The original Mega Man Starforce was a game that literally fell in my lap, as it never registered on my radar during its development, but after I started playing it I soon found myself engrossed in its surprisingly dark subject matter. Who knew Mega Man could work outside his usual side-scrolling adventures and thrive in an RPG quest? While I missed out on the second Starforce game, I jumped into this third installment not missing too much, and finding a game that's still pretty solid, despite not living up to my fondness of the original.

You play as young Geo Stelar, a boy who was once alone after his father disappeared in space, but soon found a friend in an alien known Omega-Xis. After becoming friends and forming a bond, the two could merge to become the Wave Road superhero known as Mega Man. He has saved the world twice now and even his closest friends have learned of his secret identity. Life seems to be getting back to normal for Geo after his last successful world saving endeavor, but has he met his match when it comes to the organization known as Dealer? It's up to you to stop them and save the world from a bright red meteor heading your way.

Mega Man Battling

While I didn't find myself as emotionally invested in the story as I did during the first Starforce game, it's still not bad and actually quite good at times. You'll have to run around and do some inane quests to advance the story, but once characters start falling into place it becomes a pretty decent story. The main story revolves around Mega Man trying to bring down the evil organization known as Dealer, but first there are several of their plans you're going to have to clear in the process (mostly dispatching violent Wizards that our running amok). There are even a couple of sweet and touching moments sprinkled throughout that will have you awing like someone looking at a tiny puppy.

Mega Man Starforce 3: Red Joker is obviously a sequel, which means there's quite a lot between the previous two that happened if this is your first foray into the game. The first big one is his friends now know that Geo is Mega Man. How did they learn of his secret identity? Don't know, never played the second game. Who is this masked magician looking guy talking about following a script? He was a bad guy in the second game. What the heck is this one scientist talking to you about? Oh yeah, he's referring to your meeting in the first game. While it's not absolutely crucial for you to have played the first two games to completion, you'll definitely appreciate all the various elements of the story that newcomers won't understand at all. Even if you are jumping into the game with no previous knowledge, you can still enjoy the game without needing to know the exact history.

I only have two problems when it comes to the story portion of the game. For starters, it just doesn't feel as epic; some bad events happen and there are bad guys, but it never struck me as a real catastrophe. My second problem with the story is that every character wants to ramble on and on as if giving a James Bond villain monologue. You'll often have to sit through quite lengthy cutscenes, half-heartedly reading it all as you button click to the end.

Gameplay is quite unique for a RPG as it bucks many of the traditions that come with the genre. You'll fight random battles and earn both money and battle cards, but you won't be really buying any healing items, new weapons, armor, or grinding enemies for experience gaining levels. Instead, most things found that would fall under those classifications, are represented as cards, which you can take six of into the start of every battle. Battle cards come in the form of attacks, summons, buffs, defensive shields, and others. While buff cards can be added to any attack card, you can only pick more than one card when they're of the same type, or fall on the horizontal or vertical of where you picked your first card. Players then take these cards into battle to perform special attacks, heal, erase a line to keep enemies away from you, and much more. After a certain amount of time is up, you can then press a button to jump back to the card picking screen, where new cards in your battle deck will now appear where the last cards were. Using these cards and your buster (fires constantly with no reload), you'll dispatch the enemy, get your reward, and then rinse and repeat the next time you come across someone.

As for the battle board itself, it's set up like a grid you're looking forward at, though you control only movement on the very bottom row of three squares while enemies move around the rest of the board. You'll dodge left and right on your row to avoid enemies, attacking with your blaster by using the B-button, using the A-button to use the next card in the row, pressing the Y-button to put up a temporary shield, and pressing down on the directional pad to focus on an enemy for an attack. The system works well, but when you get more than one or two enemies on there (especially the bigger versions of the small ones) it can be frantic dodging back and forth and trying not to die in only three hits; I found myself being killed for this very reason several times, so the game has definitely gotten harder than the last time I played the franchise.

Questing and fighting takes place on several different planes of existence. There's the real world, where you'll run across people, many of which will talk to you or ask you for help. Above that is the Wave Road, which is a series of connecting data passages that you walk on to reach data cores. Data cores are the inside workings of an EM machine and typically used as dungeons when it comes to fighting a giant out of control Wizard. One of the things the game does well is mix the worlds up to provide something new almost any time you jump into these dungeons. One time you'll have to use magnetic polarity to solve puzzles, another time you'll have to keep yourself warm and not freeze in place, and another you'll have to run and jump over floor cracks so that you won't fall and have to start over.

Board Lineup

New to the game is the idea of Noise, which is basically the leftover pollution that comes from EM objects you encounter in your everyday life. At first Noise isn't used for anything other than a plot point, but later on you'll eventually learn how to battle with it so you can get some rare battle cards. Further along into the story, however, you'll eventually learn how to harness it so that your Mega Man appearance changes with new skills and buffs happening in the process.

The introduction of Noise is great in terms of throwing a new mechanic into the game, but it's the way the game uses it that annoys me. Both the game box and manual tells you that you have the power to transform, but nothing about when the power becomes available. When I was told in the game about managing the Noise to get new cards, I thought I was doing something wrong, which is why I thought I'd never get a Noise change form for Mega Man. I kept playing, however, and eventually I stumbled upon the plot point that basically says, "Okay, NOW you can use this ability." Well that's just great. Here I thought I was an idiot all this time, but the fact is the game just didn't want me to know when I'd suddenly have this ability. Thanks! It's gameplay decisions such as these that ultimately hurt the product.

Outside of the singe player game, players can meet online to form Brother Bands with other players, trade cards, and even battle each other. I'm not a huge fan of it, but it's an interesting diversion, plus it's important if you want to see all the Noise forms that the game has, because much like the Pokemon dual game format offering some creatures that the other doesn't, so too goes Noise forms across the Red Joker and Black Ace versions of the game.

Graphically the game is pretty simple, but still manages to get the job done. Most of the game is spent looking at nice sprites walking on isometric roads and then ultimately battling in a pseudo-3D that works great for the battles. The models during these 3D battles are a little jagged, but still look very good when engaged in action. The game does an equally good job with the audio portion of the game, including various foreboding tracks for more dire situations while most of the time it's pretty jazzy and fun. The voice work isn't much in the game, as it's really only used a handful of times, and in most cases is solely used for when Geo yells and turns himself into Mega Man.

If you've been a previous fan of the first two installments in the Mega Man Starforce series, Mega Man Starforce 3 is a must buy, as it's everything you've loved, but with some new tweaks thrown into the mix. It's got a pretty good story once you start getting deeper into the game and the combat is still fun and oftentimes challenging. A few problems keep the game from being perfect – most notably things like dialogue segments that drag on forever and gameplay mechanics you're never sure of when they'll appear. It's still a solid game and one I'd recommend despite its flaws.

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