Toggle Background Color
Battle Network 4 (Blue Moon) – Pre-Let’s Play Notes
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Preface
Personal Notes
- Due to the random nature of the game's progression, general notes on chips should be placed here.
- B, S, and V are apparently the best codes to use. Try looking into some others, though.
- AntiFire does not trigger V-Doll in BN5 and just destroys it. Is that true here?
- When using GreenWood in Blue Moon, it seemed to crash the game. Does that hold true in Red Sun or was it a one-off error?
- I am not a fan of most Program Advances in this game. Needing a sequential code instead of a mono-code has never appealed to me, and most of the PAs here rely on the former. Navi Program Advances have been cut entirely due to version exclusive content. And some Program Advances seem worse than their base counterparts. The Boomer PA, for example, flinches enemies, unlike the base Boomer chips.
Commentary
- My Battle Network 4 games are patched with a bug fix (exeguy11) and the Wii U Virtual Console patch.
- Navis without Counterparts: LaserMan, KendoMan, VideoMan
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Game 1
Personal Notes
- Talk about Boktai in three interludes. The first interlude should come between the Boktai manor and the Princess Halberd attack, covering from the beginning of the game up to the defeat of The Count. The second interlude should come after ShadeMan's second defeat, covering from meeting Lita at the Solar Tree all the way to Carmilla's defeat. The third interlude should come after meeting Django in the Undernet, covering the rest of Boktai 1, then completing his quest.
Commentary
- Sprites have become smaller than they were previously. This is likely in response to Battle Network 3 having so many issues fitting content on the cartridges, requiring miniaturization of overworld assets.
- This is the strangest opening to a Battle Network game. Up to this point, the usual introduction to a Battle Network game is to show what's happening with Lan and MegaMan (1, NT, 3, 6). 2 establishes the new antagonists, while OSS and 5 introduce characters who will be relevant to the plot. 4 instead starts with a bunch of minor NPCs who won't be meeting Lan for quite some while and never even get named. Despite that, we spend a fair amount of time with them before the asteroid comes into play.
- On that note, the threat the asteroid provides is likewise strange and would be more at home in the sequel series. In fact, this very plot point is recycled in Star Force 3 with MeteorG! That said, the threat of an encroaching asteroid does at least make the player wonder how this will be resolved in a way that MegaMan can deal with.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ShadeMan, Part I
Personal Notes
- Try not to lean too hard on the typos in order to avoid rehashing EPM's "Fuckup Tally".
- Be sure to get a screenshot of the mom/daughter duo outside of Jomon. There is a funny error in their conversation.
- Likely due to NG+, this game doesn't seem to have many plot-locked computers.
- I've heard that many animations were removed in 4. AntiDmg is one of the more obvious instances, but I've heard that MegaMan's eyes used to blink, his buster animation resets even at MAX speed, MiniBomb doesn't rotate anymore, etc. Keep watch to see if this is true.
Commentary
- Lan's house is redesigned but maintains the same layout. Seeing the photo of Lan and Mayl together feels nice, considering moments like Mayl coming to see him at the airport, and helps reinforce the idea of them being close friends. There's also a poster of Tadashi.
- Toshihiko Horiyama is the composer for this game. While he worked on the Ace Attorney series and provided a nice soundtrack for Apollo Justice, I feel the new musical themes in BN4 are misses right out the gate. The new theme for indoors is too short and bland, and the internet themes are likewise rather blasé.
- The email given at the start feels like pointless fluff "foreshadowing" for the oven breakdown that follows.
- Battle Network 4 is something of a soft reboot and starts with an oven situation like BN1. It's used as a tutorial rather than the first dungeon. While the oven computer has been redesigned, turning the first hurdle Lan and MegaMan triumphed over into a tutorial does feel like a way of showing how far they've come. I like that choice.
- Battle Network 4's tutorial involves Lan and MegaMan already knowing what to do, which is a step up from Battle Network 2 and 3's tutorials.
- While Lan not knowing what Full Synchro is strikes me as odd, I do like the idea that Lan and MegaMan are able to tap into this power. We already had previous games set up Hub Batch, Lan control MegaMan with his heart, and finally the both of them becoming one. It makes perfect sense that Lan is able to perform this with MegaMan now after all of those experiences. The new mechanic also justifies the tutorial being unskippable.
- That being said, I am not a fan of the removal of the Add button. Being able to jettison unhelpful chips in order to increase your draw was a perfectly fine system, and it's a disappointment to know that it never comes back. Additionally, gaining Bug Frags through countering has been removed in favor of finding Bug Frags randomly in GMDs, which feels like an unneeded change. Perhaps Capcom was incapable of coding both the double damage feature and the Bug Frag drop at the same time? Either way, I wish a more dedicated BugFrag acquisition feature was present in the game.
- The fridge is mentioned as being full of ingredients, but Haruka can't make a stove-top breakfast?
- The oven contains another 500 zenny. I initially thought this might be a safety net in case the player spends the money they were given by Lan's parents, but Lan can't leave his house at the moment nor are any Netdealers open. Perhaps originally that was the intention, but Capcom decided to idiot-proof this early bit.
- Lan's homepage looks nicer, though the wallpaper is ugly.
- While Battle Network 3's design philosophy of making the main road a distinctive color was retained, the Squares have been removed entirely and BBSes have been mostly moved to homepages, with the Undernet's being placed in random spots. I don't care for the removal of Squares, as it feels like a step back in the worldbuilding department; on the other hand, BBSes being placed on homepages does allow Yai and Dex to have more social interaction than just Lan. I have always found it strange, though, that Mayl never has a BBS, which only serves to increase my distaste for her being solely locked into the role of "Lan's love interest", without many other interests or points of contact.
- Wallpapers have been mostly homogenized. There are three types: Electopian, Foreign, and Undernet. These are shared between relevant areas, only changing color palettes. The wallpapers even cycle between symbols representing all of the areas that share them.
- Boring visuals aside, I think Battle Network 4 is a contender for best designed main internet in the series. Most of the areas never feel too obnoxious to get through, with the exception of Park Area and Black Earth 1.
- "Shuko's Area" is blocked off by a generic gate instead of a security cube. I assume this is so players of Red Sun won’t wonder why there's a cube they can't open unless they link with Blue Moon, but it still provides a gate that can't be opened and clashes with the series’ established security features for homepages.
- Battle Network 4 begins a new trend: chips featuring viruses that can't be battled in-game are greyed out as an indicator that those species no longer exist. Despite that, Canodumbs will never have their chips greyed out at any point in 4 - 6.
- I like the new LongSword art. It matches well with the aesthetic of the other two.
- The opening of the game is surprisingly more charming than I remembered. Lan's parents both have a day off, and they're eating as a family. Considering how intermittently Yuichiro was around in previous games, it feels nice if a bit slow. Yuichiro and Lan are even spending the day together, though the reason is still tied into his work. Lan has even made good on his promise to get up on time for school, suggesting a respect for the narrative choices that came prior.
- Yuichiro, who has a PET, needs to go home to send an email. Additionally, if Yuichiro can send an email, shouldn't he have a Navi? Previous games established that Navis have to hand deliver emails, though that detail tends to be zigzagged.
- The game uses this lull to introduce the player to the newly redesigned ACDC. While I appreciate this, I am not a fan of how heavily the layout has changed. The only retained similarity is that Lan's house is next to Mayl's, and the school doesn't even exist anymore. The new town theme is nice and cozy, though.
- The new mugshots for the characters look much better than the older ones.
- Elec Town is the first theme that stands out as very good to me. The area also looks very nice, though I again wonder about the omission of the Internet Squares when Elec Town is specifically mentioned to have a Square in the real world. The name Elec Town also seems rather lazy, particularly for a city in a nation called Electopia, but then again there are countries in previous games called NetFrica and Creamland.
- Comp spaces are smaller, making it easier to see if they have anything worth grabbing. I appreciate the reduction in screen clutter, though I wish the design of these areas looked nicer.
- While you only need to speak to Roll, Glyde, and the Earphone Navi to advance the plot, it bothers me how no NPCs have a problem with the creepy vampire creaking in the corner.
- Roll seems much flirtier with MegaMan this time around. I believe the anime also seemed to be playing up their affection much more around this time.
- Yuichiro, the creator of the PET, is being called in to be a consultant about an asteroid impact. I’m not sure I understand the logic behind that decision, unless NAXA is already aware that the asteroid is man-made. Even then, it seems like a leap to involve Yuichiro.
- I am torn on the detail of Net Battles having a ban on them. On one hand, this is consistent with the detail about Lan needing a license as well as the N1 being a much anticipated event; if Net Battles are not commonplace, seeing them occur at a big tournament event would be rather exciting. On the other hand, no one seemed to take issue with all of the Net Battling that Lan did in BN1 or NT.
- I have mixed feelings about the premise of the City Battle Tournament. It's cashing in on the popularity of the N1 out of universe, and likely even in-universe. However, as the game even points out, the announcer seems to have done a poor job advertising the event, which defeats the explanation that it was held to improve local Net Battling talent. Additionally, it feels like a retreading of the ground covered by the previous game.
- This might be an odd complaint for me, given my distaste of BN2 and BN3's introductory segments, but it seems like this opening would have benefitted from a tournament qualifier section, especially given that one will be coming up in the next section. MegaMan could easily have done a shorter task than the ones coming up, come back, and found some of the contestants (and perhaps even the host) attacked by ShadeMan as opposed to Lan suddenly going "Gee, I wonder what those people are upset about." and jacking into a stereo just so ShadeMan can dump exposition about his binge eating at him.
- In Japanese, ShadeMan apparently introduces himself to MegaMan, though there is no such event in English. As such, MegaMan simply learns ShadeMan's name through osmosis at some point.
- In Japanese, ShadeMan's laugh is apparently transliterated as "kiki". In that case, why not just localize his laugh as "Kehehe" or "Kekeke" instead of the weird whee-ing? Perhaps to preserve the connotation of that being a bat onomatopoeia?
- Despite being nearby Town Area at the moment, which is a large, bustling area, ShadeMan decides that he'd rather go to the comparatively smaller ACDC Town to find a female Navi to eat. I'm assuming he's trying to lay low to avoid being caught by the Officials, but considering how many Navis he's eaten here and is soon to eat there, it doesn't seem like he's particularly intent on being discrete. For that matter, why not just eat everyone the first time he laid eyes on Roll? Was he just not paying attention at the time?
- Lan can talk to all of his friends before jacking in, and none of them say anything about being attacked by ShadeMan, only telling him to get online to come hang out with them. Despite that, Lan will not tell Mayl to jack out and is complicit in all of the nonsense that is to follow with ShadeMan.
- ShadeMan purportedly wanted a lady Navi for dessert, but not only is he still eating Navis, he's still eating MALE Navis at that. The funny part is that the purple Navi is in the Yamcha pose.
- The left side of the area has a Mr. Prog that tells you to turn back due to ShadeMan being ahead if you talk to him. This is notable only because there's an invisible wall behind him that prevents you from going forward in order to railroad you into triggering the next cutscene. Amazing.
- After the previous game spent a lot of time building up GutsMan as a powerhouse, he's just casually defeated alongside Glyde offscreen by ShadeMan. Now, granted, ShadeMan is meant to be powerful, but this dismissive defeat of GutsMan does nothing to preserve the image that BN3 worked so hard to craft.
- Yai gives Lan her PC Code to help go after ShadeMan, but we've already passed where her PC is, making this entirely unhelpful.
- Putting an enemy with 100 HP that can easily destroy in-battle GMD at the beginning of the game feels unnecessarily spiteful.
- Continuing the trend of this beginning scenario feeling poorly thought up, there's a link to Town Area's tower on the main net, but there's no pathway that lets you enter the area. Nor is one erected/repaired for the rest of the game. I'm not sure if ShadeMan is supposed to have removed the path, but that still doesn't make it better considering the pointlessness of this cut-off area. ShadeMan already managed to access the main internet from an isolated network. There’s no reason he couldn’t have just done the same again and Mayl sends Lan information on Roll’s log-in data or something along those lines.
- Net Dealers continuing to have wares to sell is a nice change that is good for Chip Trader fodder, if you were so inclined to go that route.
- A subtle detail that is easily missed: ShadeMan devours the original Earphone Navi. If you speak to the Navi that is there after ShadeMan attacks ACDC but before the point where you need earphones, it's revealed that he was replaced by his weaker protégé!
- Why would Lan going towards the tower from higher up work any better than approaching from the bottom if the sound was loud enough to hurt someone's ears?
- While it’s great that Lan is able to acquire noise canceling earphones, I’m not really sure if they should be powerful enough to cancel out the amplified soundwaves from this giant speaker.
- There are only three dungeons in Battle Network 4, and yet all three manage to be exceptionally obnoxious. Elec Tower wants MegaMan to collect Cyber Bats during a ten second duration of a sonar, except the bats spawn in random spots each time the sonar activates, the paths are winding, the second area makes you waste time by leaving an alcove, and random battles continue to occur while you're running around. Nothing would have been lost by making it so that the sonar stayed constantly active after being booted up until the bats were captured.
- Melody viruses are based on otamatone. They are also another instance of an annoying virus, though their later versions are more offensive than the base forms.
- ShadeMan states that he was too full to eat MegaMan, but there are three Navis on the ground here. All of whom are ALSO male. How many Navis does ShadeMan eat on the regular?
- What was the point of MegaMan getting his own set of earphones if ShadeMan is going to use a sonic wave on him that he can't endure?
- Why does Lan have to turn the volume off? Does the volume affect the Cyberworld speakers? Why can't he use the control panel he's already in front of? Why is this scenario being pointlessly extended by another few seconds? And, now that I think of it, why didn't Lan turn off the volume sooner, so that it wasn't hurting all of the people in the area while MegaMan was going through the dungeon?
- ShadeMan, rather than being a normal boss, is an unwinnable encounter. As a result, not only does this battle not teach the player how to properly fight ShadeMan, which will be an issue down the line, it also robs the first boss battle of meaning. Additionally, MegaMan is smug about how he has handled ShadeMan, while ShadeMan acts as though he's been defeated soundly. Was this battle meant to be done differently in the initial draft of the game? Something is very wrong here.
- Since ShadeMan isn’t a boss, the first boss of Battle Network 4 was essentially the Normal Navi MegaMan fought for earphones.
- Chaud and ProtoMan show up, which scares ShadeMan into retreating. I’m not a fan of this; while ProtoMan has showed up as early as QuickMan’s scenario in Battle Network 2, he’s never popped in to handle the first boss. The game just started and MegaMan is already being undercut by ProtoMan! I suppose I shouldn’t complain too much, though, since this is the last you’ll see of ProtoMan in the game if you're playing Red Sun!
- ShadeMan dropping this glowing chip baffles me. How did he manage to drop it this time when he didn’t at several earlier points? How does ProtoMan manage to miss this while fixating on ShadeMan?
- At Higsby's, his store is now being run by a brunette girl named Nanako. I'm not saying this is the same girl from Persona 4, but I'm also saying that the supernatural oddities tin this game wouldn't be out of place in the Persona universe.
- Despite being told that the Dark Chip is a danger to his twin brother that he had an emotional breakdown over losing in the prior game, Lan continues to keep it purely so that plot can happen.
- Plots of the previous games have established what the game is going to be about fairly early. Lan and MegaMan will be fighting against the WWW or Gospel; 1 and 3 even establish the villain's aim from the outset. 4 seems to be playing coy about whether or not the main concern should be ShadeMan, a possible unrelated villainous organization, or the asteroid. It’s a bit odd, but if handled well, I suppose it could be a nice mystery.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Den Battle/City Battle Tournament Preliminaries
New Opponents
- Game 1: Yuko, GutsMan, TopMan | Yuko, AquaMan, SparkMan
- Game 2: FireMan, SparkMan | Tetsu, TopMan, NumberMan
- Game 3: N/A | N/A
Commentary
- These scientists from every nation sure all look like Electopian NPCs. This is particularly strange given that NPCs of other nations are already modeled in this game and will be appearing later.
- This is the only mention of Nation Z in the series, to my recollection. I don't believe it's ever even mentioned in the anime or manga. It's also renamed Nation X in the Legacy Collection.
- Battle Network 4 had potential to play up the mystery of who its antagonist might be for a while like 2 did, but then it blew its load immediately by introducing a custom sprite bearded man in a monocle from a military nation that would “be a bad enemy”. Good grief. Additionally, his monocle is on different eyes between his sprite and mugshot.
- At this point, Lan returns to oversleeping as he did before the ending of Battle Network 3, and nearly misses the start of the tournament. What happened to Lan learning how to wake up on his own? I was happy to see that in the last scenario. Worse yet, this is reminding me of how Lan almost overslept for the N1, which just makes this game feel even more like a rehash.
- The three quests done for the tournament qualifiers are all unremarkable, aside from the Mettaur Village quest, which is mildly interesting for following up on the friendly virus idea from 3 in addition to having a fight with a Heel Navi.
- On the topic of that Heel Navi, I do find it funny that he accuses MegaMan of being a virus sympathizer and moves to kill him... with his own viruses that he's domesticated.
- The hot dog stand is a takoyaki stand in Japanese.
- Every tournament will be a set-up of Generic Navi, Custom Navi, and Soul Navi. This might change if the opposite version is linked with, though.
- After every round, incidental dialogue across the world and cyberworld is updated. This holds true for all following tournaments as well.
- The sink in the Den Dome cannot be jacked into during the tournament. However, once the tournament is concluded, you can jack into it. While there are two other comps in the game that only can be jacked into after certain points, Mayl's doll and the Jomon PC, the former is scenario locked to Red Sun and has nothing important inside. The latter is only locked off while you don't have the P-Code. The sink is the only comp in the game that works this way normally, and there are Navi Customizer parts inside of it on two different playthroughs. Good grief, Battle Network 4.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yuko
- I am curious as to why Ponta is the only named Normal Navi in the series.
- Yuko reminds me of Mamoru. I don’t think inserting Mamoru into a local’s tournament would’ve made much sense, though, unless Serenade was in disguise as a Normal Navi or something. I can’t imagine a choice like that would go over well with fans, at any rate.
- How did Yuko's dad find out where Lan lived? Does the tournament staff just hand out everyone's personal information? I suppose he could've looked up the Hikari residence online.
- Yuko's ability to summon Navi ghosts seems a bit outlandish, but Navi ghosts were already established to exist in previous games, so I can't fully dislike the idea. I don't understand why Lan needs special tools to deal with them now, though a post on Yai's BBS attempts to address this later on.
- Lan seems to latch onto Yuko a bit fast, but I can't say Lan rushing to help like this is out of character for him.
- Why do these random Navis have souls? Isn't Hub supposed to be special in that regard?
- Of the eight Navi ghosts, only four are required to be exorcised (ACDC2, ACDC3, Town1, and Town2). Three of the friendly ghosts (ACDC 3, Town1, Town3) give you items.
- How did Yuko come back from the dead? Why does Yuko returning from the dead affect Navis? Why did her father act like he had seen this before? Did this happen during the N1, and we just didn't see it? Is Ponta still around or was he a ghost, too?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tetsu
- I didn't get to fight Tetsu or Flave at all during my three recent playthroughs of Red Sun! Why is there no redundancy check in this game to avoid getting the same scenario three times in a row!?
- Tetsu is strange in that he has the only unnamed Heel Navi of the three tournament participants, yet he is one of the few generic Navi operators to get a custom sprite.
- There's apparently some kind of previously unmentioned gang in Electopia? And Lan thought the leader was a myth? Even though the gang exists and is well-known? Also, Tetsu didn't even mention a gang when he showed up, so why would Lan think a guy he can recognize on sight isn't real?
- Tetsu leaves with a fade to black and a weird sound effect, likely owing to the geta that he's wearing. I’m not sure if this some kind of reference to something that didn't translate over to English.
- For whatever reason, some goons assault Lan and try to extort money from him. While Lan’s family should be rich and he is part of the tournament, it doesn’t seem like he’s been targeted for either reason. I could give them 100,000 zenny fairly easily with time, but this is still a pretty dumb plan.
- Despite thanking Tetsu to his face before he left, Lan and MegaMan feel the need to go find Tetsu and thank him again. Nothing like that Battle Network 4 padding.
- Lan is suddenly worried about Tetsu getting into a fight and getting disqualified from the tournament, even though Tetsu just beat these guys up in front of the tournament building. Wouldn’t he be at less risk of that now due to the change of venue?
- The goons say that they can't get into a fight with a kid because it'd hurt their image. Even though they were just trying to extort a child for a hundred thousand zenny literally ten minutes ago and got beaten up by a child after, both of which seem to be perfectly fine for their image?
- An absolutely incomprehensible conversation follows in which Lan seems to accidentally tell Tetsu and the goons to have a Net Battle. What the actual hell is going on in this scenario?
- For whatever reason, Tetsu's adversaries in this scenario are a bunch of Heel Navis who look exactly the same as his Navi. Wouldn't it have made more sense to have given Tetsu a Normal Navi for this scenario and Yuko a Heel Navi so that your tournament opponent isn't just a slightly stronger version of the myriad enemies you're going to fight beforehand? Or, better yet, script a more sensible scenario altogether?
- MegaMan fights 6 Heel Navis, then has to fight three groups of three Heel Navis. That adds up to 14 Heel Navis despite the two black Heel Navis saying they had 20 guys left.
- Gutsy Punch? I think Dex is going to have a word with Tetsu after this scenario.
- Tetsu gives the exact same speech that Tora gave to Lan after the N1.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TopMan
- Tensuke goes out of his way to hand-create an AI just so he can get along better with his grandson, and the kid just calls him a boomer and tells him to get lost. Kids today.
- Lan, savior of the world three times over, expresses surprise that Net Battling can be more than a game for kids. While I initially wanted to be generous and assume he just meant tournaments, that makes no sense either given that multiple adults participated in the N1 Grand Prix.
- Tensuke gets angry at Lan for stopping the virus in his top, stating that his own Navi could've handled things. Shortly after, he admits that TopMan is broken. I can't tell if this is consistent with his behavior as a crochety old man or an error.
- Did TopMan get created as an elderly Navi? We see other elderly Navis in this scenario, so I suppose it's not unreasonable that Navis can age. But TopMan seems to have been made recently and is already old. If a Navi is created elderly, what does that mean for their lifespan? This scenario is making me ask too many questions.
- There is a fun detail in each of the Key Items given by the elderly Navis: each has information about one of TopMan's attacks. I can only surmise he fought in a completely different way before these were given to him.
- The punishment for getting an answer wrong is very mild and then immediately rewards you. This prevents the scenario from wearing out its welcome. I wish later scenarios would have followed this trend.
- I assume the massages are just MegaMan's way of using Disk Defragmenter on the old Navis.
- Tensuke's twin is interested in kites rather than tops. I assume his Navi is KiteMan. Hell yeah. Despite that, however, his sprite has a top symbol on his back instead of a kite symbol due to just being a lazily recolored version of him.
- Lan, maybe next time don't give your opponent the ability to use three Air Hockeys at once.
- I have no idea why the sad music is playing for Tensuke's happy reunion with his brother and grandson. It might be intended to be heartwarming, but it sounds too somber. There is also at least one line that uses the wrong twin's mugshot.
- Despite talking about souls at the end of the battle, MegaMan doesn't get a Top Soul!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SparkMan
Personal Notes
- Using the number 1181305 as a base, the password can be figured out by the number of correct digits. 9681345 [4], 9651345 [3], 1863546 [2], 1563546 [1], and 7374262 [0].
Hints
* Number of Programs in the LCD Computer: 9
* 15 + 2 + 3 – 14: 6
* Number of hotdogs: 5
* Number of Net Dealers in Town Area: 1
* How many streets radiate from the square in ACDC 2: 3
* Number of Navis in ElTwrComp right now: 4
* Number of trees visible in ACDC Town: 5
* Number of Jomons: 7
* How many "CyberBat" are there: 7
* Number of ramps in Town2: 2
* In Town3, number of triangles pointing up and down: 6
* Number of stuffed bears in ACDC Town: 2
Commentary
- While this scenario is short and easily glossed over, that’s only if you use out of game advantages like GameFAQs to ignore the gimmick. I’m not sure if that’s a point in the game’s favor, since the intended method does involve a lot of backtracking.
- Tora's early concept art in BN3 was reused as SparkMan's Operator Terry.
- Terry seems to have been legitimately repairing PETs before he noticed he was handling Lan's. Why wouldn't he work somewhere with a table instead of potentially dropping important components onto the ground?
- The gimmick of this scenario is that Terry locks Lan into using an underpowered folder. On a normal game, this might not be too much of a detriment. The folder is weak, but has a lot of synergy due to asterisks and such. As a result, backtracking to get the codes to unlock the folder might not be too big of a hassle. On New Game +, however, this folder's damage output is exceptionally mediocre, making the backtracking all the more punishing.
- The woman who tells you to speak to Jomon is placed on the left side of the screen, opposite of where Lan comes in, while Jomon is placed directly in front of Lan. Would it not have made more sense to swap these two NPCs around? A new player is very liable to speak to Jomon before her and not realize you're meant to talk to him due to the first conversation not triggering a cutscene.
- This scenario has hints of something good under the surface. Jomon's store has been introduced earlier in the plot, so we're already aware of this guy's family and their reputation. The operator and Navi argue as opposed to Lan and MegaMan having trust between one another. Terry is willing to cheat. This could've been an interesting introduction into Dark Chips by having Terry use one and corrupt SparkMan for a chance at an easy win. SparkMan is even has an attack that summons MegaMan’s shadow to attack him, pretends to be a Darkloid in 4.5, and is a Darkloid in the anime! Yet, the game instead chooses to have Terry be a minor antagonist that does nothing of consequence, wasting the potential avenue to tie into the game's plot.
- What is it with everyone who's into robotics being a tool in these games? At least Terry's not trying to cause a worldwide war, though. Yet.
- Despite Terry's rather rude and bratty actions up to this point, I feel disowning him was rather excessive. There are characters in this series, let alone this game, who do worse and get lesser punishments.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GutsMan
- While I appreciate Dex sticking up for Lan, Chisao was being mildly obnoxious and didn't even seem to be bothering Lan. Then again, considering that Chisao already had this hostage situation ready to go on the drop of a dime, maybe it was a deserved response.
- Speaking of which, it's pretty messed up that Chisao's evil plan is designed to take advantage of Lan caring about whether Chisao lives or dies. That's genuinely sociopathic.
- Why does GutsMan quote MC Hammer? Why is this literally the only thing GutsMan says this whole scenario!?
- On that note, this scenario has pretty much nothing to do with GutsMan aside from the fight at the end. I feel like I should get Chisao Soul at the end instead. Maybe it'd make MegaMan good at coming up with fake hostage situations in the span of five seconds.
- Guts Soul seems like it might be a little tricky to build around, though the Atk+30 bonus seems worthwhile if I can find a good setup.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FireMan
- I love how Mr. Match walks in, pretending to be nice, and Lan is just immediately tired of his BS.
- That's two scenarios in this tournament that involve someone trying to extort money from people. And the same NPC sprites, too! At least this makes more sense than trying to get thousands from a grade schooler, but how much money can this hot dog stand possibly generate? I suppose there is a big sports event right next door that could've bolstered business, but she says business is bad. But MegaMan also said that she was the most recommended restaurant in the area? I don't know what to believe!
- These Heel Navis sure are unconcerned with MegaMan walking into their locked evil lair!
- While I appreciate Lan's accurate suspicions, why doesn't Lan tell the tournament staff about all of Match's shady behavior? Or the police?
- Lan saying that viruses are just plain bad when the last game had a virus raising mini-game and the qualifiers for this very tournament had MegaMan protecting viruses sure is... a thing.
- I don't really get the goal of Match's new group. They're going to blow up a locals tournament and kill people in order to...? And they're giving them all a chance to escape without causing damage, because...?
- Mr. Match's affection for the hot dog lady probably saved his life considering his goons would've blown him up either way.
- I completely forgot that FireMan's scenario had a mini-game. How bizarre. It's not hard, but it goes on just a tad too long for my tastes.
- Why does Mr. Match still get to participate in the tournament after trying to blow up the building? Why does everyone just act like their lives weren't in danger? Also, Lan saying Mr. Match did nothing wrong when this bombing was his idea in the first place!?
- Much like with GutsMan, this feels like another situation where the Navi that MegaMan gets a form from barely interacts with him.
- I remember Fire Soul seeming rather disappointing to me for a New Game + form, though it is apparently good against sheep, spiders, and other things.
- Mr. Match friend zones the lady he likes and then leaves to John Wick his former henchmen. I'd assume that's why he's not in Battle Network 5, but BurnerMan's scenario and the ending of this game both feature him.
- The Fire Soul email does not mention its ability to absorb lava panels to heal.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AquaMan
- At no point has Lan been shown to subscribe to a magazine, nor is there ever another fortune from it. Given its prescience, however, I can only surmise the Navi who predicted the ice age before FreezeMan's scenario got her predictions published.
- The vending machine nearby turns into some kind of slot machine for this cutscene, apparently? Shuko then loses her money and, instead of asking the nearby tournament staff member to help her get refunded, launches into some melodramatic whining that would make Maggey Byrde shake her head.
- The Battle Network version of AquaMan looks like a Sobble more than his Classic counterpart.
- Artificially constructed vagueness for the sake of causing an idiotic misunderstanding is not cute. There's no reason for Shuko and her brothers to play coy about discussing the replacement of a washing machine other than to create conflict for this scenario. Also, this isn't even a mishap. Shuko literally says the washing machine "says" woosh. That was about as artificially manufactured as possible. Then again, the twins talk about how they're attending "that school" before the washing machine talk, so maybe they just speak in annoyingly vague ways.
- If AquaMan is this sensitive that his crying is a thing that they prepare for often, wouldn't Shuko be more attuned to AquaMan's feelings and check on whether or not he's upset about anything at a given time? Also, why would you design a Navi to have the ability to flood the Net?
- I wish they used a better color filter for this scenario. Looking at the water hurts my eyes.
- Most of the NPCs don’t react to the internet flooding, though the random battles do adjust to be mostly water-based and the Navi blocking the way to the foreign internet does have changed dialogue where they stubbornly refuse to let you pass even while drowning.
- Shuko is said to be in ElecTown1, strangely enough. Real world areas are never labeled like internet areas. Shuko also doesn't appear there before you talk to her brother, which I noticed on replay.
- Are the Officials not going to investigate AquaMan doing so much damage to the Net?
- Navis will discuss the Net being flooded after AquaMan drains the water.
- Overall AquaMan's scenario is fairly harmless, if contrived, and helps you get more water chips in preparation for his Soul.
- While I wouldn’t say that Lan and MegaMan established a deep connection with them, Shuko and AquaMan wind up feeling like friends to Lan, which is more than I can say for some tournament participants. It also makes their reappearance in Battle Network 6 feel nice.
- After the battle, MegaMan gets his first Soul Unison. Where the power of Soul Unison came from isn't ever really explained, but it could possibly be tied to Change.bat. Perhaps being restored from inside of Alpha caused a change that resulted in it manifesting in a new form?
- Aqua Soul is great with Wide Shot, but overall, the lack of good Aqua chips really hurts what should be a good Soul. It’s worth noting that Battle Network 6 reuses every aspect of this transformation wholesale for Aqua Cross, and it’s significantly improved by having a better library to work with.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NumberMan
- If Higsby galivanting off to to Netopia in BN2 and leaving his shop closed is an indicator, I can see why Cone isn't happy with the return on his investments.
- Cone working for NAM makes me wonder if this is a jab at Konami.
- Higsby's moneylender wants to turn his shop into a supply store for women. This doesn't seem like the best area for that kind of thing but considering the success of the Bubble Wash in the last game, he might be onto something. That said, aren’t Battle Chips kind of the backbone of Net Society?
- Nanako threatening to kick Lan’s ass if he doesn’t do good enough of a job advertising genuinely tickles me.
- How does Mr. Prog support Higsby's? Word of mouth?
- To my immense surprise, Higsby's scenario gives you a large task to complete, but lets you slide with only doing it halfway. The only change is your resulting reward. Why wasn't this the standard of BN4?!
- Humorously enough, there is an error on this sidequest. After Lan hands out ten, you can throw the rest away in the garbage at Dex's place and still get a reward for handing out 10 + the number discarded. Throwing away all 10 gives you the 20 flyers reward, for example.
- 10 to 14 flyers gives TripCrak *, 15 to 19 gives LifeSync N, and 20 gives Ball T. Meh rewards, but I suppose the thought counts.
- Why doesn't NumberMan just jack out of wherever he's trapped? Does jacking out not work if a door is in the way? And that still doesn't explain where Higsby is.
- Why is Nanako's diary in this warehouse?
- Do no adults buy chips from Higsby?
- A few angry children is enough to discourage a business move. Is it really that easy?
- Number Soul is the equivalent of Custom Style, though I am bothered that I need to use a specific Soul in order to get more access to chips, and even then it's only for three turns. At least Number Soul does have a damage buff while it's active, providing additional benefit on top of the increased chip draws.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Den Battle/City Battle Tournament Conclusion
- While I am hardly the biggest fan of Battle Network 3's plot, I'd like to play devil's advocate for a moment. The N1 is the big turning point of Battle Network 3's plot, where the shift from goofy slice of life to a more focused plot happens. You see Dex in the background trying to prepare for this event, which is continued with him going overseas and improving to the point that he's able to come back and help with the (then) final battle with the WWW. Yai's injury during the N1 also leads into Mamoru's introduction and you can even surmise that Chaud gains some measure of respect for Lan, given that he never really doubts Lan's capabilities again after the rescue of Shuuseki. I don't think the tournament itself was necessary, mind you, given that a lot of this set-up was already happening and only Yai's minor injury directly/logically leads to the hospital, but there's some measure of structure there. I think this style of plot is done better in Star Force 3, where there is a significantly more impactful plot build and turning point, but you can see the seeds of that storytelling beginning here.
- In comparison, the City Battle Tournament provides absolutely nothing. Lan wins the tournament, but what is gained? ShadeMan and the Dark Chips are nowhere to be found. The plot beat with the asteroid is not raised. Obvious villain Dr. Regal has no presence. This particular tournament is never even mentioned again, as far as I'm aware, being almost entirely forgotten from the moment the next scenario starts. It is a tournament for tournament's sake purely because people liked the N1 in the last game. Sparkle, but no substance. The fact that the scenarios are based on RNG is also indicative of the lack of concern of creating a cohesive narrative. Even the mandatory scenarios with GutsMan and AquaMan do nothing to further the plot or themes of the game given how little you interact with the two Navis MegaMan is supposed to be forming a friendly bond with.
- Souls are obtained arbitrarily. I suppose you could argue that MegaMan is seeing an opponent fight and copying their battle style for himself, but why is a Navi like AquaMan treated as comparable to GutsMan? AquaMan and Shuko are polite and likable, sure, but they've barely known Lan and MegaMan for any significant period of time. MegaMan tells AquaMan he's not being thrown away, and that's the extent of their interaction before the tournament begins. Later, the game tries to cash in on the deep bonds of Souls, which rings hollow due to the lack of set-up. Furthermore, if MegaMan is only gaining Souls by copying his opponents, why do some custom Navis like TopMan and SparkMan not provide Souls?
- How is Dr. Regal typing with his hands behind his back?
- This cut back to Dr. Regal is entirely pointless. He notices "something" about the asteroid, then leaves chuckling to himself. It's basically saying "Regal is the villain" and offering nothing further. Sure, there were portions in the other games where Wily or Sean laughed about their plans, but typically there was a bit of insight into what they were planning, whether it was getting rid of Lan and Chaud or just advancing some other type of plan like attacking the Mother Computer.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ShadeMan, Part II
Personal Notes
- Show off the link up feature with MegaMan Zero 3, which causes that game to have Battle Network viruses as enemies around the map.
Commentary
- Lan somehow completely forgot about the Dark Chip that was destroying his twin brother’s soul, and then continues to keep it for no clear reason. Did this game forget that MegaMan is important to Lan?
- Mayl expresses that Lan has been concerned or out of sorts since the tournament where nothing bad happened. If Lan has been worried about the Dark Chip for a week, why is he only just now talking to MegaMan about it? Why hasn't he contacted anyone in the past week about taking it off his hands? Why hasn't he asked Higsby about the safest way to dispose of it or turned it in to the Official Center? For that matter, where has the Dark Chip been while MegaMan's been doing all of these tournament things?
- Another tournament is announced: the Hawk/Eagle Tournament. Given that the last game had the N1 as a big arc, this one seems to be going for the idea that more = good, which only helps to expose the shallowness of the plot and how poorly it is aping the Battle Network formula. Lan and MegaMan are in exactly the same position they were in at the start of the game. There has been no forward momentum in what is going on. They haven't been looking into ShadeMan. They haven't gotten rid of the Dark Chip. They know nothing of the asteroid. The plot isn't stalling; it's non-existent.
- NPC chatter feels a lot hollower this time, usually just talking about tournaments or the like.
- In the process of doing this errand for Roll, I find myself liking the new way that Homepages are set up for Lan's friends. No more virus encounters inside of them, and they hotlink to Lan's homepage. Battle Network 1 and 3 had an issue of making jacking into Lan's PC feel pointless after a while, but this game manages to avoid that issue. Well done.
- Mayl's homepage seems to be shaped like a Mr. Prog. It also has a teddy bear wallpaper instead of the piano wallpaper that has been present for the last several games.
- MegaMan and Roll's mugshots look very similar, curiously enough.
- Yai's BBS gives some lore about ghost Navis being the product of your mind's fears, though this is only a rumor. This also explains the title for the boss theme in this game.
- Jomon's BBS also reveals that Mr. Famous made the Humor program.
- It'd be nice if Roll tried to win the tickets for MegaMan instead of using this as an excuse to make you fight more battles. In fact, if this game and 4.5 merged together, I’m sure something neat could have resulted. Maybe this could be a segment with a playable Roll asking MegaMan out on a date.
- The message on the screen of Lan's computer does not appear until after you check on Haruka.
- Despite Lan's house being broken into and his mother telling him to call the Officials, Lan will not call the Officials about either the break-in or the Dark Chip.
- How did this random Nebula Navi get into the Park Area without anyone noticing? Whatever the case, the fight between MegaMan and the Normal Navi who works at Castillo could've been avoided if MegaMan just flashed his licenses or called the Officials.
- It's starting to feel like this game doesn't know how to handle regular viruses. Moloko are a bad enemy design because you need to focus them down and defeat them before they go offscreen. But the intended way to defeat viruses is to take them all out at once. How are you meant to do that with an enemy that constantly charges at you with a regenerating shield?
- The opponent who introduces Nebula to Lan and MegaMan is a nondescript Heel Navi who immediately dies following his introduction.
- ShadeMan does a thing and kills some guy and his nondescript Navi. If I'm expected to take this seriously, I can't. ShadeMan just (somehow) killed two underlings (who only existed for the prior scene) for failing to fix a mistake that he himself made. This doesn't present him as an intimidating boss; it just makes him look pathetic. He delegated a fix for something he fouled up to begin with, and then he tries to save face for his subordinate's blunder by making a show of intimidation. Except, the only thing ShadeMan has done this whole game is beat up generic Navis and Lan's friends, so he doesn't even come across as particularly tough.
- For all of my complaints so far, I do like the family scenes, brief as they've been. Lan spending time with his parents or being embarrassed to talk about going on a date with Mayl in earshot of his mother are rather adorable moments.
- Haruka took the Navi Customizer from Lan so he'd stay out of trouble, purportedly. I feel it would’ve been easier just to say that Yuichiro took it to update it for the new PET model. But seeing as Lan doesn't have those illegal Netopian Mod Tools anymore, maybe he got in trouble with someone over that.
- Undershirt being smaller from the outset and colors being less restrictive is a nice change, though I'm mainly wondering why the Navi Customizer comes so late in this game.
- I'm disappointed at how few NPCs are around to talk to in ACDC Town now.
- Battle Network 4 has three mistakes in the Z-Saber chip: name, description, and Zero's status as a Reploid. Granted, Zero (and X) occasionally refer to themselves as Reploids within the context of their series as an easy blanket term, so perhaps that latter one can be forgiven.
- The Weather viruses are based on the teru teru bōzu, charms believed to help stop the rain and guarantee that tomorrow will be sunny.
- Pop Up has replaced Rush with the Momogra virus.
- Assuming ShadeMan did bug the ride system, what was the purpose of that? His other attacks take forever to start up, and he never even waits in Park Area 3 for MegaMan to arrive. And how did he even know Lan was going to be at Castillo with Mayl today? Does he have Lan wiretapped?
- While the personal areas made sense for ACDC and Town Area, how do people like Flave have their own sections of Castillo cordoned off? They obviously don't live here, and the theme park only JUST opened.
- Lan goes to get ice cream for Mayl and discovers that Nanako is playing hooky from Higsby's to work here. I'm not sure why this segment exists. It's possible you don't even know who this woman is considering her introduction is during missable conversation in the first scenario, and Higsby's shop isn't even properly open until after the Den City Tournament finishes. All in all, this date has felt pretty boring so far.
- After you talk to Nanako at the ice cream stand, she immediately disappears.
- I want to like the date given how it is nice to see Lan and Mayl have downtime where they do things together as friends, but a lot of it is glossed over or against a black screen. It is a little funny how Lan seems to be freaking out over the rides while Mayl is enjoying herself. Reminds me of when I tried a log ride as a kid with my cousin.
- I wonder if Princess Halberd is named independently of her weapon or if that's another classic Battle Network 4 mistake. It seems like Princess Hatchet would be a more accurate name.
- This game marks the beginning of the Boktai crossovers with MegaMan, which end with Star Force 1. I wasn't aware of Boktai when I was a kid, but I rather liked the games, and it was an enjoyable change of pace to try them. According to hearsay, Kojima suggested a crossover between Battle Network and Boktai due to his son enjoying the Battle Network games.
- Rather than being a 1:1 retelling of a portion of Boktai's adventure, the Django exhibit is a modified retelling of the events of Bloodrust Manor. The Count is renamed Dracky, Lita is referred to as a princess instead of being called the Earthly Maiden, both have a different appearance, etc. It could just be a modification for the theme park, or a means of keeping the story under wraps for people who might be interested.
- Because we can't have nice things, Mayl only took Lan on this date so she could wind up in danger. Of course. And why does that robot have a real hatchet? This park deserves to be shut down and it only just opened!
- Also, the robot is standing there doing nothing and Lan jumps in front of everyone else to jack in. Why couldn't Mayl and Roll handle this? Oh right, Shonen tropes. The little kid saying "I've fallen, and I can't get up." is pretty amusing, though.
- The interior of the robots looks pretty neat, being modeled after theme park rides, though the music is grating until the Vampire comp.
- Princess Halberd's axe disappears after the comp is disabled. Who took it? Mayl?
- WzDog and WzMonkey are based on the Japanese idiom of fighting like dogs and monkeys. The translation team could've touched this up better for international audiences that this would be lost on.
- The story of the Tinman seems like something I'd imagine would resonate with Wily. In fact, it reminds me of the details of Colonel's story in 6.
- Why don't PETs have flashlights? It would help Lan get around this darkened area a lot easier, not that he seems to have much trouble as is.
- The changed portion of the Boktai ride’s ending shouldn't have popped up until after you put in the story parts. It undercuts the revision ShadeMan made. On that note, there's something almost morbidly meta about ShadeMan feeling compelled to ruin another game's story.
- The Dark Chip that MegaMan has holds "very special data". What this means is never elaborated upon, nor does any other Dark Chip in the series ever prove to be anything other than a really strong chip that corrupts Navis. If this thing was so important that he couldn't give it to anyone, why was he carrying it around so cavalierly on his personal time?
- ShadeMan again proves to be massively incompetent, stating that MegaMan has trapped him in the Toy Robo Comp. How did that happen? You managed to get over here from somewhere else, and MegaMan hasn't disabled the machine. I get the feeling that ShadeMan is meant to be an intimidating boss that we should fear/respect, especially given that he's going to show up a lot more in the future, but he just looks like an idiot.
- MegaMan shooting the Dark Chip to bits in front of ShadeMan's face is clearly supposed to be cool. There's a dramatic slowdown, the music stops, and they even made custom sprites for the moment. However, considering that MegaMan could have just shot the chip at any time, it takes something that should be cool and makes Lan and MegaMan both look like morons for not doing this a literal week ago. I know I've jokingly harped on the intelligence of Lan before, but this is outright baffling. There is absolutely no reason for them to have held onto this thing for so long other than "The plot can't happen if they don't."
- ShadeMan is, AGAIN, completely invulnerable to damage, meaning that the story has AGAIN failed to deliver a boss fight. Ignoring tournaments, the only actual bosses related to the plot thus far have been Heel and Normal Navis!
- Furthermore, no explanation is given for ShadeMan's invulnerability. It's not even addressed in the story. The first time, ShadeMan behaves as though he's been beaten by MegaMan but escapes. The second time, MegaMan just uses a Dark Chip to kill him because... that's what the writers wanted, I guess. With that in mind, I'm inclined to feel that ShadeMan isn't actually invulnerable, but the reason that you can't defeat his base form is because the game doesn't want you to. They need ShadeMan as an integral part of this contrived farce of a story, so he's invincible because otherwise that'd be bad for their shoddily written script.
- On a different note, why don't the Darkloids use Dark Chips? Wouldn't they just be extremely powerful chips as far as they're concerned? They're already steeped in darkness. Then again, you have things like DS chips for Darkloids in this game and 5, so maybe they can become darker and are afraid of getting high off of their own supply? Despite being made of darkness? Whatever the case, it's never addressed.
- The anime does have Darkloids just as vulnerable to Dark Chips as other Navis! In the anime, the Darkloids work for Dr. Regal, with him manipulating them for his own purposes, which doesn't sit well with ShadeMan. Things only get worse once Regal uses his Dark Chips to build up an addiction within ShadeMan's members, causing them to become dependent on him and LaserMan as their suppliers, causing all except BubbleMan to turn against him. Even ShadeMan is horrified upon seeing what happens to his henchmen and he mercy kills FlashMan as a result.
- "Maybe we used the Dark Chip that Higsby said not to use. That we destroyed, but still showed up in our folder anyway. That was specifically said to erode the soul. That will overtake you and cause all kinds of bad things to happen. But we beat ShadeMan, so who cares?"
- Losing ShadeMan has dealt your group a powerful blow? He screwed up at everything literally every time he was onscreen. He couldn't even manage to eat Roll when the two of them were alone for over 15 minutes!
- Nebula is more worried about losing ShadeMan than the "special data", making his death seem all the more pointless. And for that matter, how does Nebula know that the Dark Chip is destroyed? Did ShadeMan send an email before he died? Did Regal read the script?
- From this point on, entering the Worried state causes MegaMan to develop two Dark Chips on the bottom of the Custom Screen. While to some degree I like this, I can't stand the overall way it's implemented because of one main issue: the Worried state renders you unable to use Soul Unison. If a person is losing a battle to this extent while they have the ability to use Soul Unison, there's one of two reasons: either they are getting beaten even with Soul Unison or they haven't gotten the chips they need for Soul Unison. If anything, the Worried state should be about making the player make a choice: do I keep up this losing battle even though my present tactics aren't availing me, or do I opt to use this easy power? By taking away that choice, players who don't use Dark Chips just get needlessly crippled. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be a detriment to Worried state but sealing off a way to get out of the situation is by far the worst idea.
- Dark Chips do have the advantage of being a player imposed challenge, though, so I suppose there's that benefit? Granted, the same could likely be achieved by remaining at 100 HP, access to light Karma aside.
- I kind of wish Dark Chips were adaptive to your play style to better tempt you. And with potentially a wider variety of chips as well. Imagining a Dark Hockey makes me laugh.
- Battle Network 4 could've had MegaMan use self-conjured Dark Chips by tying it to a copy ability. If Soul Unison is the result of MegaMan copying another Navi's powers, the Dark Chips could've been a corrupted version of that.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eagle/Hawk Tournament Preliminaries
Personal Notes
- Check if the Navi that jumps you for your points still behaves that way even if you only have one point to your name.
- Make a note of where every point can be obtained, optimal or otherwise.
New Opponents
- Game 1: Riki, BurnerMan, Roll | WoodMan, Flave, VideoMan
- Game 2: VideoMan, WindMan | BurnerMan, MetalMan
- Game 3: N/A | Riki
Commentary
- Lan is excited about a tournament where he can prove himself to be the best Net Battler in Electopia. This is despite getting to the semi-finals of the N1 and then defeating Sunayama and Chaud later in that game. He has also defeated the WWW thrice and Gospel once. Chaud will also not be competing in this tournament, though I suppose Lan has no way of knowing that. Regardless, what does this even prove? The tournament wasn't even announced that long ago, so there's not going to be much serious turnout.
- Most points can be gotten without going on the Net. I only needed to jack in four times. It still means that this is a glorified pixel hunt among four real world areas and many more Net areas. Ultimately, I find this to be the worst tournament preliminary.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Flave
- If the N1 was the obligatory shonen tournament arc, this game seems to be experimenting with other genres of anime.
- Flave is the second and last unique operator of a generic Navi. His scenario is also charmingly absurd, featuring a fairly inoffensive mini-game.
- While this game predates the series, I can't help but be reminded of Shokugeki no Soma.
- Lan apparently dislikes curry in the games, but it's his favorite food in the anime.
- The Cooking Machine converts inserted ingredients into data. This feels like the type of insanity I've come to expect from this series, which softens me on this scenario even more.
- The Cooking Battle starting out in a similar manner as the Tournament Battles is a funny touch.
- Flave's curry causing the judge's soul to leave his body was an amusing gag. Flave's curry causing the judge to explode was okay. Lan's curry summoning the judge's dead wife down from Heaven so that she can exchange some final words to him is, without a doubt, peak Battle Network. This is easily the best thing to come from this game.
- Flave should have possibly been saved for the next tournament which was world-wide. It would've been a nice excuse to bring back CookMan.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Riki
- There is a remarkable amount of organized crime in this idealized future.
- Despite destroying at least two mafias at this point, Lan and MegaMan are hesitant to get involved here. Granted, this is the real world mafia instead of the Netmafia, so I guess they're more inclined to whack people instead of whatever convoluted nonsense Gospel got up to.
- Riki refers to his Navi, Crusher, as "Crasher" after the cutscene with the mafia boss and her goon.
- What is it with video games putting stealth mechanics into games not designed around stealth? Multiple goons are placed in spots that are just outside of your field of vision! Additionally, virus battles continue through the stealth segment.
- Why are these fools talking about their mafia plans in public?
- MegaMan can destroy the cage with his buster, which may well be the first thing it has actually destroyed in a cutscene, but he can't just shoot the guys that see him during the stealth section?
- MegaMan hears mafia guys coming and decides to stay and confront them instead of just jacking out.
- These mafia guys change color when the battle starts. 4.5 would go on to have black Heel Navis sprites for battles.
- Riki decides to tell the mafia guys, who are confident enough to whack him and a child in the middle of a theme park during broad daylight, that he knows about their plans. Brilliant idea!
- The mafia boss executes two of her henchmen in broad daylight in the middle of a theme park. No one calls the police, but in this case, I can't say I blame them.
- The sound used when the mafia boss kills her henchmen is the Shun Goku Satsu sound effect. This might very well be the funniest joke in Battle Network 4, as it works even if you don't get the reference.
- Riki tells everyone in the audience that's he's in the mafia in broad daylight in the middle of a theme park. How powerful is this mafia that their members can get away with all of this stuff casually?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BurnerMan
- I know that Mr. Match has operated every Fire Navi in the series up to this point, but it feels very conceited to think that he has a monopoly on that. No one must've told him about NapalmMan.
- Atsuki brings up a Festival of Flames, and I'm reminded of Sonic 2006 having a similar concept. Most of this game's events are also never mentioned again. What a strange alignment of facts.
- Lan's mom giving him the water gun from the first game to put out the fire was a pretty funny gag, though it's an accessory for MegaMan here rather than a water gun that Lan uses this time. That feels like a continuity gaff.
- Counting Network Transmission, this is the third time that Mr. Match has set the internet on fire. How does he keep getting away with this?
- This scenario is reminding me of FlameMan's, only without the obnoxious EnergyChange program and the viruses actually change to be mostly fire-related as a result of the fight. A nice amount of effort was put into this scenario.
- Why is Atsuki saying that Lan is late again? When was he late before?
- Atsuki suddenly decides to become a terrorist in the last few seconds of his scenario despite being slightly bratty at worst beforehand, and then suddenly gets third degree burns while everyone laughs at him. Okay then.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VideoMan
- Viddy Narcy is apparently non-binary in the game and anime, though they apparently self-refer as "male" once in the anime and quickly write that off as a mistake.
- Lan deciding to jack out instead of dealing with VideoMan is rather surprising given how everyone forgets that they can do this.
- If VideoMan can pause MegaMan to the point where he can't move and then reverse his movements to where MegaMan can't fight properly, why does he need to cheat in the tournament?
- VideoMan apparently wants to win the tournament to update to digital. Would that make him DVDMan? BluRayMan?
- Why did Viddy register under their real name if they didn't want to be referred to that way? For that matter, if Viddy is operating under a given name, why did Mami refer to them by the wrong moniker? Very weird.
- This turned into SparkMan's scenario at the end. This is another instance where a villain could have used Dark Chips and it would've made sense. But we can't have plot getting in the way of... whatever this is.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roll
- It seems like GutsMan and Roll should swap places. GutsMan placed far in the N1, so a countrywide tournament would be the best spot to place him. In comparison, Mayl trying out for locals to gain more confidence in her capabilities seems like it'd be a good starting ground for her. I guess her jumping back into the countrywide scene does show a sign of confidence on her part, though it does feel like Dex and GutsMan regress as a trade-off. Still, both characters are thrown into the trash after this game, so I suppose I should take what I can get for Mayl.
- MegaMan's comment of surprise that Roll made it "this far" is cute if Roll is in the finals, as she was for me. But the dialogue doesn't update at all depending on her placement in the tournament. So it's entirely possible that MegaMan has this exact reaction if he faces her in the preliminary rounds, which is decidedly less cute!
- Immediately after I type that, the conversation turns extremely condescending, with both Lan and MegaMan commenting on how weird it is for Roll to be fighting and how she probably shouldn't. Misogyny!
- Mayl believes that she can't beat MegaMan, which is a fair assessment. Though it does feel a little lame after the previous commentary from the protagonists. Still, she opts to try her best, so good on her, at least.
- Immediately after hanging out with Glyde for protection from the kidnapper, Roll is kidnapped. This is why there's no Glyde Soul.
- When the Navi who kidnaps Roll goes shopping, you don't have to read the door to go after him.
- So we're just... not going to delete or arrest the stalker for kidnapping? Okay.
- Before Roll got a bunch of viruses on her side, her plan was to use Roll Charm on MegaMan. Which I assume would just be her going "Ara ara~" at him and then attacking while his guard was down.
- Yai has incorrectly attributed dialogue where she acts as though she's the one who is battling Lan.
- How does Roll get back to ACDC for the game of tag without Mayl? For that matter, she says she intends to show MegaMan how she can battle, but then says she never said anything about battling.
- Roll has an arrow that can delete chip data. It's a shame this particular detail has no bearing on the plot, since it would've undoubtedly come in handy when Lan and MegaMan were trying to figure out how to get rid of/destroy the Dark Chip!
- I do like Mayl's attitude in this scenario. She knows she can't win, but she wants to be taken seriously and uses this whole scenario as a means of gauging how far she's come and how much farther she needs to go. Shame about almost everything else in this setup, though.
- Yai can also be seen still walking in the top right even after she walks offscreen in the final cutscene. They didn't bother removing her sprite!
- Roll Soul has very powerful healing capabilities, but that is of no use to me when I'm likely not going to be able to show it off in my playthrough. Pity.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WindMan
- This has been an issue before, but I have to wonder why Lan and his opponent always seem to check the title board at different times. I feel like it shouldn't have been too hard to write Lan and his opponent both being there at the same time without one of them walking in from offscreen!
- WindMan is worshipped as a god, but he and his powers were created by humans. How do you worship something that you have tangible proof that you created? Does beating him in a Net Battle count as blasphemy?
- How does Lilly not immediately recognize that rice wine doesn't taste like water? Apparently, it's supposed to be sweet like caramel!
- Okay, using the Grass Flute to unbind WindMan's power is DEINITELY blasphemy.
- How did Lilly have enough time to get drunk and then sober back up before the match started?
- "Don't worry, Lilly, MegaMan and I are RPG protagonists. That means we already come genetically coded with the ability to play a flute."
- This is significantly less annoying than the stealth mission. Though it'd be a lot better with random battles turned off.
- Sure, let's just let Lilly Net Battle while drunk. Why not, tournament officials?
- WindMan's chip works excellently with SandRing and V-Doll. Clip.
- I don't recall how effective Wind Soul is, but it might be handy against Bass XX.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MetalMan
- Why does Lan recognize optional characters from the first game, but not someone he canonically fought in the N1 in the last game? Why is Tamako acting like this is the first time she's met Lan?
- Tamako breaks her hand and asserts that she won this contest. It's ridiculous, but it's also in character, so there you go.
- Drunken Master might be one of my favorite BN4 NPCs, ya idjit.
- This game teased another whiskey rap off and then shut it down immediately. I'm subtracting 500 points.
- I should probably appreciate the humor in Rockman, whose weapon is the Rock Buster, breaking rocks. Or Tamako visualizing Rockman as a rock. But this minigame sucks and goes on too long; it is genuinely the worst part of BN4 and reason enough to play Red Sun.
- You can't pause during the MetalMan minigame. Trying causes the master/Tamako to yell at you.
- While the nod to the Ura Inn is nice, I'm very annoyed that Mamoru and Kimie don't cameo for this scenario.
- Metal Soul might be the most powerful Soul in this game. With the Vulcan and AirHockey series both being useful, the ability to charge them for additional damage becomes a major damage upgrade for anyone building around those.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WoodMan
- The mayor is so hilariously unrealistic of a person that I can't even figure out what to mock about him. He's like the villain in an afterschool special about respecting the environment.
- The mayor showing up at the exact time that Sal's friends decide to send her an email about it remarkably coincidental timing.
- The Navi radicalizing environmentalists must have met with QuickMan and PlantMan. Given his predilection for "CyberBombs", the former is a possibility. Sal and Dave were even friends in the anime adaptation.
- Given that WoodMan didn't speak in the first game, this is the first time we really get to see his personality and interactions with MegaMan.
- WoodMan's obstacle course is annoying. You can also apparently brick the game depending on what you're playing Battle Network 4 on. So that's nice.
- So, I guess the Mayor's plan to tear up the park never really got resolved, huh?
- Wood Soul looks rather absurd, but it has potential. A good number of its strategies require setup, though, and the lack of stage chips don't help. 4.5 brings back Grass Stage (as FirePlus), and, while Wood Soul isn't in the game, both WoodMan and PlantMan gain much from the ability to set up GreenWood and other abilities much easier.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eagle/Hawk Tournament Conclusion
- Nebula gets tired of Lan not progressing the plot and interrupts his victory ceremony. That's kind of funny, for the wrong reasons.
- "Remember, I could easily destroy this castle", says a guy that we've never met. Why would Lan remember something he doesn't know?
- LaserMan's whole self-indulgent rant about how Nebula are the good guys for wanting the make the world evil is so dumb that I actually had to stop playing for a minute to digest what I'd read.
- "Behold the evil that exists within you. There is no one right or wrong." Yeah, except that evil is the result of him being exposed by a chip that you made that artificially implanted evil into him. You absolute imbecile.
- The recolors of DS and Omega Navis are a nice touch in 4 and 5, though the latter ditches the Omega recolors.
- The Dark Soul boss is kind of a neat idea in that it becomes stronger the stronger you become, but it also has the potential to be an obnoxious spam machine. I've had many instances where a Dark Soul would just use a Mega Chip that I couldn't avoid because it stops time and I had no means of avoiding it in my hand.
- MegaMan worries that his Dark Soul could appear at any time to attack his friends when LaserMan had to use darkness powers to even draw it out of his body.
- Also, if evil is innately inside of everyone, then what was the point of the plotline of the special Dark Chip working its magic on MegaMan? The Dark Soul is explicitly a product of the Dark Chip!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Red Sun/Blue Moon Tournament Preliminaries
Personal Notes
- Before the Red Sun/Blue Moon qualifiers, Hideo Kojima can be found in the Django attraction. There's also some funny dialogue around the park.
- There is funny dialogue in Castillo and Park Area during the beginning of the tournament. Be sure not to miss it.
New Opponents
- Game 1: ColdMan, Paulie, ThunderMan | Jack Bomber, ColdMan, JunkMan
- Game 2: KendoMan | KendoMan
- Game 3: Jack Bomber, SearchMan | Paulie, ProtoMan
Commentary
- In case the game isn't being subtle enough with the savage beating it's delivering to your noggin, LaserMan is working with Dr. Regal. That being said, it's very convenient that this specific danger happens to be the perfect situation for a laser that his Navi can sabotage.
- On that note, shouldn't LaserMan be more powerful than he is? Navis jack in via lasers now. Shouldn't he have some ability to manipulate that?
- This scene with MegaMan and friends only serves to remind me that Glyde has been almost non-existent this whole game. GutsMan and Roll only fare slightly better due to being in tournament scenarios. Chaud has also barely been present, and the same holds true for Higsby. The whole cast has been sidelined in favor of meaningless tournaments.
- Speaking of which, here's a THIRD tournament. In a game where we've barely scratched the plot. Because why not?
- Lan suddenly goes to another country with no fanfare. While it is nice to see Netopia again, albeit a different section of it, it feels like coming here was just so abrupt.
- Battle Network 4 manages to avoid the second game's pitfall with Netopia by allowing Lan to revisit Electopia at will, though the lower quality of goodies to backtrack for and the lack of a Job BBS prevents me from heaping too much praise on that front.
- Netopians are still jerks, aside from the lady you can haggle on chocolate prices. Granted, she will become mad at you if you say no even after she drops the price to 200 zenny.
- Bonds says he'll take Lan to his hotel, then clearly walks past the hotel. Lan is then violently abducted, as part of the tournament setup, and Bonds acts as though he has no idea where he went. Why is Lan getting mugged and kidnapped treated as part of the tournament qualifiers? What would have happened if Lan didn't stop to look at the car that was speeding past? What if Lan decided to call the police for help? Why is Bonds pretending not to know where Lan is when he’s alone without anyone to fool?
- The location for the first place you jack in is "Hotel HP", which kind of spoils the twist in advance.
- After Lan's violent mugging and kidnapping, the tournament staff continues by making him think they're going to dismember him. I know it's a reference to Rome's Mouth of Truth, but still. Really classy.
- Talking to Kojima during the third tournament has him mention that he ran into ShadeMan while he was jacked onto the Net, only for Django to arrive before his Navi was deleted. The two then battled, somehow ending up in the Undernet, where he is found by MegaMan before that side quest starts.
- The other countries having their own method of transportation helps add some flavor to them, something I find rather endearing. I wish we got to see more of Sharo, NetFrica, and Yumland in other games.
- I've heard some people say that BN4's Undernet 6 is an homage to BN2 as a defense for why it uses the same layout as BN2's Undernet 2. And while the reuse of assets doesn't bother me, I can't agree with that. What makes BN2's Undernet 2 so special? Aside from fighting MagnetMan there and the Under Square path being there, there's not much memorable about it. It would've made more sense if Netopia and Yumland's areas paid homage to the areas from BN2 given that they're locations returning from BN2.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jack Bomber
Personal Notes
- Make a joke about Mega Man Soccer.
Commentary
- Jack wearing sunglasses indoors immediately makes him come across as an asshole even more than the fact that he's using the "evil NPC" mugshot.
- I like how Lan insults Jack's Navi first, only to immediately gets upset about MegaMan being insulted as soon as Jack shows up.
- I wonder if this scenario is supposed to be a scathing indictment of the dangers of football.
- For 2000 years, people have been playing a sport where one guy kicks explosives at the other guy. I want to say that this is ridiculous but considering the average intelligence of NPCs in Battle Network, this sounds frighteningly plausible.
- In order to make the BombShoes, you need a Guard 1 A. While these are easy to get on the first playthrough, later playthroughs require you to visit isolated areas in order to get more of these chips if you don't have them.
- FootBomb is a dumb mini-game. MegaMan has, at max, 440 HP at this point in the game and Undershirt doesn't work for the mini-game. This means that it takes three shots at most to deplete MegaMan's HP while the opponent's Navi takes four. There is also no way to tell whether the shot will be left, center, or right, so it's merely RNG if you win or not. New Game + makes it WORSE by upping the HP of the Navi and the damage of the bombs. And the shots and goalie catching are also frequently unresponsive. At least the second game is shorter.
- This game is like football, except you're intentionally trying to give the other guy a career ending injury.
- I'm not sure how you intend to make FootBomb more popular than Net Battling by winning a Net Battle. People are still showing up specifically to see a Net Battle. It's like me trying to promote Boktai on my primarily MegaMan Battle Network themed YouTube channel.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paulie
Personal Notes
- Water God Route: 1 > 6 (Blue) > 4 (Green) > 13 (Blue) > 10 (Pink) > 8 (Blue)* > 16 (Pink)
* If you want the FullCust, take the green warp in Area 8 to Area 12, then use the green warp to return to Area 8.
- Gold Prog Route: 1 > 6 (Blue) > 14 (Pink) > 6 (Green) > 1 (Blue) > 5 (Pink) > 3 (Green) > 11 (Green) > 9 (Blue) > 11 (Green) > 3 (Green) > 2 (Blue) > 10 (Pink) > 8 (Blue) > 12 (Green)
* The Gold Mr. Prog appears in Areas 2, 9, 12, and 14.
Commentary
- "You're pretty cool." "Hey, thanks. Wanna come to the other side of the world with me?" "Sure, why not?"
- Last year it flew clear to Sharo Area. So naturally, that's a clue for "It's in Sharo Area again this year."
- The scene of the Navis leaving mid-conversation was probably the most dynamic action in a cutscene this game has had thus far.
- The scientist in the Water God competition passes out during the search because he can't keep doing the dance. That's pretty funny.
- For whatever reason, the game can't just let you do the Water God computer immediately, requiring another tedious step beforehand. Because why not?
- Navis died in the Water God computer instead of jacking out. How do Navis even die in the first place? Wouldn't they just be deleted?
- There is a 1 in 16 chance that Gold Mr. Prog will spawn in the Water God when you jack in, giving prizes if found. More information here.
- This scenario is the best example of how much this game overuses mandatory virus battles. First you need to fight a three round battle to even get into NetFrica area. Then you need to fight a three round battle to open a door. Then, at the very minimum, you need to fight a single round battle and two five round battles to finish Water God. Then you can fight at the tournament.
- Paulie almost deprives his village of water just to showboat. On one hand, kids do dumb things. On the other hand, kids typically do dumb things like breaking something important, not depriving an entire village of water while also blaspheming against their god.
- Just because Paulie isn't exiled doesn't mean that he should get off Scott-free. He should be punished in some kind of way.
- This is literally Tora's arc for the third time with the "The world is vast and there are more people stronger than me" thing. And they recycled it for yet another Heel Navi, even!
- Paulie is literally eviler than Dr. Regal. Duo showed up on this planet purely to destroy him and I refuse to believe any words to the contrary.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ColdMan
- Our introduction to Chillski is a guy wearing a heavy fur coat complaining that it's too hot. I think this sets the tone for this chapter.
- NPCs in Netopia Area actually do comment on ColdMan lowering the temperature. Surprising late-game effort.
- Lan cannot leave Netopia before talking to ColdMan since the cutscene is only set up to trigger when leaving the hotel.
- In the span of time that it took Lan to ask Chillski to stop lowering the temperature of Netopia Area, Chillski took a multiple hour flight, flew to Sharo, knocked out the scientists, hijacked the weather satellite, transmitted the colder weather he wanted to Netopia, and then came back. Before Lan walked ten steps.
- I like the giant matryoshka doll in the shape of a lady.
- In order to clear this scenario, you need to find a shovel, shovel the snow, jack into the satellites, beat the multiple snowman viruses inside, and have a specific chip of a specific code to heat the satellite. On a time limit. Four times. Have fun!
- How is Lan able to endure all of this nonsense in shorts and roller skates?
- If body temperature drops to at least 91°F / 33°C, a person can begin to experience amnesia. I suppose this is an explanation of why Lan needs to have a tutorial in Battle Networks 5 and 6, haha.
- This scenario evokes the EnergyChange segment of Battle Network 3, only worse given that it requires specific chip codes. The PMD by the Slider Master always has a BlackBomb Z in case you need it for ColdMan's scenario, at least, and the Cyber Torches don't actually use up your chip.
- If the signal will take a while to reach Netopia, how did Chillski know that Lan changed things? Wouldn't he not notice until the signal reached Netopia? And how did he know Lan and MegaMan were responsible? For that matter, how did he get Lan's number?
- If ColdMan's back row is filled after he does a jump, his AI breaks and he cannot do anything.
- Chillski is another character who could have easily used Dark Chips in the tournaments considering how amoral he is.
- Lan threatens to punch a man twice his size and the man cowers. Even in Sharo, there are hushed whispers about the legendary Lan Punch.
- In hindishgt, is this guy really the only person in Battle Network 4 who actually goes to jail for the crimes he's committed? Most everyone else gets away with their wrongdoing scott-free, barring the occasional street justice here and there.
- While I understand it’s a gag, why is this Netopian police officer interrogating a Sharoan criminal about a crime he committed in his country in a room in NetFrica? What is jurisdiction?
- ColdMan's ghost is placed in a rather obnoxious area that is directly in the middle of your path if you try to get to the C-Slider in Sharo Area.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
KendoMan
- It is nice to get an in-universe explanation for Mr. Famous' various Navis, though I didn't expect this game to be the one to provide it.
- KendoMan's minigame is unfun and occasionally unresponsive. Furthermore, in addition to the game giving you 50 seconds to completely drain a decently lengthy HP bar, RNG can screw you over by having the training dummy do something like attack you four times in a row. I'm also not a fan of backtracking through areas with viruses I can't run from or avoid with SneakRun, especially when this game went out of its way to make virus battles so annoying to deal with.
- KendoMan's minions give actual kendo commands in Japanese.
- KendoMan's scenario is about strengthening your character through discipline and not using the easy route to get ahead. Basically, the opposite mentality to what Dark Chips represent. Naturally, Dark Chips will not be featured in this scenario.
- The tournament official says that Mr. Famous has five minutes to arrive, before acquiescing to Lan's demand and saying that she can prolong the tournament, but not for very long. Despite this, Lan will have time to board a plane, head back to NetFrica, then back to Netopia and the tournament match isn't canceled. And this is after he already boarded a plane and took two long flights. In Red Sun, the tournament officials get angry at Lan for holding up the fight with GutsMan for five minutes!
- Mr. Famous has put some kind of seal on the random blond guy that prevents him from defeating a Mettaur. Either Mr. Famous is some kind of wizard, or he just broke this guy's hands.
- For whatever reason, the blond guy is too afraid to run past a sixth grader. As a result, Mr. Famous presumably breaks his legs this time.
- Another scenario that ends with talk of spirit. Despite that and the fact that Lan has known Mr. Famous for two games now, there is no Kendo Soul.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ThunderMan
- Lan and MegaMan seem to remember Raoul and ThunderMan, but it also seems like the wording is just vague enough that they might not?
- As soon as the scenario starts, a racist old man challenges Lan to a duel. How odd that this is the only time a scenario starts with a fight.
- This old man seems far too happy to be torturing MegaMan simply for the crime of... being in a tournament? Seriously, what's his problem? Is it just that he's Netopian?
- There's a lot of weird lines with Lan and Raoul where the characters' dialogue is attributed to the wrong speaker. It's worse here than any other part I can recall.
- I have no idea how MegaMan got a voodoo curse placed on him. Or how there's a voodoo curse that works on Navis in the first place. Maybe it works since MegaMan is part human. Would Raoul's clan even know that, though?
- For this scenario, there's not really a gimmick aside from the dropping HP, which is even less of an issue if you have Roll Soul like I do. I have to imagine that the game designers also noticed a lack of Yumland scenarios given you have to go to Yumland area to find two of the marks.
- I don't know why Lan is so stressed he didn't get to try the bread. Surely he should be able to tell the person running the contest that he operates MegaMan and get what he earned. Granted, in my case, he immediately got shuttled to NAXA after this fight, so that's a bit more appropriate.
- Thunder Soul seems like it will be a very powerful form, though I am tentatively worried about the quality of Null and Elec chips!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SearchMan
- This scenario feels fairly short somehow, possibly because it's mostly virus battles and running to Undernet 6.
- For the longest time, I thought Laika's earpiece was part of a beard. I guess he's younger than I originally believed he was. Makes sense, given that the anime makes him part of a trio with Lan and Chaud.
- On that note, it's a shame Laika and Chaud don't really interact, even in BN5. But I suppose that's what the anime is for.
- Getting shot by SearchMan does 200 damage on Super Hard Mode, which feels excessive, though the mini-game is fairly generous with the timing.
- What the heck is Navi karate? And that's no Moon of Hades, that's just the Spirit Bomb.
- Use the Blizzard series on SearchMan to counter his Search Grenade.
- Lan just outright saying that he won with the power of friendship feels a bit too hokey, even if it is true. Even Kingdom Hearts has never been that direct!
- You can't go wrong with Search Soul.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JunkMan
- It bothers me that Yumland returns, but we never get to see what's going on with CookMan or our pen pal from Battle Network 2. Heck, we never see a single named person from Yumland over the span of six games, with only CookMan and JunkMan serving as named Navis from that region. And both wind up dead by the end of their respective games!
- Despite technically controlling JunkMan, Lan is still able to achieve Full Synchro with him. Using Soul Unison also prevents the confusion status that occurs at the start of the battle.
- MegaMan sympathizes with JunkMan's plight while lying inside of all of the soon to be deleted junk data. I'm not sure if it's intentional, but it reminds me of how he was trapped inside of Alpha and awaiting deletion in the last game.
- Why is the Buddha statue blinking?
- That was a fairly short scenario. And it actually involved souls. That being said, I have no idea how JunkMan purportedly survived his destruction if he has no operator and no backup data. If there actually are souls involved, I suppose he could still exist somehow.
- My understanding of tournament battles was that they had safety precautions in place so that the Navi wasn't actually deleted when they lost. There are a number of instances where a Navi talks after they get beaten by MegaMan, but JunkMan actually dies. I guess it could be that the safety features are tied to a PET.
- It's a shame that this scenario didn't reference Zero.EXE, as he seems like he could've been relevant to this whole situation.
- Junk Soul has the power to recycle Dark Chips for safe use, interestingly enough. That said, they still cause the usual bugs in MegaMan when selected.
- The Junk Soul email does not mention its ability to remove invisibility and cause confusion.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ProtoMan
- Lan starts off this scenario by repeating everything the tournament officials say, like this is a Metal Gear Solid game.
- Why is Chaud even in this tournament? In his last two appearances, he was after ShadeMan, who was since deleted. But after that LaserMan showed up and Nebula has been somewhat active as well. We're also meant to believe that Dark Chips are getting circulated to some degree. Does Chaud really have enough free time to just be taking part in a tournament for funsies? He doesn't seem to be aware of the impending asteroid, so I doubt he's taking part because of that.
- Chaud uses a Dark Chip, despite telling Lan not to use a Dark Chip earlier, in order to deal with 500 Nebula Navis. First, I guess Chaud soloed all of Nebula by himself, explaining why we never see any members of this group outside of four. Second, why not just jack out instead of getting mobbed by the whole organization? Third, is Dr. Regal supposed to be Zapp Brannigan with this strategy? How many agents does he have left?
- The anime uses this scenario, albeit with a different twist: Lan and Chaud have discovered that Regal is the leader of Nebula thanks to Anetta, but the latter has been taken hostage aboard a ship. The ship has taken off already, and is primed to detonate, with ShadeMan preventing them from disabling the bomb immediately. Given the risk of death, Lan considers using a Dark Chip he obtained earlier, but Chaud swipes it and uses it instead to give ProtoMan the ability to overcome ShadeMan. Ironically, MegaMan gets Proto Soul shortly after this and is able to force ShadeMan to retreat with that.
- Lan, despite telling off Chaud in the first game for not being partners with ProtoMan, is more concerned about Chaud withdrawing from the tournament than he is about Chaud fixing ProtoMan.
- Seriously, I don't get why Lan is being so macho with Chaud here. Didn't they get over all of this in the last game?
- In the span of seconds, ProtoMan immediately teleports into the Undernet, drawn by Nebula's call. Despite that, they chain him up even though he specifically came to join them.
- Chaud, Lan also knows the Undernet very well. And if you know the Undernet's trickery so well, what was all that about ProtoMan being unable to use the BlackMind in the last game? Are you able to get in here or not?!
- If you have not already, you need to find the components of the C-Slider to progress the plot for this and SearchMan's scenarios. The only problem is that the Navis that sell these parts are hidden under raised walkways, meaning you have to search all over the net to find them. I know where they are since I played before, but what is the point of this? Why conceal Navis required to complete the plot?
- Spidy, CircKill, and BomBoy are all terrible viruses that require you to ignore everything else on the field to deal with their gimmicks.
- Spidy's chip, WhiteWeb is an odd gimmick chip. All three version do the same amount of damage, but the version determines the row the webs spawn on (1 = top, 2 = middle, 3 = bottom).
- ProtoMan's Dark Soul is not very eloquent, is he?
- I'm not sure how Chaud transmits his feelings to ProtoMan through MegaMan. It's kind of weird. I think the anime's way of having Chaud fight a spiritual battle with ProtoMan was better.
- ProtoMan losing his Sonic Boom was a massive misstep. You can also break the AI of his base form if you get him Game 1 and use AreaGrab, as he apparently doesn't get the ability to jump into your area until his upgraded forms.
- Proto Soul's charged shot can counter, oddly enough. It can also double Z-Saber's damage, but it does not turn it into a StepSword.
- The Proto Soul email does not mention its ability to remove flinching from sword attacks and counter with its charged shot.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Red Sun/Blue Moon Tournament Conclusion/Endgame
- NAXA needs a Net Battler for the next phase of their plan, but they can't even let Lan climb up the rope ladder before shunting off at full speed. Hopefully he doesn't panic or lose his grip and fall to his demise.
- Dr. Regal has apparently had NAXA set up a tournament, wait a week, go through the events of the tournament, fly the Net Battler back to HQ, and bring them directly into the room before deciding to explain WHY he needed a Net Battler in the first place.
- Apparently there was an alternate tournament being held, with the winner there being sent to Sharo. I like to believe that Chaud is the winner of the Blue Moon tournament in Red Sun while Raika is the winner of the Red Sun tournament in Blue Moon.
- I can't be angry about aliens existing when I have accepted the fact that aliens exist in Star Force. That said, I am not happy that the answer for the threat of the asteroid is "aliens".
- Nebula blocks off access to the Net (somehow) and everyone immediately jumps to the conclusion that Nebula sabotaged the laser plan. How would you even draw that conclusion? This could be an unrelated incident that happens to unfortunately align with present circumstances. It was just said that the asteroid's existence was Level 5 classified information.
- Yuichiro notices something strange going on with Regal, but doesn't say anything about it to Lan or the other scientists. Why?
- MegaMan is afraid to go to the Undernet despite being at least Rank 2 at this point, depending on how canon BN3's post-game is. Granted, I suppose that could be a reason to be nervous since people could try and mug him for said rank.
- The Undernet is reduced to a pit stop in the story. You never actually NEED to visit the Undernet for the narrative at any point aside from ProtoMan and SearchMan's scenarios, which really lessens the importance of it after Battle Network 3. This treatment does not get better in later games.
- What is it with Nebula and Castillo? This is the fourth time an operative has attacked this theme park or set up a meeting here. And for that matter, why is Park Area tied to the Undernet?
- Why is MegaMan surprised that the Navi behind the Net attack is with Nebula? That was explicitly stated before he and Lan left to handle this incident.
- Why didn't Dr. Regal just have the plan be to send his Navi from the outset? Perhaps the fact that he had a Navi named LaserMan would be suspect, but surely he could disguise him somehow much like ShadeMan posed as a Normal Navi. All he did was out himself as the villain to Lan. Everyone already thinks that having a sixth grader save the world is ridiculous, so he could've just saved himself some grief. Furthermore, there's still the issues of the now forgotten second tournament winner, runner ups in both tournaments, Officials, and any others that could've been asked to take Lan's place. Perhaps Regal's overzealousness here is meant to be what exposes him, but no one questions this aside from Yuichiro.
- The Transmitter stops even though MegaMan isn't deleted. Additionally, Roll and Co. manage to somehow teleport between MegaMan and the Heel Navi with barriers despite clearly not being anywhere nearby when the explosion started.
- Yuichiro waits until literally the last second to point out that Dr. Regal is evil. Not only that, but he also didn’t call the Officials or tell anyone else his suspicions. Not only that, but he also immediately surmises that Dr. Regal is the leader of Nebula, which is a baseless accusation! While it is fair for him to be suspicious about the transmitter plan, there is no real proof at this point that Nebula is actively sabotaging their efforts. At the very least, assuming that Dr. Regal is the leader of the organization is a leap in logic.
- When did Dr. Regal have time to set explosives on that platform? How did no one notice him setting explosives on that platform?
- Yuichiro's plan makes no sense and is self-contradicting. He waits until the last second to expose Regal, confronting him about the fact that he is the leader of Nebula after everyone else has departed the platform. He then turns his back on Regal and is knocked out. But he expects Lan and MegaMan to arrive to save the day... except he doesn't, because he didn't realize that MegaMan was still alive. Despite that, he left a note in advance to jack into the generator, suggesting that he knew that Regal was going to sabotage the railing leading to the laser, otherwise Lan and MegaMan would have no reason to jack into the generator and would just use the laser like Regal is already doing. What the hell?
- Beyond the issue of no one insulating electronics in this universe, why is it dangerous for Lan to send MegaMan into the generator just because it's charged? The PET is wireless now. It doesn't actually involve a "jack" anymore. Sure enough, Lan isn't even electrocuted when he jacks in.
- The gimmick of the final dungeon is to mash the buttons whenever a magnetic disturbance begins to suck MegaMan up, otherwise it resets all of his progress opening the path to the next area. This is never conveyed to the player by Mr. Prog, Lan, MegaMan, Yuichiro, or anyone else. According to a YouTube comment on KNIJohn's BN4 video, Netto says "大きなじばのみだれだ！ロックマン、すいこまれないようにもがくんだ！" (It's a big magnetic field disturbance! MegaMan, struggle so you don't get swallowed!) in the original Japanese version, meaning that it's a dub issue that the final dungeon gimmick was not translated, much like ShadeMan's name not being spoken early on.
- "I'm not like I was before! My friends have shown me true love!" Let's dissect this line a bit. The reason why MegaMan "lost" before was because MegaMan didn't have love on his side. Despite that, the only thing MegaMan has done since the last time he met LaserMan is obtain one new Soul and get saved by his friends, whom he has barely interacted with the whole game. There's been less meaningful interaction between MegaMan and his friends in the last section of this game than there was in the first five minutes of any other previous title. Furthermore, the first Navi he forms a Soul bond with showed up to fight LaserMan alongside him last time, so the notion that he didn't have the love of his friends on his side is patently false.
- LaserMan can be broken by Wind Soul just spamming Air Shots on him, which causes him to not act.
- Exactly what has LaserMan done to make MegaMan hate him so much to let his Dark Soul be so prevalent? I guess he beat up GutsMan or AquaMan, but it's not like they had permanent injuries or anything from it. Heck, in Red Sun, there's a time skip to MegaMan hanging out with GutsMan with no problem right after that incident.
- Dr. Regal has thus far sabotaged every attempted at destroying or redirecting the asteroid because he wanted LaserMan to take control of it in order to doom the world. However, now that LaserMan is destroyed, he boasts that Lan will never be able to stop the asteroid now and has doomed the world. Which was what Regal wanted in the first place, right? But he's talking as though he intended to have LaserMan stop the thing, which is decidedly not what he was saying earlier.
- Duo is the first and only final boss that is actually capable of speech in the series, Star Force included. Granted, the main antagonist of Star Force 3 does speak through Crimson Dragon briefly, but it becomes a mindless monster shortly afterwards.
- Duo's goal is to destroy the Earth for being evil. And yes, the games have been saying that Net Crime is on the rise. Also, Netopia exists. However, on the regular, the Battle Network world looks significantly more peaceful than, say, the Classic universe with things like the Elf Wars. So, what makes Earth so evil that it's worthy of being destroyed? Why doesn't Duo try to destroy the Earth in that timeline?
- Duo has a very inconsistent speech pattern. He normally talks in a very formal way, befitting an alien, emotionless program, but then occasionally he suddenly uses contractions or a more casual manner of speaking.
- "Show me what ya got" reminds me far too much of the floating heads scene from Rick and Morty.
- Duo tests MegaMan to see if Earth can overcome its own evil. MegaMan succeeds and defeats the darkness within himself. Despite that fact, Duo sees MegaMan repressing his evil instead of outright destroying it as failure. I suppose in some alien kind of way that makes sense, but it's still an indication that humanity isn't letting their darkness win, right?
- If Duo's mission is to destroy evil, even if people aren't outwardly being evil, what entities qualify as completely good? Wouldn't the people who made a being like Duo to outright obliterate billions of lifeforms qualify as evil? Did he kill them first? Wouldn't that mean he'd need to kill himself afterwards?
- Duo's boss fight is an example of Battle Network 4's poor planning. You're expected to beat the final boss with chips that are from the beginning of the game and against a boss that does not have counter frames, meaning you are very heavily gimped in the damage department. Additionally, a number of Souls are very poorly optimized and may not stack up well here. Duo's comment on MegaMan destroying his Dark Soul temporarily is also not just meaningless dialogue, as all Dark related benefits are disabled for this battle. Both Dark Chips and the 1 HP Dark Soul activation are disabled for this fight, meaning that any player who has relied on them is at a disadvantage (no Souls, no Dark Chips, permanently lowered max HP) with no prior warning and any players who are doing poorly are just further punished by the Worried state locking them out of their Souls with no alternative option given. Duo's attacks cannot be countered, adding further issue with the weak library. And then there's Duo's laser attack, which is not immediately clear on how to dodge, hits multiple times, and pierces through mercy invincibility!
- MegaMan Battle Network 4 denied the player a proper boss fight with ShadeMan to build up Dark Chips, basically using the beginning of the "plot" as a tutorial for Dark Chips. The game then proceeds to punish the player for using Dark Chips by permanently taking HP from the player for playing badly and introducing a final boss that disallows Dark Chips. So, essentially, the game decided not to have a plot in order to introduce a game mechanic that it doesn't want you to use.
- One of Duo's missiles is a mine that BubbleMan shoots at you in BN3. I don't know if this means anything, but I hate BubbleMan even more now just by association with Battle Network 4.
- From the beginning of the game, the asteroid missile has gone from by Pluto to inside of Earth's atmosphere.
- Mayl yells at everyone for thinking about themselves when the entire world was just told that they might only have one hour left to live.
- In my Blue Moon save, I got Wood Soul in my first scenario, so Sal showing up to rally everyone felt like a nice tie-in to a previous scenario. Capcom did not think to have all of Lan's Soul Unison partners cheering for him around the world, though, which is foolish.
- On that note, why not have Shuko be the NPC that shows up at the end rather than Sal? AquaMan already shows up during the middle of the game after the point where he's relevant, and Shuko is guaranteed to be one of the NPCs that is encountered by the player. Sal makes sense, sure, but it's entirely possible to not encounter her at all on the first playthrough. While Sal showing up without her scenario is a bit of a callback to BN1, Shuko cheering on Lan and MegaMan seems a bit more immediately relevant to the plot of this game and her statement that she wanted to be more positive in the future. It also feels rather disappointing that the last appearance of AquaMan is him being beaten within an inch of his life and then jacking out after causing more harm than good.
- Sal tells Lan's friends and a few people nearby to cheer for MegaMan. This somehow causes everyone around the world to start cheering for MegaMan inexplicably.
- Somehow Chillski is not in jail or NetFrica during the ending. Maybe he really was interrogated by the authorities who jurisdiction covered him.
- Dr. Regal decides to risk his life to save the world from the asteroid, begging the question of why he interfered with the attempts to destroy it in the first place. What does he want with it? How does using the asteroid help make a world of evil? I feel like maybe he wanted to be the one to save the world from the asteroid just so that he'd be praised as a hero despite being an evil person. It'd fit his self-indulgent rant that's coming up.
- Why didn't MegaMan just use Full Synchro at the start if he could do that at will?
- This would have been an excellent moment for all of the Soul Navis you've bonded with showing up to help MegaMan push the thing, followed by MegaMan then going Full Synchro and turning the wheel.
- Duo's problem with humanity is that they cannot erase their own evil. This issue is not at all addressed by MegaMan defeating him and turning the meteor around. At the very most, all humanity has proven is that it doesn't want to be blown up by a missile, which is a pretty understandable reaction to being faced with annihilation by a missile. Duo should have learned nothing from this encounter, yet it's treated like Lan and MegaMan imparted some important lesson onto him.
- Lan seems to pass out after going Full Synchro with MegaMan. This is the only time since Battle Network 1 I can recall Yuichiro's mention of the fact that Lan's synch with Hub could affect him in the real world. Speaking of which, has Lan ever even called MegaMan by his real name once in this game?
- There was intended to be a Bass Soul and a Duo Soul in this game, with the design for Bass Soul being shared in the Official Artbook. The anime also intended to make an Ice Soul, though that ultimately did not pan out. While Bass Soul would've been in the post-game, I imagine Duo Soul would've cropped up here.
- The sad music playing for Dr. Regal is the most ill-fitting thing and the fact that the game plays it straight is downright infuriating. "Oh poor Dr. Regal, trying to destroy the world with an asteroid. He's so misunderstood." Lan even tries to suggest he's not that bad of a guy at the end. At least Regal mentions he feels no remorse for being evil.
- Regal's little "You all are evil" rant here is a load of crap. He starts by saying Lan destroyed the Navi trying to guard the area. Now true, MegaMan beat up an innocent Navi, but the Navi was not deleted, and the only people harmed as a result of the situation were killed by ShadeMan. And he's hardly in a position to condemn Lan for a "the ends justify the means" mentality when he broke into a child's house, attacked his parent, and threatened him with worse if the child didn't take action.
- Regal says that Chaud "may have" deleted some innocent Navis. On one hand, ProtoMan in the first game was willing to delete MegaMan just out of irritation, so that holds up. But Regal here is only talking in supposition, not in fact. "Uh, you probably did something wrong at some point. Probably." Furthermore, Chaud barely being in this game only weakens his argument, as Chaud has done no wrongdoing onscreen by virtue of lack of screentime.
- Regal chides Yuichiro for making Net Navis by saying Net Crime wouldn't be as bad if he didn't make them. I bet there wouldn't be any vehicular homicide either if someone decided not to create the wheel. Or as many peanut allergies if George Washington Carver hadn't come up with so many uses for peanuts. How is Yuichiro supposed to be held responsible for how other people misuse his inventions? It's not like Net Navis were created with the intent of causing death and destruction in mind.
- Regal's whole speech here would've been better backed up with references to previous games. Lan nearly caused the deaths of people by sparing BubbleMan and almost destroyed SciLab in BN3, Chaud has been willing to delete innocent Navis in BN1 and BN2 by being rash and impulsive, and Yuichiro's act of digitizing his son could been seen as an act of extreme egotism in his capabilities as a scientist that regularly endangers his son's life on a daily basis. Heck, to use this very game as a basis for his arguments, both Lan and Chaud are willing to use Dark Chips that destroy the souls of their beloved sibling/partner in pursuit of what they believe to be justice.
- This is all capped off by Regal revealing that Dr. Wily is his father, which is just another layer on the hypocrisy cake. Wily has tried to destroy the world three times (and indirectly once) purely because of a petty grudge and his son, who is following in his footsteps, has the nerve to look down on anyone else as though he has the moral high ground?!
- Regal says "Criminals judging criminals. Don't you find that ridiculous?", which is absurd. Even assuming he was right about everyone in the world being a criminal, it's nonsensical to compare a jaywalker to a serial killer. The extent to which he and Wily have done horrible things leaves them zero room to look down on others, and at least Wily never tries to dress up his evil as anything other than a personal grudge.
- Dr. Regal, despite leaping backwards off of a tall structure with his back towards the ground, is fully expected to have survived a fall he tried to kill Lan with earlier. The worst part is that he actually did survive.
- Dr. Regal has no backstory whatsoever. Dr. Wily and Sean have very little backstory, but we know enough about them to understand how they became the way they did. Dr. Regal, meanwhile, has a complete blank for his history before the scene where he steps into NAXA as the head of Nebula.
- If I notice a continued trend in BN4, it's that repentance for wrongdoing is typically the focal idea. Many of the tournament antagonists engage in some bad behavior, but they are usually forgiven if they express remorse for their wrongdoing and try to do better. The people who are unwilling to change are usually struck with some measure of comeuppance to humiliate them. Not a terrible message to convey. The issue arises when Dr. Regal doubles down and the game tries to paint him as sympathetic despite that. Perhaps he's meant to be seen as a broken man who has developed a warped ideology from what he's suffered in life, but the audience has no idea what he's suffered in life. As a result, there is little reason to feel anything for Regal other than confusion.
- Lan saves the world and only gets a trophy, just like with the other two tournaments.
- The crowd wants to see Lan's NetBattling technique despite him having won three tournaments in which he clearly demonstrated his technique. And who is he even going to battle?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Game 2
Personal Notes
- Note: For Hard Mode and Super Hard Mode, talk about 4.5 during the lulls in new content.
- Dark Sword can be used for Soul Unison in the ShadeMan fight, but how do the ShadeMan fights interact if you go into them as Dark MegaMan? From what I have heard, they do not have Dark Chips active to preserve the plot, but it is worth testing.
Commentary
- No Key Items carry over aside from the PET and the Spin Programs.
- A number of upgrades and Spin Items are exclusive to one particular game. If you miss them, you have to replay the game a fourth time in order to get them again, as any missed upgrades from Game 2 will still be there in Game 3, bumping Game 3's upgrades back to Game 4.
- If the C-Slider was unlocked, it should have remained within the player's inventory. It offers no sequence breaking at all, and only servers as an unnecessary money sink for the player in a game that's already stingy about letting the player have money.
- While the tutorial is not repeated, the game does force you to fight three viruses instead of condensing it into one battle, which would have been much more convenient.
- While on Game 1, the tutorial around town was used to introduce the new ACDC layout, Game 2 and onward still forces the player to talk to everyone in ACDC again and get their tutorial messages.
- To do the City Battle Tournament, you again have to register your name in Town Area, despite this originally being done to set up your online handle.
- Even if you already have the parts, you can't actually make the C-Slider until you talk to another Navi in Sharo area by the Undernet pathway who tells you that you need to find the Slider Master. Every time.
- Duo is the worst final boss in the series. He has 2000 HP initially, but that increases by 500 with each upgrade, with his damage also going up. The invulnerability piercing laser also gets longer and more complex with each play cycle.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Game 3
- SneakRun doesn't work in the ElecTower Comp, forcing me to contend with viruses instead of just speeding through. It continues to occur to me how terribly gimmicky these viruses are, such as the Melody series which begin to bounce after you 3+ times now.
- EX viruses begin to do outrageous amounts of damage. It’s gotten to the point where neutral hits from viruses do 200 points of damage in early game areas. Viruses also begin to do things like use Sanctuary chips in order to pad the length of fights.
- SneakRun has stopped working entirely as of Castillo Area. I've begun using an instant delete code so that I don't have to continually deal with obnoxious viruses. This may have been in part due to missing HP Memories on my initial run through. Sneak Run seemed more effective when I was at 860 max HP, though that DID require meticulous searching for HP Memories.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Undernet
Personal Notes
- Note: Poison Pharaoh removes ShadeMan's "turn into a bat" properties, which might be worth showing off.
Commentary
- If this game was going to have a Boktai crossover, I wish it was more involved in the main plot. Make it a full on crossover game, as opposed to a miniature sidequest.
- Naturally, the Navi who had the Solar Sensor in Undernet 2 was robbed, because Battle Network 4. So now you have to backtrack to Undernet 6 and spend a ridiculous amount of money on it.
- In order to complete the sidequest, you need to return to Django while jacked in from Jomon, Castillo, Yumland, or NetFrica. I usually used NetFrica due to the convenience of proximity.
- The cutscene where ShadeMan is purified plays out like a Boktai Pile Driver battle, though the international versions removed Otenko's "TAIYOH!" voice clip for some reason. The Mega Buster actually works in a cutscene and ShadeMan gets comeuppance for ruining Boktai's story.
- A friend of mine (Mezzo) described the Pile Driver battles as burning an ant with a magnifying glass, which probably isn't an inaccurate comparison.
- After the side quest with Django, he and Otenko move to the end of the fourth Toy Robo computer. Django speaks about a tremendous evil power emanating from Undernet 3, but I'm not sure why. Perhaps this was an error and meant to be referring to either Undernet 5's Bass statue or Undernet 6's Black Earth.
- I wonder if the Boktai crossover is the reason for the Darkloids existing as adversaries. Solar Boy Django is all about fighting vampires and darkness, which would make ShadeMan an appropriate enemy for him. LaserMan was a fan-design and is the only other major component of Nebula. If my hunch is correct, Battle Network 4 was a game akin to Chip Challenge or 4.5 from the outset and only had Nebula added as villains late in development, accounting for their lack of presence in the campaign.
- ShadeMan is an excellent example of how to ape the Battle Network formula without understanding what makes it work. Typically, a boss in the series is fought in the story at a slower rate of speed, before having an updated version that appears later in a dead-in as a challenge. I do think the location of these bosses could be better conveyed to the player, but the way they're set up typically prevents them from being run into on accident. BN4's presentation of ShadeMan's battle, however, keeps you from learning the fight normally due to how easy it is to interrupt him with his "unwinnable" gimmick. And then, after you do Django's sidequest, the game skips over ShadeMan V2 AND ShadeMan V3 to suddenly unleash ShadeMan V4 upon you while giving him a new gimmick!
- Bass seems to have turned to stone for some reason after Battle Network 3. Possibly as a result of purging Gospel? Or perhaps Serenade imprisoned him in this way like they created the monoliths to imprison viruses in their area? His statue is sealing off the route to Murkland, suggesting Serenade’s possible involvement in his petrification. Much like in 2, he attacks MegaMan due to sensing his power and desire for battle.
- Bass' character arc continues from the previous three games to an extent, with it continuing from where Bass GS left off. After the loss of the power of bugs, Bass needs a new corrupting strength to immerse himself in. This makes his story the opposite of MegaMan's. While MegaMan doesn't want to lose himself and spends the whole story trying to overcome his inner demons, Bass is fine with the idea of steeping himself in darkness and erasing his identity to gain greater power. I'm sad that this means Cossak will never be explored further, but it does make a good duality between the hero and his recurring nemesis.
- While the fact that Battle Network 4 has made another excuse to have a series of virus battles is terrible, this time subjecting you to three ten round virus battles to get Evil Chips, I am curious about the nature of Evil Chips and these Navis who guard them. The Undernet was created as a place to store the Giga Freeze, but it's interesting that it's tied to Murkland (or whatever the Black Earth is meant to be) as well.
- The Navis that guard these Evil Chips seem rather interesting: one is much nobler than the usual Undernet types, one is only impressed with MegaMan's might, and the other says that darkness is the only path to power. These three are a curious group, and I'm finding myself wondering how three wholly different people wound up as guardians for these chips. Were they appointed by Serenade? I'm surprised that Battle Network 4 has done something interesting with Undernet lore, even if it is tied to an annoying process.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Black Earth
Personal Notes
- Use MetalGear3 * for Duo Omega. The gear will sit in the middle of his panels and block his attacks until you are ready for your combo.
Commentary
- While Black Earth is a lazy palette swap of the Undernet and has no new miniboss viruses like Protectos or Numbers, I do kind of like how the animation for it makes it look as though MegaMan is descending into Navi Hell.
- Black Earth can be jacked out of, unlike previous secret areas. I don't know if I appreciate this or dislike it. To some degree, I do think it undercuts how deep into the Net this is supposed to be.
- Black Earth 1 has Shadow versions of Normal Navis and Black Earth 2 has Heel Navis. These can only be harmed with swords, frustratingly. It is interesting how the truly corrupt Navis that gave in to their Dark Souls seem to be sealed away in this place, though.
- In order to pass to Black Earth 2, MegaMan needs the base chips of Navis. Is this meant to be symbolic of souls?
- The final challenge for MegaMan is a series of mirrors that reflect the dark side of his friends and then a final larger mirror that reflects his own. Upon finishing this, MegaMan confronts his inner good, which gives him Hub Batch if he's pure or looks upon him sadly if he is not. THIS is what I wanted to see more of from this game. This is good, lack of new bosses and the irritation of how player gameplay styles don't mesh with certain bosses' fighting styles (WoodMan's jumps + normal movement; JunkMan moving to the front rows) aside.
- Unfortunately, Soul Cleaner doesn’t seem to be very valuable of a program for all of the hoops that you have to go through for it. Maybe if you could use it to regain your HP following a Dark Chip oriented playthrough.
- All in all, this area feels very barren for a place you have to do so much to get into. Maybe some of the side content could have been pushed into Black Earth 1 to make it less of a nothing area.
- Bass Omega shows up immediately in Black Earth 2 after beating MegaMan DS. There is no need to jack out.
- Fish apparently prevents Bass from showing up, which is kind of funny even if he's named after a different type of bass.
- Use a V-Code folder to defeat Duo SP. Invis + Pop-Up together should also help avoid some annoying attacks.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Boktai - The Sun is in Your Hand (Interlude)
Personal Notes
- Additional supporting information can be found here.
Commentary
- Otenko-sama was originally a play on words (お天気 Otenki; "weather" and お天道様 Otento-sama; "sun" as well as 子 ko "offspring/child").
- Talk to Otenko throughout the game for lore.
- Doomy will always give you an extremely fair price for sunlight, ranging from 200% interest to a spicy 1200% interest. This is based off how bright it is outside at the time; she can obviously generate enough sunlight to make back 200% interest worth of loans, but if it's at 1200%, that's like playing in a cave levels of bright.
- As it turns out, the Solar Gun can be used to hit the darkness beams rather than needing to shoot the piles, though it's not too effective unless it's a stronger model of gun. I asked ChickenHat if they could add that to Kura5 and they agreed!
- More variety with the Solar Guns would've been appreciated. Too many of the later guns make earlier ones superfluous, such as Fighter immediately being replaced by Knight, which is then replaced by Crusader and then Dragoon. Boktai 3 improves on this, at least.
- While this is a stealth game, a number of boss fights feel a bit too slow-paced. Later games manage to improve on that aspect, though the stealth gameplay is lost in the process. I'm not sure why, given MGS was able to have both.
- Azure Sky Tower is way WAY too long.
- The death of Otenko feels a lot weightier here than in either of the other two games, mainly because you feel his absence a lot more.
- The gag with the Loser switches in Dark Castle are funny. Aside from the one in the Water Tower, there is also one in the Wind Tower's math puzzle. The other two might also have some?
- Talk to Sabata after defeating him for deep lore.
- Mani deserved better. Killed offscreen and she doesn't even have the dignity of getting a mugshot or character design. This is going to feel even worse when Boktai 2 continues to not give her one while simultaneously making Ringo the coolest man to ever live.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Final Thoughts
- Battle Network 4 opted to create a new villainous organization that Chaud claims is worse than the WWW. I would have liked to have seen that. Whereas Wily is obsessed with destroying the world, Dr. Regal is more obsessed with destroying people. This is an excellent idea that could work in a slower game. Something like MegaMan hating LaserMan for forcing him to fight a darkness controlled friend should have been the norm, not the exception.
- I wonder if the writers of later games felt backed into a corner by Mamoru's existence. Lan being friends with someone whose Navi is one of the strongest entities on the Net does feel like something that would be hard to write drama with unless he just left town for a while, so he is dropped from the series and never mentioned again. This problem is more frustrating with Sean, who has no such issue.
- The folder building in this game feels rougher. While I have gained more of an appreciation for some chips after experimentation, there is definitely an issue of some chip distribution being tied to New Game + limiting folder building, as well as the chip codes being extremely inflexible.
- Souls having a three turn limit feels like it was done with Full Synchro in mind. The game doesn't want to lock you out of the double damage form, so it makes Souls relatively short-lived in order to allow you to still utilize that potential. However, Souls feel like they last too little to make much use of, especially when only two have the ability to filter through chips quickly.
- Dark Chips are a fine idea, but they are not nearly widespread enough. Only MegaMan and ProtoMan are exposed to Dark Chips, and the latter is version exclusive. Seeing the effects of Dark Chips beyond the Undernet's BBS Board and the Black Earth would have been nice.
- Battle Network 4 chose to be an episodic, almost slice-of-life game instead of a grand adventure for Lan. This is not necessarily a bad idea. Given the shift from forms based around how Lan operates MegaMan to forms based around MegaMan's allies, a game that focused on the interpersonal relationships between Lan and his friends would help strengthen the theme that the game is going for. Even the small size of Nebula could work well, given that it demonstrates how, in contrast to Lan, Dr. Regal is so consumed with his idea of everyone in the world being criminals that he's elected to cut himself off from interactions.
- Ultimately, Battle Network 4's plot is held back by the fact that it's all filler. If the game used its plot to cast a different spin on some of Lan and MegaMan's commonly accepted RPG behavior like stealing their dad's ID or taking a national treasure in the name of the greater good, it could've had something interesting to say at the end. Instead, it's Dr. Regal talking about one isolated incident that wasn't even that bad and comparing it to his own plan to destroy the world or whatever he wanted to do.
- I'm not sure if it was intentional, but 4 added a bit of a psychological touch with the Emotion window. Given that Navis were said to have souls in the previous game, I think it could've worked to have Dr. Regal as a "Navi psychologist", studying other Navis and using Dark Chips to corrupt them. You could even have a twist that he's a doctor of more than just psychology.
- Serenade should have been tied into the Black Earth more explicitly. Given their clear "light in the darkness" motif, it should have been them who guided MegaMan to the Black Earth and the mirrors for rehabilitation from the corruption of the "special data" from ShadeMan's Dark Chip.
- The thing that bothers me the most about Battle Network 4 is that it has a story idea that isn't necessarily bad on paper: after an ending where Yuichiro wondered if it was a mistake to give Navis souls, here's a game exploring the aspects of a Navi's soul. But it ultimately does so in such a superficial way by never showing MegaMan's bond with new characters and just having Nebula be a similar non-entity in the plot that it feels like a waste of an idea.
- Tournaments are a waste of time. Considering how the generic Navi plots are all pretty uninspired and unpleasant, some amusement in the two Castillo ones aside, I don't see why Capcom couldn't have just taken three of the four custom Navis from each tournament and made them fixed battles, then used the fourth as a mandatory part of the plot.
- If I was giving a hand in rewriting Battle Network 4's general plot, I would try and make it a story about morality through the context of a Navi. Mankind created new life, and what that new life does with the teachings its gotten from its parent could be seen a reflection of humanity. That could easily shape Dr. Regal and Duo's perception of the world. Depending on the version, Raika or Chaud should have served as a rival character/recurring tie-in to Nebula prior to the final tournament. And setting up the game to be centered around one tournament instead of three mediocre ones could've helped build up the usage of Dark Chips in the preliminary rounds, as well as Navis who got corrupted by them. The asteroid plot should've been cut entirely, as it's too difficult to work in reasonably. Notably, the anime makes the asteroid its own arc separate from Nebula's introduction, while the manga removes it entirely.