Forum - View topicGAME: Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection Review
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wolf10
 Posts: 992 |
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I think Star Force 3 deserves a special mention for having some of the best action RPG combat, well, ever. The grid-based movement might look dated by modern standards, but throwing out all the annoying minutiae of distance and hitbox detection means it's all about timing in the purest sense. Star Force 1 and 2 are bit under- and over-tuned respectively in some areas, but Star Force 3 nailed it, then takes that further by finally perfecting the full-synchro and form-change mechanics the series has been iterating on since Battle Network 2 with noise change, and Finalizing is a fricking drug.
Probably the only downside to playing all these back-to-back is it makes it really obvious how each game retcons some major technology into the setting that feels like it should have been there to begin with. Star Force 3 being the worst offender, naturally, but also because it has the most fully-realized vision of wave society. I think I would have rather gotten a light remake of the first two games that smoothed out some of the issues (and maybe added an early cameo for my boy Solo), but there's no way Capcom would have invested that kind of money on a "failed" franchise. I wonder if we'll get a spinoff collection at some point with Operate Shooting Star and the other Battle Network side games? Those are basically lost media at this point, especially the phone games. |
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 925 |
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It's a shame that Star Force was dead in the water when SF3 was released because they did SO MUCH in SF3 to help course-correct the franchise, but it just wasn't enough. A real shame, because I especially appreciate how they adopted the "Mega Man X" aesthetic to EM Shifted bosses, akin to how the Net Navis were reimaginings of the original Robot Masters. SF also deserves credit for going on a limb with designing new FMians to serve as bosses and not just saddling us with redesigned Mavericks as bosses. Yeti Blizzard is 100% a boss that could be in a MMX game, but he's his own thing. I appreciate that. My biggest complaint with the Legacy Collections is that they're painfully non-comprehensive; the Mega Man LC doesn't have the Game Boy MM games or stuff like The Wily Wars, Power Battles or Battle & Chase, the Battle Network collection didn't include Battle Chip Challenge, and so on. I have to wonder if studio rights might not be an issue; it's my understanding that Mega Man: Network Transmission was in limbo because of it. Sure would be nice to see Capcom compile and release all those spin-offs, especially if they add Mega Man X: Command Mission. |
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wolf10
Posts: 992 |
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The GB games (plus Wily Wars) are where things get complicated because they're already compilations of sorts. They're actually all part of the "Rockman World" subseries in Japan, which mainly remix old bosses and levels form the first six games. The studio involved also worked on X3, so there's probably no licensing issues there. I think they were considered too redundant for a collection, but they are on Nintendo Switch Online. Wily Wars was on the subscription service for Genesis way back in the day, so there's a kind of symmetry. Command Mission just needs a remaster. It's a mechanically solid turn-based RPG with a decent amount of polish. Assuming they still have the source code it wouldn't take much (not like that's stopped publishers before). The market was way too crowded back in the 2000s for it to stand out, but in today's supposedly-starved-for-turn-based climate... I can daydream all I want about MMX getting a revival as a series of turn-based RPGs, but it'll probably never happen. 
Anyway, It seems someone at Capcom cares about preservation with all their old PC ports ending up on GOG lately (including the unreleased Breath of Fire IV port). At some point they'll have to go back through the console backlog. I wish they'd done these packs like Konami did with the Castlevania collections all including one other game unrelated to the main theme of the collection that wouldn't have moved units on its own. Would I buy Haunted Castle on its own ever? Hell no. That game's only value is its sound test. But throw it into another collection and that pack's value goes up a little. We really did have so much Mega Man back in the day, though. |
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NJ_
 Posts: 3409 Location: Wallington, NJ |
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There were also said to be issues with porting those games back when they tried releasing them on the Game Boy Advance so that collection got cancelled.
A little reworking might need to be done since the Gamecube & PS2 versions had their own differences with the former said to be the (slightly) better of the two. I had it on PS2 and while it was fun, I never did finish the post-game battles. |
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2999 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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No, those happened because GOG pushed Capcom heavily to let them do it, while Capcom itself literally questioned why anyone would want to play the OG Resident Evil games in the first place when the remakes exist. The PC ports being re-released is all due to GOG, not Capcom. Also, Breath of Fire IV wasn't an "unreleased" PC port, it just simply didn't have a North American release back in the day (Japan, Asia, & Europe only, originally). |
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Southkaio
Posts: 480 |
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Am I right? This legacy collection features the return of the Star Force dub's voice actors like Wendee Lee.
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tuxedo-melvin
Posts: 49 |
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And I'm sure the love that went into stuff like the Battle Network collection to include stuff like online was purely from the devs who wanted it like Masakazu Eguchi who dressed up as his character and promoted it rather than any suit at CAPCOM who'd sooner wonder why anyone would play old games. |
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 925 |
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I had to look it up, but yes: Wendee Lee reprises her role as Sonia! They also brought back Yuri Lowenthall to voice Zack! |
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