Returning to a franchise as esteemed as Megaman holds much excitement. Despite its growing pains, the Battle Network games have provided much joy and excitement for their innovative gameplay and storytelling. Even a game as unrefined as the first Battle Network has much to offer as a foundational start for the series. With each game improving upon the last, it’s only natural to be excited for the fourth installment. This is especially true when considering the success of Battle Network 3. Megaman Battle Network 4: Blue Moon brings an overhaul to the visuals, restructures ACDC Town, new features like Double Soul and dark chips, and a combination of old and new boss Navis. All of this culminates in the series’ greatest failure.

Immediately when you start the game you will see a significant change in the art direction. The sprites are more detailed and the perspective feels slightly zoomed in. Each character’s portrait and sprite remain the same in spirit but some have different expressions. The overhaul of ACDC Town was the most jarring change. Some houses were removed, Yai’s house was moved and made bigger, and the locations of Higsby’s shop, the park, and the train station were all relocated. This condensed the town by removing about a third of the space within it. There’s no rhyme or reason behind it, it’s just different for what feels like the sake of being different. These changes don’t necessarily hurt the game but drastically changing the most known location becomes a contributing factor to the game’s other failings; starting with the story.

Battle Network 4’s story is essentially a tournament arc where Lan and Megaman participate in three tournaments while an asteroid is hurtling toward Earth. The missions between the Navi fights were daunting and served zero purpose other than giving you something to do. The story often would introduce a point of conflict and then quickly undermine it. The first example of this is the introduction of AquaMan. AquaMan overhears a conversation where he is led to believe that his operator is going to discard him for a new Navi. The conversation made me feel bad for AquaMan but then you almost immediately find out that they weren’t talking about him at all. The story does this a few times where the “danger” was a misunderstanding or a plan to gain respect/admiration gone wrong. Each tournament gives you three randomized quests to complete while they drip-feed you what’s happening with the meteor. All of these missions feel empty because they have no bearing on the story. The problem with randomized quests is that because they have to fit the story regardless of which ones you get, they ultimately end up being nothing but a means to force more journeys into the net on you.

You’re introduced to the net very quickly, and the seemingly endless forays into the same bland net spaces begin. Battle Network is no stranger to running through net spaces but Battle Network 4 takes it to another level of constantly jacking in, running to a place, jacking out, completing an objective, and then having to jack back in again to go exactly to where you just were. I think I had the layouts of ACDC and ElecTown’s net spaces memorized before I finished the first episode of content. This persists throughout the narrative as you are only given three proper dungeons to explore. One of which is so linear that it’s literally on rails. The other two were incredibly limited with only one of them requiring you to figure out navigating due to the nature of the puzzle. By the time I reached the third and final dungeon, I was ready for the game to end. I hurried to get through it as quickly as possible so I could fight the last few bosses at the end of the game.

Battling the various Navis throughout the game was the game’s greatest opportunity to show off the good aspects of Battle Network 4. This is where you can experience the Double Soul mechanic where Megaman takes on attributes of Navis that he has made a Soul Bond with. This replaces the style change mechanic that was successful in previous games. Battle Network 4 has a cumulative six characters that this can happen with. The game only lets you gain three on a first-time play-through of the game though. Subsequent play-throughs forcibly limit your encounters so that you can only gain two on a second play-through and one on a third. Having to play the game three times to fully experience this mechanic is incredibly daunting, especially for a game that is so frustrating to play even a single time through. The mechanic itself would have been more enjoyable had I not been actively discouraged from using it. The first two Double Souls that I received were weak against the next boss fight I was to encounter. The Navis you face in the third tournament don’t have elements so this is when Double Soul could truly shine. Instead, I received a Soul that’s interesting in concept but hard to execute due to the nature of how to trigger it. Double Soul was the most interesting of the new features but because of the story structure, I was unable to enjoy them outside of random virus battles.

The other features they added are synchro and dark chips. When you successfully execute a counterattack against a virus you can achieve an effect called “Full Synchro” where Megaman gets glowing rings around him and can deal double damage with his next chip. I used this new feature the most as it was the most accessible of the new features. There are lots of chips that are complimentary to this feature. On the other end, if you are struggling and taking a lot of damage, Megaman will enter a worried status. In this status dark chips become available. Dark chips are introduced at the end of the second dungeon where the game makes you use a dark chip to delete a boss Navi. After being forced into using one, you are informed that dark chips will now cost you a permanent loss of 1HP every time you use one. This would have been more interesting or tempting to participate in but the chips are only available when you are in that worried state. I went through the majority of the game not being able to use the chips and the one time I might have considered it, they were no longer accessible. These new features should have been redeeming qualities because surely gameplay can make up for a bad story at least a little bit. Unfortunately, because most of the gameplay is spent trekking repeatedly through the same bland areas of the net and pursuing half-baked plots and tedious minigames, these new features do nothing to alleviate the pain of fighting the same viruses repeatedly. The boss fights did little to change things up either.

Because of how the game is structured, you do end up fighting a lot of bosses. Many of the potential bosses are a combination of Navis you’ve met before and new ones which is good but the new bosses weren’t given enough time to establish themselves as characters. You get short villain arcs where you learn who they are, solve a problem they’re causing or are related to, and then fight them in the tournament. I would say that most of the boss Navi fights are well put together but when enduring the fatigue this game puts you through just to get to them it’s hard to find enjoyment in them. The new Navis that you get to face are also of questionable quality. The only returning Navi I got to face was WoodMan. While his scenario was poor in execution, his fight was one of the more enjoyable moments of the game. The scenario with BurnMan was the most interesting and calls back to a scenario that has happened in previous games, but his fight was by far the most frustrating to deal with. I’m told that Ghost Navis are in the game but I never encountered one so I never received a Navi chip. This is the first game where I didn’t receive a GutsMan chip or a Roll chip. The battles at the end against LaserMan, Dark Megaman, and Duo made for a tough challenge to finish off this experience. LaserMan’s fight was tough. The way he puts his attacks together made for a stricter challenge than I was initially prepared for. His mechanics are entirely manageable except for the health regeneration that he triggers part-way into the battle. His health recovers faster than you can damage him with a fully upgraded buster. To defeat him I had to rely on his regeneration activating later in the battle and getting the right combination of chips so I could quickly kill him before he regenerates all of his health. Defeating LaserMan opens the way to the point of no return.

In the game’s final moments, you must confront the darkness within Megaman. This is a battle against a shadowy copy of Megaman, sporting the exact amount of health that you have and having access to your most used chips. The battle was disappointingly easy. It was easier than any of the previous Navi fights. It does make attempting to fight Duo easier as you aren’t faced with as tough of a boss fight as you were with Bass leading into Alpha in Battle Network 3. The battle against Duo initially feels overwhelming. After giving it a few attempts I found that the battle was incredibly easy. Other than one move, I was having no problems avoiding his attacks. Not long after I started battling him was I finally done. This leaves you to watch the remaining plot points before the game ends.

It’s not often that you find yourself playing a game that actively makes you want to quit. Battle Network 4’s way of introducing new features and immediately disincentivizing their use is extraordinary in its own respect. So extraordinary that I have no desire to pursue the post-game content. I’ve never looked forward to the ending of a game as much as I have with this game. It was only natural that Capcom felt the need to depart from the near-perfect formula of Battle Network 3. It’s a shame that departing from the formula meant revisiting the failures of the previous games and further regressing on them. Feeling excited about beating a game should be because you feel accomplished in conquering the main game’s final challenge. The only thing exciting about beating Battle Network 4 is getting to move on to Battle Network 5.

Honestly if i say this is the first and only game in 6 mainline games of this Mega Man interation who forces you to clear the game at least 3 times with a "100%" or the most close you can get to it at each run to then allow you do a truly 100% of this game, i wouldn't need to say anything else if you played a RPG before or if you're insane to play this game too.

There are welcome additions expanded more later on at MMBN5 and MMBN6 (like the soul changes), but even those additions can't save a weak story which has three sections divided by a lot of "mini-stories" you can replay to 2 or 3 times in a row (at minimum), a weak gameplay too since Capcom nerfed a lot of things even if the Tornado combo starts here with Super Vulcan and Air Hockey folders being a thing in this game (and the story mini-games like Metalman rock breaking or Paule Water Maze puzzle which sucks without a Gamefaqs map), a weak map to the point even Undernet 6 ripped the same map from MMBN2 and above all, this game truly manages to show you why Mega Man Battle Network should've finished on 3 and everything else is canon fanfic or spin-off.

It's kind of wild rexperiencing the black sheep of your childhood favorite franchise and really seeing all the issues stem up. As someone who admittedly frequents *Chan boards for older game discussion, I've always seen the obvious negative disdain for 4, so coming onto here and seeing such a mixed reception is rather validating. Still after both a current and ongoing playthrough, it's really interesting to see what exactly Capcom got wrong with this entry, and really elevates the other titles in the franchise for things many would had taken for granted, and in my opinion that alone at least makes BN4 worth experiencing. But nearing the end of my 2nd playthrough I just really wanted to record my thoughts and really articulate what's wrong with this game.

Acknowledging the positives first and foremost, it's still Battle Network. The gameplay loop, despite some issues in this one, still holds really strong. The netnavi still have amazing designs, animations are great, for better or worse the formula hasn't been shaken up that much which is possibly the mentality Capcom had with the games up to this point. Versus and the free tournament feature are also pretty nice, moreso with the latest Switch release having online capabilities.

And now to nitpick and complain. There isn't a whole lot of good TO say here, and I imagine if this were someone's first game in the franchise for whatever reason, there would be nothing but disdain, and nearly everything here is fumbled, but the easiest target first would be the soundtrack, which admittedly has never been a series strong suit. There are combat tracks which are generally nice, but a lot of the overworld themes are just absolutely painful. Dendome definitely stands out for such an irritating pager ringing start and I dread ever having to go there, it's just mixed overall which admittedly is to be expected when they develop completely new OST's for their annual releases of these game boy games.

I commented on how it's still Battle Network, yet there are a lot of issues to the combat and starting with a lot of the new mechanics introduced. Gone are the style changes introduced in 2 and expanded upon in 3 and in their place are double souls, temporary forms you can obtain by sacrificing chips of specific types which is really cool on paper, middling to outright terrible in execution. You don't start with the form so already having to throw away a chip just to activate the form feels bad, meaning delving into double souls means you're already neutering your deck by either throwing away one of your cards or stunting a combo. This wouldn't be an issue in itself, but another issue with double souls is a lack of scaling. Each soul will do a set amount of damage, and it varies drastically, but for most souls they'll fall off drastically in damage and utility, and only serve as a net negative overall. For the easiest example, the aqua soul will always do 20 damage, which is great early but by mid and even late game where your buster can hit harder and fire faster on enemies even the aqua soul would be good against, it becomes a completely wasted form. This is a severe balance issue that's reprimanded in the next entry, but having a bulk of forms become a hindrance is such a massive oversight that becomes all the more apparent the more you play. And yeah some souls do have utility you can rely on, like junk soul recycling some used chips or number soul giving you 10 chips to work with per turn, but the balance discrepancy is still there, and building around some souls is much easier said than done, especially once you're deep into your 2nd playthrough.

Speaking of undercooked new features are dark chips, very powerful chips that will drain your max health for the rest of the game on use with no way to circumvent it, and other than becoming a sort of meme amongst discussion, really serve no purpose in indulging. Not only is there no way to circumvent the effects, and not only do you have to be on critical health just to gain access to them, but there's more than enough ways to supplement similar damage and protective numbers. It's an addition that just feels pointless and barely expanded on, and is potentially the biggest reason why the add feature was cut, meaning you can no longer cycle some chips in to easily find your combos for some extended fights... of course there is ONE reason why you would rely on the dark powers, but it isn't a good one.

Chip selection sucks compared to previous entry, and deck building just feels worse compared to previous and later entries. The general rule to making a good in-game BN deck is to stick to as few codes as possible, but during your first few playthroughs your options are stunted, and building around 1 or 2 codes leaves you with a ton of garbage you're stuck with, and no I'm not expecting some omni game killing folder similar to guts shoot an hour in, but it's just the complete inverse here, forcing me to rely on either lifesword and varswords, or air hockey's and boomerangs with a splash of assorted asterisk cards for most of my playthrough, and while yeah my options will expand once I get to post game after 2 or 3 playthroughs, but that's a good 30-40 hours in before the consistency and variety really start coming in, and you're not hamstrung into relying on really bad chip decks, which admittedly is where the dark chips might come into play, since even with one of the few consistent strategies, some fights can be rather rough.

So let's just make an overview on the gameplay changes here. Chip folders will be bad and stunted because most options are locked behind new game plus, and you have less options overall because the game expects you to utilize double souls and dark chips in some capacity. Double souls either fall off to the point of being literally useless or require ample amount of late game chips to even consider a build around. Dark chips are an overall net negative, will never come up if you're staying healthy health-wise, and would only come up in a practical sense because the chip selection early is really bad. All without mentioning the biggest issue the game has, and these are all issues that continually feed into one another, and it's so amazing because no other game in the franchise has these kinds of problems at this magnitude. And yeah you can turn your brain off, not consider any of this, and just use chips that look cool, but more than likely you'll be struggling on a lot of fights in the FIRST playthrough, especially if you're still rather green to the series.

The story is another gigantic mess even if it does have its own charming sparks here or there. Characters still act like they normally would, there's a ton of fun flavor text, and some references to other individuals like the Hideo Kojima stand-in (kind of subtle) and the Boktai series. (not nearly as subtle) The primary issue is the game is more or less filler in the worst way possible, and does ample amounts of damage to the gameplay in turn. To put it shortly, it's a tournament arc they somehow fumbled tremendously, which is genuinely a first for me in any sort of medium. You have 3 seperate tournaments where you see your opponent, and perform a side quest involving them, many of which involve you backtracking through the net, performing some unrelated minigame, or usually a mix of both. It takes the concept of a tournament and one of the more enjoyable segments of BN3 and turns it into a slog, and these make up most of the game. The core plot more or less happens at the start and at the end, and the rest are randomly generated tournaments that incentivize you to run through NG+ to endure every scenario. And worst yet are the optional navi fights and double soul forms locked behind these, and you will not have access to every unique navi fight until you've beaten the game 3 times. This isn't including secret navis or hidden boss fights, but regular content.

And I've mentioned it several times, but genuinely it is the worst part of the game, unique to Battle Network 4, and that is New Game+. Multiple boss fights are locked behind NG+. Tons of chips are locked behind NG+. The post game dungeon isn't accessible until you beat the game 3 times. And having to run through so many of these terrible and repetitive side quests with wonky new mechanics and a very skewed and admittedly terrible selection of chips just creates an ouroboros of issues that just endlessly feed into one another, and many might not even get past the first playthrough after the initial lukewarm experience it gives.

The biggest sin this game commits is serving no purpose. There's nothing in the story that adds to the plot before and after, and even if it's still Battle Network, there are 8 much better options for you to invest time into. I've lowered the rating about 3 times now writing this out and that stings because this is a franchise I absolutely adore and one I would recommend to people.

Just skip 4.

BN3's late-game theatrics became the main characteristic of Battle Network 4, their most ambitious but not necessarily their most accomplished effort. Sleek new graphics, a welcome overhaul to the Metroline, and a further-streamlined Net world accompany updates that don't improve over their recent standard but simply changes the approach. In particular, this is Battle Network at its most 'action-y', best represented by the extra combat mechanics (notably fighting game-esque counter hits and even a performance gauge crossed with rage mode and a morality system) as well as bonus items and the removal of chip mulligans. Fight optimization now relies on a greater dose of good old-fashioned timing, not only synergies or elements. Its narrative and dungeons are - instead, a step in the wrong direction (the former resorting to fantasy JRPG cliches, and the latter containing some of their worst ideas so far), while the randomized overworld progression still detracts from what they do best.