The Let's Play Archive

Mega Man Battle Network 3: Blue

by Epee Em, giver336

Part 55: Starting the PostGame! And Helping Scrubs.

What an emotional ending.

I was tearing up a little bit.

Really?

No, not really.



So, just like the previous two games, when we defeat the final boss and let the credits play out, we see this neat little star next to our Continue option!



You know what this means, right? The postgame is here! More challenges and hidden nonsense await us!

Calm yourself. I think you might be getting a little too excited in a way that's probably not entirely socially acceptable.

Many people agree that Battle Network 3's postgame is so big that the the main story only accounts for half of the overall content! You can very easily spend 50 hours doing the postgame if you're haphazardly completing tasks left and right. As such, I will be tackling the postgame in the most efficient method I've devised. This, again, is part of the reason why I spent so much time getting BattleChips in the main story. I'm starting this off with 157 Standard Chips. Normal players will have around the 100 mark. And we just got our first star of seven. We need to work on getting the other 6 if we want to say we 100% completed this game. Yes, this game takes a while, but who cares if it does? I want this game to last as long as possible.

What, two plus years isn't enough?

Sarcasm aside, this game is massive. Most games have their postgame be almost an afterthought - you beat the game, good job, have a little extra scenario as a cookie. MMBN 6 comes to mind. Not so for this game, we're gonna be here a while.




Starting out slow, we do need to get the last of the Quiz Givers out the way.





We got 15 questions this time.





I know you guys playing on emulator/Wii U abused savestates. Don't lie to me!

When I do these quiz questions, I usually just do trial and error for the questions I don't know the answers to. It's a pain, but it works eventually.





Wait, what? When was this said?

See my previous comment re: trial and error. That being said... There's a tiny little graphic on the elevator in SciLab. Easily missable, but at the top left of the elevator it says 5.





I don't understand how this qualifies as a question from the Quiz KING.





This is more like it.

I like that it's asking for information that you should know from playing the game.





I don't think I want to know how this dude has that statistic. Oh, Japan.





Come on, this is a silly one.





Oooh, good one! Actual lore!





Blah, blah, easy peasy.

Transmission is the Gamecube game, and I think Battle Operation was nothing at the time of the game's release. Now, it's the remake of MBBN1 with the Starforce addition.





WHY IS BUBBLEMAN POPPING UP EVERYWHERE!?

God the little fucker's like a cockroach that you can't kill.





Really? Is this game even trying?





Better. You'll have to call upon your Battle Network 1 knowledge for this! Or just bruteforce it.

Fishmonger is Masa, and Sandwich chef is Sal! Both people that I wish were in this game because Masa's a cool dude and Sal made sandwiches. Unfortunately for Sal, her next appearance is in the fourth game and comes with a horrendously broken random battle bug.





Tricky, if only because it reads like "Saint Beach" and not the way it should read!





Wait, she isn't crazy about those anymore?

Nah man it's all about the Mr. Progs these days!





You'd have to talk to the Mr. Progs inside DNN's Editing Room in order to find this out. MissEchelon helped me guys!

But who doesn't talk to every Mr. Prog they see? C'mon Giver I thought you were supposed to be good at this game.



And that was the last question. SWEET! Navi+40 does exactly what you think it might do. It's a MegaChip, so if you're putting this in, you're probably putting it on a multihit chip like BubbleMan or BeastMan.

BeastMan. Heh. Heh heh.



Remember one of Chaud's last lines with us?

LastFewUpdatesAgo posted:




Well, the game DID end, and we are at Hades Isle, so that means we get to fight our rival.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orZc8faVpGg

Giver will talk about ProtoMan at some point when he does the S-rank video on him, but this guy is in every single MMBN game. He's actually a hell of a lot of fun to fight, granted his AI doesn't snap in two because of an AreaGrab or something silly like that.

He can be hard to fight because of the shield that he has, depending on how your folder runs. Time-stop chips are your friends here because he can't avoid them period, so long as you get him when he's vulnerable. ProtoMan likes to hop around a lot, and about half of his moves involve invading your territory, so like DrillMan, Slasher is a nice chip to use. Other than that, ProtoMan tends to stick near the rear of the field and snipe with his Sonic Boom, then leading into a HeroSword or jumping to your side of the field for some sort of StepSword.




Unlike other Version 1 Navis, ProtoMan is nice enough to give us his chip right off the bat, regardless of rank or level. This is good, because ProtoMan's chip is, as usual, fantastic for virus busting! It will hit all enemies on the field for 160 damage or more depending on the version. ProtoMan attacks with a WideSword, meaning if you have two enemies stacked up vertically, they will both get damaged by the same slash, meaning once ProtoMan hits each enemy, both enemies will take 320 damage or more. Fighting ProtoMan and getting his chip is probably the first thing you should do when getting ready to tackle the postgame.

Why yes, yes that is as broken as it sounds. Not so much when fighting bosses, but if you've got things that like to be in neat little columns then they're basically screwed when you pull this out.





Sure whatever you say Chaud

Higher versions of ProtoMan will unlock once you start to take down the secret bosses. And this is why I love BN3's postgame. You see, each of Battle Network 3's little tasks has its own little progression stopper. You can't unlock the next stage of the progression until you complete other tasks. While this can seem very articificial in lengthening the game(and to be fair, it is in some places), it's actually done well here. You're getting both rewarded and teased at the same time. You get an S-ranking tool to help you one-shot most encounters so that you can fill out your Library(reward), only to realize that it isn't powerful enough for the really tough things(teased), so you go through the mini-quests to get more power, all while the game continues to throw new bosses and enemies at you. I love RPGs with extensive postgames.

I don't know, I think it just comes off as Chaud being a smug superior dickbag. We beat your face in, idiot, don't try to save face by claiming you were only testing us! Granted it was only the normal version, not even alpha, but still.



This guy will offer us the FamFolder, which is just a silly ExtraFolder that you can play around with. We will be taking a much greater look into the ExtraFolders later in the postgame.



Time for the devil himself.

Start praying to your RNG gods.

Upon killing the final boss, this Chip Trader will show up here, letting us to put in 10 BattleChips like its brethren in Seaside Hospital. As you can expect, this one will churn out rare and powerful BattleChips quite often! In fact, I believe it will even churn BattleChips you don't have in your Library. This is pretty much the best friend for many-a- Battle Network player.

Save-scumming is still a thing, and can lead to very fun things. A shame that it's not available earlier in the game, but I guess they understand game balance a bit.



Due to excessive BugFrag grinding, I maxed out on my collection of GutsManV3 BattleChips. We can offer to waste a few.



See? A chip I didn't have in my Library! No doubt many people find the Chip Trader addicting -- but I must warn you: it's a trap. You see, while I don't object to you throwing in chips you have plenty of like in the screenshots above, it's a real problem if you're tossing away chips that you have very few copies of. Always try to keep 4-5 copies of any chip in any code on-hand. Never, ever chip trade those chips if you less copies than that. The simple reason is you don't know what chips can be strung together to make either an interesting combo, or a Program Advance. It's better to save them for when you want to make a silly folder later, or have more options open when you're S-ranking bosses.

Those Shockwaves are useless though, toss those things.






Useless trade, but whatever.

But it's part of my chess folder! Four pawns, two knights, two rooks, and every version of KingMan! Plus two Sensor2 (to act as Bishops) and four Quake chips for the other four pawns. I'm just missing the Queen.



BowlMan's Alpha and Beta versions open up to us once you beat the final boss. Let's make this quick.

Note: My style in the video is ElecCustom and my base HP is 900. This was recorded after advancing in the game a little bit beyond the end of this update. Don't mind the disparity so much, just enjoy the thrashing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8evrosDkSs8

Better than my showing.



Magic letter.

Oh yeah that reminds me ProtoMan's chip has the B code because his original name was Blues and that works with RockMan, get it? I mean, everyone knew that already, but it's kinda cool.



Going back to Seaside Hospital, we see this guy. Uhh, what? But that's a Navi!

CopyBot technology apparently time-travels. (For those that don't get it, or are reading through the archives in order, it's a MMBN6 joke)



Well, then.



This wasn't suspicious at all.

If this were BN 4 or 5 I'd expect that to be a DarkChip. Instead nope it's just a weird ghost thing.



Poltergeist is time-stopping. It will cause any and all obstacles placed on the field to be hurled at the nearest enemy, dealing 150 damage per shot. You can only have a max of 2 obstacles on the field at a time, so this isn't that great. However, it's more effective in PvP when both players can have up to 2 obstacles on the field, bringing it up to 4 obstacles total. This is also one of the only ways to eliminate the "place obstacle in back row strategy" that I showed in the PlantMan Alpha video.

And before you say something, no it doesn't work on KingMan.



I can't believe I missed this. But there is a SubMem inside this computer. This brings our SubChip memory capacity to 7.

Seriously? That's like one of the easier ones to get.



Free RegUp1 can be found in one of the trashcans in the Metro Station. Only available once you beaten the final boss, and I think it's located in SciLab's station, judging by the colors.

In case you haven't noticed, the game has stopped pretending the RegUp powerups aren't literal trash.



We're at SciLab's CyberSquare right now. Once you beat the final boss, NPCs will finally stop posting on the BBS board and we can ready every single post.



Now, the game was kind of enough to give a very nice instruction for a secret code in-game.


"I was gonna keep this to myself, but since we're both Net Battlers, it's only right that I tell you all about it. You know how attacks like AreaGrab work when the screen goes dark, like Navi Chips? If you get hit by one of those, press back on the Control Pad when you get hit to reduce your damage by half! What'd I tell you? Crazy, huh?!"

you're welcome for the transcription, by the way

Bam. Let's practice this one, shall we?

This is wizardry of the darkest arts. Also apparently everyone controls their Navi with a gameboy.



So, Swordys use AreaGrab. This gives us the opportunity to learn the timing of this chip.



See my HP? AreaGrab normally does 10 damage, but it only did 5. This is what I like to call "Teching." With frame perfect presses of the Left key, you can halve the damage of any time stopper move. This will work on each hit should the timestopped move be a multi-hit one like PlantMan. Add onto this by standing on a HolyPanel and you have a total of 75% damage reduction. You can imagine the look on someone's face when you reduce their damage of their Master Style Program Advance. Battle Network 3 is the only game to feature a command such as this. I guess the developers thought it was too powerful, and rightly so. Who wants to fight me in PvP?

Still not going to fight you, no matter how many times you cast aspersions on my gender.





More than that, the BBS is a great place to get some ModCodes.

It's like GameFaqs before GameFaqs was a thing. That being said, now that we HAVE GameFaqs, we don't need this. Still, it's nice that they show it in-game.









Unfortunately, not all of them are found here, but it's a good place to get a few. I'm not gonna show you screenshots for all of them, but I think you get the idea.



Fuck. Fuck this, fuck you, fuck everything I'm out! *sound of a door slamming closed*

Ugh, the dreaded RequestBBS part. Truth be told, I don't mind doing a bunch of sidequests during the postgame. It's during the main story where I do. In the main story, it's a momemtum-stopping block of the story. At least during the postgame, there's a possibility for challenging quests.



In order to efficiently tackle the postgame, we have to get all of these out of the way.



I'm going to be abridging this.

what do you fucking mean contract? I want to see my lawyers!





Just going to give the bare minimum so we can fly through this stuff.





There was something about the two Navis fighting a lot every morning. Typically speaking the sidequests do try to invoke some emotion by delving into personal issues, but in this case, it doesn't really go anywhere. The husband is still mad at the wife for Duo-knows-what.

I'm going on strike and you can't make me LP this segment! Go ahead, sue me, I don't care! I... why yes a raise does sound like a good solution to our problem.





NEXT









GiverFAQs says posted:

A Recov30 * can be found in a Green Mystery Data in ACDC Area 3 for a 15.625% chance.

Fancy that.

Right I'm back, totally not because I just got a 15.625% payraise.





And while sometimes the quests try to be about a person's personal life, othertimes it's just blatant nonsense. But still, a very good reward.

Well they have to throw in padding somewhere. Not sure how a Recov30 will help with your Navi's sickness, but I like the mental image of Lan handing the girl the chip for the sick and dying Navi while he's holding the Recov300 in his other hand.







You've come to the right place. Although my services are pricey, you can definitely be sure that I will get the job done. I'm starting a new business, Yeti. Join me.

Sorry, already have a non-competing clause in this contract. I'm just here for the LP. I'll still totally buy stock though.









OH GOD THE FACE

This is one time when you don't want bedroom eyes





Poor kid.

I think she might want to be worried more about the fact that her son is using a HeelNavi.



"his pop" Wait, I thought you were the mom? What the fuck!?

AUGH IT'S SOMEHOW WORSE NOW



This is weeeirddddd.

...Let's just never speak of this again.



Take note of this quest in your next playthrough. Easy SpinYellow, right here.

Fuck so that's where the bastard was! I couldn't remember.



Man, I'm just knocking these out today.







Note: you do NOT jack in. You just need to examine the educational computers themselves.



Like so.

This tripped me up quite a bit when I was playing for the first time. It's hard to break the idea of 'Virus -> Jack in to kill them'



Normally, I'd comment on the difficulty in relation to when you're supposed to take the quests, but given I skipped out on all these, and given you can fight them whenever you want, I won't. Also, no, these encounters don't change in the opposing version.



I approve.

This is a Good RewardTM.





Back to personal life stuff.







Sorry, I'm too distracted by that Navi walking in and out of the screenshots.

Weird, I thought Navis froze when you were talking.



This Navi and his brother are competing to earn the right to inherit their father's company, and to do so they're trying to prove who can sell the best by offering the best deal.



Yeah, yeah, yeah, figure out his price.



Well, he's got him beat.





And he asks us to check once again. So we go do just that.



Oh.

Little did we know that he hired his own guy to examine our dude's shop prices. Is it ethical to use the board to help solve your personal problems?

I would have laughed so hard if we met up with the other guy's go-between and just kinda bitched about how terrible this job was.







Slasher B is our reward, and it's something we most definitely need! We've got Program Advances to complete, after all...

Heh. Also, how does trying to be a competitive seller mean you're not fit to run a company? That's almost as backwards as trapping all of your heirs on an island and making them solve a riddle for gold, and giving it all to a witch that kills them all if nobody figures it out in time.



Fucking e-begging. Quick! Someone make a Kickstarter!

The lack of initial capitalization is quite obnoxious. Almost As Annoying As Those People That Capitalize Every Word In A Sentence. Pro-tip from a part-time writer: that doesn't add emphasis to what you're saying, it just makes you look like a twat that failed 4th grade.







I'm cool with this. I'm the equivalent of a drug lord in this game's setting.

Now all we need to do is go back out of the area and head back in for the game to think "enough time has passed."

This is, I think, because we're doing this so late. Some other games require a certain part of the story to be completed before we can move on, but it's not like it matters now.







MY MONEY



THAT FUCKER IS GONNA PAY

KILL THEM ALL





THAT. IS. MINE.





And now we go back to the guy.



Unlike that one quest in Battle Network 2, the guy won't give us a profit in terms of Zenny, just in other powerups. Perfectly fine.

At this point 8000 Zenny is more or less chump change.





"Dispose of a rare chip"? What are you, high? There are Chip Traders, you know!



Seems legit.

Wait how the hell did the person get into Yai's telephone? It's ancient, it shouldn't be connected to the internet!



I never jacked into here, for some reason. Oh well, we're far too powerful for this, anyway.







This is your idea of a mugging attempt? Really?

Pro-tip to muggers: don't go after the guy that can crush you without breaking a sweat. Leads to far longer lifespan.



Twinners are the Level 2's of the virus found in DNN's Editing Room computer. Recall that if you don't kill them both at the same time, they will just heal back to full health upon their death.

Use:

Or a HeroSword or LifeSword or anything that hits them both



This is what the thread asks me on a daily basis.

And I think I have a habit of doing it hourly. Not my fault, though, if you all saw what he's showing me.



Decadus? Is that you? What are you doing on the internet, Zero's waiting!



At least his money's good.

All right, that's enough for one update. I just have one question for you guys: do you believe in magic?



So as you might expect, Punk had his Alpha version open up to us for a very long time now. Why am I just now talking about this given it's at the end of the main story and I can fight Beta-level opponents?? There's a good reason...



Click this.



Okay, it's running.

I see blonde, brunette, Magnum...



Of course I don't.

See? Either the good chips can be selected or they've got stupid high RegMem requirements.



Why yes that IS the second slot in the folder, why do you ask?





For all you fans of EPM's other LPs... No, that's not . Sorry.

I have done it... Behold, Punk's unused AI!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahcAyA2Nagk

I can see why it's unused. Compare this to the AI found here.

Punk only attacks diagonally up/down in this iteration. Think: AirHoc from Battle Network 4. He doesn't like to stay in your row and will do his best to avoid your direct line of sight. When at half HP, he will proceed to bounce up/down your whole area, just like the Satelite viruses from Battle Network 2. He only does his Double-Go-Round move when you moved into his row 30 times. Notably, he seems a bit more aggressive about applying his Shield-And-Chain move.

Yes, that is an actual AI routine found in the game. I'm happy they decided to go with the version we have now. The Punk fight would have sucked otherwise.

As a bonus, here's an unused Mr. Famous animation:



---------------------------------



Oh shut up DrillMan I have to LP the HelpBBS section I have it so much worse than you