G4TV

Since the name is a little confusing, let’s clarify – this is basically Mega Man Battle Network 7. It’s not a side-scrolling action game, like Mega Man ZX. It’s another action-RPG mashed up with a card-based battle game and wrapped in the art style of the old-school Mega Man series. No, that wasn’t confusing at all. But if anything, it is Capcom’s fault that the name Mega Man gets slapped on all kinds of things these days and no two ever seem to be quite alike anymore.

The Battle Network games had their fans on the GBA, although Capcom might have tried to feed its audience a little too much of the same thing. Star Force takes the series in a different direction, which isn’t a bad idea to start with, but the game we’ve ended up with may not be a better one. Get past the basics and it’s actually pretty simple, not to mention fairly easy (and even easier if you know how to break it in the right ways). There’s a lot of pretty artwork jumping out of the screen, as there almost always is in a Mega Man game, but you can only sit there looking at the pictures for so long.

On…The…Air!

Star Force is built on a story so goofy it’s hard to sum up with a straight face. Our hero, a withdrawn boy pining after his missing father, meets an alien energy being on his way to Earth just ahead of a massive invasion. Boy meets alien and both become Mega Man (or something that looks a lot like him, anyway) and together they travel the alternate “Wave World” on a quest to fend off the upcoming attack.

The Wave World appears on top of the ordinary isometric game map, a network of glowing pathways inhabited by representations of the programs that hold the world’s computer network together. Random battles jump out all over this world, but it’s also possible to learn more about different characters and other aspects of the real world by sneaking a peek at “private” computer data. That comes in handy later on when building relationships with supporting characters can lend an advantage in combat.

Super Fighting Robot

Simply slugging it out with the bad guys takes up far more time than electronic voyeurism, though. When battle begins, you first draw a few active cards from a deck of attacks – ranged beam attacks, close-in sword attacks, support cards that power up other attacks, and so on. Depending on how those cards link together, it’s possible to have as few as two or as many as four or five on hand.  Occasionally a couple of those cards are good for a combo attack, if you’re quick on the trigger.

There’s all the time in the world to pick those cards, but using them takes place in real time. Combat itself happens on a grid – five rows of three spaces each, only the first of which is open to Mega Man himself. Battle Network, you may recall, had more freedom of movement on a slightly bigger grid. The player dodges back and forth while enemies move in and out of range, trying to set them up for a combo attack or countermove. Once you run out of card attacks, you can strike with the default Mega Buster until the recharge meter fills up to let you draw more cards again.

Strategy and Tactics

The trade-offs here are pretty obvious – Star Force moves faster than the EXE games, but it’s not quite as complex or challenging. Evading or blocking enemy attacks is dead simple, to the point where it’s hard get hit unless you’re too itchy on the trigger finger. On the deck-building side of things, cards have no cost in proportion to their power, so as the game goes on there’s less strategy to building a deck and more emphasis on loading up the biggest guns possible. Encounters are eventually so frequent and repetitive that you’ll want to plow through them as fast and easy as possible.

Many of the strongest cards in the game are hidden in the “Cipher Mail” system. This is essentially a set of passwords – find a particular word or phrase, e-mail it to the right address, and get a hidden card as a reward. Trouble is, though, some of those cards are very powerful, as in “clobber the last boss without breaking a sweat” powerful. That’s probably going a little too far the other way.

Don’t Cry, Emo Robot

It would be nice to say that the story provided a diversion from all the random battles, but that straight-face factor becomes a problem again. Nearly everything about the game world and the people in it is incredibly silly – which would be fine, since it’s all about cartoon robot aliens. Except the cartoon robot aliens themselves are hell-bent on taking the whole thing seriously. The main character is so stubbornly gloomy and bitter that after a while you want to buy the poor kid a big lollipop or slap him a good one upside the head.

Long-time Mega Man fans are still going to enjoy the look of the game. It’s very colorful, in the familiar Battle Network style, and the 3D animation in combat makes a nice change of pace from the 2D overworld. Is that going to be enough for them, though? Or anyone? Despite the seemingly huge collection of cards to shuffle together, Star Force’s combat still feels awfully repetitive, and combat is by far the biggest chunk of the game. There’s potential here, but Capcom needs to put more varied action in this action-RPG.