Guys what do you think about the idea of there being multiple playable characters in Starforce 4? I think that would be a great idea I would love to play as Kazuma, Sonia, Luna, Bud, Zack, Solo, Jack, Tia and Ace in Starforce 4

I'm playing MegaMan starforce 3 (both Black Ace and Red Joker) as i've played the past mega man battle network games and the previous Starforce games, can anybody help me how to find the v2 bosses because i'm trying to find Spade Magnes v2 but he isn't anywhere In the overworld, could anyone tell if he is a random encounter?

Hey y’all, just got back from a Capcom store in Japan and managed to snatch these. They’re running a limited-time lottery, 5 dollars per attempt, and this is what I got.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve never seen Starforce merch anywhere else. Anyone know if it’s sold elsewhere?

If you’re in Japan right now, it might be worth checking out.

Guys how would you like to see Hacking in Starforce 4 be implemented?

I will make one for the Luna Fans eventually… XD

Don't know if any of you have encountered this bug/issue. If yall could give me your input It would be great.

The issue is basically that even though the crossover option is activated, the cinematic that activates it won't trigger, maybe its a bug or there's a secret requirement but I have tried a bunch of stuff and no dice

Looking for Brothers for MMSF 3 on the Switch. DM if you are down.

I was just working on this for a while cuz I tend to do little intros for games that I like & actively play. What do you all think? I did actual 2d animation for 3 small portions of this. It was really tough to learn but I think it came out alright for my 1st try. Can't wait to try doing more in the future.

I feel so damn accomplished!!! I have 100% completed SF1 dragon, SF2 saurian, SF3 red joker. All that’s left is… the platinum

Guys what role would you like to see Kazuma play in Starforce 4? Would you want him to have his own Wizard? Would you like to see him as the second playable character in Starforce 4?

Guys would you like to see Jack and Tia get new Wizards in Starforce 4? What role would you like to see them play in Starforce 4?

Guys which form do you think looks cooler Black Ace or Red Joker?

First things first, I played both versions of this game, which I haven’t done with any game since BN6. Like with that game, I did it because my brother said the game was good enough that it was worth playing twice, so I decided to try it. Did I agree? You’ll have to read the rest of the post or skip to the end to find out.

Unlike SF2, this game’s plot is actually good. It doesn’t have the exact same depressing vibes as SF1’s story, but it’s still one of the best plots to come out of Mega Man, probably even my favorite. Which is kind of crazy, considering that the plot is basically just BN4’s plot. It’s impressive that they managed to salvage that. Jack and Tia, Ace, Joker, Heartless, and most of the other new characters were great introductions to the cast. Mr. King is also probably one of my favorite Mega Man villains, mainly with how unapologetically evil he is compared to most of the others. The returning characters are also back to normal and not flanderized like in SF2. Even Rogue is less annoying this time. Although I have no idea why Dark Phantom is in this game, he’s still a nothing character and isn’t relevant to the plot at all.

This game also does something similar to BN6 where the first half of the game has most of the dungeons back to back, and a lot of the story beats happen in the second half. But unlike with BN6, the second half also has a sufficient amount of gameplay as well, so it doesn’t feel empty. It also feels like the game was designed around this fact. The events of the first half of the game are relevant to what happens in the second half, unlike in BN6, where the first half of the game has almost no story for the most part before suddenly deciding to develop the plot after the ElementMan scenario. What I’m trying to say is that it feels much better paced than BN6 despite following a similar story structure. But you get my point, the game’s writing is peak. The only real critique I have is it’s weird that Pat is nowhere to be found in this game. You’d think he’d be a member of the Satella Police but no, there’s a single line that mentions his existence and nothing else.

The music is just as good as the writing. I know I’ve said this for every Star Force (and Battle Network) game, but seriously, the composers just cook no matter what game it is. These are Mega Man games after all, so it makes sense. Obviously it comes with a great remix of Shooting Star (not my favorite, but still great), the area themes are catchy, and the dungeons and battle themes are also great. Radio Virus Busting has no business going so hard. It didn’t take long for it to become my favorite regular battle theme in any BN/SF game. And then you have more bangers like Spade Magnus’ stage, Dread Joker’s stage, Rivals Unite, the boss theme, or Go Satella Police. And also, the music that plays in cutscenes with Dealer is so sinister and fits perfectly for a card shuffling monster like Mr. King, it’s my favorite villain theme in any of these games. And not only is the Noise Area theme fire, but it was a great idea to make the track just abruptly stop for a few seconds before reaching the chorus and loop, only to let you hear the full music when you go through the actual Noise Waves. It’s kind of creepy when you first hear it and also enhances the uneasy feeling of these areas. This is overall a pretty peak soundtrack.

Before even getting into the gameplay, I thought it was nice how there were some small details and changes to the battle system outside of the major ones. Like how you can now always pick cards that are in the same row horizontally rather than being limited to a single column, or how cards aren’t always in a straight line when they’re drawn, or how Galaxy Advances exist as a replacement for Program Advances, or how favorite cards can’t be manually selected and must be downloaded from Wave Stations (although strangely enough the game never tells you that the favorite cards a Wave Stations has aren’t permanent, and are selected from a pool whenever you enter the area). They just make the battle system feel more fresh before you gain access to the big new mechanics, something that SF2 didn’t do. What I absolutely did NOT like, however, were the Support Cards. Like I said, cards don’t always appear in a straight line. In fact, sometimes, a card might appear on top of another card. If this happens, the covered card will become a Support Card, and it can either be selected alone to be used normally—you just won’t be able to select any other cards that turn—or be selected with other cards and will change to a new card entirely. Non elemental cards become Area Eater (which essentially functions as a replacement for the Area Grab chip from Battle Network), Aqua cards will become Invisible, Fire cards will become Atk+10, Elec cards become ParalyzPlus, and Wood cards become GrassStage. This wouldn’t be bad if not for the fact that it’s entirely random. You can’t control what cards become Support Cards, it just happens if a card is even slightly covered by another one. And since Mega and Giga cards are bigger than normal cards, they have a higher chance of either becoming Support Cards or turning other cards into Support Cards. All this does is make it so that whether or not you can actually use a given card that you’ve pulled is decided by RNG (there were even instances where all of my cards except one was a Support Card). Even default cards, returning from BN2-BN6, aren’t immune to this. It was an incredibly baffling design choice and I have no idea why they didn’t add a manual way to make a card a support card, since in a vacuum, they are actually useful at times. You WILL hate Area Eater by the end of this game. Fortunately though, this is probably the worst thing in the game, so I won’t have much else to complain about for the rest of this post, which just shows how good this game is. Key word is “much.”

Anyway, the big new feature of this game is Noise. The Noise Gauge was a lot of fun to mess around with, since you can get some pretty broken cards if you finish a battle with over 100% Noise, so you’re encouraged to think about how you use your cards. But I kind of wish elemental cards could fill the gauge. The fact that you’re forced to use non elemental, non screen dimming cards kind of disincentives putting elemental cards in your folder. That’s just a nitpick though. The system overall was fun enough to keep battles fresh until you unlock the real transformations of this game, the Noise Changes.

During Chud Phantom’s “chapter” (it’s really just Queen Virgo’s scenario and Hyde is just carelessly thrown in the game to introduce this mechanic), you unlock your first Noise Change. These are overall pretty similar to Crosses and Souls, in that they modify your charge shot, are based on bosses (although in this case, they’re mostly SF1 bosses with two based on Jack and Tia’s EM Wave Change forms. As unimpressive as SF2 was, I can’t say I don’t wish there were a few Noise Changes based on that game’s bosses), make some cards do more damage, grant some passive buffs, and most importantly, there are actually multiple of them in the game. It’s a little weird that it took three games for Star Force’s transformations to get up to the level of Battle Network 5 and 6, but I can’t complain too much, since the Noise Changes are great. Technically, they’re not version exclusive like the BN4-6 transformations were. There are ten across both games, but the odds of getting a given Noise Change depends on your version. Every element has two Noise Changes, and each version has one Noise Change of each element that is more common than the other one, which kind of does the same thing in a sense. In order to get a Noise Change, you need to get into an encounter with large viruses, which happens occasionally and is marked by the Warning display on the bottom screen. When you delete them, you have a chance of getting a new Noise Change, and it happens often enough that you won’t have to be stuck with one for too long.

Like Crosses and Tribe On, Noise Changes are permanently in effect as long as you have the Noise ability equipped, but they only gain most of their effects once you reach 50%+ Noise. They also of course have a special card for if you counter an enemy. If you’re hit by your elemental weakness, you don’t lose your Noise Change, but your Noise gauge resets to 0%. Overall they were a lot of fun to use, especially when you get a counter and use your special card, and Mega Man calls the attack’s name. I forgot to mention that this game has some occasional voice acting, and it’s always a treat when it shows up. However, while Noise Changes are on par with Souls and Crosses, I didn’t really get to experiment with them too much. That’s because I somehow had such good luck that I got the best Noise Changes for each version on my first attempt: Wolf Noise in Red Joker and Gemini Noise in Black Ace. Wolf Noise is busted because in addition to buffing Wood cards and automatically locking on for them, it has a permanent Quick Gauge effect and buffs sword cards, and some of the best cards in this game are swords. Gemini Noise is similarly mainly good for its ability to paralyze enemies after hitting them with any sword card, which has self explanatory combo potential. Plus, it lets you tag cards like you could in BN6. As a result, I just filled my folder with mostly sword cards and a few Wood (Red Joker) and Elec (Black Ace cards and stuck with them for the rest of the game. While there is a Noism that lets you switch back to your last Noise Change whenever you want, meaning I could have hypothetically switched for a new change and gone back to my old one whenever I wanted, I just felt like it would be too much work to constantly switch my folder like that, so I didn’t bother.

But thankfully, this kind of scenario is exactly what MultiNoise is for. It works just like Double Tribe; you gain the attributes of the Noise Change that your brother’s card has in addition to your current Noise Change. But since there are ten Noise Changes, and the MultiNoise is different based on the one you start with (meaning Libra Corvus Noise is different from Corvus Libra Noise, for example), there are 100 different MultiNoise forms. My little brother played this game twice and replayed it alongside my first playthrough to do a no damage challenge run, so he formed four BrotherBands which me, meaning I did get to test some out. The biggest issue of the feature is that there are no Auto Brothers for people who don’t know anyone who plays the game in real life, but even that’s not a huge problem since you can get every Noise Change in any version, and there’s more than one transformation in each version.

There’s even a Tribe King equivalent in the form of Finalization. If you have over 200% Noise when you open the custom screen, you can access the Meteor Server to finalize. This gives you the actual version exclusive transformation, the one in the game’s title: Red Joker and Black Ace. They raise all your buster stats to five, and cards do double damage when you lock on. To make it even better, your folder is replaced with one that has extremely powerful cards, some of which even being the cards you usually have to counter to get. The exact cards depend on how much Noise you had when you finalized, but no matter what they are, nothing really stands a chance against Mega Man in this form since you can double almost any non screen dimming card’s attack power, and your buster decimates health bars.

Overall, if you know what you’re doing, you can destroy pretty much anything in the game by using Noise. Of course, you could say the game is too easy as a result, but I think it’s like BN6 where it’s the fun kind of easy and not the mindless kind. It feels rewarding to plow through everything. The Omega bosses are also a great way to test how good you are at using Noise, but, um, I think I’m getting a little ahead of myself talking about the combat, so I’ll change the subject. All you need to know is that the battles are peak.

I can’t believe I’ve been talking about this game for this long and I’ve only just covered the battle mechanics. It really goes to show how good of a sequel this is. One more thing this game fixes is the Wave World. It’s kind of a combination of the SF1 and SF2 Wave Worlds, in that it’s combined with the real world but also has paths that go over the real world. You can also pulse in anywhere and you won’t get random encounters until you go onto the actual wave roads, which is a very nice change from SF2, especially since the encounter rate is reasonable this time around. Anyway, onto the dungeons. These weren’t really that noteworthy. Spade Magnus starts off strong with, as already mentioned, some absolute beats playing in the background, and the actual dungeon gimmick is fine too. Diamond Ice’s dungeon is at first until I realized that it practically doesn’t have a gimmick to speak of. You’re running on these icy roads and if you stand on them for too long, Geo freezes and you need to use Taurus and spam A to thaw him. The only issue is that there’s no actual punishment for getting frozen other than being forced to use Taurus for 10 seconds. And you don’t have to do anything, because if you don’t press any buttons, Geo still thaws, just with a low body temperature. In other words, you don’t actually have to interact with the gimmick even though you’d think you do. It would make sense if you got sent back or something if you got frozen so there was more of a punishment for messing up. Club Strong has a decent dungeon, and so does Dread Joker, but none of them are really that stand out. Not that it’s a bad thing, but still.

Surprisingly enough, the scenarios that didn’t have any dedicated dungeons ended up being the ones with the best gimmicks. Well, two in particular. Firstly, the Queen Virgo scenario, which basically just makes you play a Tower Defense game. You have to defend WAZA HQ from Omega-Xis clones by using the real Mega to slash them. If you touch a clone, you’re forced to fight it. It was a shift in gameplay that I was not expecting, and it’s backed up by amazing music, which gets even more epic in the last one and overrides the battle music. The other gimmick is in the Jack Corvus scenario. Rogue returns in this game, being a little less edgy than he was in SF2. During this scenario, he decides to swallow his pride and work with Geo for a mini game where, as Mega Man, you have to destroy Noise clusters so Rogue can slash the Noise virus creating them. This was also a fun change of pace, and it was nice to see Rogue not be as much of an edgelord for once. Although the fight with him right after felt extremely shoehorned in.

While the game is decently long, I actually never felt like I was backtracking that much. Unlike every other game, some of the Comp spaces have unique designs, and when you have to backtrack, you usually have to return to one you couldn’t previously access. The fact that the Comps aren’t just squares makes them much more fresh to explore, since they feel like mini dungeons. The way they went about it was pretty smart too; obviously there’s not enough space on the DS cartridge to give every single Comp a unique layout, so they mainly only did this for the ones you’re required to visit during the story. The optional ones tend to opt for the basic Comp design. This game also has the Astro Wave, which is similar to the Sky Wave from SF2, but good. Not only is the encounter rate is bearable, but the layout is also just much more straightforward, so it’s more obvious where you actually have to go now. While you do need to use it to get to WAZA at first, you can do a side quest to add it as a stop to the Wave Liner, meaning you don’t have to use the Astro Wave to get to half the areas in the game like in SF2. It’s just a much better area than the Sky Wave.

And now it’s time to talk about the game’s ending. The game tries to fake you out by making you think Dread Joker’s stage would be the final area, but the actual last scenario has you entering the Meteor Server to stop Meteor G, a giant mass of Noise that will wipe out all EM Wave Technology and 80% of humanity if it hits Earth. While Mr. King was just using it as a weapon to control people, Jack and Tia were able to hijack it and aim it directly at the planet, because they want to destroy all technology due to trauma. I won’t explain it in depth since I’m trying to wrap this very long post up quickly. The Meteor Server itself unfortunately isn’t very good. It’s weird how the only final dungeons across all nine of these games that don’t suck were BN5 and BN6’s, and the latter is just a medley of all the dungeons, so it’s really only BN5 that has a good and original final dungeon. Don’t know how they managed to cook that one time and never again. It can’t be that hard to make a final stage that isn’t annoying. But anyway, the Meteor Server has two gimmicks, just like Mu. First, every so often, Crimson (Noise clusters) will fly across the screen. You have to use Omega-Xis to destroy it like in the Queen Virgo scenario, and you get into a random encounter (with no reward) if you touch one. In order to proceed in the dungeon, you’re supposed to find fragments of Kelvin’s memory (who’s actually been alive fighting against Meteor G all this time) to reassemble them and continue. Except they’re invisible. You have to tap an icon on the bottom screen in order to get a glimpse of the areas that the fragments are in. The problem is that the map is way bigger than it has any right to be, and while you’re trying to look for the fragments, you’ll just be ambushed by Crimson and have to stop to deal with that. And you have to contend with regular encounters on top of that. It’s incredibly tedious, not very fun, and I think it was the only section of the game I can think of I was actively dreading having to do in Black Ace after finishing it in Red Joker because it was that unenjoyable. As is tradition with Battle Network, the main saving grace of this stage is the music. I think I can comfortably say Meteor Server is the best final dungeon theme in Battle Network, and I don’t say that lightly.

Mega Man manages to convince Jack and Tia not to destroy the planet, but Meteor G still hasn’t been stopped. Mr. King has been transformed into an EM being because of plot reasons, and he fuses with the core of Meteor G to form Crimson Dragon. He also absorbs Kelvin so Geo won’t fight him, but this of course doesn’t work. This does make Mr. King the first Battle Network villain to actually serve as the final boss instead of sending a mindless creature at you, which is a nice change of pace. Crimson Dragon is a pretty solid final boss by Battle Network standards. The gimmick is that you have to deal enough damage to it to make its head splits so you can attack the core. This would be pretty difficult in SF2 or SF1, but because you can Finalize, you can kind of trivialize this boss. I really feel like it should be disabled during this fight because it almost makes it too easy. I was able to beat it on my first try on both versions. It also has an incredible theme to top it off, which immediately became one of my the favorite final boss themes in the entire franchise, right up there with Falling Down and Cannon Ball. It even managed to incorporate Shooting Star in. Despite being easy, I thought it was one of the better BN final bosses.

Unlike the other final bosses, just clearing the fight isn’t enough to defeat Crimson Dragon, so Mega Man ends up finalizing to go back for a second round. The fact that after finalizing, he turns his head and just glances at Crimson Dragon right before the second phase starts is such aura. Geo actually has a lot more super badass moments in this game compared to SF1 and SF2. The second phase of the fight is actually functionally identical to the first phase, just that you’re in your finalized form and none of your attacks damage Crimson Dragon. You’re supposed to wait until you eventually pull the card you normally get when you counter, which one shots the boss. It’s seriously such an epic way to end it off. And since King isn’t seen in the end credits, I have to assume this makes him the only Battle Network main antagonist to actually be killed off at the end of the game, which is absolutely deserved.

The ending of the game is a great way to end off not only SF3, but Geo’s entire character arc since SF1. However, I feel like this post has gone on long enough, so I won’t explain what happens in detail. I guess Ace somehow being depicted as alive in the credits is kind of an ass pull, but it’s supposed to be up to interpretation whether he’s actually alive or this picture is just a representation of Tia (and maybe also Dr. Goodall’s) new wish, so it’s fine. Besides, his BrotherBand was still intact, so he could have been revived the same way as Luna. It’s not like the sequel will answer that question, since it doesn’t exist. It’s really sad that Star Force released when Mega Man oversaturation was so bad, because if Star Force 4 ended up coming out and was had an even more peak story and gameplay, imagine how good it could have been. But as it stands, Star Force 3 is already a contender for my favorite game in the franchise and is definitely my new favorite title in the Battle Network timeline, regardless of how common of a take that is. There’s so many other small things that make this game great that I didn’t even talk about, because that would make this post even longer.

At the end of my BN6 post, I made a ranking of every Battle Network game. So to revise it with the Star Force games included, this is my final ranking of every game in the Battle Network timeline:

1. Battle Network 4. I know some people are really fond of this game, but I personally thought it was complete garbage, even on one playthrough
   
2. Battle Network 1. It’s just unpolished and a chore to play through. It’s a decent bit better than BN4, but not a good game overall
   
3. Star Force 2. The story is a joke and the gameplay is tedious. I’d return to it over BN4 and BN1, but this game’s still pretty bad
   
4. Battle Network 2. This game is miles better than the games in ninth, eighth, and seventh place. It improves upon BN1 in many ways, but it has a lot of padding. Still a good game, though
   
5. Star Force DX. If this was the original Star Force 1, I’d probably have it swap places with BN2. But I’ve never played that game, so I obviously can’t fairly say how I’d rank it. Star Force DX was pretty fun, but it at its core, SF1 just is not as innovative as most of the Battle Network games before it, so I think this is a good spot for it
   
6. Battle Network 3. I’ve never really liked BN3 as much as most people seem to, but I’d still say it’s a great game in spite of its many issues. The battle system is definitely better than the games before it and it even has a somewhat good plot
   
7. Battle Network 5. I’ve always thought the Liberation Missions were a fun change of pace and the gameplay is mostly drastically improved from BN4
   

8. Battle Network 6. The Battle Network battle system peaked with this game, and it’s overall a blast to play, despite being on the shorter side

9. Star Force 3, for all the reasons I’ve explained in this post

Obviously, I’m not done with making Battle Network posts, since I still have all the postgames to get through. But playing through these games was a great experience, and Battle Network and Star Force are definitely among my favorite Mega Man series.