Review of "Mega Man Exe Advanced Collection! The definitive version of a game that is both nostalgic and new!

On April 14, 2023, "Mega Man Exe Advanced Collection" ("Advanced Collection") was released for PS4/Switch/Steam. This title combines the "Mega Man Exe" ("Exe") series of games that were once released on the Game Boy Advance into a single title. Set in a world where the Internet has rapidly developed, the story follows Kouto, an elementary school student net battler, as he solves various cases together with his net navigator, Mega Man. This popular series has been adapted into a comic strip in CoroCoro Comic and an animated TV series, and has also been developed in media other than video games.

In the "Advanced Collection," you can enjoy a total of 10 games from the first "Mega Man Exe" released in 2001 to "Mega Man Exe 6: Cyber Beast Graeger/Falzer," which was released in 2005.

In this issue, we present a review of these works. After clearing "Mega Man Exe 6: Cyber Beast Graega," we will explain the basic battle system of the series as well as new elements unique to the "Advanced Collection.

Battle System Combining Action, Shooting, and Cards

The "EXE" series consists of 10 titles, but the basic battle system is the same. When a battle with an enemy occurs, the player moves to a special field with two 3x3 areas, and if the HP of the virus or navigator on the other side is reduced to zero, the player wins.

Except during battles, you can move freely within your area.

The player can move freely within his/her own area, so while moving to avoid being hit by the opponent's attack, he/she can hit the enemy with attacks such as rock busters and charge shots. The player decides when to avoid an attack and when to hit the enemy, allowing the player to enjoy action and shooting style battles.

However, this is just the basics. The "EXE" series has its own unique element called "chips. During a battle, every 10 seconds, the player can open the "custom screen" and select a tip from a pre-selected folder.

A chip is like data sent by the player to the navigator. There are various types of chips, ranging from attack, recovery, and support chips, such as "Sword," which cuts a square in front of the player, "Recovery," which recovers the navigator's HP, and "Area Steel," which turns a vertical line in the opponent's area into one's own area.

Each chip is divided into three classes: "Standard," "Mega," and "Giga" (the Mega and Giga classes are implemented after "3"). Although it depends on the rules of each work, the standard chips are the basic type, and some mega and giga chips, which have relatively high performance, are added to the standard chips.

Each chip is assigned a code from A to Z, and up to five chips with the same code can be selected. Even if the codes are different, multiple chips of the exact same type can be selected, and there is also an "asterisk" type chip that can be combined with any code. There are various types of chips, such as attack, defense, recovery, etc. The more chips that can be selected at once, the more actions that can be taken before entering the next custom screen.

The more chips you can select at one time, the more actions you can take before entering the next customization screen. However, this will lead to a tendency to neglect the performance of the chips themselves. Is it better to focus on the turnover rate of chips, or on the performance of the chips as stand-alone units? Since neither is wrong, the balance between the two is a problem.

There is also the compatibility of each attribute, such as doubling the power of a water-attribute attack against a flame-attribute enemy. In some series, there are also elements that change the performance of Mega Man itself, such as "Style," "Soul Unison," and "Cross System," so adding these elements to the mix makes tip selection even more enjoyable.

Using busters and chips while moving within one's own area is simple, but when combined with factors such as rules for choosing chips, compatibility of attributes, and the styles and soul unisons of Mega Man itself, the "EXE" series offers a tremendous variety of fighting styles. Easy to understand yet profound, that is the battle in "Exe".

Buster MAX function makes battles fast and easy!

The "Advanced Collection" includes many features unique to this title, the most impressive of which is the "Buster MAX" mode. When turned on, the power of Mega Man's buster is increased to 100 per shot. The buster can fire in rapid succession, so if you have enough time before you can open the custom screen a second time, you can destroy almost all enemies by then.

The tempo of the game itself is dramatically faster, so this system is probably for those who are worried about battles because they are playing the "Exe" series for the first time with this title, or for those who just want to look back at the story and quickly get their equipment ready for a battle.

The power of Buster MAX is affected by the "Navi Customizer," which can be loaded with programs to enhance Mega Man. If you activate Attack +1, etc., the power of the buster will increase by 100 each time. In other words, the amount of damage for Buster MAX is 100 x Attack Lv, which can be enhanced to a maximum of 500 per shot. This should make it possible to take on even difficult enemies with more than 2,000 HP.

Because battles can be ended in an instant, collecting chips and money obtained after battles is a breeze. The "chip trader," in which multiple chips are inserted to obtain new chips, is also easier than in the original version. Filling up the "library," where collected chips are recorded, is one of the challenging elements of "EXE," and this time, in addition to Buster MAX, the library can also be supplemented through Internet communication. Although it may depend on the game being played, the time required to complete each class may be shortened.

However, while Buster MAX is in effect, the SP Navi's deleting time is not updated; SP Navi are like the strongest version of Navi that appear in a particular area, and the attack power of the chip that can be taken from an SP-type Navi depends on the time it took to defeat the target. In other words, if you defeat the target in 10 seconds or less, the chip from that SP Navi will have the maximum attack power.

The compatibility between Buster MAX and the SP Navi's deleterious time is meshing in a bad way. In the case of "Mega Man Exe 6: Dennou Beast Graega," which the author cleared this time, the SP version of Heatman, which has 1,900 HP, was defeated within 4 seconds by Buster alone.

This was partly due to the combination of the "beastification" system, which allows the buster to fire in rapid succession, but even so, it was fast. This would allow anyone to defeat SP Navi within 10 seconds and maximize the power of the target's chip, so there was no sense of accomplishment, and the "record compare," using communication to update each other's delete times, was meaningless. For this reason, I thought the specification that does not take the buster max into account in the SP Navi's destruction time was a good call.

Competitive mode with hot readings and cut-ins. Internet battles are now possible in both name and reality.

In this review, I played the battle mode a few times and felt that the use of chips was different from when the story is being told.

If you are fighting a CPU that moves regularly, your moves can be patterned to some extent, but if you are fighting a live person, it is a different story because you have to read each other's moves.

For example, if your opponent is using the Circle Gun chip, which attacks four of the eight squares around you except for the center, you would naturally try to stay in the center to avoid the attack. However, the opponent may anticipate this and hide a chip that has a narrower attack range but is more powerful. You can take advantage of this by using invisible chips that make you invisible for a certain amount of time, or by using a barrier chip that will take up to a certain amount of damage while you move around the area.

The "cut-in" feature is only available in "Mega Man Exe 4: Tournament Blue Moon/Red Sun" and later. Cut-in" means that when an opponent uses a chip equipped with a "darkening" effect, which stops time, you can use a new "darkening" chip to interrupt before the effect is triggered. When the opponent uses a powerful navigation chip, we can use an invisible chip to avoid subsequent attacks.

The compatibility of the chips chosen at that time determines the outcome of the battle, so it is not just a matter of repeatedly playing the strongest chips to win the battle. In the case of the author, there was a time when a Greiga chip obtained with the function described below was nullified, and there was another time when he was able to pass a Falzer chip that his opponent had thrown out unscathed.

The time required for a single match is 3 to 5 minutes at the most, so the tempo is good, and the match mode is quite addictive, thanks to the random chips that appear on the custom screen, the readings with the opponent, and the cut-in system I just described. What is most exciting is the ability to play "net" battles, both in name and in reality.

Although Internet battles are popular in the game, in past titles, the actual battles were not conducted over the Internet, but over communication cables that connect Game Boy Advance consoles. In this sense, it is very impressive that the widespread use of the Internet has made it possible to have Internet battles in real life. Nowadays, people of all ages, from children to the elderly, play games, and we may be able to see the same kind of scenes in the future that we saw in "Exe" in real life.

Modified cards and limited chips that were once distributed are also available.

In the "Advanced Collection," all of the limited edition chips and modified cards that were previously distributed are available. In the case of "Mega Man Exe 6: Dennou Beast Graega," chips such as Graega and Double Beast are available, as well as additional "Requests," a challenging element.

All of these items were only available at the World Hobby Fair at the time, or through the purchase of certain books, and are a dream come true for those who missed out. I was in elementary school when I was playing "Exe.

I was an elementary school student when I was playing "Exe," so I was happy to have those chips that I saw in Corocoro Comics and other magazines.

To use the limited chips and modified cards, first select "Mega Man" from the menu screen, then press the Y button. This will take you to a special screen where you can choose from a variety of chips and cards, which you can then set up as you wish. If you are so inclined, you can use Giga Chips such as Graega and Falzer from the beginning of the story, which is recommended for those who do not want to use the Buster Max function but want to proceed smoothly through the story.

Modification cards cannot be used unless they are within the set capacity, but those that are deleted due to space limitations can be reacquired at any time later. In the versus mode, you can also set whether or not to use modification cards, so it will be interesting to find combinations of modification cards for the versus game.

Since the game is almost an exact port of the original Game Boy Advance version, the tempo of the game is slower than it is today. However, there is a Buster MAX function that increases the power of the buster by more than 100 times, and the game has been updated to make it easier to play in the modern age.

Although the game itself is old, the Internet has made it easier to play online battles than it was back then, and now is the time for "Exe" to really come into its own. Fans who played the "Exe" series in real time will be able to reminisce about those days, while children who do not know the series from back then will be able to enjoy the series in its purest form.

（This "Advanced Collection" is such a great value title.)