Review #160: Megaman Star Force Dragon

 Oh boy, how do things change...

 It's no secret that I used to love the series(Cough Cough), but time has passed, and this is my third time through the game. So, how does it fare now?

 Megaman StarForce begins with a depressed Geo. He´s been skipping classes for a long time now, and neglects friends, due to fear of getting hurt, since his dad went to space some years ago and he never came back. Eventually, Geo meets the alien Omega-Xis, Mega for short, who grants him the power to turn into MegaMan. This is just a small introduction, the story itself is fairly decent with a couple of really good moments, although characters are fairly bidimensional. Still, the writing is Ok for a kids game.

 The game takes place in the future, so there are tons of technological advancements and commodities. For starters, when Geo turns into Megaman, by jacking in on a hotspot, he becomes an EM wave-entity, unable to directly interact with the real world. He can, however, jack into various devices, and he will need to, in order to clear the viruses. While Geo himself cannot walk on the EM-Roads, he can put on his visualizer  in order to see them and talk with nearby EM entities. To turn into Megaman, Geo has to stand over  over special zones, and he goes directly into the EM-wave roads above town.

As stated, you explore the town as Geo Stelar, and accept quests from townsfolk, while battle are only fought as Megaman. While on the Wave Roads, you are subject to random encounters. Fights take place on a 3x5 Grid. Megaman can only move to the sides, while enemies get to move through rows as well. Before each battle, you get to pick among 6 cards, randomly selected from your 30(Up to 5 mega and 1 giga card per deck) card deck. While there are six cards on display, you can only pick: Same cards, cards of the same column or cards of the same row. There's also gauge that slowly fills as you fight, once it gets full, you can pick new cards. After each fight you either get money or a new card.

 Battles use a Rock-Paper-Scissors kind of system. Fire cards deal double damage to Wood enemies or enemies standing over Grass panels. Wood deals double damage to Electric enemies or enemies over electric panels. Electric cards deal double damage to water enemies and enemies that are frozen. And Water deals double damage to fire enemies. There are also non-elemental cards. Megaman, usually, is non-elemental, but if he uses one of the special forms, he gains an elemental 
affinity. Get hit with your weakness, and you revert to Normal Megaman. Speaking of "Special forms", in order to use the transformations, Geo has to get the Star Force card and pick it. While you can only use the version of your version of the game, if you link up with players with the other versions, you can use their transformations... except that since the Servers are dead now, this is no longer a possibility.

 The game has a rather huge problem... it's a grindfest. Getting cards means hours of grinding. Y'see, each enemy holds a different card, and after each random encounter, you either get ONE card from ONE of the enemies or money. Don't get the card you want? Too bad, gonna have to roam for that a random encounter that has the enemy you need, and hope that this time, it drops its card. Sure, you can use the C-Finder, which you get near the end of the game, to ensure a card drop, but it could be ANY card drop from the enemies you just fought. And you will need to get all cards in order to access the post-game. Bosses open up a completely different can of worms. First of all, fighting them again is a bit of a chore, as they are the rarest random encounters, and getting to them doesn't mean you will get the card you want. There are three versions of each boss card, and they depend on the rank you get. 1-7 is the vanilla card, 8-10 is the V2 card and 10(rarely) or S gets you the V3 card. That means that if you are extremely lucky(Remember that rank depends on the time it takes you to beat them, which in turn somewhat depends on which cards you randomly get when you fight) you could get all three cards after three fights... but that's just hopeful thinking.

 The 3D used in battles, looks very nice, although the rest of the game is made up of 2D sprites. While I felt the sprites looked pretty nice(Megaman has different sprites for facing left and right!), the next games in the franchise would put this one to shame. The game lasts about 20 hours, and there are loads and loads of quests.... which can get a bit annoying, since you need to:
1st) Pulse into the Wave Roads, get above the NPC, read his Transer(A device everyone carries around, like a cellphone)
2nd) Pulse out, talk to them as Geo.
3rd) Do the quest. You can't accept any other quest until you finish the last one you accepted.
You have to do this every single time you want to tackle a quest, sometimes you'll have to pulse out, talk to the person, only to have to pulse back in and return to where you where.

 Megaman Star Force 1 was a great game the first time I played it. It was a good game the second time, but on my third time through it... it has taken its toll on me. I'd still recommend giving it one go, but three times? That's overkill!
 6.0 out of 10