I've tried, once again, to get into the Mega Man franchise with Mega Man Battle Network 2. I was recommended this title over the first in the series because, like most Mega Man series, the second entry is where the gameplay supposedly gets much tighter and comes into its own.
That being said, this title seems to take the typical bullshit staples of the series- time-based rankings, weakness oriented boss and enemy encounters that are extremely strict, and the constant nagging reminder that you could do way better if you adhered to its mechanics, but with the additional tedium of grinding atop that! The dialogue and plot are atrocious, but the actual combat is quite nice- if only there wasn't an absurd amount of grinding necessary to get passable rankings for it. While I'm enjoying the twists on the RPG formula, too many are merely substitutions for long-standing concepts from the genre and aren't necessarily better. Battle ranking, for example, should push players to get better but not necessarily lock out enemy drops behind high ranks.
In other words, this is a game that, in my youth, I likely would have accepted and adapted towards because of how much I like the actual combat- but being older, sort of wiser, and more aware of when this franchise goes out of its way to waste my time, I likely won't be getting much deeper into the series after beating the final boss, unless it shakes up the formula in a very interesting way.
Also, I hate Mega Man.