The Musings Of The Consensus

 In the first two parts, we analyzed the story and constraints of the developers. In this final part, we shall examine the other technical aspects and see how they did or did not contribute to the Battle Network series' fall from grace. In absolute fairness, Battle Network 4 did do a lot that was sound technically, despite the limitations, and for that they receive credit. Regardless, what they did poorly just hammered more nails in the coffin. We shall examine these things below. 1. Boktai Crossover Battle Network 4 was the first game to include a "guest" series crossover. The Boktai series by Capcom was lent to the developers for an in-universe crossover. Overall, it was mostly good, with one major flaw. We got some new battle chips out of this, which were well-balanced and would be returning elements in the later games. The overall theming did not feel out of place either. The thing that was glaring weakness is that this crossover highlighted a glaring lack of original...

 In this second of what is planned to be three posts, we will analyze the narrative structure of Megaman Battle Network 4 and why it failed to be as good as the other games. For this reason, let's review a few things. This will have story spoilers, which are essential to examine the plot structure of Battle Network 4 as compared to other BN games and the Megaman series in general. Megaman Battle Network is an alternate universe to the original "Classic" series born from humanity deciding to specialize in internet networking technology instead of robotics. Robotics, while not entirely ignored, remains much more niche and marginalized. As a result, virtually everything in the world is not connected to the Internet, which has become its own dimension that can be traversed by digital beings called Net Navis. The Navis are the equivalent to many of the "Robot Masters" of the classic Mega Man games. As digital beings, their names all have ".EXE" at the end, ...

 Having recently purchased and had a blast with the Megaman Battle Network Legacy Collection games, I was immediately reminded why the fourth of the series (Red Sun and Blue Moon Editions) were horrible. Even back during their original print run, they were some of the lamest games of their series and could even cause real hardware issues due to utterly horrific coding. To my knowledge, the versions that ship with the Legacy Collection are patched to not have these issues even on the Switch, but all their original flaws remain. This will be a multi-part post, so I first want to cover some background and explain why this trainwreck, while having redeeming features, was going to be a trainwreck given the sum of its parts. 1. This was never originally intended to be made. Battle Network 3 Blue and White Editions (Blue and Black in Japan) were clearly intended to end the series, and do so on a high note. The way they were written tied a nice bow on the story as written from the beginnin...

 I admit. I really just wanted to leave this to rot because the game was so bad doing one more post on it was something I dreaded, but I figured I might as well close off with one last post giving an itemized list of the remaing stupid mistakes SO4 made that follows up on my prior posts. 1. The Grigori were a total fail as a faction and their defeat was a blatant copout. The Grigori had a decent start and initially made logical sense in the context of the series as a villain. Around the Roak Arc, they picked up a bizarre death cult fetish and since they just degenerate into further incoherence. It gets really bad by the time of the EN II (Star Ocean 2 nostalgia arc, that's short for Energy Nede) arc, where they establish the "leader" of the Grigori is less a being and more a non-Euclidean entity right out of Lovecraft from another dimension that is essentially unkillable by any conventional means. Instead, all we can do is kill off its spawn point and hope it never comes ...