MegaMan Battle Chip Challenge is the newest Battle Network game to hit our shores. Only, it's not exactly the Battle Network game that everyone was hoping for. It takes a whole new spin on the series, turning it from an action RPG into a strategy game that is awfully reminiscent of a card game. A lot of people were frightened and even plain scared away when they heard how different it was going to be. But for those of us who persevered, there's an engaging and even addicting little gem to be found.

Graphics - If you've played any Battle Network game before, you know what's going on here. It's the standard BN graphics. Even though BN4 is getting a huge facelift, BCC is just the same old stuff. Not to say that's bad, of course. The graphics are colourful and nice to look at, but I do have one little gripe. They didn't go all the way and make every type of animation for every character, so if say Roll were to use a sword, she wouldn't swing a sword, but only raise her arms in the air causing a slash to appear in front of her. But it's not that bad, so I won't take many points for it. 9/10

Music/sound - Again, it's standard Battle network fare. The battle theme might get annoying to some after a while, because it's played so often, but I don't think it's too bad. It's just like every other RPG, really. All the other music is techno-esque and has that MegaMan feel to it. The sounds are (I assume) taken from the other BN games, because they're just those basic sounds, like exploding and slashing. 9/10

Gameplay - This is what scared everyone off. Instead of waltzing around a map finding things and running into enemies, pretty much everything is automated. You don't walk around, you choose an area and are thrown right into battle. And even that is turned around. You can't actually control your character, they do all the fighting themselves. All you have to do is place a handful of battlechips in a program deck, and you're good to go. The only thing you can do in the battle is send in a support chip or two. Otherwise it's all automatic. This may sound boring, but I had a lot of fun with it. One really great feature is that you get to choose from 6 characters to play through as; Lan, Mayl, Dex, Chaud, and two new characters, Mary and Kaita.7/10

Story - The problem here is that I can't read the Japanese. Or at least, I can't translate it. But obviously it revolves around your chosen character. There's a big netbattling tournament going on and they clearly all have their own reasons to want to win the championship. 7/10

Controls - You don't have to do a lot, so how could the controls possibly be complicated or wrong? They can't. It works. 10/10

Replayability - I assume you'd want to play through at least six times, once for each character, so I'd say the replayability is pretty good for this one. Of course, if you didn't enjoy the game you wouldn't play it over again. But I'll play through at least six times, so it's good for me. 10/10

Overall - I really enjoyed the game, with the only problem being that I felt left out. But that little detail aside, It was fun to watch and root for my character to win. Kind of like watching sports or being down at the track. So I'll say it's an 8/10. I suggest trying it out, and if you don't like it, that's too bad, because I found it to be much more fun that I'd originally expected.