There are plenty of battle chips, but almost no challenge.
In Mega Man Battle Chip Challenge, Lan and his digital pal Mega Man have taken a break from fighting villains on the Internet and have instead opted to enter a special tournament, the Battle Chip GP. To the victor of this battle royale goes an extremely rare battle chip.
The game begins with the player picking one of six different characters to play as, each with his or her own unique attributes and story. The premise of the game is quite simple. Contestants build a battle deck of chips and then use these decks to square off against each other. The concept is very similar to other card-based games such as Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh, only there is one big difference. In most card-based games, you draw some sort of "hand" and then play cards from your hand in the best way possible to take out your opponent. In Battle Chip Challenge, things are a bit different. Your "deck" consists of what we’ll call three tiers. The tiers are set up like a branching tree. The first tier has two spots for chips, the second three, and the final tier has four slots. The chip slots are connected to each other via branches, like a family tree. The chip drawn from the first tier decides which of the two chips in the second tier are available to be drawn. This continues from the second to third tier. Each chip has a size and the total size of your deck is limited to a certain amount, thus keeping players from building a deck of all amazing chips. Building a good deck will require players to think about which chips to put where, as chips from certain slots on the tree are drawn more often than others.
While this tiered deck system is quite different from a lot of card games, the game gets even more out of whack. Once a battle starts, almost everything is automatic. At the beginning of each turn, the chip tree comes up, and chips are selected via the process described in the above paragraph. After that, the two Navis fight. If one of them isn’t dead by the end of the turn, the process repeats. The game is focused almost completely on deck-building. Once the battle starts, there is practically nothing for the player to do except watch. There is an option to "slot-in" one or two chips during the battle. Decks contain two "slot-in" chip-slots. The chips in these slots can be used at any point in the battle by pressing either the L or R button (depending on which of the two chips is going to be "slotted-in"). While these two chips can alter the course of a battle, all they usually do is finish off an opponent slightly earlier or stave off death for a turn.
Simply put, Battle Chip Challenge is a really boring game. Building a winning deck is pretty easy, especially because playing certain chip elements (fire, water, electricity, etc) against each other turns most battles into child’s play. However there are one or two battles which are quite difficult, due mostly to the fact that the player is simply not equipped with the right chips to win. The game is focused on deck-building, but this only comprises about half of the game. While the deck building can be slightly fun, when the game gets to higher levels, the other half (the battles) is mind-numbing. Somebody at Capcom must have realized this, because there is an option to put all of the text that shows up during the battle into fast-forward. It’s only imaginable how coma-inducing the game would be without this option.
Battle Chip Challenge is running on a modified version of the Mega Man Battle Network engine. The graphics are identical to the progenitor of the game, and the battle-chip gameplay has been slapped on top of it. Players will never control a character in the game. Lan does not walk to the shop to buy new chips, or ride the train to get to the tournament. Instead, everything is done through the game’s menus. In battle, everything is handled by the deck. There’s no moving Mega Man around like in the real-time battles of the game’s older brother. All of this static gameplay further contributes to the game’s dreariness.
Mega Man Battle Chip Challenge is a dull title with next to no actual gameplay to be found. Perhaps there is a small crowd of people who are really really into customizable card games that might find the deck building aspect interesting, but hardcore card game players are going to find it too easy to be entertaining. Most people are going to fall asleep playing this game.