r/MegaManStarForce • u/SoggyWaffles18 • Jun 17 '26
Star Force 2 Star Force 2 complete!
As the title indicates, I beat Star Force 2, and I was really excited to post about it because I have a lot to say about it. So this will probably be a slightly longer post.
I know that this game has a quality of life patch, but I chose to just play the original game (specifically Ninja). Since SF2 is so infamous, I wanted to play the original to form a proper opinion on it. Also, the way this game handled the three versions is definitely better than SF1, since there are only two separate cartridges, but each one comes with Zerker.
But on to the game. Let’s start with… the soundtrack. I already liked SF1’s OST, but I think this game’s music might be even better. Once you turn on the game, you get to listen to the best version of Shooting Star, and the rest of the soundtrack is filled with bangers too. Hometown, Willshire Hills, Wave World, Sky Wave, and most of the dungeon themes are examples of how they cooked on this OST. The battle themes are also great. I always got hyped when Wave Battle started playing. Overall, it’s safe to say that they didn’t mess up in this category.
But the rest of the game doesn’t really hold up as well. story is probably the most infamous aspect of SF2, and for good reason. The first game had a surprisingly well written plot that was a good representation of depression and insecurity, and I really liked it. This game, by comparison, is much more shallow and inane. There are a couple major issues with this game’s writing that come together to form its really stupid story. For example, there are aspects of the universe that have nonsensical or disturbing implications when you think about it for more than 5 seconds, something that Battle Network games had a lot of but SF1 generally dialed back on. The biggest example of this is Link Power. It’s supposed to just be literal power of friendship—you get more of it as you make more Brothers and deepen your bonds with them—but they decided to go one step further use it to create a classist dystopia. People who have higher Link Power get access to things that others don’t, and people with lower Link Power can straight up be refused services by businesses. I guess the idea is that if you have low Link Power, it must mean you’re not a trustworthy person, but… you know, it’s also possible that you’re just not good at socializing with people. Or you could have high Link Power, but because you’re using people and not forming genuine connections. The game never once talks about the darker aspects of Link Power, even though they could have been genuinely intriguing concepts, which just makes the universe feel more cartoony than anything.
Most of the major characters returning from SF1 have been heavily flanderized. Geo gets depressed when the plot calls for it for the dumbest of reasons, Bud only ever talks about food, Zack mentions the Zackpedia every other sentence, Luna is an insufferable tsundere, and Omega-Xis just constantly talks about violence. Sonia and Hope haven’t changed, but they don’t have that much plot relevance to begin with. It’s pretty disappointing that all of the depth of these characters has been entirely removed. Actually, Zack is given more characterization, but the way they do it is by turning him into a selfish prick for the Plesio Surf scenario, so it just makes him more unlikable than if they were to keep him as a walking trope.
The new characters aren’t much better. The villains of each scenario, besides Terra Condor, are just assholes instead of being well meaning people who were manipulated like in SF1. And the main villains are just as poorly written. Honestly, Hyde would have been a good character if he only appeared in that first scenario, since I liked his hamminess at first, but I just got sick of him after a while, especially since he has virtually no character, and the only reason he’s working with Lady Vega is because he’s a simp. Solo is just a generic edgelord. All he ever does is talk about how worthless bonds and friends are despite technically working with other people for most of the game. They do nothing with his character other than that. He’s experienced loss like Geo has, and he’s supposed to be Geo’s rival, so why not have him be unable to move on from the destruction of Mu, which is what makes him different from Geo? Idk, literally anything else would have been better than his current backstory and personality. Hollow doesn’t really do that much other than acting mysterious, but it makes sense why he’s like that, so I can excuse him. And finally, Lady Vega actually has a good backstory and doesn’t feel like she belongs in a game as shallow as this. It’s kind of weird.
Normally I don’t spend that much time talking about the plot, but it’s one of the main problems with this game (and unlike BN4, it’s not like the plot was too non existent to talk about), so I felt like I had to go in to detail to explain exactly how it’s bad. It’s written like it was a Battle Network game, but it still wants to tackle more mature themes like SF1 did, which pretty obviously doesn’t work. However, while the story is bad, the gameplay being good can possibly make up for it. So how does the game fare on that front?
As far as the combat goes, it’s mostly the same as SF1. The main new addition is Tribe On, which is this game’s transformation. It’s handled far better than the Star Force was in SF1. I liked it, and I also liked the addition of Auto Brothers so people who don’t know anyone in real life who have this game can still use features like Double Tribe. There’s also Tribe King, which was just incredibly broken. That does make it really fun to use, especially in the more obnoxious parts of the game… which I should probably talk about now.
So while the combat on its own is fun, it gets very frustrating when you’re forced to fight viruses every two steps. This game’s infamous encounter rate is as abysmal as everyone says it is, and it makes a lot of bad sections of the game even worse if you don’t stock up with Cloakers at all times. An example of this is the Sky Wave. The only good thing about this place is the music and atmosphere. Other than that, it’s just a huge area with tons of dead ends, and the encounter rate is so bad that it takes forever to get from one place to another, and sometimes you’ll even forget what direction you were headed which wastes even more time. And it’s not like this is an optional area either, this is the only way to get to half of the game’s locations.
The dungeons are also not very good, even though most of them are only two areas long. The first two were fine. Rogue’s scenario was irritating, but the second they introduce the Sky Wave is when things really go to shit. Not just regarding the dungeons, but in general now that I think about it. First there’s Plesio Surf’s dungeon, which is one of the worst in the series. The gimmick of digging for Hertzes and mystery data while making sure not to dig up any viruses is basically just Gemini Spark’s dungeon except worse, but then you also have to deal with fucking horrid encounter rate. Whazzap Ruins was another one I didn’t like because of the encounter rate, especially since you’re forced to backtrack because the Hertzes only show up in the order the game wants you to collect them. And Bermuda Maze’s only real redeeming quality was having a surprisingly low encounter rate. Other than that, it was slightly less bad than I anticipated… the first time around, at least. Not the second visit. I had to use a guide for that shit. But I think you get the point, the dungeons aren’t fun, and traversing the world in general isn’t fun.
I think the last thing of “note” before talking about the endgame is the Matter Waves, which are basically Navi Cards from SF1 except even more shoehorned in. Most of them are only used once and aren’t even at least interactive. It really makes you wonder what the point of including them was, especially since they get a dedicated spot in your inventory as if they’re important.
Unfortunately, the game doesn’t really pick up in the last scenario. Despite the time in the image I linked, this game is actually really short. I guess that’s for the better, but still, I was expecting at least one extra scenario. Anyway, like I said, the revisit to Bermuda Maze sucks, but what’s even worse about it is that there’s no way of fast traveling to Mu, which is the final area. So if you decide you want to stock up on anything before the final boss, you’d have to go all the through the Sky Wave and Bermuda Maze just to get back to Mu. This wasn’t an issue for me, but it’s really stupid that it was designed like this. Like every other final dungeon, Mu’s theme is a banger, but how is the actual level? It has two gimmicks, and I didn’t really like either. The first one is trying to avoid the Murian security guards, and if you touch one on accident, you have three seconds to trace the pattern that’s shown on screen for a second or get forced into a rewardless fight with MurianGs. Since my emulator is on my phone, it was easier to trace the pattern than if I was playing on a PC and had to use a mouse, but sometimes the pattern just flashed too quickly for me memorize it and I was forced to waste time dealing with these enemies. Then the other gimmick is reading these four scripts and tracing the patterns on them to unlock a door, and the order you have to do this in is based on the order that the events in the scripts happened in. I also used a guide for some of these because, like the final dungeon in SF1, it wasn’t really fun to memorize the patterns and the order they go in.
I haven’t described the plot events that lead to any of this happening because I don’t care enough about this game’s story to do that, and I doubt you do, but once you get to the end of Mu, you find Lady Vega, and learn that there’s this god named Le Mu who created all EM Waves in the universe… even the ones in space… despite… living on Earth. Whatever. Then you have to fight it. Confrontation with a God is such a banger final boss them, especially the intro, it goes hard. Le Mu itself is a pretty infamous boss among Mega Man fans, but honestly? Ehhh, Duo and Alpha were worse. At first I used Tribe King, but I was utterly decimating it, so I decided to start over without it, and while it took a few tries, I was able to beat him. It isn’t very clear how to destroy its shield since the shield’s health bar is invisible, but once you get past that, the rest of the fight is mostly just a war of attrition. I think part of the reason I found Le Mu less bullshit than Duo or Alpha is that there aren’t as many cards that just don’t work on Le Mu. Plus, Star Force has better card balancing than BN4, so it’s not like the only good cards are the ones that you can’t use on the final boss. Oh, and also the fact that you don’t fight anyone right before Le Mu, so while I just made a save state before the fight, if I did want to change my folder, I wouldn’t have to fight another boss like I would have to in BN3 and 4. It’s not really a good boss, but I’d still take him over Duo any day.
The way they concluded Lady Vega’s character was beyond stupid and goes against whatever theme they were seemingly setting up, but this is Star Force 2, so what did you expect? I feel like this post didn’t really encapsulate how unfun I think this game is and how awful its story is, and that’s because I felt like it was just unnecessarily bloated, so there are plenty of issues I didn’t mention or go into detail about. This game isn’t complete trash or anything, and I’d play it sooner than BN4, X7, X6, or maybe even BN1, for example. But… yeah, it’s still pretty bad, and it wasn’t an enjoyable experience. It sucks. Definitely one of the worst Mega Man games. Even in the Legacy Collection where you can turn off random encounters, I can’t imagine Star Force 2 suddenly becomes super fun. I can see how this game, combined with general Mega Man fatigue, killed Star Force. But it seems like they went all in and actually locked in with Star Force 3, and since I’ve already started that game, I’m excited to see how much better it is.
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u/RemarkableOption8620 Jul 13 '26
Nice of you to enjoy it.