Mega Man Battle Network is not your typical Mega Man game. If you go in expecting platform shooting, you will be very disappointed. Thankfully, I knew that this title was an RPG. I’ve been waiting forever to get to play it. It was originally supposed to be available about a month after the GBA’s US launch, but it was delayed until some time in November or December. Mega Man Battle Network is a real-time RPG, sort of. It has a heavy action element.

You play as two characters, Lan and MegaMan.exe. Lan is a boy who lives in ACDC town and MegaMan.exe is his PET (short for PErsonal Terminal). People in Lan’s world use their PETs to “jack-in” to the net. Basically, everything in the world is wired into the net and PETs are used to access the net anywhere. And as we all know, the net is a haven for crime. In this case, there is some kind of evil syndicate known as the “WWW.” They have been going around putting virus programs into stuff. For example, the WWW put a virus in my oven that made it shoot fire. So, being the law-abiding citizen that I am, I took my PET MegaMan.exe and jacked him into the oven to fight off the baddies. Once inside the oven you take over and control MegaMan.exe. As you search around the device to find the virus, you are attacked by smaller viruses (which are random battles). Then, you go into combat.

Combat is good. The system is a sort of RPG but it’s mostly action. You start out by picking which chips to give to MegaMan.exe. He can use these chips to fight the bad guys. But there is a catch. All chips have a name and a code. You either have to give Mega Man chips that match the name or code of a chip already in his line-up. For example, you start out by giving MegaMan.exe a “Cannon A” chip. Now, you can only give him cannon chips or code A chips. Also, MegaMan.exe has a default weapon that does a puny amount of damage but is useful to just shoot like mad when you run out of chips to use for that turn. After you pick the chips you go into battle. The battles are real-time. You can move MegaMan.exe around his 6-square grid (the battlefield is a 12 square grid). You use the A button to fire his chip weapons, in the order you gave them to him, (he can use up to 5 chips a round), and the B button is used for the blaster. When you’re done with a battle you are judged depending on how well you did. The better you preformed, the better the loot you get for winning.

I’m in the second area of the game now, and it’s pretty good so far. I’m really enjoying the real-time battles. They keep the game in the “Mega Man” world for me. If you’re a fan of Mega Man games, and you like RPGs it would be in your best interest to get this game. If you like RPGs, you’ll also probably like this game. I think the only reason one might not want this game is if they were hoping for a true Mega Man game from Capcom, which Mega Man Battle Network is most certainly not.