Part 54: The Lengthy Ending. Brings a Tear to the Face.
Double Update Bonus!
"Be nicer to the thread." Man, what was I smoking?
Man I don't know but you should continue smoking it.
And the denial has already kicked in.
Wow this just hurts.
...If you've ever had to tell someone their pet died, this is a surprisingly similar question.
The last time someone praised Lan's skills when he did something wrong...
And now he goes into a self-loathing spiral.
I don't think Tora's trying to be a jerk, but he's really not helping things here.
Survivor's guilt is a hell of a drug.
For some reason, the island is shaking and collapsing. No, I don't get it either.
I will whine for as long as I want, Chaud! I just lost MegaMan! How can I continue on to the postgame, now!?
With your skills I'm pretty sure you can beat the game with just the regular Navi. It won't be easy, but I'm pretty sure.
Note that this isn't a compliment, just an accurate assessment of your skill level.
Chaud makes an excellent point. Why bother with the sacrifice you don't get outta there and live?
This does, however, bring up the sunk cost fallacy. The drive to continue because of previous decisions down a path despite the path itself being - oh god Megaman's DEAD
And our heroes leave the island...
I would suggest jumping off but...
...in the slowest way possible. No rush, guys! No need to run or anything!
...yeah sure this works too. Do Dex/Chaud/Tora even have run sprites?
And Lan looks back one last time. Nice touch.
Hey, can we bring back Alpha and actually have him start a nuclear war this time? I would pay to see that story.
So you're saying you want a sequel where you play as Wily? Actually shit, that would be pretty awesome.
And they all exit one-by-one, saying a line or two.
Everytime Lan mentions MegaMan, someone's heart drops.
Just when things couldn't get any worse!
Oh fuck it's these two chucklefucks
Go away!
Personally, I think it's a bit early for that. The AlphaBugs may take a bit longer to die, but I digress.
I think it's like the snake - cut off the head, the rest dies instantly. If anything, the AlphaBugs probably all crashed when their parent died.
Hmm, what could she be thinking?
Well, this is gonna get awkward real fast.
Oh hey, Lan, how's MegaMan - oh. Oh...
You're gonna carry a full-grown man on your back? Someone call the emergency team! Oh wait, we saw how effective they were back when that stupid nurse held onto the damn dungeon key!
I think I'm more amazed because someone actually apparently grabbed Cossak on the way out. Either that or he'd been sitting slumped in the boat the entire time. Even when we went back to the mainland for other stuff, he was just sitting there.
So, Chisao runs into Dex's arms. I will always remember the older games for taking more liberties with their side-character animations.
Too bad he's a little cuntgobbler in the fourth game.
Hey now, language. We avoid talking about that as much as possible.
Sniff. Cry. Pout.
Hey, look! I wrote Battle Network sound effects!
I choose to interpret it as Yai thinking that's the best way to get her point across. You know, how the Elcor talk in Mass Effect.
Behold, Chaud's dickheaded father gives more credit to his own son than I do with the thread's intelligence.
Let's see, checklist... Emotional reunion, check... Approval from the emotionally distant parent, check... What are we missing?
Yes, he only assited us. Yeti, please continue to assit me.
That sounds dirty, somehow.
Every game has quite a few typos, I just usually don't point them out.
And of course, silly text spacing.
I HAVE (silence) AN APPOINTMENT
Save me from WWW? I don't care. Save the world? You have my permission to eat with me. He is the personification of High Expectations Asian Father meme.
I think this kind of treatment is qualified as abuse. Isn't it?
And there he goes, never to appear in the series again unless you count the Japanese-exclusive cellphone BN games.
Yeah but nobody counts those
Strangely accurate. The only time you "helped" was when DrillMan was going to commit a pointless suicide. Oh, I guess you helped delay the hypnotic effect of the first tank?
I know it's supposed to be humbleness but in this case he's just telling the truth.
Hell, if it wasn't for Chaud, Mayl would be dead. Blown to bits by bubble bitch. ...Wait, that's a good thing!
Probably sit in the corner and cry for a while.
Frankly, in this day and age, you'd have to.
Wat.
Hey now, some people don't have smart phones these days.
Everyone! We've lost Lan Hikari! The day has been won but both heroes have died!
Shit shit all hands on deck we have development. I repeat, this is not a drill, we have character development 
I really can't make this happy at all.
That's kinda nice, I guess. Him saying that even though MegaMan's gone Lan's still worth his praise.
Well, the girls failed miserably at making Lan feel better the last time. Let's see if they've improved their comfort skill.
I think all the BN games have used this line to some degree.
I don't recall, but that wouldn't surprise me. A lot of games in a series do that, just to give them a slightly bigger feeling of inter-connectivity.
And Lan still hasn't learned!
Yeah, let's see what the girls have to say.
Do we really have to? I don't want to...
Yeti! Why did you use the p-word! Now look what you did!
I just really want pretzels right now, for whatever reason.
It's called a ladyboner, Lan.
Neither does this game, really. The women here don't do SHIT.
'Women are capable of being something more than damsels in distress? Wha?' -this game.
:Herp. Herp. Derp derp derp.
Not in front of all you guys! It's too embarrassing!
That's like your girlfriend asking for a goodbye kiss in front of all your friends. Yeah you want to, but it's still awkward as hell.
"Baby, I wanna plow you."
"By the way my brother died, thanks for worrying."
You know Lan, it wouldn't hurt to think at least a little bit. I mean, yes, he doesn't understand love, yet, but Christ.
To be fair when a woman is crying you really don't have that many options aside from "Hope to god you didn't cause it" and "Get the hell away from Ground Zero".
Part of me even thinks that Lan even knows what Mayl's feelings are. It's just that Lan doesn't know how to handle it, so he kinda "brushes it under the rug."
That wouldn't surprise me - especially in these games that were well-written. A lot of people do that.
You were standing two feet away, how did you not hear what was said.
I told you, "Get the hell away from Ground Zero". Why didn't you listen, Lan? WHY?
Well, I guess we can kill off Navis, but killing humans is a no-no. By all rights, Cossak should be dead from what Bass did.
Food for thought: do you think Cossak would have held back just enough energy to not delete Bass?
And back to zone of "Characters Who Will Never Show Up Again"
I don't blame them, Swapopolis is a stupid name for a country.
No, you won't. Shut up.
Tora exits the series.
Eh. I wasn't a huge fan of his Navi anyway.
...ouch.
At this point the screen fades to black, with Lan narrating that he told his parents what happened at WWW Isle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg-DY6-87iU
This is NOT the time for bad grammar, game!
Is this like the only time we see Dr. Hikari doubting himself, or something? Usually the guy is super-confident.
I say 'doubting' in the sense of 'oh god I fucked up big time', of course.
Note: this, coupled with the Pulse Transmission System will inspire a beautiful mechanic in Battle Network 4.
Heh. If you guys thought this game was broken BEFORE...
Oh that's right, the Hikaris lost Hub TWICE. You see what happens when you just let something like Alpha fester!? You had an opportunity to delete it! Now you lost the same son AGAIN!
It's now a running joke in the Hikari household. How many times can their one son die?
This is the most emotional Battle Network ending. Not even 6's hit the same level of feels.
I think 6's music at the end hits me the hardest, though.
Which means, whoever still has a brain left is getting interrogated. Let's hope no villians get released from jail in a few months again!
It's okay, the JudgeTree is going to sentence them. (It's a MMBN 6 reference, don't worry if you don't get it, random reader)
Hey I thought it weighed more than that
Hey, you don't seem to be that surprised, dude. Lan just gave you something from your dead father.
To be fair the guy did have a habit of hiding random notes everywhere. The father probably found one in the cereal box.
And THIS is why Dr. Hikari never deleted Alpha. But, see, why weren't the other Officials saying the opposite? I get Dr. Hikari's reluctance, but some of the top Officials? Pretty sure someone said "Hey, make a new base for the Internet, and delete this problematic one."
I think it was more a status quo thing. That and Lan's Dad is more or less the god of this world, so they probably weren't going to go against him.
Speaking of, now that Alpha's gone, so is, presumably, the Internet. Everything kinda fed into Alpha's core form, which made it easy for him to creep into every system. It's gonna take a while to invent a new foundation for it, since, you know, Alpha was the foundation for it.
I think Dr. Hikari made the right choice here.
Saaaaadface.
Can somebody in the thread please give out free hugs?
Paging... Actually, I don't know who'd be a good person for hugs.
Hell no.
"He watched his brother die, I think he's a little sad."
The screen fades to black.
I don't deal well with emotions.
Someone make this happier. Please.
I'll even take Yai right now.
So, paging the friendship speech in three, two...
Oh.
One.
Okay, guess MissEchelon and I were both mistaken. Sean appears one last time during the credit sequence. He still doesn't appear in another game!
A shame because I kinda like the guy.
Hooray!
"Hey I know your brother died but you should be happy like usual"
I know I'm harping on this but come on now writing team, it's WORSE if the person doesn't react to the trauma.
The cheerleader squad is finally doing their job!
At least Dex graduated to "Useful Friend" in this game. Don't expect that to stay.
You contributed nothing except exposition.
You... It will soon be obvious why meeting you was the best thing ever.
Free inn stays, obviously.
Oh yeah, sure. Randomly localize his name to Shun! Dammit localization team!
Why did they change that? It had already been localized as Sean in the previous game. Wait, didn't they write it as Sean in the hospital?
Yes, they did.
See?
Not without severe emotional trauma and maybe a few years of therapy.
And the screen does another fade to black.
This ending is still going on.
For reference, this is image number 390. 390! And we're going to 474.
Oh, their brain wasn't completely shattered into a million pieces? How come Wily and the others get a pass, but Cossak nearly dies? Especially when the island freaking collapsed in on itself!?
So wait their personalities had literally been converted to data? How does that even... know what? No. Capcom science.
Suspicious. They can find the remains of a human brain, but not Bass? Something is amiss here.
To be fair though they probably were able to find the human brains by looking at the storage in the NerveChair or whatever it's called.
Looks like the shock of MegaMan dying spurred Lan into passing his classes on his own, rather than the opposite like in some other stories. I guess Lan is finally getting over-
--Nope.
Yeah, that's... Wait, 6th grade?
I can just imagine Lan talking to himself at school and constantly telling MegaMan stuff about what the teacher had said.
That's a coping mechanism. Lan's not doing too hot right now.
I never knew why Haruka never got her son up sometimes, especially if he was running late to school. I mean, she's already up making breakfast, why not knock on her son's door and say "Get up?"
Missed Screenshots: The ringing of a PET goes off, Lan naturally goes "MegaMan?" before the dude in the green shirt goes "Sorry, that was me." and goes off with his PET.
Just another kick to the gut courtesy of Capcom. We get it, guys, MegaMan's dead.
I'm pushing 500 images on this ending sequence, I have to cut out some things, yeesh.
And even when the series finished its run, we never forgot these precious little games.
They hold a special place in our heart.
And we'd never change a damn thing about them, well, except maybe the fourth game.
My favorite is the 6th game.
Those legendary words will never be forgotten.
Battle routine, set.
Credits time!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boG50lHq0qg
S.Kurosawa was pretty good with the writing for these games, even so much as coming back to help with Starforce 3's story. I believe he only consulted for Battle Network 4-6, though. Word to the wise: don't leave the writing to M. Eguchi or you get what Starforce 2 was.
So THAT'S why SF3 was so much better than SF2. Also, on a related note, fuck SF2. It's the MMBN4 of the Starforce series.
The character design is excellent and creative in this series. Good job.
I'm still impressed that most of the Navis are unique. That's what, five for the main friend cast and then like five or six for each set of villains?
MistMan - Tsubasa Kataoka
Yep, those 3 Navis were contest entries, by the looks of it.
Also that image is showing something we haven't covered yet.
Bahaha, I love the post-credits scene scenarios.
If only MissEchelon were here to see this! MegaMan leading a bunch of Mr Programs like that is just gold!March, my Progs! March to war!
Any minute now.
And he poops.
Oh, game. So classy.
Curse my late timing. Been playing this at 4AM in the morning. But even still, NumberMan surrounded by tiny Navis is funny.
Man Press sucks.
Now, Dex, make sure you don't run into somebody.
Welp. Also, Aoki is back once again with the music! She helped with Battle Network 2. If you listened to the composition of both games' music, you could probably tell it was made by the same person.
I have the soundtrack to this game, and yeah it's pretty good.
GUTS SMASH!
I would love to know what the thinking behind some of the credits scene scenarios were. I hardly see games do random jokes like this.
Tiny Mr. Progs
If I were MissEchelon, there would be an amazing picture here but I'm not so there's not.
Okay, who the hell is K. Kitagawa? He doesn't show up in the Japanese credits at all.
I don't know but his QA is pretty good.
These four are not listed in the Japanese credits, and their full names are: Takuya Shiraiwa, Kaori Funakoshi, Ayumi Kambara and Masayuki Fukumoto. They were all Capcom localization people.
Higsby, your poor tact makes this wonderful.
Oh, this one is cool.
Even the giant HeelNavi can't hold up to ProtoMan. I think the writers had a favorite Navi.
Too bad you left the company Inafking. But I understand. Here is a complete list of the Japanese credits and English credits. In the Special Thanks(English) section, there is a name by "K. Fukumoto" Going by the other BN games and the Japanese version, this should be "M. Fukumoto". Also, K. Kitagawa isn't listed on the Japanese version or any other BN game, so I have no idea who he/she is. Google doesn't seem to provide any meaningful results on this matter.
Inafune was a pretty cool dude but Capcom has shit the bed on the MegaMan games, so whatever. I was really only a fan of the Battle Network series, so I don't really care about the eleventh release of the original series.
To those who played/saw MissEchelon's BN2 LP, this should seem familiar.
We've got a fight on our hands, all I'll say.
Hell. Yes.
It isn't shown, but Lan is running back and forth, going to his shelf and computer.
He runs back and forth some more and he finishes.
Hyperactive little bugger, isn't he? Then again, I suppose him doing the work is a good thing, shows he's grown up a bit.
Watch, the next 3 games will take place over the course of the 6th grade.
I... think they do, if I'm recalling correctly. 4 is the first bit, 5 is the summer break, and 6 is the rest.
Oh boy, text between two characters with no distinguishing mugshots. Luckily, this one is pretty simple.
...Chaud and Mayl! Right?
So, Dr. Hikari got us a new toy. What could it be?
"You think so?" Come on, Yuuichiro, you know what it is!
I remember being kinda mad the first time I played the game. 'I don't want a new Navi, I want MegaMan!'
It took four months, but to be fair, Dr. Hikari would have been really busy with post-Alpha cleanup, making his son a good Navi, family matters and all that.
It could just also be a heavily encrypted file. A lot of encryptions (the tougher ones, anyway) take a long time to break. I think AES-256, one of the more secure ones, takes 2254.4 operations to break - which is better than the brute force of trying every possible combination, but just barely. To put that in perspective... Actually, there's no real way for humans to imagine a number that BIG. Anything more than 10 or so just becomes abstract in our minds. Certain hash functions, like SHA-1 and MD5, are also broken, but only theoretically; SHA-1 still takes 263 operations with the best attacks, which is still a long time.
Good news, though, is that we've shifted to SHA-2 which is (while still questionable, because the SHA-2 algorithms are similar to SHA-1) more secure than SHA-1.
"I told you not to let Gow into the house. Now he's shitting everywhere. Yuuichiro you goram idiot."
I would laugh if it was just basically a congratulations on breaking the code, like those old You Win! screens in games.
Er. Phrasing, please?
Wow, we got that back? Just imagine how that could be used to further the technology of the setting!
Tell me!
THE SUSPENSE!
This is Lan talking.
Who...?
This is NOT Lan talking.
WHAT
I'll admit, there was a giant smile on my face the first time I saw this scene. Of course now there's just my usual embittered scowl, but still. Memories.
And...that's the ending! We're doing quite all right for ourselves. We nearly 160 Standard chips, and a little more than half of the MegaChips. Our Gigas currently rest at 1/20 The one I got in the FlamMan Omega/PlantMan Omega double fight won't count here since that was a special fight on another copy of the game. So, while this number is low, it's ultimately expected since you can only get 1 GigaChip.
So, how did MegaMan come back? Apparently, when he blew himself up, Tadashi Hikari managed to recover MegaMan's core program and store it in that secret spot (the real world SciLab). It was there that Alpha's influence could not reach MegaMan, then all Dr. Hikari had to do was re-program MegaMan's frame, which I'm sure Dr. Hikari kept some old code of.
Now there's the little issue of the entire Net losing its foundation. For that, you'll just have to assume that they made a new foundation. Maybe they used Gramps' Note to help with that?
Probably. If a certain plot point in MMBN5 is to make sense, Gramps' Note probably contained a rough framework to begin with that they just implemented.
But that concludes the main story section of this LP. The next step is tackling the lengthy postgame. You see, BN3 is the only game in the series where you can reasonably say that beating the story only really accounts for half of the overall content. A slight bit of an exaggeration, but this is still the longest game in the series hands down. And that's good, because I LOVE me some long games.
Roughly sixty hours for the main story (though that's with the grinding, of course) and don't forget that this is a handheld game. I know a lot of games take more than this, but they aren't handhelds.
The postgame is filled with many tasks. Completing any task will just unlock something else down the line creating a huge chain of new bosses, challenges and adventure. Naturally, there is a lot of grinding involved. Since my first update, I've been cutting down on the grinding required with all the S-ranks I've done. It wasn't necessarily to show off, but reduce the amount of time spent trying to get all the chips later. The same can be said of going through every Style and BugFrag grinding.
Someone in the thread asked if there was an efficient way of BugFrag grinding other than GutsMan. Nope, sorry. That 10 per fight is the best you're going to get.
I'll be trying to tackle the postgame in the most efficient way possible, and things will only get more technical from here on out. I didn't go as in-depth as I could have during the main story, because there's very little point. Getting past the main story is easy, it's here where you're put to the test.
Until then.
Bye for now!