Mega Man Star Force (DS)
-2 Story: Some 200 years after the events of the Battle Network series, a little boy teams up with a good alien to stop evil aliens from destroying the Earth. Along the way, he solves the mystery of his father's disappearance and discovers the power of friendship. Ostensibly, the game is aimed at children—most of the important characters are kids, parents, and teachers; and the dialogue makes no effort whatsoever to be subtle about its feelgood messages of overcoming loneliness and mistrust—but I seriously question whether we want kids to model their behavior after anything they see here.
Star Force teaches us that it's OK to skip school for any reason, you can get what you want by nagging and manipulating, abusive friendships are totally acceptable, you can't trust an officer of the law, there's nothing wrong with assaulting an officer of the law, it's fine to break into people's personal information and then offer unsolicited help with their secret problems, and it's probably safe to leave an unconscious friend surrounded by poisonous snakes. The adults are horrible role models, too. Single working mother or not, Hope Stelar is an absentee parent who seems to think it's responsible to leave her 10-year-old son unsupervised at all hours. Instead of complaining to the Board of Education or working out a compromise with Principal Loude, Mitch Shepar solves his ideological differences by not doing the job he was hired to do (and then he loses all integrity when a talking scale easily convinces him to fanatically embrace what he was resisting). Pat Sprigs's parents abandoned him in a junkyard when he was an infant. It's even a major plot point that Luna Platz's parents are terrible. All the heavy-handed speeches about trust and friendship are fine and dandy, but the main message is undermined by an entire cast of problematic characters saying or doing one questionable thing after another. This also makes it difficult to like any of the characters; do I really want to cheer for someone who's just being whiny or pushy or paranoid so that they can grow into someone likeable later on?
I also can't wrap my head around the concept of EM Waves. In the Battle Network games, you jack into a machine and navigate your avatar through a virtual world. Makes sense. In Star Force, there's an invisible world coexisting with our own, and it's made up of waves that do whatever the plot needs them to do. If you have to fix a machine, you might talk to a Mr. Hertz character (who is the personification of the machine)...or you might use an actual control panel that exists in the Wave World for reasons I can't fathom. Geo's first meeting with Mega establishes very clearly that Wave Beings can't be seen with the naked eye, yet Bud, Luna, and every other person who gets possessed has no problem seeing FM-ians without a Visualizer. There are very specific places in the Wave World where Geo is allowed to teleport, but when a group of Jammers attacks Echo Ridge, he can suddenly teleport anywhere he wants. It's bad enough that Star Force centers around a convoluted technology, but the game isn't even consistent about how that technology works! And that's to say nothing about BrotherBand technology—which is basically Facebook for people with only three friends—being able to locate people lost in outer space if you wish hard enough.
Practically every aspect of the story ranges from "didn't entirely think this through" to "complete nonsense." Did I mention the exhibit where poisonous snakes are on display without protective glass to keep them from getting loose? Or the part where Geo has to locate the former chief of NAZA, who could be anywhere in the world, and the only guidance Aaron Boreal gives is "he's old"? What gets me the most, though, is that Star Force only qualifies as a Mega Man game because it bears some resemblance to Battle Network and there's a character named Mega. The game is technically in the same continuity as Battle Network, but none of that history informs the story in a meaningful way (and the top-secret postgame cameo, while cute, totally doesn't count). If anything, Geo's world seems more like an alternate universe than a future evolution of Lan's world. Also, Star Force takes place somewhere around the same time as the Zero series; an appearance by Ciel or Neige would have gone a long way in making the game feel more like Mega Man than a spinoff of a spinoff. Heck, instead of FM-ians, the antagonists could've been hyperadvanced Stardroids—the Mega Man franchise already had a race of mystery aliens who built robots inspired by the cosmos; there was no need to invent new aliens (especially ones with such an overtly punny name).
+0 Graphics: I'm normally not a fan of DS-quality 3D graphics, but the battle sequences look pretty decent. The enemy designs are distinctive and memorable; the animations are good; and the special effects are flashy while still clearly communicating what's going on, though it would be nice to have more of a visual cue when your buster is fully charged. Outside of combat, things look as good as any given Battle Network game. Character designs and dialogue portraits are loaded with personality, the locations in the physical world are nicely detailed, and the roads of the Wave World are vibrant and twisty enough to retain some degree of visual interest on the umpteenth visit. The one problem—and it's a major one—is that it's inherently messy to layer the Wave World over top of the physical world. If you're on the ground, there's a lot to obscure your view; if you're in the air, all the clutter below can be disorienting, especially when the path on the ground is drastically different from the path in the air. The graphics of the two worlds look great when kept separate, but they're a confusing eyesore when smashed together, and that's unfortunately a large part of the game.
-1 Music: This one's a mixed bag, but it's ultimately the implementation that brings the score down. Stylistically, the soundtrack fits the atmosphere well—it's cheery and exciting and emotional in all the right places, and even the most dramatic tunes never get too somber. A few tracks stand out as particularly good: Cyber World, Wave World, and Final Battleground all have a solid, atmospheric groove; and each of the battle themes has exactly the right amount of intensity. But then there are too many tracks that try too hard to sound futuristic and otherworldly, with blips, bleeps, weird note progressions, and dissonant chords that quickly become grating. I find the AMAKEN SpaceSim and Ophiuca's lair to be outright unlistenable ("BWAH NAH NAH BWAAAAAH!!!!" ow ow ow owwwww), and the generic indoors music and generic danger music have the added problem of being too short for their own good. The latter is especially problematic: dangerous situations have a habit of triggering while you're still in the middle of exploring a new area, and restoring the music to normal is usually a long and complicated process culminating in a boss fight, so expect to spend several hours suffering from a tune that's 16 seconds long. Most of the music heard during cutscenes is equally short, and the repetition often makes it difficult to tolerate the already longwinded dialogue. Music should enhance or at least not interfere with the game experience, but with Star Force, I often find myself rushing through text and skimping on exploration just to minimize the time spent listening to certain tunes.
+2 Sound Effects: No complaints here. Battle sounds pack a satisfying punch, the digitized voice that announces your Transer selections is pretty cool, and everything else sounds appropriate and suitably realistic. The sound effects clearly convey what's going on, with a lot of style and variety to boot.
+0 Control: Selecting favorites in your card folder isn't entirely elegant (particularly if you make a mistake), and the shield would be a lot easier to use in battle if it were mapped to a shoulder button instead. Otherwise, the controls are generally responsive and streamlined. Menu navigation is easy and the touchscreen implementation usually works well, though I find (at least on my DS) that ShovelMan's controls are a little finicky, and that the junkyard radar is both unreliable and awkward to use—rapidly switching between screen-tapping and button-pressing with the same hand, with or without the stylus, while trying to dodge bulldozers every ten seconds with your other hand, is obnoxious. One notable oversight is that you can't use the touchscreen to compose e-mails.
+0 Gameplay: If the game were mostly just combat, I'd be pretty happy—I actually prefer Star Force over Battle Network when it comes to battles. The inverted charge function (hold button to shoot continuously, release button to charge) keeps the gameplay from becoming too button-mashy when you run out of Battle Cards, and charging up by default adds an element of strategy in deciding whether it's worth losing your charge to open fire with smaller shots. Using the regular buster feels more like an essential part of combat than a punishment for using up your Battle Cards too quickly. Limiting the player's movement to one row, while seemingly restrictive, is liberating in that it requires less Battle Card micromanagement. In Battle Network, you stand a better chance of survival if you constantly swap around Battle Chips to account for all the ways your half of the battlefield can change, and all the different distances at which you might find yourself fighting enemies. To a large extent, you have to adapt your playstyle to whatever the battlefield is going to look like. In Star Force, you have the freedom to adapt Battle Chips to your playstyle: you don't have to worry about terrain changes on your side of the battlefield, and you can lock onto enemies who are otherwise too far away to be hit by the weapon you want to use. Moreover, selecting multiple Battle Cards in combat is a matter of making the most of whatever hand you're dealt, rather than stocking up on Battle Cards with the same letter code. These elements put the focus more on pattern recognition, quick reflexes, and resourcefulness (ie, traditional Mega Man gameplay) than on advance planning and elaborate strategy...but you're still free to plan and strategize as much as you want, because the game encourages a variety of playstyles.
However, combat is only one part of the game, and it doesn't make up for all the problems outside of battles. There are certainly fun parts—such as launching missiles at Cygnus's minions, solving the Navi Card puzzles on the space station, and breaking into people's Transers to read their silly secrets—but there are also some unpleasant and borderline unfair parts, like being ambushed by giant snakes in Ophiuca's lair that sometimes seem completely avoidable, getting run over by bulldozers repeatedly as you search in vain for NPCs who are buried in a completely different location from where your radar says they should be, and being bombarded by random math and language questions that bring out my test-taking anxiety and don't give me enough time to fully comprehend what's being asked (though I admit that "Time is monkey" makes me laugh every time). Still, the FM-ians' lairs are a welcome break from spending the bulk of the game in Geo's hometown, at his school, or at AMAKEN. Another issue with having Wave Roads layered over top of the physical world is that pulsing in and out doesn't technically take you to a different area—you're stuck exploring the same few rooms until you take a bus elsewhere or pulse into a Comp Space. And every single Comp Space has the same layout; even two or three different Comp Space variants would go a long way in breaking up the omnipresent feeling of déjà vu.
There's already enough backtracking and repetition of locations just to get through the main story; the sidequests make matters worse. Pulse in, walk around until you can access someone's Transer, accept a sidequest, pulse out, wander back to where that person is standing in the physical world, talk to them for instructions, trudge back to the nearest Wavehole, and then work on doing whatever they've asked...which all too often involves backtracking to around the same spot where you accessed their Transer in the first place. The whole process of getting a sidequest rolling is tedious, and all that pulsing in and out (not to mention the distraction of random battles) makes it easy to lose track of which people's quests you've looked at—and losing track of sidequests lends itself to more running around in circles.
+2 Bosses: I love the bosses in this game; both their designs and their fights are varied and distinctive. Bosses come in all shapes and sizes, from the tall and slender Cygnus Wing to the short and stout Cancer Bubble to the huge and imposing Leo/Pegasus/Dragon. The bosses have a nice range of personalities, too, expressed both in their dialogue and in their animation (I'm particularly fond of Crown Thunder). I appreciate the balance of pattern recognition and quick reflexes required to survive every boss fight; combat is comfortably hectic. The likes of Libra Scales, Gemini Spark, and Andromeda offer some interesting twists as well.
+2 Battle Cards: Thanks in part to the lock-on feature, the majority of Battle Cards are useful in almost any situation; even the ones I rarely or never use (Voltic Eye, Fokx-Fu, Whistle, the various Knuckles) are left out due to personal preference rather than uselessness. Not only are the cards powerful and versatile, but they're fun. Cards such as Radar Missile, Sticky Rain, Magic Crystal, and Queen Ophiuca just feel fantastic to use, and the Gradius fan in me gets a tremendous kick out of Moai Fall. Even the most mundane cards have enough pizazz to feel like a special weapon, not just something that does more damage than the default attack.
+0 Items/Upgrades: All the usual health-increasing/restoring items and general utilities are present and accounted for, but there's not much else. There are several weapons to be found or purchased, but most of them aren't upgrades so much as tradeoffs—and if you play the way I do, you'll frequently be disappointed by them. For my playstyle, at least, all the best alternatives to your current weapon appear after you obtain one of the few weapons that's unquestionably an upgrade.
+0 Ending: The space station is falling apart, and Geo finds himself trapped on it. In a last-ditch effort to get home, he enters the emergency escape module and jettisons it from the station. I find it hard to believe the explanation that Geo remembers how to operate the controls because his dad taught him—Geo, at the oldest, would've been about 7 years old at the time, and I hardly trust kids of that age to use a can opener, let alone fly an escape pod back to Earth. Not that it matters for long—shortly after making contact with his friends back home, the obligatory Dramatic System Malfunction sets the escape module adrift. However, because technology in this game can do anything required by the plot, Geo's friends guide him back home with...uh...beams of light from their BrotherBands? If Geo is so far away from Earth that he can't see the planet to orient himself in the right direction, that means Luna and the gang are going to be standing outside with their arms in the air for a looooong time. Roll credits as the escape module floats past constellations of the game's FM-ians, which looks pretty cool. There's a brief epilogue in which Geo, back on Earth, attends a feelgood convention in front of his house, surrounded by his friends and a few of the most influential adults in his life. Pan to the roof, where Mega and Lyra discuss their plans to keep hanging around these humans for the sake of a sequel. To its credit, the ending does a good job of bringing closure to the story, keeping in mind the central themes of trust and friendship. There's a decent mix of drama, introspection, and humor, and the pacing is okay for such a long cutscene. It still suffers from all the same logical and narrative problems that have characterized the entire game, but taken in context, it's a perfectly acceptable conclusion that fits with the game's storytelling style.
+0 Replay Value: Having only played the Pegasus version (and having called it quits before reaching 100% completion, because I'm not as good at or as fond of this series as I am the more traditional Mega Man series), much of my knowledge here is based on what I've read. All the staples set forth in the Battle Network series are here: random battles, a multiplayer option where you can battle a human opponent, loads of Battle Cards to collect, various upgrades that change the combat somewhat, and optional sidequests. Characters say different things depending on when you talk to them, and there's a bonus area (DeepSpace) that becomes accessible after beating the game. Additionally, you can form BrotherBands with real-life people and send them clunky e-mails (which is a superfluous function in this day and age, but still a reason to stick with the game after beating it). There are three different versions of the game—but the differences are very limited, mainly consisting of which single battle transformation (Green Dragon, Ice Pegasus, or Fire Leo) you get to use. That being the case, I'm docking this category a point for wasting the player's time and/or money with unnecessary variants that rehash the same story and gameplay each time. Otherwise, the replay value is good.
-2 Polish: Dialogue can be skimmed and whole cutscenes can be skipped, which is a big plus. The long and unnecessary fade in and fade out surrounding each cutscene, however small, is a minus. It's incredibly easy to get stuck trying to walk past an NPC in one of the game's many narrow passageways—which is an annoyance if it happens in the Wave World and you need to pulse out, but if it happens in the physical world, the only solution is to reset the game (hope you saved recently)! Writing yourself an e-mail reminder about a sidequest, and then being surprised that you received an e-mail, is silly, and the momentary pause is a small waste of time. Composing e-mail is pretty clunky; instead of using a straightforward message editor, you're railroaded through a series of tutorial popups every time. This is especially irritating if you're trying to enter any of the Cipher codes from memory—which is fairly likely, given that this is a portable game that never indicates you should bring a pen and paper with you—because you'll probably forget what you're supposed to write by the time you get to the composition screen. What's more insulting is that the majority of Cipher rewards are items you can buy anywhere and Battle Cards you've already got duplicates of.
What's infuriating is that several sidequests can be accepted before you're able to complete them, and there's no way to cancel a sidequest aside from completing it. For example, there's one where you use ThermoMan to fix the temperature in a classroom, but it's possible to take on the quest before you have any idea ThermoMan exists...which, if you think like I do, prompts a thorough and futile investigation of every Comp Space in the school to see if a virus is causing the problem. There's another one where a kid keeps falling asleep because of the Mr. Hertz singing above him...but if you've advanced the plot to a certain point, you can't tell the Mr. Hertz to stop singing. because he won't even acknowledge your sidequest until after you've advanced the plot a little more. Same deal with the guy in Time Square who thinks his girlfriend is cheating on him—if you accept his quest at the wrong time, you'll be able to talk to the girl who's probably his girlfriend, but she'll talk about something completely different and make you suspect that maybe his girlfriend is somewhere else. On my first playthrough, I spent hours fruitlessly trying to complete sidequests that were, unbeknownst to me, beyond my ability to resolve at that point in the game. Not cool.
Extras/Easter Eggs:
Novelty:
Overall Score: X (+Y merits, -Z flaws)
[Last updated July 31, 2018]
Star Force teaches us that it's OK to skip school for any reason, you can get what you want by nagging and manipulating, abusive friendships are totally acceptable, you can't trust an officer of the law, there's nothing wrong with assaulting an officer of the law, it's fine to break into people's personal information and then offer unsolicited help with their secret problems, and it's probably safe to leave an unconscious friend surrounded by poisonous snakes. The adults are horrible role models, too. Single working mother or not, Hope Stelar is an absentee parent who seems to think it's responsible to leave her 10-year-old son unsupervised at all hours. Instead of complaining to the Board of Education or working out a compromise with Principal Loude, Mitch Shepar solves his ideological differences by not doing the job he was hired to do (and then he loses all integrity when a talking scale easily convinces him to fanatically embrace what he was resisting). Pat Sprigs's parents abandoned him in a junkyard when he was an infant. It's even a major plot point that Luna Platz's parents are terrible. All the heavy-handed speeches about trust and friendship are fine and dandy, but the main message is undermined by an entire cast of problematic characters saying or doing one questionable thing after another. This also makes it difficult to like any of the characters; do I really want to cheer for someone who's just being whiny or pushy or paranoid so that they can grow into someone likeable later on?
I also can't wrap my head around the concept of EM Waves. In the Battle Network games, you jack into a machine and navigate your avatar through a virtual world. Makes sense. In Star Force, there's an invisible world coexisting with our own, and it's made up of waves that do whatever the plot needs them to do. If you have to fix a machine, you might talk to a Mr. Hertz character (who is the personification of the machine)...or you might use an actual control panel that exists in the Wave World for reasons I can't fathom. Geo's first meeting with Mega establishes very clearly that Wave Beings can't be seen with the naked eye, yet Bud, Luna, and every other person who gets possessed has no problem seeing FM-ians without a Visualizer. There are very specific places in the Wave World where Geo is allowed to teleport, but when a group of Jammers attacks Echo Ridge, he can suddenly teleport anywhere he wants. It's bad enough that Star Force centers around a convoluted technology, but the game isn't even consistent about how that technology works! And that's to say nothing about BrotherBand technology—which is basically Facebook for people with only three friends—being able to locate people lost in outer space if you wish hard enough.
Practically every aspect of the story ranges from "didn't entirely think this through" to "complete nonsense." Did I mention the exhibit where poisonous snakes are on display without protective glass to keep them from getting loose? Or the part where Geo has to locate the former chief of NAZA, who could be anywhere in the world, and the only guidance Aaron Boreal gives is "he's old"? What gets me the most, though, is that Star Force only qualifies as a Mega Man game because it bears some resemblance to Battle Network and there's a character named Mega. The game is technically in the same continuity as Battle Network, but none of that history informs the story in a meaningful way (and the top-secret postgame cameo, while cute, totally doesn't count). If anything, Geo's world seems more like an alternate universe than a future evolution of Lan's world. Also, Star Force takes place somewhere around the same time as the Zero series; an appearance by Ciel or Neige would have gone a long way in making the game feel more like Mega Man than a spinoff of a spinoff. Heck, instead of FM-ians, the antagonists could've been hyperadvanced Stardroids—the Mega Man franchise already had a race of mystery aliens who built robots inspired by the cosmos; there was no need to invent new aliens (especially ones with such an overtly punny name).
+0 Graphics: I'm normally not a fan of DS-quality 3D graphics, but the battle sequences look pretty decent. The enemy designs are distinctive and memorable; the animations are good; and the special effects are flashy while still clearly communicating what's going on, though it would be nice to have more of a visual cue when your buster is fully charged. Outside of combat, things look as good as any given Battle Network game. Character designs and dialogue portraits are loaded with personality, the locations in the physical world are nicely detailed, and the roads of the Wave World are vibrant and twisty enough to retain some degree of visual interest on the umpteenth visit. The one problem—and it's a major one—is that it's inherently messy to layer the Wave World over top of the physical world. If you're on the ground, there's a lot to obscure your view; if you're in the air, all the clutter below can be disorienting, especially when the path on the ground is drastically different from the path in the air. The graphics of the two worlds look great when kept separate, but they're a confusing eyesore when smashed together, and that's unfortunately a large part of the game.
-1 Music: This one's a mixed bag, but it's ultimately the implementation that brings the score down. Stylistically, the soundtrack fits the atmosphere well—it's cheery and exciting and emotional in all the right places, and even the most dramatic tunes never get too somber. A few tracks stand out as particularly good: Cyber World, Wave World, and Final Battleground all have a solid, atmospheric groove; and each of the battle themes has exactly the right amount of intensity. But then there are too many tracks that try too hard to sound futuristic and otherworldly, with blips, bleeps, weird note progressions, and dissonant chords that quickly become grating. I find the AMAKEN SpaceSim and Ophiuca's lair to be outright unlistenable ("BWAH NAH NAH BWAAAAAH!!!!" ow ow ow owwwww), and the generic indoors music and generic danger music have the added problem of being too short for their own good. The latter is especially problematic: dangerous situations have a habit of triggering while you're still in the middle of exploring a new area, and restoring the music to normal is usually a long and complicated process culminating in a boss fight, so expect to spend several hours suffering from a tune that's 16 seconds long. Most of the music heard during cutscenes is equally short, and the repetition often makes it difficult to tolerate the already longwinded dialogue. Music should enhance or at least not interfere with the game experience, but with Star Force, I often find myself rushing through text and skimping on exploration just to minimize the time spent listening to certain tunes.
+2 Sound Effects: No complaints here. Battle sounds pack a satisfying punch, the digitized voice that announces your Transer selections is pretty cool, and everything else sounds appropriate and suitably realistic. The sound effects clearly convey what's going on, with a lot of style and variety to boot.
+0 Control: Selecting favorites in your card folder isn't entirely elegant (particularly if you make a mistake), and the shield would be a lot easier to use in battle if it were mapped to a shoulder button instead. Otherwise, the controls are generally responsive and streamlined. Menu navigation is easy and the touchscreen implementation usually works well, though I find (at least on my DS) that ShovelMan's controls are a little finicky, and that the junkyard radar is both unreliable and awkward to use—rapidly switching between screen-tapping and button-pressing with the same hand, with or without the stylus, while trying to dodge bulldozers every ten seconds with your other hand, is obnoxious. One notable oversight is that you can't use the touchscreen to compose e-mails.
+0 Gameplay: If the game were mostly just combat, I'd be pretty happy—I actually prefer Star Force over Battle Network when it comes to battles. The inverted charge function (hold button to shoot continuously, release button to charge) keeps the gameplay from becoming too button-mashy when you run out of Battle Cards, and charging up by default adds an element of strategy in deciding whether it's worth losing your charge to open fire with smaller shots. Using the regular buster feels more like an essential part of combat than a punishment for using up your Battle Cards too quickly. Limiting the player's movement to one row, while seemingly restrictive, is liberating in that it requires less Battle Card micromanagement. In Battle Network, you stand a better chance of survival if you constantly swap around Battle Chips to account for all the ways your half of the battlefield can change, and all the different distances at which you might find yourself fighting enemies. To a large extent, you have to adapt your playstyle to whatever the battlefield is going to look like. In Star Force, you have the freedom to adapt Battle Chips to your playstyle: you don't have to worry about terrain changes on your side of the battlefield, and you can lock onto enemies who are otherwise too far away to be hit by the weapon you want to use. Moreover, selecting multiple Battle Cards in combat is a matter of making the most of whatever hand you're dealt, rather than stocking up on Battle Cards with the same letter code. These elements put the focus more on pattern recognition, quick reflexes, and resourcefulness (ie, traditional Mega Man gameplay) than on advance planning and elaborate strategy...but you're still free to plan and strategize as much as you want, because the game encourages a variety of playstyles.
However, combat is only one part of the game, and it doesn't make up for all the problems outside of battles. There are certainly fun parts—such as launching missiles at Cygnus's minions, solving the Navi Card puzzles on the space station, and breaking into people's Transers to read their silly secrets—but there are also some unpleasant and borderline unfair parts, like being ambushed by giant snakes in Ophiuca's lair that sometimes seem completely avoidable, getting run over by bulldozers repeatedly as you search in vain for NPCs who are buried in a completely different location from where your radar says they should be, and being bombarded by random math and language questions that bring out my test-taking anxiety and don't give me enough time to fully comprehend what's being asked (though I admit that "Time is monkey" makes me laugh every time). Still, the FM-ians' lairs are a welcome break from spending the bulk of the game in Geo's hometown, at his school, or at AMAKEN. Another issue with having Wave Roads layered over top of the physical world is that pulsing in and out doesn't technically take you to a different area—you're stuck exploring the same few rooms until you take a bus elsewhere or pulse into a Comp Space. And every single Comp Space has the same layout; even two or three different Comp Space variants would go a long way in breaking up the omnipresent feeling of déjà vu.
There's already enough backtracking and repetition of locations just to get through the main story; the sidequests make matters worse. Pulse in, walk around until you can access someone's Transer, accept a sidequest, pulse out, wander back to where that person is standing in the physical world, talk to them for instructions, trudge back to the nearest Wavehole, and then work on doing whatever they've asked...which all too often involves backtracking to around the same spot where you accessed their Transer in the first place. The whole process of getting a sidequest rolling is tedious, and all that pulsing in and out (not to mention the distraction of random battles) makes it easy to lose track of which people's quests you've looked at—and losing track of sidequests lends itself to more running around in circles.
+2 Bosses: I love the bosses in this game; both their designs and their fights are varied and distinctive. Bosses come in all shapes and sizes, from the tall and slender Cygnus Wing to the short and stout Cancer Bubble to the huge and imposing Leo/Pegasus/Dragon. The bosses have a nice range of personalities, too, expressed both in their dialogue and in their animation (I'm particularly fond of Crown Thunder). I appreciate the balance of pattern recognition and quick reflexes required to survive every boss fight; combat is comfortably hectic. The likes of Libra Scales, Gemini Spark, and Andromeda offer some interesting twists as well.
+2 Battle Cards: Thanks in part to the lock-on feature, the majority of Battle Cards are useful in almost any situation; even the ones I rarely or never use (Voltic Eye, Fokx-Fu, Whistle, the various Knuckles) are left out due to personal preference rather than uselessness. Not only are the cards powerful and versatile, but they're fun. Cards such as Radar Missile, Sticky Rain, Magic Crystal, and Queen Ophiuca just feel fantastic to use, and the Gradius fan in me gets a tremendous kick out of Moai Fall. Even the most mundane cards have enough pizazz to feel like a special weapon, not just something that does more damage than the default attack.
+0 Items/Upgrades: All the usual health-increasing/restoring items and general utilities are present and accounted for, but there's not much else. There are several weapons to be found or purchased, but most of them aren't upgrades so much as tradeoffs—and if you play the way I do, you'll frequently be disappointed by them. For my playstyle, at least, all the best alternatives to your current weapon appear after you obtain one of the few weapons that's unquestionably an upgrade.
+0 Ending: The space station is falling apart, and Geo finds himself trapped on it. In a last-ditch effort to get home, he enters the emergency escape module and jettisons it from the station. I find it hard to believe the explanation that Geo remembers how to operate the controls because his dad taught him—Geo, at the oldest, would've been about 7 years old at the time, and I hardly trust kids of that age to use a can opener, let alone fly an escape pod back to Earth. Not that it matters for long—shortly after making contact with his friends back home, the obligatory Dramatic System Malfunction sets the escape module adrift. However, because technology in this game can do anything required by the plot, Geo's friends guide him back home with...uh...beams of light from their BrotherBands? If Geo is so far away from Earth that he can't see the planet to orient himself in the right direction, that means Luna and the gang are going to be standing outside with their arms in the air for a looooong time. Roll credits as the escape module floats past constellations of the game's FM-ians, which looks pretty cool. There's a brief epilogue in which Geo, back on Earth, attends a feelgood convention in front of his house, surrounded by his friends and a few of the most influential adults in his life. Pan to the roof, where Mega and Lyra discuss their plans to keep hanging around these humans for the sake of a sequel. To its credit, the ending does a good job of bringing closure to the story, keeping in mind the central themes of trust and friendship. There's a decent mix of drama, introspection, and humor, and the pacing is okay for such a long cutscene. It still suffers from all the same logical and narrative problems that have characterized the entire game, but taken in context, it's a perfectly acceptable conclusion that fits with the game's storytelling style.
+0 Replay Value: Having only played the Pegasus version (and having called it quits before reaching 100% completion, because I'm not as good at or as fond of this series as I am the more traditional Mega Man series), much of my knowledge here is based on what I've read. All the staples set forth in the Battle Network series are here: random battles, a multiplayer option where you can battle a human opponent, loads of Battle Cards to collect, various upgrades that change the combat somewhat, and optional sidequests. Characters say different things depending on when you talk to them, and there's a bonus area (DeepSpace) that becomes accessible after beating the game. Additionally, you can form BrotherBands with real-life people and send them clunky e-mails (which is a superfluous function in this day and age, but still a reason to stick with the game after beating it). There are three different versions of the game—but the differences are very limited, mainly consisting of which single battle transformation (Green Dragon, Ice Pegasus, or Fire Leo) you get to use. That being the case, I'm docking this category a point for wasting the player's time and/or money with unnecessary variants that rehash the same story and gameplay each time. Otherwise, the replay value is good.
-2 Polish: Dialogue can be skimmed and whole cutscenes can be skipped, which is a big plus. The long and unnecessary fade in and fade out surrounding each cutscene, however small, is a minus. It's incredibly easy to get stuck trying to walk past an NPC in one of the game's many narrow passageways—which is an annoyance if it happens in the Wave World and you need to pulse out, but if it happens in the physical world, the only solution is to reset the game (hope you saved recently)! Writing yourself an e-mail reminder about a sidequest, and then being surprised that you received an e-mail, is silly, and the momentary pause is a small waste of time. Composing e-mail is pretty clunky; instead of using a straightforward message editor, you're railroaded through a series of tutorial popups every time. This is especially irritating if you're trying to enter any of the Cipher codes from memory—which is fairly likely, given that this is a portable game that never indicates you should bring a pen and paper with you—because you'll probably forget what you're supposed to write by the time you get to the composition screen. What's more insulting is that the majority of Cipher rewards are items you can buy anywhere and Battle Cards you've already got duplicates of.
What's infuriating is that several sidequests can be accepted before you're able to complete them, and there's no way to cancel a sidequest aside from completing it. For example, there's one where you use ThermoMan to fix the temperature in a classroom, but it's possible to take on the quest before you have any idea ThermoMan exists...which, if you think like I do, prompts a thorough and futile investigation of every Comp Space in the school to see if a virus is causing the problem. There's another one where a kid keeps falling asleep because of the Mr. Hertz singing above him...but if you've advanced the plot to a certain point, you can't tell the Mr. Hertz to stop singing. because he won't even acknowledge your sidequest until after you've advanced the plot a little more. Same deal with the guy in Time Square who thinks his girlfriend is cheating on him—if you accept his quest at the wrong time, you'll be able to talk to the girl who's probably his girlfriend, but she'll talk about something completely different and make you suspect that maybe his girlfriend is somewhere else. On my first playthrough, I spent hours fruitlessly trying to complete sidequests that were, unbeknownst to me, beyond my ability to resolve at that point in the game. Not cool.
Extras/Easter Eggs:
Novelty:
Overall Score: X (+Y merits, -Z flaws)
[Last updated July 31, 2018]
Mega Man Star Force 2 (DS)
Story:
Graphics:
Music:
Sound Effects:
Control:
Gameplay:
Bosses:
Battle Chips:
Items/Upgrades:
Ending:
Replay Value:
Polish:
Extras/Easter Eggs:
Novelty:
Overall Score: X (+Y merits, -Z flaws)
Graphics:
Music:
Sound Effects:
Control:
Gameplay:
Bosses:
Battle Chips:
Items/Upgrades:
Ending:
Replay Value:
Polish:
Extras/Easter Eggs:
Novelty:
Overall Score: X (+Y merits, -Z flaws)
Mega Man Star Force 3 (DS)
Story:
Graphics:
Music:
Sound Effects:
Control:
Gameplay:
Bosses:
Battle Chips:
Items/Upgrades/Support Utilities:
Ending:
Replay Value:
Polish:
Extras/Easter Eggs:
Novelty:
Overall Score: X (+Y merits, -Z flaws)
Graphics:
Music:
Sound Effects:
Control:
Gameplay:
Bosses:
Battle Chips:
Items/Upgrades/Support Utilities:
Ending:
Replay Value:
Polish:
Extras/Easter Eggs:
Novelty:
Overall Score: X (+Y merits, -Z flaws)