Great Improvement over the first game, by a large margin, but the end game narrative pay off feels severely lacking

Battle Network 2 is a substantial improvement over the first game. Challenging, more collectible Battle Chips, tougher bosses, and Mega Man having access to new styles adds more depth to the combat. If you don't have access to the original GBA game, then the Battle Network Collection will hook you up with this classic.

Mega Man Battle Network 2 is an upgrade in every way to the format; raising up combat, challenge, and stakes. MMBN2 is the natural progression the series needed, and one that fixes a number of problems in the first game. While I don’t think Battle Network 2 is a vast improvement, it’s a nice addition to the series, and one I was fine playing.While I didn’t have many quarrels with the first game, the fact this game helped deck building by introducing 2 new elements was a pleasant surprise. By giving the player the permanent add function, cycling through unwanted chips really helps go through your deck faster compared to the first. As well, the game added * chips that basically function as wild cards, and are able to be added to any single lettered chips. While these two functions seem mild, it really helps in smaller ways when you have too many chips that aren’t good for an individual fight, and you don’t want to keep changing your deck when you roam around. Due to this, a lot of fights don’t end up being longer than they should if you met a hard team of enemies or a boss you weren’t fully prepared ****, oh boy, will you met some hard enemy teams and bosses along the way. Along with the improved deck management, everything out to get you, is extra mad in this game, and they don’t pull any punches. Seriously, if it wasn’t for the fact that they introduced sub ships to the system to make exploration far easier, I would have complaining about the difficulty spikes far more. And while true, there is difficulty spikes, the majority of the difficulty doesn’t come from enemies being outright hard, but due to the fact they require certain chips to beat. I don’t know why this game liked giving enemies plenty of invincibility periods or limited ways to approach them, but the further and further you go into this game, the more enemy teams you meet that just require you have certain things in your deck or even worse, make you wait to hurt them. Perhaps the worse enemies in this entire game are the ones that you get a limited time to hurt, and by making the fight drag on longer than it should just became even more aggravating when you’re trying to explore a given area, and you lose your barrings because the fight took too long.I don’t think Mega Man Battle Network 2 has a story that really beats the first one, but it does indeed up the stakes. From stopping planes from crashing, to castle traps, and everything in-between, this game is surprisingly dark for a target audience of kids. Still, despite it’s more grim nature, the game still remains as bright and colorful as ever, with many new designs being anywhere from cute to downright badass. Legit, Battle Network 2 delivers on updating and making new models of character and robot masters. Is it enough to put it over the end of the first game though? Hard to say really, while Battle Network 2 is very much an upgrade of the first on, but I just think more fondly of the story and gameplay of the first.