Battle Network (Megaman) Series

Where these actual good games or is it just nostalgia?

Depends on your tolerance of random battles and fetch quests. If you like the combat and chip mechanics you'll like the game, but if you don't you'll probably find the grindy nature of getting the chips and some of the more tedious quests to be too offputting.

In general play the games in order up to 3 if you want to have a pretty good time, the general consensus on quality is: 3>2>6=1>5>4

Though I may be remembering which between 4 and 5 was actually the worst

4 because of imbalance all around and that idiotic "New Game +" feature.
Five was an improvement but still lackluster.
Six was a very good game, but sadly, the damage caused by the two previous titles was done already and the series ended. Something similar happened to Star Force, 3 was good but 2's shitty quality killed it.

They are fantastic games, obviously some (like BN4 or even BN1) don't stack up very well to others in the series, but as a whole they're some of my favorite games.

>3 >= 6 > 2 > 5 >> 1 >>> 4.5 >>> 4

i forgot which bn was that where you have to look for the kid and he's in a car or some shit? fucking pissed me off, took forever for me to figure out.

They're my favorite games of all time actually.
I'm not saying they're the best games of all time by any means, far from it, but I think every game excluding 1 has 8/10 gameplay at least. The story isn't that good outside of 3 and 6, but if you're playing them for the story, then you're playing them wrong.
I've autistically replayed every game in the series constantly. I always have a playthrough going of at least one of the games since the first one came out. I really don't think it's nostalgia, they really hold up.

Battle Network 1.
IceMan scenario.

>He prefered 5 over 1

Playing 1 right now and I'm tired of the constant random battles and maze like paths. Does it get better after the metroline thing? Does tree series get better?

The series*

1 was total shit
4 was barely better
5 was okay
2, 3, and 6 were awesome

Objectively, if you remove all story elements from the games, the list is as follows:

3 = 6 > 5 > 4 > 2 > 1

The depth of gameplay pretty much peaked at 3, dipped at 4, and then ascended back to 3's level.
Liberation missions in 5 were an excellent way to change up the formula.

I recommend skipping 1. Here's the jist of the story:
> Lan and MegaMan were twins, MegaMan was named Hub and died as a youngling of a shitty disease, Lan's dad scienced him into being a netnavi, which is why MegaMan is so OP.
> Dr. Wily gets beaten and disappears (?)

There you go. Now you can move on to 2, which is miles better, and then to 3, which most people consider the best of the series.
4 is highly repetitive and has fuckloads of typos. 5 is super long because they have a whole extra type of strategy netbattles you have to do which are really fun. 6 is my favorite and takes the series back to its roots, and honestly is everything MMBN should really be. Fun, interesting, amazingly deep netbattling, and more.
There are tons of QOL improvements, especially from 2 to 3. Definitely stick with it.

Yeah I'm just going to watch parts of 1 on YouTube and skip it. But what about version differences like blue moon, red sun etc? And do the other games have less random battles & maze paths?

It has the distinction for having a completely unique combat style that you can't mimic without blatantly being called out on it.

Version differences really don't matter much. They change some minor events in some games, each have exclusive stuff, yadda yaddda.

If you want the best experience, I recommend 3 Blue, either version of 4 since they're both the same, for 5 Team Colonel since it's the "canon" one, and either version of 6. But honestly, it doesn't matter much.

Each game has random encounters, but the encounter rate in 1 is much worse than the others, and as the series progresses it becomes absurdly easy to finish encounters in one turn.
"maze paths" are usually the schtick in a lot of dungeons, but the regular level design becomes so much better.

Plot wise there's very minor differences between versions while the main difference is what giga chips are available and what forms you have.

Also Battle Network 1 was notorious for being the most maze-like since the internet looked the same (it was just Internet 1-16) and each subsequent area got more and more maze-like. Subsequent games divide the internet into different zones with themes representing them and viruses being segregated to each area.

However aside from the undernet the internet tends to have similar tilesets throughout instead of mixing up the shapes. Battle Network 4 got really into using curved segments for example.

The core gameplay is one-of-a-kind and is a genuine stroke of genius, but every other story sequence is such a fucking drag.

>mfw in BN3 you had to go through EVERY other area in the game over again to blow all your water chips to douse fires

if you're going to play 6 there's an english patch for the JP version of Falzar.

6 got pretty brutally fucked with in localization and entire areas were cut out to remove the Boktai aspects. Other shit got fucked up too like how the crisis music at the end of the game which is supposed to turn off when you enter post game doesn't turn off at all in the NA version.

I can't exactly remember what the Nintendo E-shop version changes for 6 but you can get a ROM of it. In fact I think you can get a ROM of all the E-shop versions of the games which at the very least have changes to compensate for the lack of multiplayer. Basically using the communication function will give you everything that was exclusive to multiplayer like hidden chips.

Sounds like they solved all the issues I have with 1. Thanks anons

Forgot to mention this is really important for BN3 since the only way to get library completion is to trade for Bowlman/Mistman chips from the opposite version. You need a complete library to do the Omega time trials.

Keep in mind they also give you event chips which can be OP as fuck so try not to rely on them because they're cheap.

>Original battle system
>Tons of variety
>Fun
Yah, its pretty good senpai

What do you think about the Underworld (sp?) parts? It's been years since I've played this series, but I remember always being stuck. Are extra areas like that considered good content?

Depends on what games your talking about, but the undernet is hardly extra content since I'm pretty sure in every game you have to go there.
The undernet is usually pretty difficult and for a lot of younger players historically was a bit of a wall depending on the game, but I urge you to retry it. If you build a skillful folder, the undernet can be some of the most fun in the whole game.

Undernet is always part of the story. I think only battle network 2 put into place it being really dangerous at the time because it threw a bunch of new dangerous viruses at you

It's areas like WWW area and Secret area that are the extra content.

Reminder that Yai is the BEST girl.

Star Force was better.

So much shit in the Battle Network games was cryptic as fuck, and there was minimal info on the internet at the time.

Those games consist of like 95% backtracking, so it's probably nostalgia by Sup Forumsirgins