Why Megaman Battle Network 4 Is Still The Worst Of The Series

 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 beginning, gave all the characters a nice sendoff and didn't leave too many dangling plot threads.

Sure, they had Megaman Battle Chip Challenge, but that was something of a non-canon "Gaiden Game" that gave them an excuse to reuse the assets of the first three games for a once-off title that was okay but nothing amazing.

That said, the series was meant, canonically, to end at 3.

However, Capcom saw dollar signs in printing more, so the series director, who outright admitted 3 ended the story he wanted to tell, had to throw something at the wall and devise a way to continue the story.

He admitted to struggling with how to keep the story going, and Battle Network 4 is a testament to why Capcom zombifying this series was a bad idea.

In fairness, Battle Network 5 wound up being competent and basically was about as decent as Battle Network 2 in terms of competence. Still, the damage to the fanbase's trust was already done, so Capcom wisely made the sixth game the last one, and the sixth game managed to reach the levels of 3 (though not entirely in some ways, but close enough) in once again ending the series on a high note and tying off the plot threads with some dignity.

Overall, had Battle Network 4 been merely average, Capcom probably could have gotten away with more games after 6, but 4 hammered a huge nail in the fanbase wanting to trust Capcom after 4 bombed so hard it wasn't funny.

I further want to clarify, before we move on, this series of posts is going to bash the resultant quality of Battle Network 4, but the majority of the blame falls mostly on Capcom for their unreasonable expectation the devs of the prior games could whistle up an entirely new game from scratch with no planning for doing so prior and gave them less than a year to whistle up an entirely new game. Worse, the Japanese version of BN3 White (Black there) was still in development and thus BN4 was made with less technical assistance for some time, thus less beta testing was able to be done in the mere year they had to work on it.

Frankly, the fact it wasn't worse what we finally got is somewhere to the left of a miracle. BN4's versions were technically complete in many areas, but still horribly underdone due to demands of the Capcom executives when they released.

2. The things Battle Network 4 did well.

It's worth noting Battle Network 4 had some good ideas despite all the garbage it wound up being in total. Many of these better ideas would be expanded on and further polished in 5 and 6 and still hold up as competent. Unfortunately, they alone could not save 4 from what it did wrong.

First off, the art style shifted to match the then-running Battle Network anime. Compared to the rougher style of the first three games, colors were more vibrant, animations much more detailed, and character designs more visually distinct. Overall, this looked great and 5 and 6 would just polish this concept further.

Second, they retooled the "Full Syncro" idea, formerly a plot device, into a viable regular battle mechanic, and honestly, it made more logical sense and made for less cutscene weirdness where you could be stupid powerful in a cutscene and get wasted in gameplay.

The battle chips received a further balance that was generally well done, and they introduced "Double Soul", where you could temporarily use the abilities of another Navi besides Megaman.EXE.

Double Soul was a good concept albeit a bit half-baked and unbalanced, but since all the concept really needed was to make it more fun for the player, Capcom made it even MORE unbalanced in the player's favor and tweaked it to not require sacrificing a battle chip to activate by BN6.

Finally, the idea of two games with exclusive content was fully realized in Battle Network 4 for the first time. Both versions of 3 are pretty minorly different and largely identical except for very few differences that are ultimately rather marginal. This was apparently because the decision to make two editions was made rather late in development and the developers didn't have time to make the editions of 3 more unique.

All this said Battle Network 4 turned out to be a horrible game in both editions despite all these good things because what they did badly was so severe it killed player enjoyment dead.

Some warnings for the eventual followup post. It will spoil plot details and it will cover both earlier games in the series and other Megaman games, which will be necessary to understand why BN4 fell so short in terms of narrative.