Es literalmente un juego de relleno

PERO
A) Metió las fusiones que son la mejor mecánica de la franquicia
B) Fue el primero que jugué
así que a mi me mola

Holy fucking shit they took everything i hated about this franchise and doubled down on it, more backtracking, more filler, more running around the same spots and corners of the internet looking for shit, but now with a laughable excuse of a story, repeating characters that adds nothing, a awful villain, and the RNG of the tournaments that can and WILL prevent you from getting unique Navis and instead give you generic who the fucks to fights, it's insane.

The soul unision feature is amazing tho, it took them this amount of time to use the Copying ability of classic megaman but they've did it and the game is better for it, (the combat at least), it's definitely the most amount of fun i've had on the combat side of things of the Battle Network series.

After a 100% completion and a 45:45 total logged time in-game, my opinion on this game has fallen since I started. I want to love this game, I really do, but there are just so many grievances that prevent that.

I love the OST and the art style, and many battle chips are honestly very interesting to use. It also has a strong set of souls that I found myself using a bunch. I also unironically enjoy the botched localization.

But some bosses, viruses, and the whole structure of the game forcing at least 3 whole playthroughs to access all the content within the game bring the game down so much.

Like most Battle network games, this game is still pretty fun. But it also has all the typical issues of the series amped to a crazy extent.

A lot backtracking,
Repetitive Missions,
so-so writing,
and a lot of fluff.

However, it's much worse here, due to the fact the most of the game's story is just 3 Tournament, with most of the Tournament missions kind of dumb, or kind of boring, one of the two. You have by far one of the dumbest Megaman Villains. (Which is saying a lot.) on top of all of that, competing this everything in this game, takes about as much time as watching all of one piece. And doing that is likely more fun.

Honestly, if I didn't love the battle network game's main gameplay, this shit would be a one. But the new stuff added like double soul, and other new systems, really make going through this game a lot more fun than it would be.

Either way though....

Unless you are curious, skip this game and play 5 saves you a lot of time.

Whenever there is a significant departure in an established series, risk is inevitably incurred. Risk of alienating established fans with potentially controversial changes; risk of corrupting the core appeal by deviating too much from what has always worked; risk of obscuring completely the fundamental identity of the series through a glut of overly contrived additions in the place of cleanly refining the essential components and expanding upon a strong foundation. It’s always a risk, but one which is necessary to stave off stagnation, and create space for further creativity. Every failed idea was an opportunity for success, and before focusing on the egregious mistakes which lead to an undoing, it’s important to acknowledge the attempt to try something new. Battle Network 4 is an unquestionable failure and a risk–a necessary deviation from the refined formula of the series, which had reached its culmination with the splendor of the previous game. It’s actually less what 4 does differently which makes it so maligned than what it continues to do in terms of the series’ consistent pitfalls. The deviations of 4 are only frustrating in that they initially promise an exciting evolution for the series, which sadly goes unrealized in the face of all the worst impulses of the franchise manifesting so overtly. The new gimmicks thus become an additional flaw, perceived as a shoddy realization that compounds upon the already prevalent issues of the game instead of a bold innovation and a wellspring of future potential. So long as the fundamentals are solid, any nominal growing pains can typically be forgiven. With Battle Network 4, though, it feels as if every lesson learned in the development of the three previous titles were completely forgotten, and even the most basic of game design philosophies had been thrown out the window.

Setting aside mechanics for a moment, one of the immediate differences returning players will notice is the total upheaval of both the art style and the overworld as two of the most familiar and consistent elements of the series. This is not a dealbreaker in and of itself—beloved characters remain and maintain their base designs, while the spirit of the in-game world is not necessarily compromised due to the changes. However, it’s evident from very early on that these visual changes are overall for the worse. It’s another case where the negative sentiment could probably be assuaged if the game around it was still good, but because the core itself is rotten, these pockmarks fester across the whole of the experience. Similarly, the persistent localization errors plaguing the game’s translation are a minor but ever-present nuisance that, more than anything else, embody a lackluster sense of presentation inherent to the game. It contributes further to a pervading sense that the game was intentionally designed to be frustrating for the player, as even the flashy new developments introduced here are marred by obtuse limitations and tedious extension.

Double Soul is the new gimmick for Battle Network 4, replacing the Style Change function of the previous two games as the transformation mechanic that imbues Mega Man with various elemental powers. It recalls the central conceit of the original Mega Man games, in that you take on the powerset of certain opponents after defeating them in battle. This is far and away the most exciting and evolutionary change Battle Network 4 presents. Double Soul incentivizes more strategic play, as it only lasts for three turns in battle and requires synergistic deck-building to get the maximum value from every use. It’s also a more visually inspired mechanic, fusing elements of other Navi’s design with Mega Man to emphasize the melding of their abilities, as opposed to the generic palette swaps and minor ornamental differences seen in previous games. The catch, as it were, is that you can only access three of these souls, despite there being six unique variants per game, for a total of twelve different options across both versions. You have no means of influencing which souls you obtain on any given playthrough, and are expected to play through the game multiple times to experience all six, which are hard-coded to make you repeat at least one on a second playthrough, forcing at least three entire playthroughs of the game to experience the complete breadth of this new mechanic. Presumably, this is done to ensure variance for subsequent playthroughs, but the scenarios are presented in such a way as to be entirely interchangeable, negating any uniqueness they could have had. What’s worse is that the main narrative missions persist as well, further exacerbating the tedious nature the game has to begin with.

It’s almost impressive how tiring the gameplay loop ends up feeling, even from just the very early sections of the game. Whether you’re playing through part of the main narrative chasing down evil Navis across the net, or chugging through the tournament scenarios that pad out the time between actual story progression, the structure of these games has never felt so cyclical. The first major scenario embodies this aggravating approach acutely: you’re forced to chase an evil Navi across the heavily-restricted and blandly designed net, hit a dead end after you catch up to him, go to another place in the overworld and access the net again, chase him again until you hit another roadblock, go back into the overworld to obtain a progression item you’ll never use again, and then access and complete one of only three more traditional dungeons this game has to offer. The amount of backtracking endured in this first scenario is a dire portend of what’s to come, and when you’re not tasked with running back and forth across the same stretches of net, enduring an onslaught of tedious virus battles along the way each time, you’re saddled with cryptic invisible item
fetch quests and monotonous endurance battles as your only additional content to experience. There aren’t even side quests anymore to break up the repetitive loop of carbon copy plot beats and uninspired story missions. It only gets worse towards the end, as certain progressions keys are locked behind a currency gate, forcing you to grind for pittances of zenny in random virus battles should you have chosen to commit the grave sin of engaging with the game’s economy of shops throughout the game. In a twist of irony, this inexplicable punishment functions as a far better risk/reward system than the one which actually exists in the game. Unless you’re consistently playing like crap throughout, you’re unlikely to ever see Dark Chips outside of the mandatory tutorial they’re introduced with relatively early on in the game.

The persistent feeling of frustration that comes from playing Battle Network 4 is only ever compounded by the moments where the gameplay feels engaging and fun. It’s frustrating because, very clearly, there exists the groundwork for an appropriate and exciting evolution of the series beneath the grueling game design that weighs down every other moment playing this game. The combat in particular showcases the continued trend of improvement and complexity of the series, with new and interesting chips to be used in tandem with the more compelling Double Soul mechanic the game more or less revolves around. In hindsight, one can almost certainly claim that the risks taken in the digressions of Battle Network 4 were ill-advised. Still, it should be said that the failures seen here are a greater product of poor design in general, rather than the changes made to specifically distinguish this entry from the prior titles. The game is bad on a fundamental level, but it’s arguably still a decent Battle Network game. The spirit of the series is maintained, by means of its unique battle system being preserved and expanded, while the story and characters remain consistent, if a little more confused due to the botched localization. I’d be curious to know if these staple strengths of the games were enough to endear an uninitiated player to the series, similar to how the unrefined mechanics of the first game are endured thanks to the foundational appeals one experiences playing it for the first time. It’s impossible to ignore, though, the rudimentary failures of basic game design here, forcing players through repetitive loops of undistinguished gameplay, and masking the keys to progression behind abstruse and unintuitive solutions. Battle Network 4 seeks to incentivize players to go through the game multiple times based on the structure of its core design, but the baseline flaws are so discouraging it’s a struggle to complete even a single playthrough of the game, let alone three or more.

TLDR: Easily the worst Battle Network game. For some reason they made a game drawing on the worst parts of 1-3.

Before replaying this for the first time in over 10 years I would have said BN1 was the worst in the series but now after replaying both I have no clue why I'd think that.

The game somewhat randomizes the tournaments so that it takes three playthroughs to face all the navi's and get all the Souls. This isn't necessarily bad in theory but it made it so 80% of 4 is meaningless bad filler that has you going through areas you've already visited again and again. A third the time its even against generic navi's even though there's enough unique navi's that you could face instead. These scenarios are like the worst parts of 2 and 3, which in my opinion are the Freezeman and Flameman scenarios, over and over again.

As a result of that tournament structure you can only get 3 souls in playthrough one and the other three in the next two playthroughs. The ones you get are also random and you wont know what you'll get until the tournament they're part of. So tough luck if one your interested in is locked until another playthrough. A shame since I actually like the system more then styles from 2 and 3.

There are only a few parts of the game that are relevant to the main plot with puzzles and bosses at the end. Unfortunately the boss at the end of the first two can't be considered a real boss. 1's a bullshit fight where you can't damage him and the others an intro to a new system where you one shot him. Wasting two of the few more traditional parts of the game on that is frustrating as hell especially considering its still like that on the other two playthroughs needed to see everything in the game.

The NG+ system also makes it that you can't get higher level chips from viruses making you feel fairly weak on a first playthrough since your stuck with mostly only the first tier of chips.

Ultimately 4 is easily skippable, just read up on the few important NPC's introduced before 5 and 6.

Also special shout out to the RNG bullshit hell that is Footbomb.