What's the best Battle Network game?

I don’t think theres a single one I didnmt enjoy but 1 was definitely the one I was the most tired of playing by the end. Its not that long tho unless you do the undernet. You have to be fair to 1 tho as it is literally the first game in a series of games that added massive improvements and unique fun gimmicks with each installation

My grievance with 4, is that higher level viruses are cordoned off behind subsequent playthroughs, and that kneecaps acquisition of higher level chips, which in turn, stymies deck building. Like, going through the whole game with low tier chips blows.
Although, I really like recolours, and the introduction of omega-level for each stage of virus was a treat for me. I clapped when Mettaur Omega returned as Mettaur 3 Omega, and liked the new lime green/orange variants for stages 1/2. However, I understand that's just my bizarre love of seeing old friends with new paintjobs, and it's not actually a positive towards the game itself.

I didn't have much of an issue with the theme park comp, but I can understand not being a fan of doing it multiple times.

MMBN1 is basic.
MMBN2 has the best maps in the series. Nearly every map has unique tilesets. Everything looks distinct. Electopia's map looks COMPLETELY different from Netopia's map. It's the only fucking game in the series where the net isn't just a bunch of fucking recolors.
MMBN3 has the best battles but the shittiest map. The map in MMBN3 is designed purely to waste your time. Even if you unlock every shortcut, you still have to go through roundabout bullshit to get from Point A to Point B. Prepare to use Tamako's PC CONSTANTLY. Press is the worst decision the series has ever made. Fuck BubbleMan.
MMBN4 is mediocrity incarnate.
MMBN5 does some neat things and I'm a fan of Chaos Soul but it's easily the most divisive game in the series.
MMBN6 is probably the best game all around. Like it has flaws, its maps aren't as good as MMBN2's, its battles aren't as good as MMBN3's, but I think it has the least egregious flaws.

1 is more enjoyable than 4. At least 1 has the decency to only be 10 hours long

2 most average
5 best PvE
6 best PvP
3 most overrated
1 is a proof of concept
4 is overhated, but its still bad

also we've had this thread a gorillion times already
is it really that bad for bnfags?

6 is the most consistent game, and the only one decent for PvP but its just way too easy and streamlined for me to call it the best. In the very first dungeon you get BlackBomb F and FireBurn F and that combo can carry you through the entire story and half the postgame too. The Undernet is also a lot smaller than previous games and you never truly feel like you are in a dangerous area. It's especially noticable coming off of BN5, which if you are counting the postgame I would say is the most difficult BN game.

I want to love 6 but it just has too many edges sanded off. The story is much more progressively telegraphed as well, with every scenario being attached to a different town that are all organized in a hub shape. Plus they don't even explain why Wily is evil again when he was cooperating with the heroes at the end of 5.

The story in MMBN's always been trash and I just learned not to care. Mega Man's writers have never been all that good at writing, and MMBN suffers the most from it because it has a LOT of writing.

It's especially annoying because these characters all have zero fucking charisma. Lan has never said a single thing worth saying in six fucking games. MegaMan barely has a personality.

In the very first dungeon you get BlackBomb F and FireBurn F

no you can't
earliest blackbomb is in the Green HP PMD which is the beginning of the judgeman scenario
you can get M Cannon early in the Aquarium Comp if you farm the GMDs, but that's about it

5 best PvE

really? I found 6 to be better on that aspect.

I think it would be more fair to say 6 has the worst "Difficulty" rather then story. The story is fine the thing is that it absolutely SHOWERS you in Power in the Beast-Outs and Crosses with how heavly it favors the player, the Bosses have never been more of Punching Bags aside from arguaby LOLGATER. it is by a wide margin the "easiest" MMBN.

5 - best pve

i love s-code

3 is the best game all around.
2 and 6 are the next best.
5 is okay, 1 is okay if you play it before anything else but shit if you go back to it.
4 is really really bad, I would say almost worse than 1.

1 is rough in many ways, but if there is one neat thing about it, it's that the internet is mostly fully accessible early on, instead of being walled behind certain key items or story progression
It's fun to dig deep, encountering viruses that can oneshot you and random chips that will break the rest of the game in half

MMBN3 has so much grindy hidden shit that was designed around talking with other kids who were playing the game, and it's must more frustrating to play in 2025 when you aren't sure how much you should be trying to figure out yourself and how much you should be looking up online. I can't help but love it though. I still kind of fantasize about what the series could have been like if they had built off 3 instead of soft rebooting it.

4 IS BAD!

Uh hello?
Dark megaman is the coolest fucking megaman in the entire series.

All of you are adults so you don't get how hype edge characters are.
It's like getting filtered by shadow.

Evil megaman is the kino of the entire story. By far

This is exactly the impression I had when Legacy Collection launched and I replayed 1, it's much better than people give it credit for. It's the only game in the series that does not have pointless backtracking as part of the story as well. I really love how much freedom it gives you to push deep into the Internet as early as you want.

Press is indeed absolute garbage but 3's Undernet was absolutely fucking kino, there's no way you can in good conscience say it has the worst map in the series with that IMO.

Play 1 anyways fuck the haters. Skip 4. 4 and 6 aren't as good but fun

Dark Chips were neat conceptually but having to play the game three times just killed 4. Absolutely atrocious.

Dark MegaMan is sold to you as this super powerful temptation but in reality Light MegaMan getting free Full Synchro with AirHocky blows his damage out of the water. The Karma system was always poorly implemented in these games because Light MegaMan is straight up stronger and has more tools, and doesn't require permanently gimping your HP

I fucking hated how they added black lines to the sprites. It used to look as good as BoF4

Losing one max hp when using a dark chip absolutely MURDERED my autism; I could not handle it. Autism made me straight edge.

Who cares about Dark Megaman when you have to play through the games three times doing the same scenarios with two and then one change on the next two playthroughs, you can lock yourself out of chips outside of gambling if you don't make absolutely sure to farm for everything each playthrough, you can permanently softlock yourself with WoodMan if I remember right, and it has a huge plethora of endgame chips that are 100% useless in Dark Chips.

I've developed an intense resentment towards MMBN3's map due to having to repeatedly go to Tamako's PC, Seaside Area and Hades just to reach the Undernet. Over and over and over and over and over and over.

Also, MMBN3 easily has the most unpleasant looking map. Seaside Area especially is an eyesore. Every area except Hades and Undernet looks identical, except each has a worse color pallet than the last.

Just play 1 with the Buster Max feature in the Collection, turn it off for bosses
Have maps open of the Internet because it’s a schizo tier maze where exit 1 connects to entrance 14 and so on
The bosses in 1 (and every game) are generally the best parts, and 1 has a cool story that sets the stage for the rest of the series, but the maze-like map “design” and constant random battles make the first game a fucking slog
It doesn’t do anything interesting or unique, and everything is expanded upon in sequels

Doesn't matter because dark megaman turns the stage into swamp and is way cooler in aesthetics
Stop trying to fucking minmax a game for children and enjoy the hype

I like Shadow the EDGEhog and I still own his game but Dark Mega is a washout. Beast Over is a more fun berserk mode, and Chaos Unisons were a good if rarely used compromise that also should have come back after 5. A lot of power on some of them, but you have to be good (or pause buffer) to use it.

Or just don't play 1 and play the remaster/remake of it. I seriously don't understand why everyone acts like the GBA version is relevant anymore. It hasn't been for like a decade at this point and even if you're playing the collection you should just emulate OSS.

What's wrong with her?

OSS fixes none of the things that are actually issues in BN1 though.

Huge feet.

3 or 6 are the best by far

I dunno man I think the Koto Area is more visually ugly than any 3 map, even if you don't spend a lot of time there
The only real problem I had with 3 was that after beating Alpha the net stayed shit colored. That is a genuine flaw that I cannot defend

It lets you run now, you have less encounters, it makes puzzles less tedious, it adds wildcards, it adds way better rewards in the mystery data, it reworks enemies, it buffs drop rates, gives better code distributions, reworks card damage, and more. Yes, it doesn't change the map design (I can't remember if it had the map on the bottom screen to make it easier) but so much of the game was overhauled to make it a better experience overall.

Barriers of entry, being DS emulation, and translation patch. BN1 GBA is probably more accessible, and that's where people would gravitate, despite OSS being a vast improvement.
Path of Least Resistance, basically.

I’m gay so I can’t play this

Honestly you reminded me how how most BN villains are actually pretty murderous, i tend to forget that in the bigger picture.

Do you guys think the collection sales were enough to tempt Capcom into reviving the spin-off?

lol

Sales were great, but Capcom is currently in a 'DOOD RE ENGINE AAAA BLOCKBUSTER' mindset, and they're going full retard. It will be some time, before they come to their senses.

Nipponese honor dictates that there cannot be an earnest MegaMan project while Inafune still draws breath

it's fucking insane to me just how fucking amazing battle networks combat is and people that try to make spiritual successors of it don't fucking understand that it being real time with rounds is the entire fucking point.

This is an American+European according to Battle Network

youtube.com/watch?v=2_xe4yuR9gA

i wish i knew who serenade was. she(?) shows up for like 10 seconds and that's it.

Mamoru's navi

Serenade was supposed to show up in BN6 but they ran out of cartridge space.

You know I just realized that BN2-3 all have 3 postgame bosses + Bass, but 4-6 have Bass as the only new postgame boss.

Eguchi already basically said "It would suck if we just did it", so Capcom would have to actually push for it. Which they won't.

Eguchi: Hmmm… EXE was a thing because it was of an era where the network hadn’t matured yet. I think that’s a big reason of its success. We depicted things as “it’d be good if this ended up happening” or “this will happen sooner than you think”, but most of it has already become a reality or reality has overcome our expectations.

Hashinaga: We couldn’t expect the Wi-Fi to fly (laughs). We did everything with wires back then, after all.

Eguchi: I think it’s going to be harder to fit the upcoming times in the packaging of games. I think there’s no longer a shared view of the future. Back on the days of the “BBS”, we all gathered in a single place and had fun together but now it’s the days of the “SNS”. You could say that “society” was the main subject but we’re shifting into an age where the “individual” is the main subject. The future each of them visualize is different from the others. It’s a very hard problem to be able to summarize or compile that in the world of a game.

Tsuchiya: Each series has its own fans, and I’ve heard a lot of voices asking for sequels. There’s no rule that says “we’re not going to make any sequels of this game”. However, were are proud of Rockman EXE being top contents back in the day, and shallow ideas aren’t the answer to the avid voices. To make a sequel, we’d need careful ideas and preparations, the trends of the age, and whether the market is ripe for it… We need all of these factors to be perfectly on our side.

Eguchi: There are some parts that were due to coincidences, but since we’re being told that “you predicted the future”, these games did satisfy expectations. Overcoming those components is no easy task. We must overcome our imagination as we meet up with the expectations. If conditions for us to be so confident happen, then there might be a chance.

Pokemon Black has a White legendary

Pokemon White has a Black legendary

I don't trust nu-Capcom to do a good job with BN7 anyway.

I'm just hoping we get Legends Legacy Collection

Makes more sense when you realize that in Japan White version was just EXE3 Regular version (the menu is blue because MegaMan is blue) and Blue version was EXE3 BLACK, a greedy moneygrubbing "pro" version that game later (the menu is gray because gray is a shade of black)

One step from eden mogs this slop play an actual skill based game using the superior system.

it misses the entire point of the combat

Even based on their outlook on the current world I can still see them using the internet in a different way. SF used Wave Roads to basically be radio waves and other nondescript waves connecting places together so why not make it so major websites are all connected and you visit the major ones via the series of tubes that are the roads in both BN and SF? So have the [Social Media] (X formerly known as Twitter) area, the [Shopping] (Amazon) area, the [Forum] (Generic forums but could be Reddit I guess) area, etc. You'd still have your home PC's area where you receive e-mails and your Net Navis accept them, you'd still have BBS areas (To represent smaller forums), you'd still have areas connecting to the bigger locations (To represent your friends or other people connecting to the big areas), etc.

It could easily be used to criticize just how overly connected and dependent people are on certain things if they really wanted a serious message out of it. I don't think they should do BN7 though. SF technology was already basically our current technology to a degree so why not follow through with the SF4 plan or rework it so you get rid of the outlaw stuff? Have the major villains be some new group of back door hackers that use Net Navis to break the newer encryption methods of the internet and it's harder to track them because of it so that they can bring Lan's descendant into the mix, and then use the story to discuss e-waste, older technology finding new use in today's world (Vinyls for example), and how newer isn't always better.

Turn based trannies seething they weren't blessed with the motor skills to play the superior game. Sad!

low quality bait, don't fall for it.

You just mentioned a literal tranny game and call us trannies?

I like OSFE but it's literally nothing like BN if you have eyes and a brain

battle network is not turn based

not turn based

constantly pauses while you pick your moveset

What would you call this

do you think fighting games are turnbased because they have rounds? you fucking retard?

Turn based Lite

answers the question with a question.

I'm not surprised battle kekwork l players are this retarded

You'll get it after Star Force Legacy Collection.

can't extend his logic to see if it's consistent

genuinely low iq

he's dark and evil

hold on one second...

dark mega in bn4 fucks solely because of poisonpharoah/aura spam and you don't even need to sweat as hard as you have to for the bn5 dark AI bullshit

funny thing is that they nerfed darkmega spamming darkchips/PAs in the LC, but people still figured out that you could just make it spam knuckles, jealousy, or giving your opponent a shitty dark AI that replaces their trap with a shitty antiwood, spam colorpoint and rock cubes or guardians while shooting the guardians

4 is unironically better than 5

it had like the top 3 sales of all BN games but capcom will be like "one mirrion sareru? megaman fans do not rike game. no more megaman geimu for twenty year."

Trivializing the enemy encounter on replay with stuff like Gutsman, boomer, copydmg, timebomb, circgun, etc definitely makes the game feels different than alphabet soup folders as a kid.

game feels different than alphabet soup folders as a kid.

You will pry my BigWave J from my COLD DEAD HANDS.

anti-synergy with itself

SF1 and SF3
BN 1-6 and SF2 are skippable

2 is allegedly brought down by the Freezeman.EXE scenario.

Don't fall for the post-game meme in any of the games, especially by BN3fags. They all suck. If you feel absolutely compelled to try, just use a cheat to get all the battle chips. You will be spending much more time than the base game in its entirety to grind out the chip library and other boring shit to fight the 1 or 2 interesting superbosses.

It's insane that this shitty design made it all the way to SF3

Having to depend on counters and white capsule is NOT good combo gameplay.

isoteric trvthnvke: sfdx's pegasus form has the best combo gameplay out of all these games

3 > 2 > 6 > 5 > 1 > 4

MMBN's internet sucks.

Real world

Want to buy something online

Just go to an online storefront and buy it

Transaction complete

Takes less than two minutes

MMBN

Want to buy something online

Have to have your Navi run all the fucking way to the Netsquare or whatever

Find the specific merchant that's selling the shit you want

4 also had a really low effort translation and marked the artstyle shift so it just had a lot of unfortunate circumstances. I think you could have turned a lot of the tournament scenarios into side quests while having a more fleshed out main quest fighting the main navis. And like the other anon said just artificially kneecapping the decks.

More people should play the phone games. As jank as they are the combat is still solid.

But how do I do this

I always thought it was cool in 5 that you could get reap all the benefits of Dark Megaman without the deficits, but only for three turns. Usually ended up working out anyways.
Downside is you have to play 5. I had it as a kid and even I can't defend it.

Amazing that they never made a MMBN gacha.

Download the dumped games and jank emulator.
rockman-corner.com/2024/02/rockman-dash-great-adventure-on-5.html

Download the TREZ English patch and use some program to magnify the emulator (OBS works).
rockman-corner.com/2024/05/mega-man-phantom-of-network-and-legend.html

skip 1, 4, and 5
You can play Operate Shooting Star which is a port of BN1 for the DS which has extra QoL features like an bottom screen map for internet areas and being able to run from battles which required you needing Escape Chips in the original.

i remember reading somewhere that lorewise Lan isn't controlling MegaMan in anyway outside of sending chips and that netnavis basically move way faster than it's portrayed in the games so in reality he's not waiting 50 years for MegaMan to get to a certain page he's pretty much there instantly if we go by this, it's almost the same amount of time it would take in real world outside of a virus battle jumpscare

5 is such a strange game because I absolutely love the idea of Liberation Missions and freeing the net with a team of operators but then I actually play it and it's the most boring shit in the world

Liberation missions are incredibly kino though, if you get into them. They can be tedious barriers at some points

Light MegaMan

Is that GunDelSol MegaMan or something else?

The thing is that it can't be that fast otherwise sending chips would basically be unviable for a human to react to. The fight with anything would be over before you could even blink, unless viruses for some reason slow down time to a crawl. With Geo and Omega-Xis it makes sense for it to be fairly fast since he's turned into the equivalent of lightspeed travel.

all the Star Force content is locked to the end of the game

Terrible fucking decision

2 or 3B for me
6 is a close second
You can skip 1 but I think the big twin loredump is there

Just the karma system, so no dark chips. In BN4 hitting an enemy a bunch of times randomly gave a full synchro so stuff like airhoc were more abusable.

This. Nobody could've cared about needing multiple playthroughs if one of the biggest reasons for it being there (getting to see the various tournament scenarios) had been written well instead of being shitty one-offs with half of them starring literal whos. No, I don't give a shit about muh cool dude or muh DEADLY FOOTBALL or the goddamn video tranny.
Them being completely irrelevant to the actual plot, which barely exists as it is, only makes them even worse. The only ones I can remember having SOME connection are Protoman and Searchman's, but even those are just generic "Nebula is doing shit, have an excuse to go to the Undernet".
Even if the gameplay is good and the music is solid, 4 is a prime example of the story being so fucking awful it undermines everything else, and that's considering BN doesn't have the strongest narrative to begin with.

Watch the anime

i remember reading somewhere that lorewise Lan isn't controlling MegaMan in anyway outside of sending chips

You are correct, and the dialogue in each game implies this as well. In 4.5 Real Operation battles are played how they're described in lore, and the Battle Chip Gates do the same for 4, 5, and 6.

Got the collection recently and man I must’ve had much more patience when I was a kid. The scenarios in 6 for example just feel nonsensical. The combat system was just as good as I remembered though.

played 4-6 when I was a kid

never beat 5 tho since Liberation Missions filtered me (but I feel they kinda suck)

Beat 4 (Blue Moon) and 6 (both)

Get 3 Blue used at a FUCKING GAMESTOP

it has a save file with all 7 stars and Shadow Aqua style

never delete the save

now buy the collection

not sure how I should play

I assume I could do 1, 2, 3 Blue, but then for 4-6, which versions? I guess Blue Moon, Team Protoman (I always thought Protoman was cooler than Colonel), and then Falzar?

You just pick the version that has the cooler souls/crosses.

What's the best Battle Network game?

All of them

Which ones are skippable?

None of them

Shame cuz I like the crosses in both versions of 6. But Blue Moon and Protoman just have objectively better Souls.

He didn't skip Wonderswan

FUCK I meant to respond to

The wonderswan game is cute, it's like a mini-NT. Unless you meant the one that's just a worse BCC, then yeah fuck that.

A reminder we we never EVER get a game that has us play through the Alpha Revolt, it's like the Elf Wars, to dark to be made.

Got a question about a glitch in 6. I just got to the Underground, and whenever the Heady viruses start to attack, their heads completely disappear and their HP values start crossing the screen at extreme speeds. Even with Gregar's machine gun, I can barely land any hits. I've seen a GameFAQs post mentioning it years back, and another one on reddit showing the same thing happening on Legacy Collection. Is there a way to fix this? I'm playing on the translated version of Gregar right now, but I remember playing this exact same version several times and I never had this problem.

Overall, it's 2 because it was released after 9/11 with a plane hijacking scenario where you foil 2 suicide attempts and do pic related. But for real,

best maps

best scenarios

best character and boss design

most secrets

The fact Sean and Lan didn't get radiation poisoning from the amount of radiation they were exposed too is almost as baffling as the WWW operators in 3 not being brain dead after they transplanted their brains to the net and synced with their navis, which promptly got deleted.

they faurkin' TANKED that
bn humans built different

I love battle network

Their criminal justice system sucks too.
Like how Mr. Match was allowed to enter the tournament in 4 after his terrorist attack on scilab in 3 nearly killed Lan's dad and some other scientist.
Only to find out his plan was to bomb the tournament but he got cold feet because of pussy at the last minute.
The fact Lan didn't try to get him arrested on sight and then let him go.

I've said it once and I've said it again, if Gospel were a real organization, a lot of old Anon Babble (pre-2006) would have joined it.
Also how many people did Sean murder. He had Arashi blown up and 2 nameless Gospel agents killed.

Airman operator survived a suitcase bomb (BCC)
Beastman operator survived 'deletion' from Wily (BCC)
Princess Pride is a returning character
Shadowman's operator was an antagonist in NT, and BN2, but he ended up working joining the crew in 5
Navis getting deleted, and returning frequently.

Probably a lot more.

1 would be fine if it wasn't for the encounter rate. Did Operation Shooting Star ever fix that?

Megaman.exe.exe

Kek

Just finished 2 yesterday after not playing it in 2 decades. It still holds up. Gospel is a formidable foe, I feel some things hit a bit different and you can appreciate them differently when grown up, like the subtle romance between Mayl and Lan, and how cherished Lan's dad is by everyone in spite of being kinda abscent and a workaholic, he still is a good man deep down inside.

Well to answer your question OP, I'd say the best one is 4 imo, while the 3 replays is tiring I feel the scenarios do a fair enough job to switch it up, even if you do all 3 replays chances are you still don't experience all scenarios. Music is great, and most importantly, the gameplay second best (falling behind 6), however I appreciate the music, story and gameplay and just nostalgia which makes it better than 6 IMO. From best to worst.
4>6>3>5>2>1 (in spite of that 1 holds up still just have the internet map close by)

BBC

Is that even canon?

Princess Pride

Probably got away with the fact it was attempted murder and diplomatic immunity

Shadowman's operator

Mercenary who worked for whoever hired him.

Navis getting deleted, and returning frequently.

Backup data

Doesn't explain how Match wasn't a wanted man or who Lan forgave him.

Anon............. You've got to be extremely careful