Mega Man Star Force: Pegasus

The Good
Although that Mega Man games are about 20 years old, on the contrary to so many series that decays and are no longer what they used to be 20 years ago, Mega Man managed to always comes with new fresh ideas and haven't decayed yet. The main reason for that is that Capcom is a great game company, and they understood that to avoid making their series decaying, they should stop making them and re-creating sub series after a while. That's why even if Mega Man Battle Network (from now on MMBN) was a very successful 6-logy, Capcom always announced there would only be six MMBN games and never dared to release a cheap sequel, because they know that if they do this they will eventually run out of good ideas and release bad games.

For this reason, Capcom took all good elements of MMBN games, fixed all that was old or that could be improved, create a new universe, and reforged all this into a brand new game for the Nintendo DS, that is called Mega Man Star Force. Hardcore fans of MMBN may be surprised by this new twist, but personally, I think Mega Man Start Force (from now on MMSF) is even better than what MMBN used to be.

The protagonist of this game, Geo Stellar, lost his father 2 years ago as he went in a mission in space. He's not happy about it and he refuses to have any friend because he's afraid that they would make him sad again as his dad did. Yet he's a very intelligent boy, and for this reason he don't go to school but study alone and observe the sky in the hope to have any clue to what happened to his dad. As he does this a mysterious creature, made of FM (frequency-modulated) waves called Omega-Xis appears. He's able to fuse with him to "pulse-in" the world of waves, and both transform into Mega Man. In that form they are able to fight bad waves and stuff like that. And unlike the NET in MMBN, the world of waves is actually connected to the real world, which is a good thing.

Now, you'll understand this immediately, the story of MMSF is not like the story of games of the MMBN series at all. The story is very captivating, has a lot of emotion to it and is unpredictable, which is exactly the opposite of the cheap storyline found in MMBN games (although they probably tended to improve towards the end of the series). This is a very welcome move from Capcom, since it's really better to play a good game if there is a good story with it.

But is the gameplay good ? Of course it is ! The battle system is similar to what is was in MMBN, that is you fight viruses with cards, each card has a specific attack from one enemy. Enemies of course throws such cards when you defeat them, allowing you to put it in your folder and use that attack against other enemies, etc... There is also the mega buster that allow you to do weak attacks without using any cards, and of course boss cards are back, which allow you to summon bosses after you beat them. This great system already made his proofs in MMBN and there is nothing much new.

However, this time, the battles are in 3D such as the camera is placed behind Mega Man, and you see the face of your enemies. The battle again happen on a small chessboard You can only move into one direction (you only have 3 panels you can stand on) and this makes things more challenging ! Thanks god it's possible to attack at a far distance if you hold the down button which target enemies automatically. You'll have to know how to use and abuse that system to your advantage ! Oh and elements are back, with their corresponding panels. For example if you can put an enemy on a grass panel and attack him with fire it will double the damage, which is great.

Along with all of that, the controls are just what they are supposed to do, and in many place there is mini-games that require you to use your stylus, which is better than some cheap artificial uses of the touch screen I've seen some DS games do. It also makes cheap mini-games found in MMBN games look like ridiculous. You can optionally select chips with the stylus during battles if you want, but you typically won't be doing that.

The soundtrack is not always 100% great, but it's mostly good. The soundtrack is (again) made entirely of synthesizer sounds (but it's eventually not squarewaves only), which give this game it's own "modern" feeling. The battle music wasn't too annoying while not memorable, and most other songs are really excellent, but some may be a little too dissonant. The sound effects are still really weird and seems like artificially remixed sounds from MMBN. Although you get used to them after a short while.

I haven't mentioned anything about the graphics yet, overall they're similar to GBA graphics from the MMBN series except that battles are in 3D which is always cool, and that the main protagonist is very different. Geo is much more timid, selfish, and overall imperfect and realist, while Lan were just a perfect hero that could do anything. Character portraits were nice too, as opposed to how they were goofy in the MMBN series.

The Bad
There is nothing much to say here. This game is close to perfection. I wish that Capcom would have got rid of the tradition in MMBN that there is only 4 places in the whole game, but they didn't. Yet they managed to make a great story and a longer game with only 4 places to go to, which shouldn't have been an easy task.

The difficulty is about right, but the game is a bit too easy sometimes. I've still had to try hard to beat the last boss, which is a good thing. Oh, and there is a non-playable character, Zack Temple, which I never known if (s)he was a boy or a girl.

The real bad thing is that this game kicks so much ass that MMBN does look so cheap and childish when you play them back that it makes me bad to have been a fan of them back then, but that's not really a bad point.

The Bottom Line
This is a great game, and I'll always remember it as it's the first DS game I've ever got to play. It's an amazing start for this amazing console. If you liked Mega Man Battle Network series, chances are that you'll love this ! Unless you are a hardcore fan that refuses any changes or someone like that. Anyone that likes action RPGs should like this game.

Oh and I already see everyone complaining about that I only compared the game with MMBN instead of actually reviewing it. However, it's just that despite the list of obvious differences I said above, the game is still very similar to MMBN, at the point it becomes hard to imagine how one would look at this game without knowing anything about MMBN. In summary Star Force is to Battle Network exactly what Mega Man X was to NES Mega Man games, everything is similar but yet very reforged and improved, and the bosses are animals instead of humanoids, again.

Although the story doesn't seems to leave much room for a sequel, it looks like MMSF 2 is already released so Star Force is definitely going to be a series and not a standalone game. This is probably a good thing, let's hope the following installments are as good as this one.

In summary : Battle Network + improved battle system + good plot = perfection