Live Blogs Let's Play Megaman Battle Network 6

ComicX62013-10-12 15:44:33

The following day opens with Lan getting ready to send Megaman online to check out the jamboree festival, but he's interrupted by Haruka mid-jack in. Someone's here to see him apparently, but when he gets downstairs there's no one there. His mother describes the person as a girl with hair clips, so Lan goes outside to find Iris. She's over by the plaza again, and when he finds her Lan tries to invite her to the event too. However, she tells him that he shouldn't go on the Net right now, she has a bad feeling about the event. No more information is forthcoming, but at that moment Lan gets a phone call from Mick, wondering where Megaman is.

The scene switches to Central Area 3 where a handful of Navis, Mick's included, are standing in front of the Cybeast statue platform, before the event's host, Circusman◊.

Oh boy. This guy. This rotund, creepy, multi-digited, soulless-eyed clown Navi was one of the three winners of this game's create-a-Navi contest, and he does nothing but cause grief. For instance, he immediately begins to dance, which turns out to drain all the spectators of their energy. Then he inhales the energy like he's a dementor. His operator, the young woman from before, is revealed to be Yuika◊, and the plan becomes apparent. Circusman rises into the air, floats over to the giant chasm in the center of the place, and disgorges all of the energy that he's amassed. The Net begins to shake, the scenery darkens and changes color, and in a flash ghostly specters of the Cybeasts Gregar and Falzar appear.

Having completed stage one of the plan, Yuika and Circusman go about stage two: capture the Cybeasts while they're still “groggy.” Circusman opens up a giant gate in his body (thankfully his back is to us), and activates “the program” to suck in Falzar like some kind of demented vacuum cleaner. In Cybeast Falzar it's Gregar that gets pulled in instead. This act leaves Circusman worn out and filled to the brim, but he still tries to go about sucking up Gregar. At that moment a squad of Net Policemen try to confront him, leaving him and Yuika torn between completing their mission and escaping. Gregar makes the decision for them as it roars and Circusman jacks out in fright as the remaining Cybeast blows away the policemen. The scene switches back to Lan (presumably having seen everything via Mick's PET) who tells Iris thanks for the concern, but he has to go online since his friend's in trouble.

Once we get online we see that the entire area is darkened, like the captured areas were in Battle Network 5. The virus roster has been temporarily altered with new specimens, and as we get closer to Central Area 3 we can hear Gregar's roars in the distance. It's a rather eerie atmosphere.

Gregar's still at the middle of the chasm when we get there. Megaman tries to fight it, and gets clobbered about as fast as those policemen did. Having underestimated their enemy, Lan jacks out Megaman, and the only thing to do is to go downstairs and as Yuuichiro “how can we beats a Cybeast.” His father's at first all “what...?'' but quickly realizes what's going on and goes into his now-familiar “this is too big for you, leave this to the adults.” spiel, with the addition of “I mean it this time!” Back to our room then.

Where Lan takes “listen to your parents” to its logical conclusion by eavesdropping on a phone call his father is having with some scientist about the current situation. Yuuichiro's talking about the possibility of sealing the Cybeast back up, and apparently to do so they'd need a container with a buttload of memory. I guess that explains why they used an entire network area the first time, though you'd think they'd pull a Giga Freeze and put them in a remote server instead of an Alpha in plain public view, but what am I saying? Battle Network society runs on the principal of “what could possibly go wrong?”

Yuuichiro then presumably hears about Circusman's absorption stunt, as he sputters that it's impossible for a Cybeast to be inside a Navi – they'll explode from being over capacity. Then with another shock he realizes that the Navi must have had “that program” installed into it. In private he talks with Haruka a bit, and “that program” is given the name of Exa Memory, which was what he used to incorporate Hub's DNA into Megaman. In case you're wondering, exa is metric shorthand for ten raised to the eighteenth power. So that's a lot of memory. Haruka points out that he gave a copy of the program to the Mayor the other day, but Yuuichiro says that that can't be how it got into Circusman's hands, as he had altered it so that it would only work on a server. I guess the implication is that whoever was responsible reverse-engineered it. Hearing all this encourages Lan and Megaman to go back online.

At the start of Central Area 1 we are greeted by the sight of a fallen Net Policeman who warns us that the Cybeasts' revival has caused evil spirits and ghosts to swarm all over the place. It's Toadman's scenario from Battle Network 5 all over again!

Well, not entirely. What we are faced with is a strategy minigame of sorts. These ghosts appear clustered on the overworld, and they can only be defeated with “Soul Weapons” that the policeman gives us. There are four kinds: knife, sword, axe, and gun (looks more like an old mortar cannon) each with different ranges. Imagine that there's an invisible grid laid over the area. The knife hits the cell right in front of Megaman, while the sword hits in a Long Sword range. The axe is Wide Sword-ranged, and the gun hits a single cell three panels away. When hitting A to use one targeting recticles will appear to preview the range.

The evil spirits appear in three colors: red, yellow, and blue. Red ones die in a single hit, while yellow takes two and blue takes three. If attacked from behind a spirit will die in a single hit. If Megaman fails to finish one off, any flanking ones will do damage to him. Once all spirits are dead, the mass of purple flame blocking off the area's exit will vanish, and any leftover Soul Weapons will turn into Bug Frags.

There ain't really all that much that I can say about this segment. Just scout out, examine the layout of the spirits, and attack them strategically. By the time Megaman clears all of the ones in Central Area 3 out Gregar has almost made it to Seaside Area, which would be bad as it could mess up its water management systems. Lan suggests that this time they go in with a long-ranged attack, but Megaman has another idea: to use the Exa Memory program inside of him to absorb the Cybeast, just like Circusman did. No one else thinks that's a good idea, not Lan, nor Yuuichiro (who's come around to his son's eavesdropping), but Megaman's adamant given the circumstances. He doesn't seem to expect to come out of this either, as he says farewell to Lan and Yuuichiro and thanks them in shades of Battle Network 3's ending before raising his arms, glowing Hub Style-blue-green, and absorbing Gregar. There is a flash of light, the area returns to it's normal brightness, and Megaman collapses, successful.

But not without a cost. When the scene fades back in he's back in Lan's homepage, lying on the floor and convulsing in agony as Gregar reacts violently inside of him. Yuuichiro can't do anything to help him either as an examination would be too risky while he's this unstable. However, once again Iris comes to the rescue by sending Lan an email telling him about a fountain in Seaside Area 3 of Navi-rejuvenating “Healing Water” that may calm the Cybeast. Lan wonders how Iris knows what's going on, but hey, it's not like there are any other solutions available. Oh right, but he doesn't have a Navi right now.

And that's where Link Navis come in. So it's off to Cyber Academy to pick up Heatman for a jaunt. Right into an area full of Aqua viruses. Though once we get to Seaside Area we find that it's infested by evil spirits too, so more Soul Weapon play (there are no random encounters while they're around). The layout of Seaside Area with all the conveyors makes this a little more difficult than the Central Area spirits, but again, just being strategic will take you through. At the back of Seaside Area 3 is a giant water tap for the Healing Water (Heatman remarks on the follies of having a Fire Navi handling water) and there Circusman jacks in, as he doesn't want Megaman waking up and ruining the plan to capture the Cybeasts. He doesn't fight us himself though, he just sends out some viruses. He jacks out once we win, and we have to go all the way back to Lan's homepage to give Megaman the water.

Gregar evidently doesn't take too well to the Healing Water, for Megaman immediately starts to convulse again before transforming into a bestial state. So Gregar's taken over, but Heatman tries to fight, and predictably gets walloped, but the one attack that he does land manages to damage Megaman enough to return to normal. Yuuichiro takes stock of the situation and says that while Megaman could easily be taken over or deleted by the Cybeast, there is the possibility that he'll be able to suppress, and even use its power. Neither he nor Lan can do anything now, it's all on Megaman's shoulders if he wants to live.

So naturally, a couple hours later Megaman's internal struggle comes to an end with the Cybeast under control. After Lan falls asleep from exhaustion, Yuuichiro sends us an email tutorial on our new transformation feature: Beast Out.

The Beast Out state allows Megaman to control, in Yuuichiro's words, 50% of Gregar's power. On the Custom Screen we'll now see a button shaped like Gregar's crest located below the OK button, and hitting that will cause Megaman to transform.

Gregar Beast Out◊

• The Mega Buster fires extremely-rapidly and continuously by holding down the B button
• When using a weapon-based chip Megaman will automatically move right in front of the enemy to attack
• Normal chips can be charged with the A button to unleash an auto-targeting, pointblank double claw slash
• Normal chips are powered up by thirty points
• Megaman will not recoil from attacks

Megaman can stay in this form for three turns max. With each battle that he doesn't use Beast Out the counter, shown on the Emotion Window, will increase by one, maxing out at three. At the end of the three turns Megaman will return to normal and enter the Tired state where he won't be able to utilize Full Synchro. However, even being tired won't prevent him from Beasting Out. If he transforms when the counter is at zero he will enter a state called Beast Over◊. Beast Over only lasts for a single turn and it's just like Dark Invisible in that Megaman will turn invincible and rampage uncontrollably around the field. When he returns to normal he'll enter the Exhausted state, where his buster stats will go down to 1, he'll rapidly lose HP, and Crosses are unavailable. So use Beast Over to finish battles, not start them.

There's one more aspect of Beast Out, and that is that it can be combined with Crosses. Cross Beast Out forms combine the passives of both Beast Out and the Cross in question, and the chip charge attack changes. Heat Beast's◊ charge attack has Megaman breath fire in the classic Gospel Breath formation of one panel followed by two columns.

All in all, Beast Out is incredibly powerful and incredibly useful.

At that moment Haruka calls Lan to tell him he has another guest and Mick barges into his room. Circusman is apparently back in Central Area 3. Impeccable timing.

He's over by the Cybeast statues and he doesn't believe Megaman when he says that Gregar is inside of him. Battle time with this joker.

HP: 700

Element: Normal

Attacks:

• Happy Clap – Two giant hands come together on one column for 20 damage.
• Fear Whip – Circusman cracks a whip and a robotic lion flies down Megaman's row for 20 damage three times in a row.
• Gloom Cage – Circusman appears above Megaman and tries to ensnare him in his curtains. If Megaman is caught he will be pummeled for 69 damage.

For such a tubby guy Circusman is fast. His attacks are mostly weak but come out very quickly. Gloom Cage especially has very little warning and can do a lot of damage. And of course he stays in the back row. So, this battle is perfect for a demonstration of Beast Out, and was probably designed like that on purpose. So Beasting Out and bringing him the pain is the order of the day.

I'm not really sure what's up with the odd damage value for Gloom Cage. It could be a percentage-based attack.

Winning gives us 3000z.

• Trumpy
  • Viruses in the Trumpy family stick to the back row and don't attack Megaman directly. Instead, they play a song that has a variety of side-effects depending on the version. Trumpys make allied viruses invincible. Tubys confuse Megaman, wreaking havoc on the directional controls, Trombys' songs immobilize him, while Mute Ants bind him and Xyloses heal allied viruses.
• Armadillo
  • Armadillos method of attack is to curl up into a ball and roll down a three-panel-long range. When curled up they can only be hurt by Break attacks.

• Evil Spirit
  • This is sort of the Cybeasts' theme. In game it's usually punctuated with distant roars and shrieks.
• Suspicion
  • The "Suspicious Mood" track for the game, basically.

Comments

Hunter1 Since: Dec, 1969

Oct 12th 2013 at 11:14:54 PM

I wonder what would happen if Bass fought the Cybeasts. The Cybeasts are stupidly powerful, but then again, Bass is stupidly broken. On the other hand, Bass always seems to lose to Mega Man, and if Mega's incapable of handling the Cybeasts, what hope does Bass have?

(Note, I'm assuming 1v1 for these fights. I have no doubt Bass would lose sole against both Cybeasts.)

ComicX6 Since: Dec, 1969

Oct 13th 2013 at 10:31:57 AM

Bass actually did fight them in the manga (which I've always found to be a prime example of what Power Creep can do to a story) where he absorbed Falzar to get a Beast Out form of his own◊.