Review by: Danielle Riendeau

It has a ridiculously long name and only the most tenuous connection to actual, old-school Mega Man, but that doesn’t stop Mega Man Star Force 3: Red Joker from being a fun, young-skewing RPG. With a dynamic card-based battle system, and an emphasis on evolving Mega Man into new forms, it’s pretty robust, but everyone over the age of 12 will probably be turned off by the kiddie story.

You play as a little kid (Geo) who lives in a world where technology allows folks to “interface” with the objects and systems in their world. It’s all sort of a caveat allowing the game to quickly swap between “overworld” and “dungeon” style areas, but it works well enough. Geo turns into Mega Man when he merges with his wizard/alien spirit friend (excuse me, EM being, whose name is “Omega – Xis”), and you’ll run around the world, battling viruses and helping the folks around you.

The battle system at the core of the game is rock solid. The computer selects a random variety of cards from your deck (which you can customize – and you’ll find or buy new cards all the time), and you’ll choose two or three cards every 15 seconds or so of battle. Rounds are not turn based – you can move Mega Man on a grid, firing his arm cannon and laying down card attacks (or defenses) at will. Enemies all have their own attack patterns, meaning that it’s up to you to have the skill (being able to dodge and time your attacks) and the strategy (in selecting the right cards for the job). It gets repetitive, sure, but particularly hyper armchair generals will eat it up.

There’s also a fairly compelling upgrade system for Mega Man – the “noise transformations” all carry strengths, weaknesses and special abilities. Both the Red Joker and the corresponding Black Ace versions of the game have unique transformations, so if you’re really into Mega Man: Star Force, you’ll want to share with friends. You can also battle your friends (up to seven, in fact), provided that everyone has a copy of the game (either version will do).

The only problem is the padding – there’re plenty of boring missions and vanilla dialogue keeping you from enjoying the real meat of the game. The save system is problematic as well - if you die in battle, you have to start from your last save. There’s no autosaving – so if you haven’t bothered to manually save in a while, you may be losing an unacceptable amount of progress. Adding insult to injury here, the story isn’t exactly great, earth-shattering stuff. It’s obviously aimed at kids – and the localization and writing are perfectly up to par – but its incredibly lame to have to go through the unskippable dialogue again after a save snafu.

With that said, the game is solid fun for kids or series newbies who haven’t gorged themselves on the Battle Network or Star Force games yet – or conversely, fans who cannot get enough. It’s an accessible, fun, card clasher and young gamers will want to take full advantage of the Wi-fi features.

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