I think the reason why some say the navi character designs here feel too OCish is because it deviates from the robotic design themes more than the official navi designs I saw or read somewhere long ago that the official character artists' navi designs avoided using hair and cloth as a rule (and are given only to select few characters like Colonel's cape, Proto Man's hair, Bass' cloak to show that these navis are a cut above the rest) and instead made the organic bits inorganic like Roll's blocky "hair", Glyde's "wings", King Man's "robe", etc. If there's ever a chance they'll redesign their navis I wish they keep this in mind. Otherwise, I'm always happy to see anyone cooking up BN fan projects
Yeah the official art book goes over those very rules you mentioned. It's a good read. I think the book even points out that Protoman doesn't actually have hair, and that it's basically just a solid clump of mass that looks like hair. As for the navi designs in Chrono X, most of them are fine and can be neatly slotted into the other games. EXCEPT Riffman. As you said, he breaks a lot of the rules and looks way too human.
@@DoritoGOD2811 Yeah Riff Man, Ghost Man, Dark Mega, and Zeta comes to mind when I wrote this comment, though maybe the latter two were purposefully breaking convention. Also, Cactus Man's clothing could be more navified but that's probably more of a personal opinion
@@DoritoGOD2811You can't create content yourself. You take advantage of Marvel. Your brain is disabled. Your father is disabled. Your father is mentally ill, and dogs are more valuable than your father. Your father is a giant wild boar. Your father is a pig weighing a thousand tons. Your father is the world's heavy garbage. I won't come in and read your reply. You can't counter me. I won't see your messages. I log out Id and turn off notifications. Yeeee ez
@@DoritoGOD2811Worthless junk channels, your channels are of no quality. Your father is dirty, giant, fat nerd. Your mother has an underdeveloped brain. Your mother can't teach you. You have a humble family, a social scumbag. I won't come in and read your reply. You can't counter me. I won't see your messages. I log out Id and turn off notifications.
11:00 I always thought that Plantman would have been a great wood soul/cross for mega seeing as the operator of plantman had good intentions for the environment and Plantman didn't seem completely evil just following his operators orders also the Hospital scenario in BN3 was one of the most memorable moments of the series imo. Also Plantman his probably one of the coolest redesign of the original robot masters. Last point just a personal one Megaman 6 is my favorite of the original series so I love seeing all those guys as Navis lol
What if the reason Dark Megaman is using a scarf is because he could be re-created using some residual data from the Bass cross fusion and the scarf was a attempt to recreate the cloak since they had the same collor.....
I did really like the character writing for this demo a whole lot. One thing that I appreciated about it is how Megaman and Lan actually have genuinely funny and meaningful interaction instead of the usual "I can't lose you megaman/lan, your my best friend" thing that the official games just sort of gave them, they had their moments in those games but ultimately you only really got some surface level look into their relationship. Gotta admit though, i'm not really big on this game as much as most people are, I vastly preferred Shanghai.Exe since it felt like it was doing more to bring new things to the table along with some QoL features and mechanics that I had been wanting from the series for a while (add functionality came back, the talk button works to give you hints on requests, the transformations are the best of both styles and crosses, etc.). Of course, i'm willing to give Chrono X the benefit of a doubt since unlike Shanghai, this demo is still very early days, whereas Shanghai was much farther along and is now pretty much complete except for some of the post game stuff from what i've heard.
It may actually be over a decade at this point. I always think it got cancelled and forget about it for a few years, and then a new version comes out that made a little more progress lol
You also have to keep in mind the X Program is in MegaMan now, which means he's gonna essentially get the Style Change-esque version of Beast Out/Beast Cross.
I've informed KNIJohn, and now I shall inform thou. NAXA is not as silly a name as you might expect. The Japan Program is called JAXA, but NAXA in Battle Network is a station located in Netopia (aka Ameroupe in Japan, where NAXA is named ANSA).
i havent played this yet and honestly i appreciate this review of it. i've been waiting for 5.1 to play after watching this it does look really fun i just hope the devs take a look at your video as most of your critiques seems pretty reasonable the oc thing did seem like they could be off putting to me.
on the "it feels like two specific characters getting replaced with OCs" I actually understand the protoman replacement, but the dex one doesn't make sense. It makes sense for Chaud and Protoman to actually not be available, but Dex is literally fightable. I feel the Dex replacement only exists to justify an OC being friends with a personality like Dex.
My brother in net battling, the author decided the story. Chaud would be in if the story had been written differently. Idk if he left Chaud out specifically to include his OC, or if Chaud was left out for other reasons and this OC was added at a point when the devs didn’t want to change the story, but it’s not like this is a live action project and an actor was unavailable so they had to be replaced (think Morpheus in Matrix 4) Granted, I haven’t played the game yet. Maybe the character is well written and this is an over reaction
@@UncalibratedAimbot The reason I'm okay with this is pragmatic. It isn't as easy as just writing Chaud in. He has to actually JUSTIFY it. Chaud is in college classes overseas as well as him intending to eventually go into a international offical branch. He'd need a reason to even be there, not even as part of the story. Protoman appearing can work easily, we're talking internet after all. But Chaud himself is really hard to just justify. Hence why I'm okay with a Chaud replacement.
Great video! Definitely wanna play this when it's finished. Also agreed that there are some huge design oversights in the mechanics of the memento system based on what you described. Quickman just existing outside the weakness circle with no wood type form is a super bizarre choice, but the biggest thing that irks me is the Navicust color restriction. Did the devs not play Battle Network 3? Literally the only thing people dislike about that entry is needing to rearrange the Navicust every time you need to equip the Compress program in the overworld. If mementos are supposed to be convenient to switch between outside of battle, then restricting their usable Navicust colors is basically an even worse version of what BN3 did with Compress. If they change literally nothing else about mementos, I hope it's removing the color restriction. That design decision alone is bafflingly amateurish compared to the rest of the project's quality.
Yeah I agree on the color restriction. Maybe if the game implemented more modern elements like alternate loadouts for the navi cust, so that you could have a loadout for every memento, then it would be fine. But as it is now, adding in more mementos will only make it more of a headache to switch between them. Everything else in the game feels like a sequel to BN6, but since the memento system is seemingly based off of style change it feels like something you'd see in an alternate timeline version of BN4. Like you said, it feels out of place.
Actually there’s an explanation for this. As you know, Bass and Megaman are arch rivals and Bass has in fact revived multiple times throughout the series. So it’s not strange for Dark Mega, much less other Navis from previous games to revive if they’re deleted due to the Undernet even though he’s pretty much an extra boss after BN2-3. Wandering the undernet cautiously and exploiting Bass’s final defeat in BN6. It’s already hinted repeatedly Megaman’s darkness will never go away and will always revive… so that explains where Dark Mega went in BN6? The Memoir system is absolutely terrible though. The cross system seems to be designed for everyone, not unique to Megaman- therefore weaker netnavis can borrow this power. It feels more like you’re converting Megaman into another netnavi here instead of letting him gain powers of his strongest opponents/repeated opponents (Cyberbeasts, Dark Mega, Bass, Protoman, Gutsman, Heelnavi, Shademan, Mettool) Also holy hell, Megaman feels so weak here it’s ridiculous. The guy who went to defeat multiple world ending disasters is getting 1-2 shotted by some viruses. Have they evolved to become anti-Navi programs now or through injections from the antagonist group? If so, the Cyberworld‘s future looks grim.
I played the demo of this game way back in 2012 - I didn't get very far. Hopefully they finish it soon! It has been over a decade!! Edit: You should play 2, it is absolutely incredible and allows you to have two styles at a time that you can actually TRADE (which makes the grind a lot more bearable than in 3 where it only let you have one to make room for trading programs). It has a great story, the areas are very well designed, the PAs are super powerful to the point of abusive but oh-so-satisfying. There's no Navi customizer but the PowerUP items make up for it in a way. My personal favorite of the Battle Network series.
When you went into the HeelNavi fights at 5:38, this isn't a new thing as the Japan exclusive 4.5 had these battles and even NormNavi fights in some of the tournaments as random opponents. I can understand you didn't know that though. Beyond that, this was a well put together video explaining this game as I normally don't look at stuff beyond hacks these days.
Yeah Heels and Standard Navis were enemies in 4, so this isn't new for the series. Pretty sure I said as much in the video. I haven't played 4.5 because it honestly didn't look very good.
@@DoritoGOD2811 It's something of a game that's for sure. I recommend only playing 4.5 if you use the Real Battle patch though as the game is very bad due to the AI being poor as you don't get to control the Navis. The patch solved this by giving control back or the player plus they made grinding chips a lot easier. It still has the core issue of everything being tied to the real time clock and that's my #1 complaint on that as most days you won't get much done.
@@Toxin-56 I actually did that toward the end of my playthrough as I was tired of waiting for the weekend tournaments to come up to advance the game plus I was aiming to collect all of the chips and needed to go to places at certain times to do the grinding of viruses and frags. The last few I got just by winning tournaments and I stopped playing after that as my goal was met and after 7 playthroughs, the game wore its welcome.
Man. I just want Battle Network with literally everything in it. Bring back style change as your base form and then double soul or cross as the secondary choice. Literally that’s all it needs. Maybe have the capacity to keep like 3 or 4 styles at any given time with a necessity to revert to normal style to farm a new one. I’d like to see double soul of literally every Navi ever and you select your favorites to add to your in combat selection. I do appreciate this game’s fresh take though. But I’m starving for a real all-in-one type Battle Network experience.
Yeah, I'm honestly surprised there's no fangame that just mashes both versions together. That way you just have all the forms and bosses. Though I think having every form from 2-6 in one game would be a bit much
@@DoritoGOD2811 Maybe i'm a little too late to the discussion, but the one fangame i played that feels the closest to use almost every BN mechanic and putting it into one game, has to be Shanghai.exe (The BN x Touhou one)....... It only lacks a true Double soul but apart from that, has the ADD function, a Style Change fused with Cross System which i like very much, and it's own version of the Navi Cust that's alright, and all with the typical BN3-6 mechanics like Full Synchro or obtaining bug frags every time you finish a virus with a counter.
A little nitpick I have in regards to the DarkMega design is that it goes against the design philosophy that the original character designers had when making net navis. They were not allowed to include cloth or fabric in any of the designs, with Bass being the sole exclusion to this. Perhaps the reasoning for DarkMega's scarf in this is that maybe he absorbed Bass' data or something? Would make sense, as it would seem Bass might have been completely deleted by the end of 6 (if he wasn't already deleted by the end of 3, that is).
@XIguy And I can't stand people who talk about it as an excuse that can't be used or people who don't understand Indie game development. Covid tore up numerous triple A studios ability to deliver games delaying some even up to 2 years. This is an indie project. The original team behind the game which started development prior to 2020, got torn apart. It was originally a larger team, and they lost important members of it crippling their ability to develop at the pace they were. This isn't some major AAA studio who can just replace a really good sound developer, programmer or story writer. It's a small group of dedicated fans who are choosing to create something on the side, NOT as their main source of income and have had issues with retaining staff that they need to be able to actually continue development. They also create a lot of original assets for the game instead of pulling created ones. Even many level design assets are original. Thats why they had about a year stretch or so where no story content was added and they focused on Quality of Life updates. They simply didn't have some crucial positions filled nor the time to cover for that missing role. If they don't have someone to fill an important role it slows development, it isn't laziness, it is common senae. Especially if it's a role that none of the others have much experience in. Also Covid continued into early-mid 2022 before most countries properly began opening up entirely. And even then many games by big studios were suffering setbacks in release because of Covid cited reasons as they suffered larger than expected development issues through it
Chrono X is pretty good but Shangai.EXE is just light years ahead, both in content and gameplay wise imo, although it lacks online netbattling. Looking forward to Chrono X next update.
I like the scarf because megaman has his weird mouth covering. It has a similar purpose to it and it makes him like a bandit with the old ragged scarf.
I love this fangame to death but if there's one complaint i have about it is how the combat feels. Now i don't know if it's an intentional change to increase the difficulty or just engine used not allowing the same fluidity as the original games but combat feels a little clunky in Chrono X. Like i don't know how to put it but it animations don't seem to be as fluid in the official games which makes it sometimes difficult to counter enemies. For example, countering basic mettaurs has been hard coded into my brain and i can do it pretty much with closed eyes but in Chrono X i keep failing because the animations just aren't flowing the same way they do in Official games. I also agree on the two new Lans' friends introduced. They just feel like they've been forced into the game just so there are new cool looking OCs there. Other than that it's a solid S rank game. Development has been going for ages now and i hope we'll get another Demo soon.
At 14:10 is your talking about the scarf and it actually reminds me of Bass.exe's design. I know Bass has more of a cloak, but the color is quite similar
Yeah it is similar to the scarf worn by Bass cross Megaman. Still, I don't think it makes much sense for Dark Megaman to be wearing it. Like, Bass got his cloak sometime after he turned evil. It's not a part of him. But Dark Mega in CX just popped out of the digital womb with his scarf???
The best mmbn fan game although not actually a game is open net battle as it is still mmbn but expands on it by allowing us all to experience our childhood dream of having a net Navi and visiting real life web addresses and meeting, talking and battling with real life people that sometimes even have their own custom made net navis.
I really liked the new navis back when I last played it. But some of the navis need more spritework and others feel... "fanfiction-y" and out of place. Still, all of the new navis were interesting. My favorite of them has to be Raven.exe and Crashman.exe even though the latter barely had any screen time. I wish we could've seen more of him.
Nice video! It's great to see this fangame get more coverage. By the way, have you tried Shanghai Genso Network? It's another extremely detailed fan game (the setting is entirely different though, and many characters are based off of Touhou characters), that is mechanically faithful while being in a different setting/universe.
Yeah, I’m going to second the recommendation. The “anime girl” aesthetic you’re thinking of is toned down and borderline non-existent, with a couple minor exceptions on one or two individual Navi designs. Most of the characters look like they could fit in with the official games. The difficulty is a bit higher than the actual series as well. I started a side quest and got into a boss fight against a NormNavi, and it started pulling out Program Advances to fight me. (Yeah, it’s a side quest, so it doesn’t necessarily have to follow the normal difficulty curve, but damn…) Plus, there’s a series of Virus bounty hunting missions that pull some neat tricks to trip you up and you’ll have to plan around.
I also follow this opinion. I tried Chrono X and cannot get into it. But I am in a second run of Shanghai.exe. The cute girl aesthetic is extremely toned down compared to other Touhou Fangame and the characters are actually interesting and legit has many funny moments. Also, some of the battlechips are amazing and the style system is a great mix of style, soul unison, and cross soul altogether. Lastly, the Navi design are great (I wished that Druidman is an official design). If you consider it a con, then the difficulty spike might be the problem (Those SP5 Navis make even Bass BS feels like a joke)
18:41 In BN3, one of the N1 contestants, Jennifer, introduced as "sexy" by Suniyama. When that happened and I saw that as a 10 year old, it made me uncomfortable too lol, no different here, you're right.
Hey man, I like you highlighting this game. I think you were a little over critical at times. I’m pretty sure they even got the original creators approval for this fan game and feels really close to a direct official sequel based on visual similarity. I think with their version of crosses they were trying to use navi’s that haven’t been used in any of the previous games soul or cross systems which only leaves certain ones available. And in my personal opinion I think games 2-4 had some of the best navis. There were a couple cool additions in 5 like Cosmoman and Colonol. I thought 6 had by far the worst navis. One is a literal train 🚂 🤦♂️ But that is just personal opinion based on aesthetic preference. Also I think they had started to run out of mega man characters to make navis from by 6 and the art style also drastically changed in that game (looking more stencil based than all the previous games). I’m personally glad they didn’t use navis from 6. I think they are trying to take the best parts from each game and of course making these decisions based on their own judgement which might be different than you or my preference. But hey, we still get a good quality (if incomplete) fan game to enjoy 🤷♂️
Yeah I can definitely agree that I came across as overly critical of this game. It's just easier to pick apart the things I don't like, so the negative part was a lot longer than the positive one. I still like this game a lot tho, and as you said it's pretty much the official sequel in my eyes as well. For the use of the different navis from past games, I agree that they're definitely using ones that haven't already been used as alt forms before. And like you said, this isn't a real problem, it's just a matter of personal preference. Like, I would have loved to have a form based off of Zero from Network Transmission, or Cloudman from 5, or a whole bunch of other stuff. But it's not my game.
I'm really hoping the OC characters who are clones of chaud and dex turn out to be double agents of sorts. having chaud and dex be villains just doesn't work, but lan's cool new friends can be.
Archer isn't an as out of place OC as you think. He's clearly supposed to be the ancestor of Geo Stelar from the Starforce games, which we know take place in the same world as BN 200 years later. We also find out in those games Geo's ancestor worked with Lan on his future research, so having an ancestor present in this story to bridge that gap makes sense.
That does nothing to refute my point about how he is derivative of Chaud/Protoman. Also, his father being a scientist working with Lan's dad was all the Starforce connection I felt was needed. Just mention that the guy has a kid on the way or something and that's enough.
So much of this comes across as "I wouldn't have made this choice". Your complains, while valid for you, don't really provide me with any useful information independent of personal preference.
The title of best fangame definitely belongs to Shanghai EXE, that game is on par with the best of the official Battle Network games, I'd say its even better than them on some aspects.
I'm cautious about that new funko game because it might turn out to be garbage despite it being developed by the founder of travellers' tails and an Ex employee doesn't matter who departs from the company Travellers will always stay strong no matter how much hate they get though to be quite frankly honest it's over blown mainly because people have been harassing the developer's at TT which is both ashame and very disrespectful towards them the employee's are very hard working and to see them being harassed is a slap in the face to anyone that works there
Links to the Chrono X website and twitter page are in the description.
I didn't even mention the online multiplayer.
I think the reason why some say the navi character designs here feel too OCish is because it deviates from the robotic design themes more than the official navi designs
I saw or read somewhere long ago that the official character artists' navi designs avoided using hair and cloth as a rule (and are given only to select few characters like Colonel's cape, Proto Man's hair, Bass' cloak to show that these navis are a cut above the rest) and instead made the organic bits inorganic like Roll's blocky "hair", Glyde's "wings", King Man's "robe", etc.
If there's ever a chance they'll redesign their navis I wish they keep this in mind. Otherwise, I'm always happy to see anyone cooking up BN fan projects
Yeah the official art book goes over those very rules you mentioned. It's a good read. I think the book even points out that Protoman doesn't actually have hair, and that it's basically just a solid clump of mass that looks like hair.
As for the navi designs in Chrono X, most of them are fine and can be neatly slotted into the other games. EXCEPT Riffman. As you said, he breaks a lot of the rules and looks way too human.
@@DoritoGOD2811 Yeah Riff Man, Ghost Man, Dark Mega, and Zeta comes to mind when I wrote this comment, though maybe the latter two were purposefully breaking convention. Also, Cactus Man's clothing could be more navified but that's probably more of a personal opinion
@@DoritoGOD2811You can't create content yourself. You take advantage of Marvel. Your brain is disabled. Your father is disabled. Your father is mentally ill, and dogs are more valuable than your father. Your father is a giant wild boar. Your father is a pig weighing a thousand tons. Your father is the world's heavy garbage. I won't come in and read your reply. You can't counter me. I won't see your messages. I log out Id and turn off notifications. Yeeee ez
@@DoritoGOD2811Worthless junk channels, your channels are of no quality. Your father is dirty, giant, fat nerd. Your mother has an underdeveloped brain. Your mother can't teach you. You have a humble family, a social scumbag. I won't come in and read your reply. You can't counter me. I won't see your messages. I log out Id and turn off notifications.
To be fair “Jennifer the sexiest netbattler in netopia” was real dialogue in 3
And people said hell and damn plenty of times in 2.
11:00 I always thought that Plantman would have been a great wood soul/cross for mega seeing as the operator of plantman had good intentions for the environment and Plantman didn't seem completely evil just following his operators orders also the Hospital scenario in BN3 was one of the most memorable moments of the series imo. Also Plantman his probably one of the coolest redesign of the original robot masters. Last point just a personal one Megaman 6 is my favorite of the original series so I love seeing all those guys as Navis lol
Been in the community of this game for about 5 years now (even got my pfp from someone in there). Glad to see more peeps talk about it.
What if the reason Dark Megaman is using a scarf is because he could be re-created using some residual data from the Bass cross fusion and the scarf was a attempt to recreate the cloak since they had the same collor.....
I did really like the character writing for this demo a whole lot. One thing that I appreciated about it is how Megaman and Lan actually have genuinely funny and meaningful interaction instead of the usual "I can't lose you megaman/lan, your my best friend" thing that the official games just sort of gave them, they had their moments in those games but ultimately you only really got some surface level look into their relationship.
Gotta admit though, i'm not really big on this game as much as most people are, I vastly preferred Shanghai.Exe since it felt like it was doing more to bring new things to the table along with some QoL features and mechanics that I had been wanting from the series for a while (add functionality came back, the talk button works to give you hints on requests, the transformations are the best of both styles and crosses, etc.). Of course, i'm willing to give Chrono X the benefit of a doubt since unlike Shanghai, this demo is still very early days, whereas Shanghai was much farther along and is now pretty much complete except for some of the post game stuff from what i've heard.
man i've been waiting for this game to finish decade ago.
It may actually be over a decade at this point. I always think it got cancelled and forget about it for a few years, and then a new version comes out that made a little more progress lol
I'm glad you have a lot of critiques of the game. It shows you care a lot about the series, I hope the devs watch this and incorporate some changes
You also have to keep in mind the X Program is in MegaMan now, which means he's gonna essentially get the Style Change-esque version of Beast Out/Beast Cross.
I've informed KNIJohn, and now I shall inform thou. NAXA is not as silly a name as you might expect. The Japan Program is called JAXA, but NAXA in Battle Network is a station located in Netopia (aka Ameroupe in Japan, where NAXA is named ANSA).
Btw, if there's a MEMENTO that SHOULD'VE been put in, it's one based on ShadeMan.
i havent played this yet and honestly i appreciate this review of it. i've been waiting for 5.1 to play after watching this it does look really fun i just hope the devs take a look at your video as most of your critiques seems pretty reasonable the oc thing did seem like they could be off putting to me.
on the "it feels like two specific characters getting replaced with OCs"
I actually understand the protoman replacement, but the dex one doesn't make sense. It makes sense for Chaud and Protoman to actually not be available, but Dex is literally fightable.
I feel the Dex replacement only exists to justify an OC being friends with a personality like Dex.
My brother in net battling, the author decided the story. Chaud would be in if the story had been written differently.
Idk if he left Chaud out specifically to include his OC, or if Chaud was left out for other reasons and this OC was added at a point when the devs didn’t want to change the story, but it’s not like this is a live action project and an actor was unavailable so they had to be replaced (think Morpheus in Matrix 4)
Granted, I haven’t played the game yet. Maybe the character is well written and this is an over reaction
@@UncalibratedAimbot The reason I'm okay with this is pragmatic. It isn't as easy as just writing Chaud in. He has to actually JUSTIFY it. Chaud is in college classes overseas as well as him intending to eventually go into a international offical branch.
He'd need a reason to even be there, not even as part of the story. Protoman appearing can work easily, we're talking internet after all. But Chaud himself is really hard to just justify.
Hence why I'm okay with a Chaud replacement.
@@UncalibratedAimbotChaud is in the game
MBN Chrono X was sounds like a Megaman Battle Network 7 that we never get from Capcom
Great video! Definitely wanna play this when it's finished. Also agreed that there are some huge design oversights in the mechanics of the memento system based on what you described. Quickman just existing outside the weakness circle with no wood type form is a super bizarre choice, but the biggest thing that irks me is the Navicust color restriction.
Did the devs not play Battle Network 3? Literally the only thing people dislike about that entry is needing to rearrange the Navicust every time you need to equip the Compress program in the overworld. If mementos are supposed to be convenient to switch between outside of battle, then restricting their usable Navicust colors is basically an even worse version of what BN3 did with Compress. If they change literally nothing else about mementos, I hope it's removing the color restriction. That design decision alone is bafflingly amateurish compared to the rest of the project's quality.
Yeah I agree on the color restriction. Maybe if the game implemented more modern elements like alternate loadouts for the navi cust, so that you could have a loadout for every memento, then it would be fine. But as it is now, adding in more mementos will only make it more of a headache to switch between them.
Everything else in the game feels like a sequel to BN6, but since the memento system is seemingly based off of style change it feels like something you'd see in an alternate timeline version of BN4. Like you said, it feels out of place.
Actually there’s an explanation for this. As you know, Bass and Megaman are arch rivals and Bass has in fact revived multiple times throughout the series. So it’s not strange for Dark Mega, much less other Navis from previous games to revive if they’re deleted due to the Undernet even though he’s pretty much an extra boss after BN2-3. Wandering the undernet cautiously and exploiting Bass’s final defeat in BN6. It’s already hinted repeatedly Megaman’s darkness will never go away and will always revive… so that explains where Dark Mega went in BN6?
The Memoir system is absolutely terrible though. The cross system seems to be designed for everyone, not unique to Megaman- therefore weaker netnavis can borrow this power. It feels more like you’re converting Megaman into another netnavi here instead of letting him gain powers of his strongest opponents/repeated opponents (Cyberbeasts, Dark Mega, Bass, Protoman, Gutsman, Heelnavi, Shademan, Mettool)
Also holy hell, Megaman feels so weak here it’s ridiculous. The guy who went to defeat multiple world ending disasters is getting 1-2 shotted by some viruses. Have they evolved to become anti-Navi programs now or through injections from the antagonist group? If so, the Cyberworld‘s future looks grim.
To be honest, i hope the full version has more returning characters, other then Mr. Famous. We need Tora and Mamoru.
just ginna wait for eternity for the game because WOO BOY
I played the demo of this game way back in 2012 - I didn't get very far. Hopefully they finish it soon! It has been over a decade!!
Edit: You should play 2, it is absolutely incredible and allows you to have two styles at a time that you can actually TRADE (which makes the grind a lot more bearable than in 3 where it only let you have one to make room for trading programs). It has a great story, the areas are very well designed, the PAs are super powerful to the point of abusive but oh-so-satisfying. There's no Navi customizer but the PowerUP items make up for it in a way. My personal favorite of the Battle Network series.
When you went into the HeelNavi fights at 5:38, this isn't a new thing as the Japan exclusive 4.5 had these battles and even NormNavi fights in some of the tournaments as random opponents. I can understand you didn't know that though. Beyond that, this was a well put together video explaining this game as I normally don't look at stuff beyond hacks these days.
Yeah Heels and Standard Navis were enemies in 4, so this isn't new for the series. Pretty sure I said as much in the video. I haven't played 4.5 because it honestly didn't look very good.
@@DoritoGOD2811 It's something of a game that's for sure. I recommend only playing 4.5 if you use the Real Battle patch though as the game is very bad due to the AI being poor as you don't get to control the Navis. The patch solved this by giving control back or the player plus they made grinding chips a lot easier.
It still has the core issue of everything being tied to the real time clock and that's my #1 complaint on that as most days you won't get much done.
@@Ziko577 You can change the time and date on your PC so that it changes in-game
@@Toxin-56 I actually did that toward the end of my playthrough as I was tired of waiting for the weekend tournaments to come up to advance the game plus I was aiming to collect all of the chips and needed to go to places at certain times to do the grinding of viruses and frags. The last few I got just by winning tournaments and I stopped playing after that as my goal was met and after 7 playthroughs, the game wore its welcome.
Man. I just want Battle Network with literally everything in it.
Bring back style change as your base form and then double soul or cross as the secondary choice. Literally that’s all it needs.
Maybe have the capacity to keep like 3 or 4 styles at any given time with a necessity to revert to normal style to farm a new one.
I’d like to see double soul of literally every Navi ever and you select your favorites to add to your in combat selection.
I do appreciate this game’s fresh take though. But I’m starving for a real all-in-one type Battle Network experience.
Yeah, I'm honestly surprised there's no fangame that just mashes both versions together. That way you just have all the forms and bosses. Though I think having every form from 2-6 in one game would be a bit much
@@DoritoGOD2811 Maybe i'm a little too late to the discussion, but the one fangame i played that feels the closest to use almost every BN mechanic and putting it into one game, has to be Shanghai.exe (The BN x Touhou one)....... It only lacks a true Double soul but apart from that, has the ADD function, a Style Change fused with Cross System which i like very much, and it's own version of the Navi Cust that's alright, and all with the typical BN3-6 mechanics like Full Synchro or obtaining bug frags every time you finish a virus with a counter.
A little nitpick I have in regards to the DarkMega design is that it goes against the design philosophy that the original character designers had when making net navis. They were not allowed to include cloth or fabric in any of the designs, with Bass being the sole exclusion to this. Perhaps the reasoning for DarkMega's scarf in this is that maybe he absorbed Bass' data or something? Would make sense, as it would seem Bass might have been completely deleted by the end of 6 (if he wasn't already deleted by the end of 3, that is).
the second musical piece you mentioned being your favorite reminds me heavily of the ghost tower in the older pokemon gba games
I'd prefer if a fangame is finished
Theyre working on it but its a team of like 6 people that suffered quite a bit of turnover through covid
Also
Mementos
Pretty decent.
And the online play is useful to keep busy until new updates
@XIguy And I can't stand people who talk about it as an excuse that can't be used or people who don't understand Indie game development. Covid tore up numerous triple A studios ability to deliver games delaying some even up to 2 years. This is an indie project.
The original team behind the game which started development prior to 2020, got torn apart. It was originally a larger team, and they lost important members of it crippling their ability to develop at the pace they were. This isn't some major AAA studio who can just replace a really good sound developer, programmer or story writer. It's a small group of dedicated fans who are choosing to create something on the side, NOT as their main source of income and have had issues with retaining staff that they need to be able to actually continue development. They also create a lot of original assets for the game instead of pulling created ones. Even many level design assets are original. Thats why they had about a year stretch or so where no story content was added and they focused on Quality of Life updates. They simply didn't have some crucial positions filled nor the time to cover for that missing role. If they don't have someone to fill an important role it slows development, it isn't laziness, it is common senae. Especially if it's a role that none of the others have much experience in. Also Covid continued into early-mid 2022 before most countries properly began opening up entirely. And even then many games by big studios were suffering setbacks in release because of Covid cited reasons as they suffered larger than expected development issues through it
Shanghai.EXE: Genso Network... is quite finished, aside from some small postgame content
Chrono X is pretty good but Shangai.EXE is just light years ahead, both in content and gameplay wise imo, although it lacks online netbattling. Looking forward to Chrono X next update.
Sad that Technodot is ceasing the development of Shanghai.EXE. It made the development way slower. At least the core story is done.
Btw I love Battle Network and your channel name, so I subbed.
Dark mega's scarf feels like a reference to Bass
I like the scarf because megaman has his weird mouth covering. It has a similar purpose to it and it makes him like a bandit with the old ragged scarf.
Also, Zeta seems to draw some loose comparisons to X.
It’s weird, that’s what I thought I was seeing when I saw the guy.
I love this fangame to death but if there's one complaint i have about it is how the combat feels. Now i don't know if it's an intentional change to increase the difficulty or just engine used not allowing the same fluidity as the original games but combat feels a little clunky in Chrono X. Like i don't know how to put it but it animations don't seem to be as fluid in the official games which makes it sometimes difficult to counter enemies. For example, countering basic mettaurs has been hard coded into my brain and i can do it pretty much with closed eyes but in Chrono X i keep failing because the animations just aren't flowing the same way they do in Official games. I also agree on the two new Lans' friends introduced. They just feel like they've been forced into the game just so there are new cool looking OCs there. Other than that it's a solid S rank game. Development has been going for ages now and i hope we'll get another Demo soon.
10:15 That was only BN3's style system, which relied more on the NaviCust than its own strength. It made the postgame a slog to get through.
At 14:10 is your talking about the scarf and it actually reminds me of Bass.exe's design. I know Bass has more of a cloak, but the color is quite similar
Yeah it is similar to the scarf worn by Bass cross Megaman. Still, I don't think it makes much sense for Dark Megaman to be wearing it.
Like, Bass got his cloak sometime after he turned evil. It's not a part of him. But Dark Mega in CX just popped out of the digital womb with his scarf???
oh yeah i remember hearing about this a long time ago, i’ll definitely try this out
The best mmbn fan game although not actually a game is open net battle as it is still mmbn but expands on it by allowing us all to experience our childhood dream of having a net Navi and visiting real life web addresses and meeting, talking and battling with real life people that sometimes even have their own custom made net navis.
I really liked the new navis back when I last played it. But some of the navis need more spritework and others feel... "fanfiction-y" and out of place. Still, all of the new navis were interesting. My favorite of them has to be Raven.exe and Crashman.exe even though the latter barely had any screen time. I wish we could've seen more of him.
the scarf looks like bass's scarf, which I think is what the dev's are going for
I want to play this game so much but I don't have any idea when It's going to launch =(
I want to play this so much 😢
Fun Fact: Battle Network 2 actually had some minor curse words. Nothing extreme, just the occasional "damn" and "hell" and "crap."
It’s been a demo for 6 years
Me seeing comando man.exe: finally a net navi base on a newer robot master.
Nice video! It's great to see this fangame get more coverage.
By the way, have you tried Shanghai Genso Network? It's another extremely detailed fan game (the setting is entirely different though, and many characters are based off of Touhou characters), that is mechanically faithful while being in a different setting/universe.
Hadn't heard of it before. I'll probably play it at some point, but to be honest the anime girl aesthetic is not at all my thing.
@@DoritoGOD2811 I thought it would be a turn-off for me, but they do a good job of translating a lot of it to the BN aesthetic.
Yeah, I’m going to second the recommendation. The “anime girl” aesthetic you’re thinking of is toned down and borderline non-existent, with a couple minor exceptions on one or two individual Navi designs. Most of the characters look like they could fit in with the official games. The difficulty is a bit higher than the actual series as well. I started a side quest and got into a boss fight against a NormNavi, and it started pulling out Program Advances to fight me. (Yeah, it’s a side quest, so it doesn’t necessarily have to follow the normal difficulty curve, but damn…) Plus, there’s a series of Virus bounty hunting missions that pull some neat tricks to trip you up and you’ll have to plan around.
I'd dare to say Shanghai.EXE may take the "Best BN game" title from Chrono X. It's that good.
I also follow this opinion. I tried Chrono X and cannot get into it. But I am in a second run of Shanghai.exe. The cute girl aesthetic is extremely toned down compared to other Touhou Fangame and the characters are actually interesting and legit has many funny moments. Also, some of the battlechips are amazing and the style system is a great mix of style, soul unison, and cross soul altogether. Lastly, the Navi design are great (I wished that Druidman is an official design). If you consider it a con, then the difficulty spike might be the problem (Those SP5 Navis make even Bass BS feels like a joke)
18:41
In BN3, one of the N1 contestants, Jennifer, introduced as "sexy" by Suniyama. When that happened and I saw that as a 10 year old, it made me uncomfortable too lol, no different here, you're right.
Hey man, I like you highlighting this game. I think you were a little over critical at times. I’m pretty sure they even got the original creators approval for this fan game and feels really close to a direct official sequel based on visual similarity. I think with their version of crosses they were trying to use navi’s that haven’t been used in any of the previous games soul or cross systems which only leaves certain ones available. And in my personal opinion I think games 2-4 had some of the best navis. There were a couple cool additions in 5 like Cosmoman and Colonol. I thought 6 had by far the worst navis. One is a literal train 🚂 🤦♂️
But that is just personal opinion based on aesthetic preference. Also I think they had started to run out of mega man characters to make navis from by 6 and the art style also drastically changed in that game (looking more stencil based than all the previous games). I’m personally glad they didn’t use navis from 6. I think they are trying to take the best parts from each game and of course making these decisions based on their own judgement which might be different than you or my preference. But hey, we still get a good quality (if incomplete) fan game to enjoy 🤷♂️
Yeah I can definitely agree that I came across as overly critical of this game. It's just easier to pick apart the things I don't like, so the negative part was a lot longer than the positive one. I still like this game a lot tho, and as you said it's pretty much the official sequel in my eyes as well.
For the use of the different navis from past games, I agree that they're definitely using ones that haven't already been used as alt forms before. And like you said, this isn't a real problem, it's just a matter of personal preference. Like, I would have loved to have a form based off of Zero from Network Transmission, or Cloudman from 5, or a whole bunch of other stuff. But it's not my game.
Scarfs are 100% evil, it was snowing I put one on then started stealing candy from babies
Great video!
Is there a fan game where I can play a different navi like diveman, judgeman, videoman?
Maybe the ??? In the showcase of the forms is wood man
I'm really hoping the OC characters who are clones of chaud and dex turn out to be double agents of sorts. having chaud and dex be villains just doesn't work, but lan's cool new friends can be.
I remember playing a demo of this ages ago with the first dungeon and a few net areas, nice to see it still exists owo
shanghai.exe mogs it hard
Archer isn't an as out of place OC as you think. He's clearly supposed to be the ancestor of Geo Stelar from the Starforce games, which we know take place in the same world as BN 200 years later. We also find out in those games Geo's ancestor worked with Lan on his future research, so having an ancestor present in this story to bridge that gap makes sense.
That does nothing to refute my point about how he is derivative of Chaud/Protoman. Also, his father being a scientist working with Lan's dad was all the Starforce connection I felt was needed. Just mention that the guy has a kid on the way or something and that's enough.
So much of this comes across as "I wouldn't have made this choice". Your complains, while valid for you, don't really provide me with any useful information independent of personal preference.
Hey guys is this game almost done I see someone play a part of the game I never saw before in another video 🎉
I wish this fangame release on android because i like this so much!
16:55 i found it kinda easy tbh
Most i remember about this project was that the programmers really hated americans.
In the Thumbnail artwork, Is that a Netnavi version Of X I see ?
No
Isn't CactusMan just SpikeMan...?? TBT to MMBNO lmao
how many hours is this game might play it
Probably 4-6 hours
Shanghai.exe be like :
Is the creator of megaman battle network chrono X still completing the game?
They're still working on it yeah
nice play now i played in a demon a main page not in but a full versio what time arival?
I saw X in the thumbnail, is he in the game?
No
Honestly I forgot this thing even existed. I forgot everything about this game. Seeing only four momt is even more disappointing.
“Ramps up the difficulty and forced the player to think” Bruh that’s just being an arse mmbn aint about that
It is confusing how simular in appearance an OC Navi is to MegaMan to an unnecessary degree.
So, a reason why there isnt a wood memento is there are just no wood navis lol
Plantman from BN3 tho
And Woodman, Snakeman, and Tomahawkman.
is it complete or still in development?
10:20 I can see now that your problem with the donut steels is that they aren't wojaks or Sneeds.
The title of best fangame definitely belongs to Shanghai EXE, that game is on par with the best of the official Battle Network games, I'd say its even better than them on some aspects.
Quick man is a sword element because he is weak to crash bomber which can break walls in Megaman 2
The quick man form is actually normal/null type in this game
Original characters look corny. Let me just hang out with dex
I'm cautious about that new funko game because it might turn out to be garbage despite it being developed by the founder of travellers' tails and an Ex employee doesn't matter who departs from the company Travellers will always stay strong no matter how much hate they get though to be quite frankly honest it's over blown mainly because people have been harassing the developer's at TT which is both ashame and very disrespectful towards them the employee's are very hard working and to see them being harassed is a slap in the face to anyone that works there
Wow, this video is so critical that its ironically offputting and makes it sound like the worst MMBN fangsme you've (N)ever played 😅