It Could Always Be Worse: why Mega Man Star Force 2 online was a complete disaster
now you might be thinking “hey Mia, doesn’t that mean the version that gets the fire transformation is objectively slightly better? they can’t be snapped out.” well, no, because there are substantially bigger problems here that make that problem completely moot
see, in Japan, they released a series of collectable card packs called Wave Command Cards. they had holes in them, and you’d put them over the DS’s screen and tap patterns indicated on the card to load the card data into the game. this would give you cool bonuses, like:
* harder enemies
* harder bosses
* extra items and money (once per card per save)
* persistent stat boosts (you do have to pick only one)
* writing onto Blank Cards, allowing you to violate folder construction rules because Blank Cards don’t count towards limits (and this lets you put a second Giga Card in your folder)
but actually none of these were the problem, because it got SO MUCH WORSE
It Could Always Be Worse: why Mega Man Star Force 2 online was a complete disaster
see, uh, they released three super rare cards that when stacked, revealed a secret code… that lets you start every fight already in Tribe King
and the cards got released in America as a single book that you could buy at GameStop, which meant it was about twenty seconds before that code wound up online
and that’s right, the Wave Command Cards absolutely worked in online PvP
SO EVERYONE STARTS IN TRIBE KING, EVERY FIGHT, AND CHUCKS OUT A BUNCH OF UNAVOIDABLE DAMAGE AND STUN, WITH DOUBLE DAMAGE
so the next time they nerf your class, remember:
it could always be so, so, so much worse
It Could Always Be Worse: why Mega Man Star Force 2 online was a complete disaster
fun fact: the internet disagrees with me on this one, but how I remember it working is that Tribe King would inherit your base version’s element weakness (for example: Tribe King on a Ninja file would be weak to fire), and if you got hit by that element, it would snap you out of Tribe King
so how I remember it working was, you’d quick-draw and whoever’s wave connected first… would usually break the other person’s Tribe King, effectively winning or losing the fight at the first button-press
It Could Always Be Worse: why Mega Man Star Force 2 online was a complete disaster
fun other details:
* Flicker Kick hits three times. its hitbox is "where your opponent is standing." (the intended counterplay is, you move at the last moment.) if you add paralyze to this, and it hits the first time, they guaranteed eat the next two, and whatever else you've got lined up
* all the stuff here assumes 1 Buster Power, but it goes up to 5, so you better believe you were usually eating not 90 per charge shot, but closer to *150*
* really if any of them were broken, it'd be the *non-fire* versions, because you'd want your *second* stage to be fire so it couldn't be snapped out, but, whatever, if you didn't start with Tribe King, you already lost the game at character select anyway
* it's still super hilarious to me that there were clearly intended to be three versions, pokémon style, but they wound up squeezing three versions into two cartridges, so you'd get a cart that could either make fire and lightning save files, or lightning and wood save files
It Could Always Be Worse: why Mega Man Star Force 2 online was a complete disaster
@gardevoir First, thanks for posting this, it was an amazing read
Second, what the FUCK.
re: It Could Always Be Worse: why Mega Man Star Force 2 online was a complete disaster
@socks YEAH.
i'm so glad other people can appreciate how awful this experience was now lmfao
re: It Could Always Be Worse: why Mega Man Star Force 2 online was a complete disaster
@gardevoir This kinda sounds like 1. the game was not intended to be played competitively in any shape or form and the multiplayer functionality was meant as a very casual "do cool flashy moves with your friends" thing, or 2. there was a grand total of zero budget for balance and playtesting which may be because of 1 or because corporations
re: It Could Always Be Worse: why Mega Man Star Force 2 online was a complete disaster
@socks i definitely think it's more of the former
like, they gave people who had Wave Command Cards set a, uh, little mark on their name, so you knew what you were getting into
but i don't remember there being a way to, like, decline a random match if someone was using a WCC, soooo...
re: It Could Always Be Worse: why Mega Man Star Force 2 online was a complete disaster
@gardevoir @socks what really sucks is just that they waited until the ones with bad multiplayer to give us any sort of online stuff
why couldn't you do MMBN5 multiplayer with the ds version at least?
-F
