While we can’t be at Tokyo Game Show this year, Capcom was nice enough to invite us to their U.S. office in the Bay Area to get our hands on a bunch of the games they’re featuring at the event. One of the games was Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection, unveiled during the recent Japanese Nintendo Direct.
The Mega Man Star Force games originally released on the Nintendo DS, and while they weren’t critically heralded, they sold quite well, spawning two sequels on the handheld. I personally never played any of these games, but I’m also more than familiar with the Mega Man Battle Network games that graced the Game Boy Advance, and the similarities are there.
Because time was limited and there were a bunch of other games I was scheduled to get my hands on, I really only had a few goals during my playtime. I wanted to see how well it translated from the DS to the Switch, and I wanted to experience the difference in battles compared to the GBA games.
There’s our guy, Geo Stelar!
For those unfamiliar with the Star Force games, it came in three versions–Pegasus, Leo, and Dragon, with each version differing only in your main transformation. Each version also has slight differences in bosses, but the game and story were fundamentally the same. For the sake moving forward with the demo, I only played the first few minutes of Pegasus.
Even though I never played these games, as I sped through the story to get into the tutorial battles, it definitely felt familiar. The isometric view looked exactly how the anime-inspired games looked in the past, and I was quite happy with now snappy it was to tap my way through dialog. The “second screen” could also be seen on the upper left corner, and you could use the left shoulder button to make that your main screen. One thing I wasn’t particularly fond of was the camera shaking as it panned to different parts of the screen to focus on. Again, having not played this on the DS, I don’t know if that was a normal thing, but it was definitely something noticeable. Aside from all that, nothing has changed.
This trudges a little more into review territory, but to go over the battle system real quick–it’s essentially what Battle Network featured from a different perspective. Battles took place on a 3×5 grid, and in most situations, you could freely roam about in four adjacent columns. Action in Star Force takes place mostly over the shoulder on a 5×3, but you couldn’t move forward (where left and right usually were with MMBN). I found this change to be a little archaic, but since it’s been more than a decade since I played these handheld games, it was rather easy to get used to. As they always were, battles are reliant on what are pretty much trading cards that you draw before your attack phase. Finding and equipping the best cards to plan your onslaught on your enemies is its main draw, and despite the fact that it’s essentially a card-based system, the action feels like anything but.
Mega Man Star Force – Pegasus, live on the OG Switch. Mind the chips.
There was no hint as to whether or not there’ll be a lot of extra content in the final version, but seeing as how this is one of Capcom’s Legacy Collections, that wouldn’t be a surprise at all. In fact, that’s expected. The Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection will consist all three versions of the original Mega Man Star Force (Pegasus, Leo, and Dragon), both versions of Mega Man Star Force 2 (Zerker x Ninja and Zerker x Saurian), and both versions of the previously Japan-only Mega Man Star Force 3 (Black Ace and Red Joker).
Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection is slated for release on just about every modern platform next year.
While we can’t be at Tokyo Game Show this year, Capcom was nice enough to invite us to their U.S. office in the Bay Area to get our hands on a bunch of the games they’re featuring at the event….
While we can’t be at Tokyo Game Show this year, Capcom was nice enough to invite us to their U.S. office in the Bay Area to get our hands on a bunch of the games they’re featuring at the event. One of the games was Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection, unveiled during the recent Japanese Nintendo Direct.
The Mega Man Star Force games originally released on the Nintendo DS, and while they weren’t critically heralded, they sold quite well, spawning two sequels on the handheld. I personally never played any of these games, but I’m also more than familiar with the Mega Man Battle Network games that graced the Game Boy Advance, and the similarities are there.
Because time was limited and there were a bunch of other games I was scheduled to get my hands on, I really only had a few goals during my playtime. I wanted to see how well it translated from the DS to the Switch, and I wanted to experience the difference in battles compared to the GBA games.
There’s our guy, Geo Stelar!
For those unfamiliar with the Star Force games, it came in three versions–Pegasus, Leo, and Dragon, with each version differing only in your main transformation. Each version also has slight differences in bosses, but the game and story were fundamentally the same. For the sake moving forward with the demo, I only played the first few minutes of Pegasus.
Even though I never played these games, as I sped through the story to get into the tutorial battles, it definitely felt familiar. The isometric view looked exactly how the anime-inspired games looked in the past, and I was quite happy with now snappy it was to tap my way through dialog. The “second screen” could also be seen on the upper left corner, and you could use the left shoulder button to make that your main screen. One thing I wasn’t particularly fond of was the camera shaking as it panned to different parts of the screen to focus on. Again, having not played this on the DS, I don’t know if that was a normal thing, but it was definitely something noticeable. Aside from all that, nothing has changed.
This trudges a little more into review territory, but to go over the battle system real quick–it’s essentially what Battle Network featured from a different perspective. Battles took place on a 3×5 grid, and in most situations, you could freely roam about in four adjacent columns. Action in Star Force takes place mostly over the shoulder on a 5×3, but you couldn’t move forward (where left and right usually were with MMBN). I found this change to be a little archaic, but since it’s been more than a decade since I played these handheld games, it was rather easy to get used to. As they always were, battles are reliant on what are pretty much trading cards that you draw before your attack phase. Finding and equipping the best cards to plan your onslaught on your enemies is its main draw, and despite the fact that it’s essentially a card-based system, the action feels like anything but.
Mega Man Star Force – Pegasus, live on the OG Switch. Mind the chips.
There was no hint as to whether or not there’ll be a lot of extra content in the final version, but seeing as how this is one of Capcom’s Legacy Collections, that wouldn’t be a surprise at all. In fact, that’s expected. The Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection will consist all three versions of the original Mega Man Star Force (Pegasus, Leo, and Dragon), both versions of Mega Man Star Force 2 (Zerker x Ninja and Zerker x Saurian), and both versions of the previously Japan-only Mega Man Star Force 3 (Black Ace and Red Joker).
Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection is slated for release on just about every modern platform next year.
by Danreb Victorio
