Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection Review: Worth Revisiting?

I’m never against a group of games being rereleased or included in a collection. Keeping games available to future generations is always important, and it’s great to see Capcom bringing back one of the longest-running Mega Man spinoff series for a new generation. After revisiting the series for the first time in nearly twenty years with the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection though, I wish the series was still as strong today as it was in my head before playing it.

Back in the early aughts, when these games originally started releasing, the Battle Network games were actually my favorite Mega Man series. Despite never being a huge fan of the Blue Bomber’s various platforming efforts, I loved this very different take on the character where elements of his traditional gameplay were mixed into a card-based (or chip-based if we’re being technical) RPG. I found it to be a match made in heaven, with a variety of RPG elements mixed with a unique battle system and collectible aspects. Parts of that still work too, but other parts simply don’t fare as well for me in 2023.

A Brave New World

All six of these games, or ten if you’re counting the slightly different versions the later installments started releasing to really milk the players, star Lan Hikari. He’s the young son of a net researcher who is helping lead the way to the future. You see, the internet has really evolved over time, with everyone carrying around a device known as a PET. These PETs allow you to connect to the internet and interface with it using AI programs known as NetNavis. Lan’s NetNavi is MegaMan.EXE, who you control when in the virtual world.

With the world going virtual, there are lots of terrorist organizations looking to take over, and most of these titles put Lan and MegaMan.EXE in their path as seemingly the only ones capable of stopping them. So the two have to battle these threats and save the world. Why an eleven-year-old is the most capable of doing this never really makes a lot of sense, but the world of the Battle Network series is fun, and I do like that Lan’s group of friends and supporters are interesting and often play against stereotypes. A character who seems like he’s going to be a bully and antagonist, for example, quickly becomes a friend and strong supporter, which is awesome to see.

After playing all six of these games in a very short time, though, it becomes quite clear that very little actually happens in most of them. There isn’t much in the way of character development or progression. Almost all of these games try to reset things to the status quo so they can simply tell the same story yet again. It makes it hard to actually invest in what’s happening, and few of the antagonists are ever exciting or memorable.

Infection!

While the stories don’t evolve much, the gameplay does as the series progresses. The first Mega Man Battle Network has some fun to offer, but combat is incredibly simple. You can’t even run from battle without a special chip. The ways you can combine your collected chips and set them up for battle get more complex over time, with the second game making many significant changes that mostly stick throughout the series. Even navigating the virtual world is a chore in the first game, while by the second, things are a lot easier to follow with far superior level design. Even late in the series, I found few of the areas I had to explore particularly memorable, but they weren’t actively frustrating nearly as often, so that was a win.

Combat is where the series shines at its best, with you being able to set up your list of chips that you’ll use in battle. Of course, Mega Man always has his trusty blaster, but by default, that doesn’t do much damage, so you’ll need to use chips to take down the various virus enemies you find while exploring. It all plays out in an 18-square grid split evenly between you and the viruses. Various moves allow you to manipulate this and attack, but the core of that battle system is consistent across the series and actually mostly works well even in the first game, even if I very much appreciated some of the advances made throughout these six titles.

What becomes apparent when playing these games in such short progression, though, is that despite the gameplay evolving over time, they’re all incredibly similar, which makes the idea of a huge collection full of them less appealing, at least as something one is going to binge. I could see someone in love with this series wanting to visit a new one every year or two, but it’s hard to see too many players finishing one of these games and wanting to dive immediately into the next. There’s some evolution, but not enough to really make them stand out from each other in the way I’d like them to. The best collections feature a variety of different takes on something so that you can get some real variety. Unless you know them really well, though, you’d be hard-pressed to know which one you’re looking at by watching a minute of footage. At best, you might be able to pick out which half of the series you were in based on a change in art direction midway through the series, which I don’t think is for the better.

What’s New?

As a collection, the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection has strengths, though, even if I would have liked to see a few more options. I love that Capcom took the time to fully implement online play both for battling and trading chips, something which really does help this collection stand out from just replaying the original versions again. There are enough fans of the series that I can see a great community popping up around them.

Outside of that, though, the collection feels a bit bare-bones. There’s the standard art gallery and music gallery, but nothing to really give players a sense of the series’ history or how it came to be, which would have been cool to see. There are no save states of any sort, though the series is pretty lenient about when you can save, so that’s not a deal breaker. A fast-forward option, though, would have been hugely useful, especially when running through some of the series’ generic digital areas and getting into another fight every few seconds. The closest thing to a gameplay tweak is the Buster MAX Mode which allows you to make your standard buster do one hundred times its normal damage. This basically allows you to not even need to worry about chips in battle; think of it as a very, very easy mode. It can be useful if you just want to run through random battles, but it basically allows you to not play the game. I would have preferred tweaks to strengthen the game’s core as opposed to ones to avoid it.

Conclusion

There are a ton of games in the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection, but because the six titles have so little to differentiate them from each other, it’s hard to see anyone but the most hardcore of fans wanting to run through the entire series. I enjoyed revisiting these games from my youth but came away ready to leave them in the past. For those who just want to dip their toes in, Capcom has provided the option to purchase only the first or second half of the series separately instead of buying the entire larger collection. While it’s not quite as good of a deal on a per-game basis, for those who just want a quick nostalgia hit, that may be the way to go.

Final Verdict: 3/5

Available on: Switch (Reviewed), PS4, PC; Publisher: Capcom; Developer: Capcom; Players: 1; Released: April 14th, 2023; ESRB: E10+ for Everyone 10+; MSRP: $59.99

Full disclosure: This review is based on a copy of the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection provided by the publisher.