Author: SuperNova
Date: 10/11/04
Rating: 2.5
Platform(s): Game Boy Advance
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Summary: A lame sequel with terrible gameplay elements that was just an attempt to capitalize on the success of the previous games.
Rabid Mega Man fans will defend this game despite its many shortcomings (my brother even said that it was better than game three), but even they can't ignore its faults. The game suffers from things such as a terrible plotline, lackluster weapons, random encounters with overpowered "ghost" bosses, tons of insipid minigames that are a part of the main plotline, and a new addition to the battle system that would be kind of cool if it wasn't for the fact that it causes a permanent hit point drop of 1 without a special item that isn't available to the North American market because they only give it away through promotional events (kind of like the times Nintendo had a Pokemon event and gave away ultra powerful Pokemon). The good things about this game are the same things that were good about the other three; the basic concept remains fun despite all the changes that have been made.
The plotline: This plot review assumes that the reader is already familiar with the storyline and terminology from the previous three games.
The world experiences a short-lived peace after game three, but something has to spoil it or they wouldn't have been able to make another sequel. This time, the problem is not man-made, it seems that an asteroid is going to take out the earth (sorry folks, originality is dead); this has no real significant bearing on the actual plot until about two thirds of the game is done. There is another new evil organization in this one, but their boss navis don't get much face time; instead, the majority of the storyline is replaced by three tournaments, the last one being the only one of any major significance as far as plotline goes, the others being plot devices. The tournament battles themselves have their own subplots, worthless busywork objectives that serve no purpose other than to delay the progression of the storyline in order to increase the time it takes to finish the game.
Gameplay: It's basically the same fighting system as the last three, with a few innovative (terrible) additions and removals.
The style change system introduced in game two is gone, replaced by "Soul Unison," a weaker enhancement system that only lasts three turns, can only be done when you have a chip of matching type appear on the custom screen, can't be used if dark chips are used, yields no special customization programs, and has an even worse limitation in that the unison souls can't be traded from one version of the game to the other; its only decent feature (other than the relative usefulness of some of the souls) is that more than one soul can be used per battle.
The other addition to the main game is the dark chips, powerful battle chips that appear in the selection window whenever you take a lot of damage. These chips are overly powerful, but come with penalties; the most devastating one being the fact that you lose one hit point per use; this wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't a permanent drop in HP. The constant use of these chips will also impose restrictions on what kind of battle chips you can use. A dark navi will (this is the only good part) be able to use chips aligned with darkness, such as the classic Anubis and Muramasa chips as well as dark versions of the navi summoning chips and a powerful barrier creating chip that regenerates; inversely, the navi will be restricted from using light aligned chips.
Many of the prerequisite missions for the tournament matches consisted of finding some random navi on the Net and getting something in order to play a minigame that must be completed before the match can start. A couple of these games employed a gauge that you had to watch and press the button when it reached a certain spot or whatever the target was would still remain unfazed. Some of the other games that I've managed to see (thanks to the fact that the opponents in each tournament are chosen at random, also a restriction on what navi summoning chips you get) are a soccer goalie game reminiscent of Mega Man Soccer, a game of tag, and a cooking game where you have to chop food before it falls into the pan.
Many of the chips from the previous games have once again been either removed or balanced (weakened) and most of the new chips are lame, except for the Gun Del Sol chip, based on the game Boktai (I'm still scratching my head over the fact that a company such as Capcom allowed references to a game made by a competitor). The chips used to summon other navis to attack are harder to get, the level two and three versions are gone, leaving only the basic ones, the high-powered versions (nearly impossible to get) and the new "dark" versions; the ghost versions of the enemy navis have been upgraded from level three to omega (a super-powerful version of the opponents introduced in game three) and can only be found in random battles in this game, removing the much more friendly system of talking to the operator of the navi for battles with non-evil navis.
Music: Same as the other games, nothing new to see.
Entertainment Value: Not much is new in this game.
Conclusion: Someone who is unfamiliar with this particular game series should buy one of the previous games instead of this one, as it isn't the most user friendly game; and someone who has played the other games should only buy this one if they want to see the plotline continue (or fall under the "rabid fan" category). The best part about this game was the cross-promotion for Boktai, convincing me to buy that game as well; it was a better game and was selling for $15.00 when I bought BN4.