RPGs don’t always require compelling stories or innovative trappings to be fun. Sometimes, all you want or want are a few engaging systems, some brought colors, and a delightful loop of grinding, exploration, and reward. Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection seems to deliver all that in spades based on what I’ve played so far, matching a fairly innocuous, almost infantile narrative with well-tuned mechanics to create something thoroughly enjoyable in the early going.
The three Star Force games included in this collection don’t even try to hide the influence Pokemon clearly had on their design. All three are split into multiple versions clearly inspired by ye olde Blue and Red. A total of seven variants exist across the trilogy, and they’re all represented well here, with some content unique to each.
The Star Force games share a lot of DNA with the earlier Battle Network titles while reflecting the mid-2000s hardware migration from Game Boy Advance to Nintendo DS. Capcom has solved most of the two-screen play issues fairly elegantly, miniaturizing the second screen to an upper corner and allowing the player to instantly bring it full-screen with a trigger hold. This works remarkably well. Environments have been colorfully and crisply translated from the low-resolution DS screen. The designers wisely maintained a close to 4:3 form factor, so graphics don’t display any appreciable stretching or distortion. The Wave World dungeons seamlessly overlap the human world. The vibe and feel of all three optimistic meladramas appears to be lovingly preserved.
Combat, though, is the gravity that holds Star Force Collection on its winning trajectory. Fundamentally, all these games are combat-centric action-RPGs. Though cards, abilities, and other nuances vary, the 3×5 battle grid where you take on enemies is the most fleshed-out part of the the Star Force trilogy, a formula perfected all the way back on the GBA with the Battle Network games. You can rig clever card combos, juggle timing counters, sprint forward for melee attacks, nimbly dodge attacks, and snipe with your P-shooter. It’s a sprightly, light action-RPG combat system that rewards focus but is also fairly forgiving of miscalculation, and the battles are quick enough you likely won’t mind the random encounters.
Capcom did a good job updating these titles for the modern player, but for my tastes are less successful at contextualizing their place in the Mega Man pantheon. Some effort was put into visual or audio museums, but there’s nothing here comparable to, say Digital Eclipse’s Gold Master series, where the history and legacy of each game is celebrated by curated timelines or original documentaries. The historic features stack up poorly even next to the original Mega Man Legacy Collection, which allowed players to pop directly into certain gameplay moments directly from museum boss art. No such luck here.
As for the plot… well, that’s probably not really why you’re here. Plucky hero, quirky friends, buddy aliens made of electromagnetic energy, and maybe a dark conspiracy or two. You know, the usual stuff. It carries the collection and the combat forward, and for these games, that’s enough.
Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection doesn’t seem poised to shake up the world, but it doesn’t really have to, nor did it likely set out to. It’s appropriate for anyone who remembers whittling away hours on their GBA playing Battle Network or their DS playing Star Force. It’s also a perfect pastime for eleven-year-olds (or kids at heart) who love deck building, combo breaking, and diving into complementary, overlapping gameplay systems. Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection is, based on my time with it, shaping up to be a real winner.
Jared Petty does all kinds of things with video games. When he’s not marketing with Other Ocean or writing for IGN, he’s creating new episodes of The Top 100 Games Podcast. Find him on Instagram, Threads, and BlueSky as @pettycommajared.
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