Part 35: MMBN2 nostalgia, hand-in-hand with MMBN2 trauma.

Things resume as normal with Mayl whining.



Lan shuts her up quickly, at least. Really, he only said like, one line to her. At least she's easy to quiet.



And out of nowhere pops this shady-looking fellow. Those with a keen memory might find his mugshot familiar, although we've never met him before.



Is he a member of Nebula? No, of course not, Nebula isn't nearly competent enough to send thugs after Lan despite knowing where he lives.



All he wants to do is talk. Which obviously necessitates a more private place than out on the sidewalk in front of Lan's house.



The middle of the park should do! And excuse me, a test of power?

Sigh. You know the response to that. Even Lan objects to this, albeit not with the proper sort of annoyance he should.



This jackass' response is mockery, of all things. Buddy, you want to annoy us, fine.



Time to show him who's boss.



By navigating the "WaterGod 2: Cyber Boogaloo" teleporter maze! I'm surprised he can say that with a straight face.



Baryl interrupts with a tutorial, to make this even more enjoyable. We wrapped things up with KnightSoul last time, after all. Unlike 4, the souls in 5 are much more worthwhile, and worth detailing.

KnightSoul requires a breaking chip, for starters, so it's fairly easy to activate. The charge shot becomes the Royal Wrecking Ball, which is actually quite useful for dealing with viruses at close range, given the breaking properties and circular range around MegaMan. More important are the completely insane bonuses KnightSoul offers to chips.

For one, breaking chips get double damage when charged for a moment with A. Secondly, using any chip while in the front row grants green invincibility through the whole duration of the chip. The GunSol chips return in this game, though not GunSolEX. And that's just the start of the things you can put that to use for. Expect to see plenty of KnightSoul!



Anyway, like I said, welcome to another round of Teleporter Maze Fuckery. Thankfully, the layout isn't as random as the WaterGod was. The ACDC Squirrel is more like a series of paths that branch from each other like this:

etc. with 16 total areas.



....PartyCust?

Oh, this is what I get for skipping emails that are always useless expostion, right! Yeah, the Party Battle System has it's own simplified NaviCust. I batch converted the images before checking to see if any of them required different cropping to show the bottom screen, sorry about that!

The PartyCust is literally a one-dimensional NaviCust. The NaviCust has a grid, the PartyCust has a line. Different programs are different colors and take up different amounts of space on that line.

More notably is the 'Support' PartyCust program Baryl included in the Email that teaches about the PartyCust. With it, a single-tile program, installed, a Party Battle System Navi will appear and use their chip attack at the start of every single turn! Which Navi appears depends on which Navi is in the first slot. I have Colonel in the first slot, so every turn will begin with Colonel appearing and using the Colonel Cannon to blast at the enemy field. Seriously, it's much more useful than it might sound, especially against viruses due to the auto-targeting.

The game just keeps offering me more and more power, seriously.



So, who did you think his Navi would be? SURPRISE. ShadowMan! You fucker! Oh, I remember you alright. You little cock, you and your hellish V3 encounter! Yet another blast from the past of MMBN2.



What can I say, I've had experience with horseshit mazes. Asshole.



Yup, go read the update. In a surprising bit of continuity, Dark's mugshot in MMBN2, which only showed up in 1 cutscene, is the same as his one here, just at a different angle. Same outfit too, by the looks of it, unlike Princess Pride. Although admittedly, a royal dress is hardly practical.



Oh fuck you, Dark. Remember what he said before? This was a test of our power. You know, disregarding how we kicked ShadowMan's ass before. And then tore the Muramasa and ShadowMan V3 chip out of the flashing anus of UnderNet5. God, fuck you both.



Actually, I do better with Colonel and KnightMan...and doing well with non-MegaMan Navis is part of the point of this game anyway!



Nyeh nyeargh synchronization blah. Okay fine, in-universe the source of MegaMan and Lan's strength is due to their bond, so Lan's comment was rather dim. And hurtful.



Burn. Lan apologizes to MegaMan, at least. What are you going to say to that, Lan?



'Atta boy. Throw logic in his damned face! Why!? Why do we have to do this stupid test crap for someone we deleted way the hell back in the Mother Computer?! We even killed your underling CutMan!

In Team ProtoMan, instead of Dark and ShadowMan, we get the somewhat more logical new faces of Charlie Airster and GyroMan. Who at least are new faces. I mean yes, everyone in the goddamned world should know who Lan is by this point, especially after 4 (much as we'd all like to forget 4) and 3. But they don't, period, but even then, at least Charlie hasn't met, and had his ass kicked by, Lan and MegaMan before.

Also, GyroMan is awesome:



AutoBots! Transform and roll out!



Real fucking helpful, Dark. Dr. Regal kidnapped him, one would assume that he had something he needed of him.

Or he could use the threat of harming Yuuichiro as a means to prevent Lan from interfering, but it's Regal, and what have I said before about him? He's an idiot.



And yes, he ninja-vanishes in a puff of smoke.



Baryl abruptly emails us that we need to head to our homepage to talk to Colonel, MegaMan reading said email out loud in this screenshot. It's not another mistake, just you wait for those.



This being an RPG, 'urgent' is just a short way of saying 'whenever you feel like it', so let's check out this NPC here! A special chip for sale, huh? At only 2000z, that does sound like a bargain to me!



WHOA WHOA WHOA. A DarkChip! Yes, unlike last game, DarkChips are actually collectible now and even have codes. You can fit 3 in your folder. And starting from this point on, various NPCs will sell DarkChips to Lan and MegaMan, there are only 12 of them in the whole game. One for each element, except null.

Why Lan and MegaMan don't report them as Nebula agents to Baryl is anyone's guess.



Because DarkChips are for morons in this game, let's see the much, much, MUCH more useful things for sale at Higsby's! The Bargain Bin here is a new addition. It's a bunch of weak yet useful * coded chips! A godsend for someone with my playing style. Seriously, I already have a folder with almost perfect flow this early in the game. Selecting a full assortment of 5 chips to use every turn is not uncommon.



SuperVulcan. In S-code. Okay, that's it. I've debated whether or not to break the game in half with overpowered strategies, but come fucking on! If the game is so insistent on providing me with so much power, very well.



And holy fuck, the Number Trader. While traditionally, this thing has always been the aspiring game-breaker's favorite toy, the things it has to offer in MMBN5, and especially in DTDS, are just utterly insane.



This is the biggest game-breaker, hands down. The DarkInvis * DarkChip. I'm not exaggerating, this might be one of the biggest game-breakers I've ever seen. It's worse than Gater. And you can get it here, right now, this early in the game, because this is the first time Higsby's is open.

What does it do? It turns MegaMan into MegaManDS for about 10 seconds, who goes berserk, out of the player's control. In this 10-second window, MegaManDS will do nothing but spam attacks at all enemies randomly using the same system of using the same chips and tactics the player does seen in 4. This includes Gigachips, P.A.s, and whatever other strong chips you have.

If you think this one chip is bad, wait a few updates. If you think this isn't such a game breaker for all my fanfare...wait a few updates. It goes from game-breaking to completely obliterating any difficulty period.



And we all know how I adore this program. I'd put my Number Trader gains in one concise list, but quite a few of them merit explanation.



It's not nearly the level of GunSolEX, but surprise, the Boktai cameos continue! To a greater degree than in 4, actually, there's overall more Boktai stuff in DTDS than 4, even without a dedicated sidequest. Which was a glorified fetchquest we had to pay 10,000z for anyway, so screw that anyway.



"Almost" being the key term. Recov1000 is damned potent, but you'd be hit with a severe HP drain bug for using it. Even still, it's in * code.

Higsby, why do you have a DarkChip, let alone TWO, with a DarkChip merchant loitering behind your shop, as part of your merchandise!? I said before how there are 12 total DarkChips in the game. I've just gotten a solid quarter of them at and around Higsby's!



I grab several other, less notable chips, and also a TP Chip! I forget what this does exactly, but I'm pretty sure I remember it's useful function. Wait for next update for an explanation, it'll be relevant during the Liberation Mission.



And now for yet another game-breaker! The LeadersRaid chip! It's DTDS exclusive. It summons ProtoMan and Colonel, ProtoMan uses StepSword on whatever enemy is on the same row as MegaMan, and Colonel uses an X-shaped ScreenDivide on that same enemy.

In other words, 200 damage in an H-shape, 400 damage one the targeted enemy which is hit twice. Which, of course, will be any Navi this is used on.



What could possibly be more game-breaking than that? How about a fucking GigaChip? (SPOILER PURGED) X deals 500 damage to the entire enemy field, courtesy of Bass chucking a Darkness Overload into the center, which explodes on every panel.

It also has a spoilerrific chip image. And name. Which is why I won't be using it. It's fair game once revealed, but by that time, I'll have several other GigaChip options to choose from and they'll have better codes than X.

The GigaChips in 4 utterly sucked, I can't think of a single one I'd actually call worthy of being a GigaChip. 5 is a return to form with much, much more satisfying, mighty chips.



And that'll be all for the Number Trader.



The game's difficulty curve thoroughly obliterated, let's go see what Colonel has to say at Lan's homepage. There's a teleporter now!



More PartyCust stuff, so this little bit with Colonel wouldn't happen in the GBA games. Basically, we come here to swap PartyCust data, since we now have a full set of two image data Navis to choose from.



Then we get sent to Oran Area to mop up leftover Nebula Navis. 1 in Area 1, 2 in 2, 3 in 3. This had me hunting through Area 1 for quite a while until I realized that, I'd assumed it was two per area. Sure enough, the last one was in the back of Area 3.



Capcom might as well have put a giant neon sign with the words "USE THE S CODE!" on it, I swear to god. I wouldn't be surprised if this was in response to complaints about folder building in 4, actually. It actually took me quite a while to build an 'optimal' folder for 4, the codes all have like, 8 or so different chips each.

And there were fewer chips overall period, only 150 standard chips unlike 3, which had 200 of them. While the 'Secret' class of chips added to the total amount selectable, they were all mostly gimmicky, save for the highly amusing MetalGear-Lightning combo I had to come up with to get any use from them.

And I mentioned the sucky GigaChips. Broken Loose also mentioned before in the thread that the majority of the P.A.s for 4 were also the much less usable sequence-type (Ex: Cannon A-B-C) rather than the more folder-friendly code-type (EX: GunSol1/2/3 G)

Even the chips sucked in 4!



I didn't record it, but you can also fight KnightMan V2 any time at will outside of Oran Area 3. I forget whether or not this fight upgrades, or if it releases KnightMan V3 as a random encounter.



After slaughtering all 6 of the Nebula Navis, Baryl says to head for Oran Area 3 (which I'm conveniently at already) to restore the link to SciLab Area. We can't just open the route from SciLab to SciLab's internet, because that would be opening the door to Nebula, so we have to access things from here. SciLab3, incidentally, is the next Liberation Mission.



A stupid error accompanies, oddly, yet another Nebula Navi who gets swatted aside in seconds. Seriously, the combination of powerful, almost unicoded chips in my folder and Colonel opening every fight with the Colonel Cannon means that very few viruses last more than 3 seconds already.



We move on to SciLab area, but ShadowMan's following us.



Catack: These tank-viruses advance one panel at a time slowly. After every panel they move forward, they'll fire a strong blast that behaves identically to Colonel's Colonel Cannon, and the chip they drop, TankCannon, uses the same sprite. On MegaMan's much tinier body, no less. They'll then move forward again, repeating this sequence until they reach the back row of your field, and yes, they will gladly steal panels from you to do so. These guys can be quite dangerous, especially in the middle row, due to cutting our field down by a row each if unattended.



Nothing new here, but weirdly, they retranslated the name of the Handy virus that's appeared since MMBN1 and held that name since MMBN2.



Noticing a recurring theme yet?



As usual, MegaMan tries to get to the Liberation Mission, only to get flung back. Even getting flung on his ass for his trouble this time!



As you can see by my HP, I actually reloaded state to screenshot this gem when I realized a split second too late what was being shown.

Jesus CHRIST Capcom of America! Again, this sort of thing makes no fucking sense at all! They already had translated MMBN5: TP/TC for the GBA just fine, without nearly this many fuckups, why do all of these mistakes exist period!? The amount of dialogue DTDS added to the game is negligible.

The only conclusion is that they retranslated the entire game a second time for literally no reason. Seriously, even if there's something bizarre with DS game code that prevented them for literally copying and pasting the dialogue, they easily could have looked at the text files in the GBA games and manually copied them.

That's...that's spectacular.



Blah blah, retreat for now.



Shut up, ShadowMan.



Pride sends an email the following day. The princess is in trouble, an innovation in video gaming!

And actually, why the hell is the princess of a country doing something like mining? I appreciate the work ethic and dedication to equality Pride has, but doesn't she have something more productive to do? And wouldn't a qualified miner be better? And wouldn't a foreign diplomat mining for Electopian resources raise a few diplomatic issues?



ShadowMan's attacked her, though, and god damn it all, even with a heap of logic against her presence, she's still a favored character. And besides, Lan's a video game protagonist, it's about time he saved a princess. For real this time!



But first, DarkChip scavenging. Mr. Quiz shows up again as usual, and 5 questions later, here's one.



This old guy sells DarkSword for a paltry 500z.



And tucked away in the mines is a random scientist who also offers his DarkChip for 500z. There are 12 DarkChips in the whole game, I just got half of them in a single a update. The rest are much more spread out, to say the least, but really, finding them all is very easy. They're even a title screen accomplishment. The stars from 2 and 3 have been replaced with more indicative icons, such as Standard Complete, Mega Complete, Giga Complete, Dark Complete, P.A. Complete, Bass' icon, the icon of the game's specific version (in this case, Colonel's head) to denote beating the final boss, etc.



Identity crises aside, here's Mr. Famous, as usual with a Create-A-Navi contest winner!



Anti-Nebula, huh? Well, Team Colonel is anti-Nebula, so it must be pretty tough.

...Right?

(Something went very wrong with the audio recording, once again, the boss fight theme has been dubbed over.)

(Also, fucking YouTube.)



Moving on, Pride's been attacked by ShadowMan and Dark, who have weirdly decided to steal various programs from Knightman and throw them into the DrillComp. Even the movement program, yeesh, this sure is a bunch of throwbacks to MMBN2.



Speaking of, to my surprise, that whole Gospel thing is brought up. Pride is surprised to hear that that was ShadowMan.



How Pride reformed is never brought up, unfortunately.



Boy, I bet the Gospel operators were all embarrassed when it was revealed who the leader really was.



Worth remembering is that Pride was one of the highest-ranking Gospel members. That explains why she didn't recognize Dark and ShadowMan before, she simply never saw them.



And despite it being explained as due to magnetism before, the Party Battle System works fine in the DrillComp now.



The programs aren't hard to find. They've all been stuck in the very back of each DrillComp, but all the conveyors have stopped and the boulders are gone. So it's really just pointless, and the gameplay is unsettlingly similar to an MMBN4 tournament scenario.



At least they're grateful for our help, and it only takes a few minutes anyway.



My ShadeManSP chip says otherwise, dickass.



Considering we're being harassed by ShadowMan, we should probably see Baryl about this. Worth noting is that after the cutscene with Pride, Lan's returned outside the mines automatically. It's the little things, the little things like that. ShadowMan and Dark already attacked Colonel and Baryl, but they managed to fight them off.



Right, sorry. Name retcon. Both are probably pseudonyms, but still pointless to change. Oh well, Dusk is at least less silly than Dark.



That's a problem, ain't it now.



Oh, god dammit! You know what this means. Internet dungeon time. Aww, MMBN5, you were doing so well with this! Thankfully, this is the only time the game pulls this crap, the obligatory "Here's the UnderNet, navigate it!" run later on aside.



Time to play "Chase The NPC", oh boy!



With clouds! We get the VacuProg from this program here. The gauge to the right represents 10 units. Each cloud takes up a different amount.

White: 1
Gold: 1 (Drop random rewards or viruses)
Grey: 3
Thunder: 5

Once the gauge is full, it must be emptied by a program in the area.



Oran Area is easy.



SciLab Area is not. I love the sheer malevolence of the 'dungeon' design here. Okay, you understand the basics of the gimmick, right? GOOD! HAVE FUN! And it isn't just this. Most of the dungeons in this game, as I mentioned before back in the DrillComp, are just so much nastier than what the series usually has.



If you messed up the navigation of areas before and sucked up too many clouds you could simply backtrack to a program and empty the gauge. Not at this point, puzzle aspects get thrown in in the form of one-use programs who can only empty the gauge partway. Once you make it to this one, though, everything's fine. Hey, that gives me an idea...



Sigh. At least they gave it a specific dialogue.



Gosh, playing tag with our old enemy, isn't this fun? Time to put a stop to this.

Yeah, fuck you. Again.

(YouTube's being a cock again...)



What.



WHAT!?

OH MY GOD!

You cannot be fucking serious. Baryl hired fucking ShadowMan to be part of the team, but noooo, the fucker had to test us. We kicked your ass once before. And then again. And again and again and again, but presumably that sort of thing is non-canon. Still, you cannot be fucking serious.

ShadowMan, need I remind you all, deleted a country! Poor Yumland! No, nobody gives a shit about poor Yumland. They even looked like they'd recovered from the cyber-genocide well! They had a giant animatronic Buddha statue!



You've probably caught onto this pattern by now. Here's the cycle of the game:

1: Dungeon!
2: No Liberation Mission for you!
3: FRIENDSHIP!
4: Liberation Mission!

Repeat.



A single DarkChip can do this? I have half a dozen of them, what'll that do?







KnightMan shows up belatedly. I wonder if he and Pride knew the truth and were playing along, or whether Dar-pardon, Dusk was testing them as well.



Updates are getting way too long, so I'm going to start cutting things off to shorten them from here on out. For one thing, 75 images max, and I'll start breaking up the chapters more. Liberation Missions will be in one update each.