battle Network 6 relies heavily on the fetch-quest portion of the game, possibly more-so than any other of the previous versions. Rather than jumping straight into the action and letting newcomers learn by doing, the game starts at a sluggish pace as Lan runs from place to place learning the ins and outs of Net battling for the millionth time. In fact, you'd think after saving the world on countless occasions Lan would start with a few more powerful battle chips, or at least know a few techniques already, right? Sadly this isn't the case, and the amount of time spent doing menial tasks as an introduction to the main story (when Mega Man inherits power from one of the Cybeasts) will last about five hours.
Since the majority of the game deals with "been there, seen that" gameplay, we'll focus on the newer aspects of Battle Network 6. First of all, the creators over at Capcom have put Lan in an all-new town, working with new characters and storyline. Though this design choice does help the game from feeling exactly like the previous ones, it comes at the expense of every established character we've seen in the last handful of games, and the cast seriously hurts because of it. Though the story is a bit watered down, focusing on Lan as he runs from one overly-complicated task to the next in true Battle Network Fashion, the battle gameplay has been upgraded quite a bit. Combining the new "Cross System" with the Cybeast powers, Mega Man now has nearly double the amount of customization and variety of attacks. The Cross System works like classic Mega Man games used to, as the "souls" of any defeated boss can now be used to transform Mega Man during the heat of battle. If Heat Man is defeated, for example, Mega Man can now use a heat suit that nearly doubles the power of all fire battle chips, while also changing the look and attributes of Mega himself at the expense of a weakness towards water. Pretty cool. The Cross System works quite well, delivering far more strategy and skill into the battles, rather than relying fully on the luck of the draw with battle chips.
The second new ability in Mega Man Battle Network 6 is built around the Cybeasts, ancient Net-guardians that become resurrected by an "unknown organization." When Lan and Mega Man stumble onto the reincarnated monsters, Mega inherits their power. Depending on which version you play, Mega Man will inherit the powers of one monster and have to face off against the other. A new "Beast Out" system can be used either on its own or in conjunction with the Cross System to deliver insane amounts of damage. Entering Beast Out mode, like the Cross System, will cause Mega Man to turn into a Cybeast, replacing all of his attacks and attributes in the process. While in this mode of attack, however, Mega loses power over time and will eventually have to return to normal or risk further injury. In addition to the Beast Out system, Mega Man can also use "Beast Over," an attack that basically puts him in a berserker state. The player will lose all control of Mega Man when this occurs, but he will attack with incredible power at the risk of recklessness. All in all, the new Cross and Beast systems work very well, and though things can get amazingly complicated (especially for new players), battle becomes far more rewarding than previous versions.
Though the gameplay has been overhauled to include a ton of new elements, the adventure itself still ends up feeling like the same old Battle Network world we've seen so many times before it. New gameplay elements again take priority over updated graphical presentation or fresh audio composition, and the product suffers because of it. Battling is the focus of the game, and it's great to see new innovations, but that's still just one aspect of the overall product, and Mega Man Battle Network 6 will most certainly show even the most passionate veterans just how tiresome the same art, same music, same scenarios and all-too similar fetch-quests can get. Despite moving to a new town, Lan's adventure is definitely running dry, and it feels like a single team has used the same assets to try and create original games without doing any of the design work again.
In fact, you can see more than ever that the series is beginning to get lazy with presentation, as less and less unique animation is being used to tell the story. If two characters get in a fist fight, for example, the screen will fade to black, display the words *Smack!* and then fade back to the same characters standing exactly where they were. These fades have been used time and time again to cut corners in story telling, but after a half-dozen main versions of the game those are the moments we should be looking forward to. Rather than add new life to the characters, the designers are letting it run dry, and people can only take entertaining Net battles for so long before the lack of strong story-telling takes its toll.
