u/SoggyWaffles18

Like with BN1, I wanted to talk about my opinions on this game’s 100% experience. In my opinion, 100%ing BN1 was mostly a tedious and unrewarding waste of time that I could not recommend to anyone. But BN2 was a huge improvement over its predecessor in almost every way. Does that include the postgame?

Like I said in that BN1 post, I’m going to try to avoid talking about filling the chip library every time since I expect it to be horrible in every game. But Battle Network 2 does have a few differences worth briefly mentioning, and while there are some good ones like the addition of subchips or ability to run from battles, there are some bad ones too. I’ll only talk about the changes that were for the worse. The first one is something that I’m sure many people aren’t aware of, because there’s pretty much no way to know about it without a guide. Exclusively in BN2, for reasons beyond my comprehension, many viruses only drop certain codes of their chip based on how much health you have. Using a made up example, if you have 1000 HP total, and you’re at full health, a Canodumb will drop Cannon A and B, but they’ll only drop C and D codes if your health is between 250 and 749, and they’ll only drop E codes if it’s between 1 and 249. This is just a stupid change that makes chip hunting more convoluted than it needs to be, even if it’s only codes that are like this, not entire chips. The other change is that there’s now a Program Advance library. You’re now required to activate every PA at least once for 100% completion. For the most part, this wasn’t actually that bad in this game, but I can see it getting worse in the future. But yeah, the chip library still fucking sucks and is a slog to fill, and this game has 100 more chips than BN1, which means even more grinding. The only redeeming quality of this part of the postgame is the fact that the chip trader seems to be much more likely to give you new chips than in BN1. Oh, and searching the Net for Bug Frags also isn’t fun.

Now on to the stuff that’s actually interesting to talk about. During the main story, you’re required to get a Z, B, and A License, but once you do enough board requests (I don’t think these are important enough to deserve a paragraph, so my thoughts are that they’re fine. They’re inoffensive overall, and doing all of them wasn’t that bad), you can do the S License test. After that you can do the SS and SSS License tests. I do think that the parts with multiple back to back virus battles were a decent test of skill. My biggest problem is that for the SSS License, you’re expected to do 30 whole battles and if you die at any time, you have to restart. I just used save states every ten battles, but still, I feel like that’s a little overkill, considering that it takes 20+ minutes to do. Most of the battles aren’t too difficult, but sometimes you’ll get some bullshit like Dominerds who instantly use Geddon to put a timer on the battle. But outside of the virus battles, the rest of the tests sadly just boiled down to doing fetch quests. I could run away from every battle since I had almost every HP memory, but it still wasn’t exactly what I would call fun.

After obtaining every license, you’re able to explore a concealed area of the Net accessed from Undernet 4: WWW Area. A secret base where the remnants of the terrorist organization have hidden after seemingly being defeated in BN1. It consists of three areas, and each one has a boss at the end. Getting through here is much easier said than done, however. It is a postgame area, after all. On top of the bosses, you also have to contend with extremely obnoxious viruses, including a special kind that doesn’t appear anywhere else: Protectos. Protectos appear in preset spots on the map, and they’re gimmick battles, where each one of them has to be deleted simultaneously in one single hit in order to clear the fight. So if each one has 300 health, you need to use an attack that both deals 300+ damage and can hit all of them at once. The battles are also essentially on a time limit, as every ten seconds, the Protectos will cause a strong, field wide explosion, and they’ll keep doing this until you die.

I was expecting to hate these fights, but I actually liked them more than the regular viruses that you fight here (those beetles with auras can go straight to hell). My usual strategies of a) Gater, b) LifeSword2/3, and c) using my folder full of Gospel, FullCust, and miscellaneous asterisk chips wouldn’t always work, or would at least require more thought to use, which meant I had to think outside the box. For example, using FastGauge (which I had set as my regular chip for most of the postgame) to give myself twice as many chances to access the custom screen, or using a fan before using Gospel or LifeSword so I could hit the Protectos if they were in the back row, or using an Aura or Shadow chip so I wouldn’t take damage from an explosion and could stall a little longer, or using an ElecBall right before the explosion so it deals massive damage when it touches them. That plus the fact that they always appear in set locations and never spawn again after being defeated made them feel like fun puzzles to solve.

And now there’s the bosses. At the end of the first area, you fight PharaohMan, returning from BN1. He’s very similar to that game, with the biggest differences being that you have to actually try in order to beat this time. His sarcophaguses are permanently on the battle field, and you can’t even cheese his Ratton attack by standing right next to the coffin because of the field layout. The guardian of the next area is a new Navi, NapalmMan. I wasn’t a huge fan of this fight. I get that the postgame fights should be difficult, but NapalmMan just feels like he just floods the screen with bullshit. You have to react to his turrets shooting at you, while at the same time he’s throwing three napalm bombs at you at once that leave fire on the panels they land on for a few seconds and break those panels. It just feels cheap. And at the end of the last area, you fight PlanetMan, who is both new and not based on an existing Robot Master. He also reveals that this entire thing was a test to see who could get this far into the Net and reach him. Whoever could do that would be able to join WWW. Of course, MegaMan and Lan say no, and have to fight him. His battle is fine, I guess. I don’t really have much to say about him. Overall, these postgame battles were at least an improvement over BN1’s, even if they weren’t perfect.

But obviously PlanetMan isn’t actually the final challenge of the postgame. Right as you’re about to leave WWW Area, you get approached by Bass again. The real Bass, not the fake that Lan and Hub fought in Kotobuki. And he’s decided that MegaMan is a worthy opponent, so he fights you. He doesn’t seem to recognize you from BN1, though. Anyway, his fight isn’t that much different from in that game. He still has an obnoxious 100 HP aura that regenerates every time he attacks, his attacks are still ridiculously fast, and so on. The main difference is that he has 2000 health now, so he more or less requires Program Advances *cough cough* Wind Fan GateMan *cough cough* in order to beat. But once you do, you get a results screen that includes your performance on all the V1 bosses, and that serves as the conclusion to the story based content of the postgame.

There’s still some more stuff left to do before you can actually say that you’ve 100%’d the game. While it technically isn’t a requirement, I decided to go for HubStyle anyway. In order to get it, first you need to S rank every Navi except Bass. I hadn’t already done this since I was able to get a few V3 chips by trading or with a rank 10 busting level, but it wasn’t that hard to do with Darkness, an incredibly busted Program Advance that requires BassV3, AntiNavi, and a Gospel chip, and this went perfectly with my aforementioned extra folder of FullCust and Gospel chips. Unsurprisingly, the hard part was actually finding the Navis. Especially the postgame bosses, since they’re located in WWW Area, where I can’t run away from most virus encounters. But once you do that, you just need to do the 280 battles to get a new Style, and your next Style is guaranteed to be HubStyle. I think it’s ridiculous that you have to do that many battles to get a new Style, because I had to spend possibly upwards of 30 minutes while on fast forward just running around Den Area 2 with AirManV2 set as my regular chip to one shot every virus. This was the last thing I did in the post game, though. I guess running around in circles is a pretty fitting way to close it off. HubStyle gives lets you pick ten chips, increases your buster power to 10 but reduces rapid to 1, gives you super armor, lets you hold 8 Navi chips, starts battles with a barrier, and lets you shield by pressing B and back on the D pad. So essentially, it gives you the power of every Style at once. The only drawback is the fact that your HP is cut in half. This is a neat reward for S ranking every boss, but as I said, it was the last thing I did in the game, so I didn’t actually get to use it.

The real final thing to do in the postgame is fight BassDeluxe. After you get every chip outside of the ones this boss drops, BassDeluxe becomes a random encounter in WWW Area 3, essentially serving as a BassV3. Pretty much the only difference in this fight is that he has a 150 damage aura instead of 100, which poses a much bigger threat than you’d think. It’s surprisingly difficult to find chips that deal that much damage and come in the same code in BN2 (which I assume is the result of them trying to fix the issue BN1 had where chips were too powerful, they just ended up having the opposite issue, so now you’re forced to use broken Program Advances to beat bosses reasonably quickly), and you’re expected to have a ready supply of them to stand a chance in this fight. Even Gater won’t work because it only does 100 damage each hit by default. I settled on mainly using chips for CrossShield3 O, Muramasa O, and Guardian O to destroy his aura and then using BodyGuard—the second most overpowered PA—to actually damage him, and using Gater if the chips for it showed up. I don’t really know how else you can realistically kill him quickly enough to get an S rank, because the 150 damage aura regenerates so quickly that it invalidates nearly any other approach. And keep in mind, he’s a random encounter. If you aren’t using save states and you mess up, you have to just run around until you find him again for another try. I know LocEnemy exists, but still, that doesn’t make it not suck to hunt down bosses like this. Even though you get BassV1 after the first fight, you still have to fight BassDeluxe three times since one of his drops in addition to his V2 and V3 chips is LifeAura3. But once you do that, you’ve finally completed the chip library… kind of.

There’s actually one more secret chip that I believe is only added to the library once you obtain it. After getting all five title screen marks, you can input a code on the title screen to play the entire game over in hard mode, and if you clear it, you get Sanctuary. I didn’t play it. I’m not doing the entire main campaign again after spending 59 hours on the postgame. I appreciate it existing, since no other Battle Network game besides… BN4 has any form of a hard mode, but it shouldn’t be the reward for 100% completion.

And that’s everything. I didn’t max out MegaMan’s level because I did not feel like hunting down whatever HP memory I missed, nor did I complete every trade, and I didn’t even completely buy out every shop despite having more than enough Zenny to, but… I don’t really care. I did everything that I would say was important. BN2’s postgame was without question better than BN1, because at least there is something new other than a few bosses, but the grind to get there… seriously, I can’t stress how bad it is. There’s so much bullshit involved in filling the chip library, and because of that, I still can’t recommend 100%ing this game to anyone. It’s not worth it, especially if you’re playing on original hardware or the Legacy Collection where you don’t have save states or fast forward. But I’ve heard a lot of good things about BN3’s postgame on this sub. I’m a little interested in finding out whether or not the hype is overblown.

As the title indicates, I beat Star Force 2, and I was really excited to post about it because I have a lot to say about it. So this will probably be a slightly longer post.

I know that this game has a quality of life patch, but I chose to just play the original game (specifically Ninja). Since SF2 is so infamous, I wanted to play the original to form a proper opinion on it. Also, the way this game handled the three versions is definitely better than SF1, since there are only two separate cartridges, but each one comes with Zerker.

But on to the game. Let’s start with… the soundtrack. I already liked SF1’s OST, but I think this game’s music might be even better. Once you turn on the game, you get to listen to the best version of Shooting Star, and the rest of the soundtrack is filled with bangers too. Hometown, Willshire Hills, Wave World, Sky Wave, and most of the dungeon themes are examples of how they cooked on this OST. The battle themes are also great. I always got hyped when Wave Battle started playing. Overall, it’s safe to say that they didn’t mess up in this category.

But the rest of the game doesn’t really hold up as well. story is probably the most infamous aspect of SF2, and for good reason. The first game had a surprisingly well written plot that was a good representation of depression and insecurity, and I really liked it. This game, by comparison, is much more shallow and inane. There are a couple major issues with this game’s writing that come together to form its really stupid story. For example, there are aspects of the universe that have nonsensical or disturbing implications when you think about it for more than 5 seconds, something that Battle Network games had a lot of but SF1 generally dialed back on. The biggest example of this is Link Power. It’s supposed to just be literal power of friendship—you get more of it as you make more Brothers and deepen your bonds with them—but they decided to go one step further use it to create a classist dystopia. People who have higher Link Power get access to things that others don’t, and people with lower Link Power can straight up be refused services by businesses. I guess the idea is that if you have low Link Power, it must mean you’re not a trustworthy person, but… you know, it’s also possible that you’re just not good at socializing with people. Or you could have high Link Power, but because you’re using people and not forming genuine connections. The game never once talks about the darker aspects of Link Power, even though they could have been genuinely intriguing concepts, which just makes the universe feel more cartoony than anything.

Most of the major characters returning from SF1 have been heavily flanderized. Geo gets depressed when the plot calls for it for the dumbest of reasons, Bud only ever talks about food, Zack mentions the Zackpedia every other sentence, Luna is an insufferable tsundere, and Omega-Xis just constantly talks about violence. Sonia and Hope haven’t changed, but they don’t have that much plot relevance to begin with. It’s pretty disappointing that all of the depth of these characters has been entirely removed. Actually, Zack is given more characterization, but the way they do it is by turning him into a selfish prick for the Plesio Surf scenario, so it just makes him more unlikable than if they were to keep him as a walking trope.

The new characters aren’t much better. The villains of each scenario, besides Terra Condor, are just assholes instead of being well meaning people who were manipulated like in SF1. And the main villains are just as poorly written. Honestly, Hyde would have been a good character if he only appeared in that first scenario, since I liked his hamminess at first, but I just got sick of him after a while, especially since he has virtually no character, and the only reason he’s working with Lady Vega is because he’s a simp. Solo is just a generic edgelord. All he ever does is talk about how worthless bonds and friends are despite technically working with other people for most of the game. They do nothing with his character other than that. He’s experienced loss like Geo has, and he’s supposed to be Geo’s rival, so why not have him be unable to move on from the destruction of Mu, which is what makes him different from Geo? Idk, literally anything else would have been better than his current backstory and personality. Hollow doesn’t really do that much other than acting mysterious, but it makes sense why he’s like that, so I can excuse him. And finally, Lady Vega actually has a good backstory and doesn’t feel like she belongs in a game as shallow as this. It’s kind of weird.

Normally I don’t spend that much time talking about the plot, but it’s one of the main problems with this game (and unlike BN4, it’s not like the plot was too non existent to talk about), so I felt like I had to go in to detail to explain exactly how it’s bad. It’s written like it was a Battle Network game, but it still wants to tackle more mature themes like SF1 did, which pretty obviously doesn’t work. However, while the story is bad, the gameplay being good can possibly make up for it. So how does the game fare on that front?

As far as the combat goes, it’s mostly the same as SF1. The main new addition is Tribe On, which is this game’s transformation. It’s handled far better than the Star Force was in SF1. I liked it, and I also liked the addition of Auto Brothers so people who don’t know anyone in real life who have this game can still use features like Double Tribe. There’s also Tribe King, which was just incredibly broken. That does make it really fun to use, especially in the more obnoxious parts of the game… which I should probably talk about now.

So while the combat on its own is fun, it gets very frustrating when you’re forced to fight viruses every two steps. This game’s infamous encounter rate is as abysmal as everyone says it is, and it makes a lot of bad sections of the game even worse if you don’t stock up with Cloakers at all times. An example of this is the Sky Wave. The only good thing about this place is the music and atmosphere. Other than that, it’s just a huge area with tons of dead ends, and the encounter rate is so bad that it takes forever to get from one place to another, and sometimes you’ll even forget what direction you were headed which wastes even more time. And it’s not like this is an optional area either, this is the only way to get to half of the game’s locations.

The dungeons are also not very good, even though most of them are only two areas long. The first two were fine. Rogue’s scenario was irritating, but the second they introduce the Sky Wave is when things really go to shit. Not just regarding the dungeons, but in general now that I think about it. First there’s Plesio Surf’s dungeon, which is one of the worst in the series. The gimmick of digging for Hertzes and mystery data while making sure not to dig up any viruses is basically just Gemini Spark’s dungeon except worse, but then you also have to deal with fucking horrid encounter rate. Whazzap Ruins was another one I didn’t like because of the encounter rate, especially since you’re forced to backtrack because the Hertzes only show up in the order the game wants you to collect them. And Bermuda Maze’s only real redeeming quality was having a surprisingly low encounter rate. Other than that, it was slightly less bad than I anticipated… the first time around, at least. Not the second visit. I had to use a guide for that shit. But I think you get the point, the dungeons aren’t fun, and traversing the world in general isn’t fun.

I think the last thing of “note” before talking about the endgame is the Matter Waves, which are basically Navi Cards from SF1 except even more shoehorned in. Most of them are only used once and aren’t even at least interactive. It really makes you wonder what the point of including them was, especially since they get a dedicated spot in your inventory as if they’re important.

Unfortunately, the game doesn’t really pick up in the last scenario. Despite the time in the image I linked, this game is actually really short. I guess that’s for the better, but still, I was expecting at least one extra scenario. Anyway, like I said, the revisit to Bermuda Maze sucks, but what’s even worse about it is that there’s no way of fast traveling to Mu, which is the final area. So if you decide you want to stock up on anything before the final boss, you’d have to go all the through the Sky Wave and Bermuda Maze just to get back to Mu. This wasn’t an issue for me, but it’s really stupid that it was designed like this. Like every other final dungeon, Mu’s theme is a banger, but how is the actual level? It has two gimmicks, and I didn’t really like either. The first one is trying to avoid the Murian security guards, and if you touch one on accident, you have three seconds to trace the pattern that’s shown on screen for a second or get forced into a rewardless fight with MurianGs. Since my emulator is on my phone, it was easier to trace the pattern than if I was playing on a PC and had to use a mouse, but sometimes the pattern just flashed too quickly for me memorize it and I was forced to waste time dealing with these enemies. Then the other gimmick is reading these four scripts and tracing the patterns on them to unlock a door, and the order you have to do this in is based on the order that the events in the scripts happened in. I also used a guide for some of these because, like the final dungeon in SF1, it wasn’t really fun to memorize the patterns and the order they go in.

I haven’t described the plot events that lead to any of this happening because I don’t care enough about this game’s story to do that, and I doubt you do, but once you get to the end of Mu, you find Lady Vega, and learn that there’s this god named Le Mu who created all EM Waves in the universe… even the ones in space… despite… living on Earth. Whatever. Then you have to fight it. Confrontation with a God is such a banger final boss them, especially the intro, it goes hard. Le Mu itself is a pretty infamous boss among Mega Man fans, but honestly? Ehhh, Duo and Alpha were worse. At first I used Tribe King, but I was utterly decimating it, so I decided to start over without it, and while it took a few tries, I was able to beat him. It isn’t very clear how to destroy its shield since the shield’s health bar is invisible, but once you get past that, the rest of the fight is mostly just a war of attrition. I think part of the reason I found Le Mu less bullshit than Duo or Alpha is that there aren’t as many cards that just don’t work on Le Mu. Plus, Star Force has better card balancing than BN4, so it’s not like the only good cards are the ones that you can’t use on the final boss. Oh, and also the fact that you don’t fight anyone right before Le Mu, so while I just made a save state before the fight, if I did want to change my folder, I wouldn’t have to fight another boss like I would have to in BN3 and 4. It’s not really a good boss, but I’d still take him over Duo any day.

The way they concluded Lady Vega’s character was beyond stupid and goes against whatever theme they were seemingly setting up, but this is Star Force 2, so what did you expect? I feel like this post didn’t really encapsulate how unfun I think this game is and how awful its story is, and that’s because I felt like it was just unnecessarily bloated, so there are plenty of issues I didn’t mention or go into detail about. This game isn’t complete trash or anything, and I’d play it sooner than BN4, X7, X6, or maybe even BN1, for example. But… yeah, it’s still pretty bad, and it wasn’t an enjoyable experience. It sucks. Definitely one of the worst Mega Man games. Even in the Legacy Collection where you can turn off random encounters, I can’t imagine Star Force 2 suddenly becomes super fun. I can see how this game, combined with general Mega Man fatigue, killed Star Force. But it seems like they went all in and actually locked in with Star Force 3, and since I’ve already started that game, I’m excited to see how much better it is.

I’ve been working on the postgame for BN1 for a few months now, but I started locking in the past few days, and finally 100%’d it. So now I’ll say what I thought about it.

BN1’s postgame doesn’t really have that much new content. There’s three new bosses and that’s it. So I’ll just spend this post talking about the chip library. This is the only time I’ll talk about it, because I can’t imagine it’s that much better or different in the other games, and those games have more interesting things to talk about anyway. I’m not going to sugarcoat it, the process of filling the chip library is bad enough to single-handedly make this game that I’m already not a big fan of 5x worse. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I would seriously never recommend this to anyone unless they’re deathly bored and have absolutely nothing better to do with their time.

Starting with the standard chips. For most of them, I just checked TREZ to find out what location that virus has the highest rate of spawning in and farmed there until I got the chip. It was pretty monotonous. However, there were a few chips that I had zero interest in finding normally, so I used the chip trader for them instead. I just made a save state in front of the chip trader, put in chips, then reload every time I didn’t get a chip I wanted (for some reason the chip you get seems to be determined once you put in the chips, so I couldn’t just save after I’d already loaded the 3 or 10 chips. I had to load them again each time). This was also extremely annoying and mind numbing, and it took a couple hours while using fast forward, but I got a decent amount of chips this way, which helped cut back on the amount of time I needed to spend on this game’s shitty internet maps.

Getting the boss chips was where I actually started to lose my sanity though. I initially wanted to get as many of them as I could using the chip trader, but I realized it would take so much time and chips that it would probably be easier to get them the normal way. Most of the Navis who have operators were simple enough. Besides SharkMan. Fuck SharkMan, he might just be one my least favorite bosses in Battle Network. I just filled my folder with as many ElecMan3’s as I could and save scummed until I pulled a good amount with the add button (since it only takes three to kill him) in order to S rank him. I’m sure there’s a better strategy but I don’t care, I ended up getting all of his chips and had multiple SharkMan3’s—which are great for virus battles—and that’s all that matters.

For the ones that don’t have operators, getting their chips obviously involves finding the internet area that they spawn in, encountering their V2 version, and running around in circles aimlessly until you can encounter them again. Even with the ability to save at the beginning of every battle, this was unbearable. Since it’s this game, I not only can’t run away from any battles I don’t want to engage in unless I draw an escape chip (I guess since you need so much money for all the PowerUps and HP Memories, it was kind of a good thing that I had to fight so many viruses. But still), which just has to sit there wasting a slot in my folder, but I don’t have access to any other quality of life features like sub chips, regular chips, actual battle mechanics, a good add button, or even the ability to see the code of a chip without hovering over it. Save states meant that even if I didn’t pull the chips for one of the few good program advances in this game (GutsShoot), I could still keep going with the chips I did get and MegaMan’s overpowered buster until I got the right rank and got the chip I needed and not just Zenny. But actually finding the boss in the first place was a total slog.

Most of this game’s bosses are pathetic, so what about the postgame ones? Well, PharaohMan was also a complete joke. The only part of the fight that posed a remote threat was the one where he summons a sarcophagus that spawns Rattons, and that was only until I realized that if you stand adjacent to the panel in front of it, none of the Rattons can hit you. ShadowMan required more effort, though. You actually need to try if you want to dodge his AntiDamage shurikens, and he can also make clones like in his fights in later games. His pattern was still pretty basic, but I was kind of surprised how this felt more like a boss from any other Battle Network game. Or, since he appeared in this game first, I guess it’s technically the other way around. Finally, Bass, who just… appears as a random encounter in the final Undernet area rather anticlimactically once you get every other chip. No cutscene or anything. Anyway, it’s probably just a skill issue or because of my folder, but he actually gave me a bit of trouble. He has a regenerating 100 damage aura, which is too strong to destroy with the buster. His attacks are also fast, and I think he has more than any other boss in the game (he has a normal buster attack and three charge attacks, while most bosses only have one or two moves). He took me, like, 40 minutes to find, while using fast forward, so I just brute forced it because I was not changing my folder just to spend another half an hour looking for him. Thankfully, I realized that you don’t need a good rank to get his chip, so I stopped caring about doing well and eventually got LifeAura P, completing the chip library.

Not only does Bass show up without fanfare, but when you defeat him, you don’t get a picture or even a title screen mark. So the save menu was the only thing I could really use to show that I 100%’d the game. A fittingly underwhelming end to an incredibly underwhelming postgame.

To be honest, I didn’t completely finish the game. There are a few things, like the NPC trades or other side quests, that I had no interest in doing. The only thing I did was fill out the chip library and max out MegaMan’s level since I was close to it, and I did any trades if they gave me a chip that the trader was refusing to spit out, namely WoodAura and BusterGuard. But I have no desire to return to the game and finish the rest, so I’m fine with this. This postgame wasn’t especially infuriating or anything, since, again, it didn’t have any new content. But that’s also what makes it so disappointing. You do all of that work getting every chip and you don’t get a new area to explore or anything. I’m not sure if I’ll think it’s the worst postgame by the time I 100% Star Force 3. But I can say for sure that I’m never doing this again and never touching this game again.

Random thought I had. I think it’s because of the oval shaped eyes and lack of a mouth

A few weeks ago I beat Star Force 1, and just like I did with the Battle Network games on the BN sub, I wanted to post about my thoughts on these games as well. This should have come out a long time ago but I just didn’t feel the urge to write it. But it’s out now so that doesn’t really matter anymore.

Anyway, instead of playing all three versions of the original DS release like a maniac, I just played Star Force DX. I think the quality of life changes introduced in this patch probably makes me think more favorably of the game than I otherwise would, because it seems like the original wasn’t really that good, which I’ll talk about later.

But one of few things that the original did do well, and wasn’t changed in this SF DX, is the story. This game’s plot is really good, and definitely one of the best in the entire franchise. I thought all of the important characters besides Zack were well written and sympathetic (especially Sonia, we love Sonia). I’m not going to summarize it, but there are some things I wanted to talk about. I’m sure his reception has changed with the release of the Legacy Collection, but apparently Geo used to get a lot of hate for being too whiny, which I don’t agree with at all. The way he’s acting is reasonable for someone who lost his dad when he was seven. After beating the game I watched KNIJohn’s video about it and he said he didn’t like Geo’s short depression arc after Gemini Spark’s scenario, but I don’t agree with that either. I think it does make sense that he would go back to being a recluse when the only thing keeping him from getting close to someone—the fear of losing them—actually ends up happening.

Another thing the original did well is the music. The soundfont fits the tone and theme of Star Force perfectly, and the compositions themselves were also great. Hometown, Rocket Shooter, Dust Crash, Ride On, Wave Battle, Agonizing Wish, Loneliness, and obviously I can’t forget about Shooting Star, which is just such a spectacular track in every one of these games. I’d put this version above every Battle Network title theme, and not only is this not my favorite version of Shooting Star, but all of the Battle Network title themes are all bangers so that says a lot. Another one of my favorite themes from the game is Now Study!, which is unique since it’s the only track that uses the BN5 Double Team soundfont. I don’t know why they did that, but it goes hard anyway. Also, I appreciate how the music doesn’t reset anymore if you get into battles. It’s very refreshing to not hear the bgm start over every 10 seconds.

And then there was the presentation. Not much to talk about here. It looks nice. I could see people being disappointed that the overworld just looks like BN6, but I think the battles being in full 3D makes up for it. This is a DS game, so of course the models aren’t the best, but they’re good for what they are, especially in the Legacy Collection where you can see how they look without the compression.

Now for the gameplay. I’m going to assume you already know the basic gameplay loop of Star Force (dodging attacks, lock on, countering, etc.), so I’m not going to talk about the major differences between this series and Battle Network’s combat. If you wanted to know which gameplay style I prefer, I don’t really have a preference. I could go with either but Battle Network probably edges out slightly since it’s more complicated. Anyway, as for what this game has to spice up the battle system, it’s surprisingly basic. In the original, at least. I was shocked when I learned that all the Star Force transformation does in the original is change your charge shot and element, let you select cards to the side, and give you the SFB when you counter attack. And to make matters worse, you only get one for the entire game, which is based on the version you’re playing (and then, that’s pretty much the only version difference too, which is nothing short of absurd for a game that has THREE separate versions). That’s all to say that the way the base game handles transformations is very lackluster, and definitely feels like a downgrade from 2-6. I guess it makes sense since it was the first Star Force game, but it is kind of disappointing considering that the series ended up only having three games.

However, that isn’t to say that this game does nothing better than 2-6 on a gameplay front. One improvement is the greatly reduced backtracking. The amount of time spent running back and forth across areas you’ve already been to is a lot closer to BN6 levels, but it also didn’t feel a bit too short like that game did. And then there’s the dungeons, which I liked. Aside from Queen Ophiuca’s dungeon, they all use the touch screen for the gimmicks, and even though Star Force DX makes them optional, I think they were all fun and good uses of the DS’ gimmick. The dungeon gimmicks themselves were interesting too. Gemini Spark’s dungeon was the only bad one, which I think most people would be able to understand.

Oh, and I guess there’s the Navi Cards. Honestly, these just felt forced. At certain points in the game, you’ll need to slot in a Navi and use their ability to continue, but they were just another excuse to use the touch screen. Some of them are kind of cool like PropellerMan, but some really did not need to exist, like ThermoMan, where all you do is press a button to change the temperature. They’re fine, but I don’t think anything would be lost if most of them were replaced with cutscenes.

That’s basically everything I have to say about this game, so I’ll finish off by talking about the endgame. I really liked the idea of it being the space station that Kelvin was in being the final area. It makes for a great atmosphere and the music is the cherry on top. The space station itself has a mysterious and somewhat melancholic track playing (being the full version of a track that had only been heard in cutscenes and in the Space Sim before this), and StationComp has, in Battle Network final dungeon tradition, absolutely fantastic music. It’s not hype like the most of the previous ones, but the tone that they went for instead fits how Geo feels in this moment and how he’s developed throughout the game so perfectly. It’s a little sad, slightly regretful, but determined at the same time. Just go listen to it yourself, this track is excellent.

On the gameplay side of things, it was… fine. The overworld gimmick of having to use Navi Cards to move forward was actually pretty neat, despite what I just said about them a couple paragraphs ago. The dungeon gimmick was kind of annoying though. Like, the idea of making the constellation of the boss you’re about to face is genius. But the process of going back and forth over the displayed patterns on the ground to memorize was kind of tedious, especially because of how many branching paths there were.

After you get to the source of all of this EM Wave energy, you come face to face with the FM King Cepheus. I thought his design was… kind of unfitting, until I watched the aforementioned KNIJohn video and realized that he’s supposed to look like a brat and it made more sense. Anyway, some plot stuff happens, and he sends his ultimate weapon, Andromeda, at you. I’m not sure how I would rank this as a final boss since while I beat it on my first try, that was just through sheer brute force and not because it’s an easy fight. I didn’t even realize that during his second phase, you’re supposed to hit him right before he attacks, I was just spamming cards, which is made easier since DX lets you pick more cards on a turn than usual. If you’re not just using Recover300 whenever they show up and actually focusing on dodging attacks, you would probably have a lot more fun than I did. I’ll probably redo the fight with an actual strategy later. The final boss theme is pretty epic as always, but I feel like it’s not as good as Duo’s, Nebula Gray’s, or the Cybeasts’ battle themes. It’s definitely better than LifeVirus’ theme and probably better than Alpha’s theme, at least. It’s also unique in that it’s not a remix of the regular boss theme, which I’m pretty sure applies to the other two games as well.

After the fight (or before, I don’t really remember because I did this fight four weeks ago), you learn that the reason Cepheus did any of this is because he was extremely distrusting of others due to having been betrayed so many times, and Gemini exploited his paranoia to convince him that planets trying to make BrotherBand with him were actually planning on destroying Planet FM. Gemini had no real reason for doing this other than the fact that he’s an asshole and hates relationships that much. But Geo is able to convince him to go through with the BrotherBand. The Satellite Admins show up and ask Cepheus for his help in rebuilding the destroyed Planet AM, to which he complies. Omega-Xis, however, is fine with staying on Earth with Geo, and doesn’t join them.

But when Geo is about to head home, the space station starts breaking apart, forcing him to take a space pod, and is left floating through space for some time. Even though all hope seems lost, Geo is reminded in a dream by his dad about the strength of bonds, and thankfully, all of Geo’s friends are waiting on Earth and use their Transers to create a beam that reaches him and shows him the path back home. Thus ending Mega Man Star Force 1. That’s just a synopsis of what happens, but I really liked the ending, and I love the credits theme, it’s definitely one of my new favorites.

So, my final verdict is that Star Force 1 is a good start to the series but definitely has room for improvement. SFDX is easily better than BN4, BN1, and probably on par with BN2. If we’re talking about the original game, then it would probably only be better than BN4 and BN1. The next game I have to play is Star Force 2, which I’ve already started and already have some… opinions on, but I’ll save those for the post about that game.

ESPECIALLY their hardest variants, since I’ve just been finishing off my third playthrough of this stupid ass game. Jesus Christ they might actually be some of the worst enemies in any Mega Man game ever, and that’s saying something considering how many annoying viruses there are in Battle Network alone