I played this game a ton as a kid and loved it, but even back then I had a hard time playing it after Battle Network 2 came out. They already nailed the fundamentals of its battle system here, but the design of its dungeons and a lot of other little issues with the way its objectives were designed drag it down a lot. I never want to do that electric power plant dungeon again.

Battle Network has always had pretty bad dungeon design, but 2 onwards improved so many other systems (and the design of the internet itself) in a way that makes the flaws of this first game really stick out.

Gonna try keeping this review short, I'm actually finding it hard to say much about this game because all of its positives are pretty immediately noticeable from the get go that you're better off seeing it for yourself by booting up the game than to read a description of what makes it good. The other thing is that, doing this replay after having played the sequels already, the faults with this game are abundantly clear and it's hard to write a review that isn't just extensively dunking on this game and how the sequels improved on it so much.

Regardless, it was still a fun time. The combat is unique and solid and aesthetics are on point, the writing is charming and funny even if the emotional moments could use a little more oomph. The graphics, artwork and music, god, love it so much. The game really stands out for how unique it is, I don't think I've ever really played an rpg like it or the series in general. And it manages to be both fun and addicting. I got immediately hooked on to it back when I first played it, and I was still thoroughly engaged this time too. For a first timer to the series, this is still a pretty solid entry to get into.

That said, the faults are pretty frustrating with this game; they're more noticeable if you've played the other games, but even for someone's first time there's too many annoyances to it that really should have been taken care of from the start then be dealt with in the sequel:

As addicting as the combat can get, the lack of an escape button (that, y'know, doesn't require a battle chip) and no way to lower the encounter rate in any way leads it to become kind of a drag halfway through. The encounter rate isn't particularly high, but the uniqueness of the combat also means you can't really just button mash it thoughtlessly so things just start feeling slower in general. This is further exacerbated by the navigation of the Net and dungeons as well as some of the puzzles involved in said dungeons: all battle network games include the Internet as its main cyberworld area, with BN1 taking a more labyrinth type approach where the Net more or less feels like a huge dungeon of its own. Unfortunately this maze-like approach, the same look to every net area, and the lack of an in-game map actually made me start to dread exploring the Net in later parts of the game where failing to properly navigate your way around just means more random encounters to deal with. Regular dungeons aren't as expansive but their focus on puzzles means you can get stuck for a while doing them, again meaning you'll keep facing the same enemies on and on which gets extremely repetitive. This was my experience with the waterworks dungeons primarily leading me to loath it so much, but the Powerplant comes close 2nd for its trial and error focused puzzles.

This isn't to say most of the dungeons are this frustrating; I actually liked most of them quite a bit, but again, due to the issues with random battle encounters this also means most of them start to feel like a drag by the time you're done with them. At the least, your health regenerates after every battle and you can save anytime anywhere.

The writing is generally nice but as said before the emotional moments just don't have as much impact on me as later games do. I'll cut this game some slack though since by the end of it, it does feel like they've already planned to develop these characters further and move the plot forward in sequels.

I mostly ended up ranting, oops! Ultimately, I do think this game is still a solid playthrough. I'd recommend it for anyone's introduction to the series though I can understand wanting to quit or skip it for the sequel. For people that are already BN fans, this is a hard to one to get back to replaying lol. It's been about 4 or so years for me since I played BN1 so my experience with it this replay felt fresher at least. But there's not much reason to come back to this title than any of the other ones really.