Video Game, 2001
Even twenty years later, the Battle Network formula feels wholly original. It combines real-time battles with card collection and deck-building in a way that solves much of the repetitiveness of traditional role-playing games.
Despite the action elements, battles feel more like programmed-action optimization problemsespecially in the mid-game, when you’re powerful enough to delete viruses quickly but haven’t yet assembled the combos that trivialize enemy encounters. Given five randomly selected battle chips, your task is to plan out the most efficient way to delete this combination of viruses while taking minimal damage.
My favorite feeling in any Battle Network game is acquiring a new battle chip and dropping it in a folder to test it out. The massive assortment of battle chips, all differing in meaningful ways, is the foundation for an elegant incremental upgrade system. Every battle is engaging because the chip you receive if you perform well is a reward which makes defeating the next group of enemies easier in a more interesting way than purely tweaking stats or damage numbers. The chip code system further extends the shelf-life of virus battles by even making lettered variants of a single chip feel like distinct upgrades, since each one you collect makes that code a more appealing option at the folder creation stage.
The result is that my replay of this game surprisingly never grew tedious despite frequent random encounters, fetch quests, and backtrackingThe Freezeman scenario where you’re forced to trek back and forth across across ice-infested versions of areas you’ve already explored is a particularly egregious case of padding. because I was still invested in the battles on the way as opportunities to experiment with different folders and collect chips I missed on earlier passes.
There’s a point in this game where nearly the entirety of the Undernet (through Undernet 7) becomes accessible all at once, resulting – if you choose – in a delightful stretch of continuous discovery, where nearly every encounter includes a new virus, every victory earns you a new battle chip.
I feel that Battle Network 2 has a few too many bosses with restricted movementThunderMan, SnakeMan, MagnetMan, and PharaohMan stay in the back column. KnightMan, FreezeMan, and PlanetMan are mostly stationary., which can be a bit frustrating during the first encounter if you have a lot of close-range chips, and often makes the methods to defeat them less dynamic.
On the other hand, the NapalmMan fight takes advantage of all the elements that make the battle system fun. He moves quickly and randomly, and the cannons that appear on the battlefield deflect attacks, so your reaction time becomes critical. The fight also demands fast footwork, as you have to simultaneously avoid the flashing panels where his bombs will fall, the lingering fire on the panel where his bombs have already fallen, and the rows where the cannons are currently firing. Meanwhile, if you’re not carefully planning your movements around the panels that the bombs have cracked, you can get locked into a single square where you’ll be at the mercy of his future attacks.