I'm not particularly good at action games like Mega Man Classic or X, but this was a fun experience with friends.

Network Transmission's pace is slower than other Mega Man games until you upgrade your Mega Buster, which I didn't do until late in the game. Once you get all the upgrades, it feels better to control.

Oddly enough, my favorite part of the game are the splash screens after clearing a level. The ambient victory jingle with the key art sliding onto the screen would've mesmerized me if I played it when it released.

While fun overall, definitely play another Classic or X game prior to Network Transmission to get an idea of how these games test your skill. You'd probably appreciate this game as a fun extra if you enjoy the other games.

It's weird to think this game really exists. But yep, there is, and it's a spin-off of Battle Network. Which already acts as a semi spin-off while being its own thing and a full fledged action-RPG series.

But here we are and with a platform. The shooting type. We are safe then, right? I mean: it's Mega Man natural genre, after all!
Well...no. This was where the disappointment began. In the moment we go to the main gameplay it feels the game could play like a X game but nope: it has to remind that it's a BN spin-off with the clunky chip system to choose the weapon. The level design felt poorly designed and bland.

After having this game since release and never really beating it, I came back to this game as an adult to check it off my mental backlog for good. It was worth the initial hit of nostalgia, but ultimately was a slog to play through and finish.

The Battle Network era of Mega Man is pretty good aesthetically. The concept of having an AI partner you can use as an avatar to explore a physical internet space is a stellar Saturday Morning cartoon idea that I think the tv series & Battle Network games pulled off better than it's done here but still cool.

With that in mind, this game's 2D world exploration is underwhelming and wholly underutilized here. You'll spend the beginning portion of the game exploring medium-sized worlds sprinkled with hidden collectibles, with some collectibles requiring abilities obtained later to access, giving reason to do backtracking. Otherwise you're mostly progressing one direction to another without much platforming as there are no real platforming challenges in this game. A huge blemish for a Mega Man game like this.

At the midway point, the game gives up sometimes having levels at all, opting for hallway cutscenes that lead directly to a boss battle. In some areas, you feel really boxed in and unable to fight enemies in any meaningful capacity.

The lack of interesting traversal may have something to do with how somewhat stiff Megaman is to control in this game. His jump isn't very high and his slide move is hard to use as a dodge because it always feels like he comes up from the slide a little too early when dodging traps & wide attacks, leaving one prone to sustaining attacks.

Megaman isn't really equipped to handle enemies below his waist unless you happen to have an ability card that you can use, which often means waiting up to 60 seconds for your ability meter to recharge so you can refresh your abilities to deal with an otherwise minor nuisance.

The bosses of this game go one of two ways: 1) You will get steam rolled because you don't have the right ability cards and will have to learn obnoxious attack patterns that require more luck than skill to dodge to due to previously mentioned mobility issues or 2) You have the right ability cards to counter the boss and the fight is over within 15 seconds.

It is somewhat frantic and tense in a fun way fighting a boss and dodging everything it's throwing at you, waiting for your ability meter to recharge so you can re-up on precious abilities to turn the tide of the battle, but due to relatively small boss arenas and mobility issues -- these kinds of scenarios are more so irritating than fun.

I like the concept of this game, but it's execution was bad. The vibes of this iteration of Mega Man are so nice though, with it's contemporaries Phantasy Star Online and the .hack series painting futuristic tech as wonderful and mysteriously terrifying being right up my alley. Maybe check of the Battle Network games instead if you need a nostalgic hit of Mega Man from this era.

Well I enjoyed this more than I thought I would, but I cannot even IMAGINE trying to play this without savestates on an actual Nintendo Gamecube when this thing came out.

Network Transmission very clearly models itself after the NES Mega Man games, and it preserves all of their flaws with startling diligence. In some ways it's better than most of those titles, and in others it's worse, but should a Gamecube game from 2003 EVER be worse than an NES game in ANY way?

I've heard this game described as having "jank" controls, and I don't think I agree. At no point in my playthrough did I feel that the controls were at fault for any of what was happening to me... those responsibilities rest with the designs of levels and bosses, as well as the generally inelegant concept of layering Battle Network's mechanics onto a 2D platformer.

I must stress again: Attempting to play this without extremely liberal savestate scumming would be an exercise in absolute misery. For certain stretches of the game, things will be smooth sailing, yes, but then you'll hit a boss who obliterates you before you can even manage 10 full seconds of practice. This is a game that would have benefitted immensely from abolishing lives as a mechanic and instituting checkpoints. This game makes me say this when none of the six NES Mega Man games that I just played did the same. Dolphin is your friend.

i think one of my favorite things about the gamecube is just how many weird and creative ideas we got with its library. look at games like pikmin, luigi's mansion, pokemon colosseum, metroid prime, super mario sunshine, animal crossing... you see nintendo, as a publisher, branching out and trying a lot of different approaches to established gameplay formulas. obviously, this game wasn't published by nintendo, but it fits very snugly into that trend of taking something tried-and-true and adding a new twist to it.

i feel as though it might be heresy to say this, it really might be, but this game is more enjoyable to me than the vast majority of classic MM games. the OST is superb and easily one of the strongest parts of the entire game. the presentation is great, and while a few textures look a little questionable (iceman's model looks very bad when viewed from the front), the areas have little details and backgrounds that give life to something as simple as exploring the internet. i think one of my favorite backgrounds was global area 3, which just makes the background a microchip. it doesn't even standout until you take a second to look at it, which makes it brilliant. it fits in perfectly while also being something that adds to the game upon closer inspection. i love that. and i generally love seeing 3D versions of the MMBN series staples such as spikeys and mushys. i've always felt that MMBN has some of the best enemy design of any video game series, and network transmission capitalizes on that by giving each virus good models that accentuate their features without making them look garish.

but the gameplay is probably the most interesting part of this game. you combine the idea of a card based RPG with a platformer and... you honestly get something very interesting. maybe not something very polished or fine-tuned like we'd come to expect with the MMBN series, but interesting. i find something unique like this fascinating because, while the execution is off in some ways, it's unlike any other game i've played. you can't just ride off of classic MM or MMBN knowledge/skill. you have an entirely new beast here; tactics and techniques that would work in either of the mashed up series independently don't work here. sure, you do lose a bit of what makes both, independently, great, but you combine it into something messy, blended, and interesting.

i will say that, in regards to gameplay mechanics, it does add some features that i would have loved to see in the MMBN series, such as the ability to refight navis from a simple menu rather than having to random encounter hunt for them. i also really love a lot of the navi designs unique to this game. i know it's simple, but god damn, needleman is one of my favorite designs in the series, and his little gait adds so much personality to him that you'd look in sprites. every navi has interesting behavior, whether it be gutsman having a little waddle, brightman being mostly a counterbait boss, or quickman requiring an understanding of his openings to damage that seemingly inspired his MMBN2 behavior. there's care put into the bosses of this game, and with this game having so many to fight, that's a pretty impressive feat.

i would estimate this game's length being a lean 10 hours, maybe less if you don't fuck around with grinding like i did. at the same time, this game is a monster in earlygame. fireman hits extremely hard, and you lack many decent ways to grind for money or chips early on. i consider myself fairly good at video games on the whole, and while my skill varies depending on the genre, even i found myself having to grind for money to buy bubblers from higsby just to beat fireman. the biggest complaint i have with this game is just how integral grinding feels to a playthrough. you absolutely want powerups and health upgrades, because otherwise your damage output will be minimal and you'll be reduced to a pile of gore and teeth by most bosses. plus, you can grind for navi chips and boss weapons by refighting bosses. this game basically incentivizes grinding for a casual playthrough, and while that's not a death knell, there's a better way this could've been done. maybe scale back boss damage output/HP totals? up the damage of chips? increase the starting HP total? something else better than this had to be possible.

another major complaint i have is that, on a platformer basis, this game is brutal at times. this game taught me to appreciate good cameras in a 2D game, because the one here leaves a lot to be desired. mega man is glued to the center of the screen and has a very small box that he can move in before the camera starts shifting. this means that, at any given moment, your screen always has mega man in the middle. this becomes a problem when you're walking forward and you're given about half a screen less to react to an incoming enemy or, in the case of one level, microseconds before you can see where an instant kill laser beam came from and how to avoid it next time. it's just such a bummer, because classic MM had perfected something as simple as letting you focus on the entirety of a screen without the view changing at all. my knee-jerk reaction is to go "they should've just made the camera the same as classic MM", but the more practical solution would've been to just zoom the view out a bit and give the player more to work with. if mega man has to be bolted to the center of the screen, at least give the player more to work with.

maybe this game doesn't hit every note, but this is an interesting experience and it compels me in some unknown way. to the classic MM fans: you're getting a lengthy experience here, this game has the equivalent of 8 robot masters and 7 wily stages, with two bonus bosses. to the MMBN fans: this game rewards your ability to use the right tool for the right situation and gives you a lot of freedom in how to structure your folder (arguably too much). there is something here for both parties and i heavily encourage anyone who hasn't played this to try it, and for anyone who disliked it to give it a second chance. i truly wish we saw more games do something risky and weird like this.

edit as of 1/2/2022: adding half a star to make it 4.0/5.0 because it's been half a year and i'm still obsessed with this game's OST. that has to count for something.

Honestly i don't get the hate towards this game, I think it marries original megaman and the network games amazingly. Now the difficulty is high which I love, but part of that difficulty IS in some wonky mechanics here and there I agree. But I haven't played this in 15 years and picked it up and I'm addicted to it, it has great platforming, the cards are a great substitute for megaman weapons, soundtrack rocks, and the RPG elements of upgrading your health and buster, and maps to find secrets in is all awesome. I think the issues are - i don't like continuing making you reload the game, a lot of old games have this problem. I wish the chip load out were slightly less random in some way, and the boss battles move so quickly and range from very easy to insane - with few in that middle ground of difficult but fun like Needleman and Fireman. I think it could also be a prettier game, and all the text is pointless, but it's honestly a great megaman game

This is probably the best 2.5D Mega Man game, definitely the most interesting.

Ever since the first game put the magnet beam in Elec Man's stage, behind an obstacle only Guts Man's weapon could move, Mega Man has been trying to balance catering to two completely different kinds of player. On one hand, they wanted a skilled player to be able to beat the original game in under an hour; on the other hand, they wanted casuals and newcomers to be able to experiment and take their time.

Kyle Bosman put out a whole video on the idea that a game being released with a rewind feature is functionally dead, not really viable as a product anymore, only kept around as a curiosity or for its important place in the history of either its franchise or games as a whole. I don't really agree with this, but I will admit that in the specific case of Mega Man, playing the "classic" games "as intended" is something bordering on unbearable, and nobody has actually done it in decades.

Every re-release of every classic 8-bit Mega Man game has added quality of life features, cheats, accessibility options, whatever you want to call them. Rapid fire, saved games to circumvent the password system, save states via both emulation and the "restore points" offered by the Virtual Console, and rewind. From Mega Man 3 onward there was almost no logic behind what bosses were weak to which weapons, or at the very least it was no longer something the player would be able to easily infer as in the earlier games. It has pretty much been expected for the past 20+ years that if you're playing a Mega Man game at all, you're going to be using a guide, and you're going to be superseding the base mechanics.

Keeping this in mind, Mega Man: Network Transmission is one of the more digestible games in the series. The RPG elements both give the player more room to grow, and provide a more clear "rock-paper-scissors" structure for boss weaknesses. Ever since Mega Man 2 let you kill some bosses in 3 hits or less, some players have complained that this "trivializes" the bosses; Network Transmission wants you to find ways to trivialize its bosses, even expecting you to rematch previously defeated foes until you can kill them efficiently enough. The game's levels inherit the meandering, exploratory nature of the handheld RPG's, with a more clear expectation of revisiting these levels than pretty much any of the mainline Mega Man platformers.

The way that they've adapted the card-based combat system of the Battle Network games to a 2D action game is interesting both because of what they changed, and what they didn't. Battle Network's engagements happen in a separate screen from navigation, usually with three enemies or fewer per encounter, so it only gives you a handful of attack options and refills the customization gauge after only a few seconds. Network Transmission's fights and traversal happen continuously and simultaneously, so the meter fills slow, and each chip has a certain amount of times it can be reused (based on how many you've picked up).

The first oddity of this system is that chip usage is also arbitrarily limited by a meter (a la spells requiring magic points); I genuinely cannot think of a single good reason for this. It just results in the player waiting, which they'll also be doing if they run out of chips and need to wait for the cust. gauge to fill. It's just more unneeded complexity. The second, probably the most unfortunate holdover from the handheld RPG's, is that the mega buster is basically completely useless until you're halfway through the game and collect enough upgrades. At this point, the buster is so strong that basically the only reason to use chips at all is that they don't need to charge, they fire immediately. All of your strong chips just become boss-killers, and all of your weaker chips become emergency tools for when you poorly anticipate a regular enemy and get stun-locked.

The soundtrack is great, the graphics and level themes are cute. I kind of like how you pick levels from a map, not just because it's how a lot of other Mega Man games handle level selection, but because it's kind of like how the Pokemon games on GameCube translated that handheld series to the big screen. The back of the box features the bold lie that the game has an "intricate story-line that ties in to the whole Mega Man Battle Network series"; not only is the story shallow, not only does it have virtually no bearing on the other games, the "whole Battle Network series" at the time of this game's release in North America was... two games.

Also the story contains this passage, which is hilarious now:

"Lan: Isn't a vaccine something like a medicine?

Dad: Yeah... I don't know if you're ready to learn about this yet, but... Vaccines, viruses, Navis, and chip data are all programs. So they can all be used for both good and bad things...

Lan: So there are good viruses too?

Dad: Hehe, well, I don't know about that... But a bad vaccine is conceivable."

Could be way better than what it is! It has some homages to classic mega man, but it definitely does not live up to it in gameplay quality. Because like classic MM, this game is hard. But unlike it, not in a good way.

The level design seems like it could go on the right direction, with a decent amount of areas to explore, but some sections are just straight up unfair and frustrating, and exploring itself is also a pain when you need chips to do special movement and you can just run out of them. Boss fights are either dumb easy or plain stupid hard.

The chips system is kinda interesting but I feel like it could be made a little better. Having to grind for multiple copies is tiring.

Some of the pains of the game can be overcome by grinding (to buy health refills, or drop chips), which is boring.

The music is easily the best thing to come out of this game, go check it out! The graphics are alright, they are very colorful and charming, the "computer world" aesthetic of BN is just always a good vibe. And the story is usual Battle Network stuff I guess, haha.

Overall, it's a game I can only really recommend to hardcore mega man fans, and even those might not really enjoy it, but it can be interesting to see what it is. And honestly, there's some enjoyment to be had if you don't go mad from the frustrating parts.

Mega Man Network Transmission has a difficulty problem. Not only does it have the fault that most Mega Man X games have by being weaker in the beginning without much to work with, but it also has several bosses that feel out of place in difficulty.

The majority of Transmission's gameplay is actually a fairly decent run of the usual Mega Man classic formula mixed with The dungeon like exploration that the .exe games are known for. Largely a lot of the designs and music for this game are truly spot on for the rest of the franchise, and works great for the game. Zero makes for an interesting antagonist and once again proves to be one of the best part of the franchise.

While I certainly wouldn't say Transmission is as bad as most Mega Man X games, it certainly doesn't hold up to par with the original Battle Network game that I have played.