Mega Man Star Force 2: Zerker X Saurian

The Good
Mega Man Star Force 2 is the second game in the Mega Man Star Force series, which somehow continue what was started in the Mega Man Battle Network 6-logy. The game was released under 2 versions, Zerker x Saurian and Zerker x Ninja. This can be hard to figure out before playing the game, but this refers to "gods" of lost civilisations you can fusion with during battle. In each game you can play in Zerker mode or Ninja/Saurian mode, which will be basically the same game, except that at some point in the game you can automatically fusion with the monster you chose, and it will change the element of your attacks and give you different strengths. Anyway I played in Zerker mode for information.

You take control of Geo, a young boy. For the story, you should first play the original Star Force, because it really is the sequel of the events of the first game. You will be missing much of the story of this game if you don't play the original game first. Anyways after the events in Star Force 1, they invented a new cell-phone like device called Star Carrier which is supposed to be an improvement of what they had in the original game. If you record "brothers" in your Star Carrier, it will increase your "link power", and this is supposed to show off that you have friends. This is basically Capcom's version of Facebook, with the big difference that it also matter how much close of your friends you are in order to see the link power increase (when will Facebook implement this ?).

Like in Star Force 1, as Geo, you can turn into Mega Man by jacking in a wavehole and fuse with Omega-Xis. Then you are in the wave world (which is made entirely of EM waves) which is superposed to real world (as opposed to internet world in the Battle Network series which was parallel to real world). The big news here is that you don't walk "above" the real world like in Star Force 1, but you can walk both above and directly trough the real world, thanks to the Star Carrier.

Even trough Capcom did the changes mentioned above, this game plays much like Star Force 1. Most of the things I've already said in my Star Force 1 review also applies here, so I won't say all of them again. The 3D-gird battle system still works really great and is really fun to play with. It seems they are really severe when it comes to battle ranks in this game. In order to get S rank you have to do really impressive combos.

A good thing in this game, is that you are able to use "materialized" items for fun things, for example to be able to ski or to swim underwater. This was a really cool idea. A second good move from the first, Capcom listened me and get rid of this "4 locations" scheme that was here in the Battle Network games and Star Force 1. You now have.... 5 locations to visit ! 3 of them which are connected by bus, and 2 of them that are available trough the "long waves", is is kinda cool to go into the sky to go to a far away place.

The Bad
One thing that bothers me significantly is how the story was let down from the first game. Battle Network had childish and naive story lines, although it went a bit better toward the end of the series. Then the original Star Force came out playing the same, but having a really amazing storyline with complex character development, and plot twists instead. Too bad here the story here is again very simple and naive. Your friends are in trouble, you'll do anything to save them, etc... Well the story isn't THAT bad, and the game is till fun to play, but you won't learn anything while playing it, and there is no big motivation to come back to the game.

The second major flaw here is the significant letdown in the music. The music in the Battle Network series was very good, the music in Star Force 1 was okay, but here what we get is... really not very good. The battle music and boss music are really forgettable. Some music hear in towns is actually very bad. The saving grace is a couple of tunes recycled from Star Force 1. Sound effects are identical to Star Force 1 too (not that's it's any good or bad, I just mention it).

The third and last major flaw of the game is that it is way too easy. As far as I can remember Battle Network games and the original Star Force were real challenges, and I had fun trying to figure out how to beat had enemies and bosses. This game is really a piece of cake, even the bosses are easy to figure out. There is however one big exception, the last boss is absolutely impossible to beat. It has 2000 HP and my absolute record of damage I've dealt to him before dying was about 100 damage. You have to be very lucky to damage him, and all his attacks are impossible to avoid. If I remember well I already had this problem with Battle Network 5, but here this is the extreme example of a game who is so damn easy all the way along, and that you end up screwed before the last boss forever. I will say it again, I hate easy games with very hard last bosses. I play games for a true challenge, not for being beaten by one frustrating bastard.

The game is also quite short, it should take about 25 hours of gameplay to reach the end.

The Bottom Line
Well what to think? After releasing the original Star Force which I consider to be a pretty much perfect game, they release this one which contains a few improvements, and a few disappoints. The idea to parody Facebook in a game is nice, and so is the idea to travel trough countries on the long waves and to use "materialized" items. The lacking storyline is a disappoint, but don't take any fun out from the game. The poor music and too easy difficult however, are a big disappoint to me.

So I still recommend to play this game if you liked the first, but it's really not a must-play. They released Star Force 3 recently, and I don't know how good it is, but even if it continues the story from this game, you probably will still understand what's going on because the story of this game is extremely simple. Star Force 1 on the other hand had really an amazing story and I recommend anyone to play it (that is anyone that likes Action-RPGs of course).