Mega Man Star Force

November 12,2007 - Capcom released numerous Mega Man titles on the GBA during its heyday; many of which were games in the Battle Network series. The Mega Man Battle Network games followed Lan and his powerful netNavi Mega Man saving Dentex City from villains who used their own netNavis to infect and take over the world with various computer viruses. While the stories in each game were bizarre, they featured an intriguing action battle system that increasingly got difficult with each title. They were good, but they were just too plentiful. Now Capcom is out with a new kind of Mega Man game that sort of follows in suit with the Battle Network series, and while it has some new interesting quirks--it just doesn't do much to separate itself from the rest.

Mega Man Star Force is about a new character, Geo Stelar, who becomes depressed after the disappearance of his father. When you start the game, you head up to a building at the top of a city and look into the starry night with a new pair of goggles that were just obtained. Aliens apparently strike the earth and because of the goggles, they're actually visible to you. You meet a particularly friendly blue alien named Omega-Xis and suddenly a nearby train is infected with a virus. Omega-XIs tells you what your goggles are capable of, and before you know it, you merge with the alien and transform into Mega Man. Once the viruses are dealt with, O-X offers to give Geo information on his father in return of him doing what O-X wants for a bit, and that's where the story takes off.

Star Force's battle system is nearly the same as that of the Battle Network titles, except this time the action is done from a new third person, behind-the-back, perspective. In combat you just choose from a deck of cards, ranging from a variety of types. There are attack cards, heal cards, and stat boost cards. Like Battle Network, out of your current hand, you can still use the duplicates on the same turn. You're also given the freedom of creating different kinds of chains because white cards (mainly stat boosts) can be used in conjunction with any card in your hand, and you can also use at least two cards from the same column. When moving around the plain, you can also use the B button to simply fire with Mega Man's arm cannon. The beauty of the battle system is that the battles in Star Force are a lot more fast-paced than the ones in Battle Network.

The main new feature in Star Force is the Brother Bandsystem, which sort of works like a fake in-game MySpace. With the Brother Bandsystem, you can make an unlimited number of friends, both in and out of the single player mode. You can also play with up to 6 real-time buddies for power-ups in combat: Favorite Cards, Link Ability, Best Combo, and stuff in that area. Capcom has also juiced up this Brother Bandsystem by allowing you to login to Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection to find friends to connect with and fight.

The world in Star Force is very colorful, a lot more so than that in the Battle Network games. The art seems to all have been done by the same guy, but that's probably due to the fact that this game is just a few decades after the events that happened in the Battle Network games. Either way, while it looks good, it doesn't seem like a lot was done to it—the game plays different but looks the same.

The game also sounds like the Battle Network titles. The soundtrack is fairly catchy and has good music, but the sound effects, especially that of your weapons, sound exactly the same as they did in the Battle Network games. It's unknown as to whether Capcom did it for nostalgia or just to have sound effects. It just doesn't sound all new.

In a nutshell, Mega Man Star Force is an okay game, but it's just too much like the Battle Network games to really warrant a purchase. The story is all over the place, the graphics and sound look virtually unchanged, and the attempt at making a new battle system just seems a bit lazy. It's only worth getting if you're a diehard fan of this breed in the Mega Man series. As for which version to get, it doesn't really matter. This series has been milked so many times in so many different ways that it's difficult to even say where this series is going. To put it to plain words, gamers are due for a true blue Mega Man title, and Capcom hasn't delivered.

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