I'll preface this by saying that I created one of the largest competitive MMBN communities on the planet in 2015 and, thanks to the efforts of Salad and the entire events and commentary team, is still going strong today. Nobody can deny that I love MegaMan Battle Network. I have a lot of things to say about the Battle Network Legacy Collection, and not all of it is great.
Thankful!
We (the MMBN enjoyers) are so damn lucky to have a modern release on (most?) modern platforms - a centralized way to play 10 solid 10ish RPGs - in the modern 2020's. The collections are chock full of great features, concept art (including some that's not necessarily clear or prevalent in the MMBN Official Complete Works,) and new music remixes.
Let's talk about the developers...
BNLC was developed by NeoBards Entertainment. We can piece together a rough development timeline pretty easily because an article in their News page specifically states that they've been working with Capcom for the past TWO YEARS. This article was posted on 5/17/23. Keep that in mind.
NeoBards is a codevelopment studio. They're contracted by publishers and major developers to bring games across the finish line or wholesale take ownership of a feature or even a large portion of a game. I know this because I work with a codevelopment studio!
Taking a look at the Credits for the BNLC (both Volumes) we can determine that Capcom provided QA, Marketing, and art support. All of the development (Programming) team assigned to this title were purely NeoBards. The Capcom side of this title was EXTREMELY LIGHT!
This isn't a problem... right? Nothing wrong with Capcom using a third party studio to get this title done and dusted. It happens all the time in the industry.
What else did NeoBards work on up to this point? Let's see..... Silent Hill F. Resident Evil Resistance. The Resident Evil 3 port.
Huh. None of these titles have any kind of multiplayer or networking capabilities, huh.
The Development Timeline
(Special thanks to Protodude and The Rockman Corner for his amazing reporting and archives.]
So we know that BNLC was announced on 6/28/2022. Within a Famitsu article, it was noted that "Development was 50% completed." Previously, we learned from NeoBards directly that they were working on the title for 2 years as of 5/17/23. It released on April 14, 2023.
Are we led to believe that NeoBards had half the title done between 5/17/21 and 7/13/22? And finished the title between 7/13/22 and 4/14/23? That's kind of a tight development timeline, but this collection is - on the back end - an emulator that plays modified ROMs by executing the code within the ROMs directly using the latest Japanese version as a baseline (Some localization was cleaned up and some longstanding bugs were fixed in the context of multiplayer. The Rockman EXE Zone has a extremely comprehensive list of changes made in MMBNLC).
Even more concerning, we know that NeoBards was told to implement networking multiplayer after development had already started. An interview with Rockman Unity had Series Director Masakazu Eguchi stating that Multiplayer was being added based on feedback after the announcement.
This means that NeoBards had from 9/16/22 to 4/14/23 to implement online multiplayer - something the studio had not done up to this point. Anyone who has programmed any kind of multiplayer features knows that netplay is really freaking hard.
Network Play in a Game About Networked Devices
BNLC uses an aggressive and incredibly sloppy Lobby system. It's frankly really trash. I'll talk about competitive matchmaking first.
The game, similar to its contemporaries, has many options for networked battles. Casual and Ranked Match as a Matchmaking type. Host or Guest. Practice (A battle without any penalties and don't count to your record) and Real Thing (Where the loser loses a battlechip from their library at random.) Single Battle vs Triple Battle. And Patch Cards Enabled vs Disabled.
Each configuration of these settings has its individual lobby.
For example, if I select Casual > Host > Practice > Triple Battle > Disable Patch Cards - I will never ever see any other player that selected Casual > Guest > Practice > Triple Battle > Enable Patch Cards. Or any variation of any of those settings. To top this off, on the back end, BNLC region-locks your session. Only after failed matchmaking will it try to expand its search outside of your region.
This has led to a situation - again in a title without any semblance of cross play between Switch, Playstation, and Steam - where each configuration is a siloed island. These netplay lobbies are ghost towns because getting connected is the biggest pain in the neck.
Okay, but you get connected finally to a player - likely by going to a Discord and getting a match organized ahead of time. You're GAMING!
Except the netcode that drives the BNLC is Delay Based. If there is any variance between either party or a big geographical distance, the game hitches and lags, your inputs are processed as if they are underwater. There's a turn timer as well that forces both players to make their weapon decisions before each turn within 30 seconds. This timer counts down regardless if there is lag or not within the session, so you'll have several turns where you just don't get to play the game. Genuinely awful.
I'd go into detail about Chip Trading here (Where you have to CREATE A NEW LOBBY EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU NEED TO DO A SINGLUAR TRADE) but I honestly think I'd get too angry going into detail here.
Conclusion
I said on my previous Cohost post that BNLC should have been a slam dunk and it definitely sold gangbusters - selling among the highest number of copies in the entire MegaMan series.
It's a great collection to experience the games as they were on their original release with some stellar quality of life improvements (Hello, Patch Cards?!)
It should have been better in the networking component.