Now that the Megaman Starforce collection is out, let’s talk about Starforce 2, the game that is frequently cited by fans as the game that dealt a killing blow to the entire Megaman franchise as a whole.
This is, of course, hyperbole, SF2 was just one one of many straws that would atomize the camels back, but the idea does have merit. SF2 just isn’t that good a game, despite being dripping with potential.
Its encounter rate is trough the roof, the characters got flanderized, and the plot is… honestly, pretty good for the first half. And even the second half has potential, it just squanders it.
I really like the idea of globe trotting to save your friends. But the way you get to these locations, the skywave, suuuucks. And then the locations themselves are underwhelming. Whazzap is like, 2 areas you walk back and forth between and a dungeon, stretched into an amnesia plot line that just won’t end.
And not tying Le Mu to the overall space alien based plot of these games is just… it was right there. It’s based off of Ra Moon the alien super computer from the classic series spinoff game, it could have been revealed to be a powerful EM being, the opposite of Andromeda with the power of creation instead of destruction, and the game could have been about ancient aliens that formed the myths about yokai around the globe. It’s what the crazy man from the history channel would have wanted!
And then there is what they did to poor Sonia, and even worse, Pat and Rey. Sonia is made into an idiot who betrays Geo so that the villains won’t hurt him, and then the villains attack Geo anyway, and she still keeps siding with the villains despite this. It’s dumb, and I hate it, and the dungeon for that area is awful, they could get rid of it and it’s be for the better. No one likes the Bahama Quadrangle anyway.
And for Pat… It’s uncomfortable ironic that the character with abandonment issues so powerful they created an antagonistic alternate personality to push people away before they could be potentially abandoned again was abandoned by the series shortly after finding a friend group who accepted them.
I’d have given Sonia an entirely unique area, and have Rey be the one who betrays Geo and sides with the bad guys. Rey himself would be a reoccurring character in the first half, Pat always tagging along with the group, and Rey chiming in, never getting along with anyone and just waiting for someone in their new friend group to stab Pat in the back so he can say “I told you so!” And then he gets his chance, and instead Geo comes to the rescue, they have their falling out, and Geo has to convince Rey that he’s as much a part of the group as Pat is, and they all care about both of them. That in the end, it’s not Pat waiting for his friends to abandon him, he had full faith in Geo the whole time, it’s Rey who is the one still hurting.
Instead, they just threw him in as a bonus boss in 2 and sidelined him entirely in 3, Bleh. Think of the potential of having Pat and Rey join the team during the Power Rangers/Sentai inspired plot of 3! Not to mention, they never got to meet Solo, but I already made a post about that.
