[NDS] Megaman Star Force 3 Black Ace- Fripplebubby

Now I know the forum is getting flooded with my reviews, but I found a GOOD game to review :oMegaman Star Force 3 Black Ace- A Fripplebubby slanderIf I was to sum this game up, in one sentence, for everyone to read and be enlightened by, I would make the sentence as follows: Dorky game, but surprisingly good.Let's start with the review then, shall we? First of all, I will say now that I will refer to this game as MSF3BA, which still doesn't count as a very short title. I will list what I hate about this game first before I get on to the good stuff, as well.As for the bad parts, I will start with the name. The name is terrible, to put it nicely. If I was chillin' with my dawgs, and I was playing a ds game, and they asked me what I was playing, I think i'd be shot. "Yo, homie, what are you playing? A little Halo, maybe?" "No, actually i'm playing Megaman Star Force 3- Black Ace!!!" "Wtf?!?"So it is established that this is one of those games you can't take out in public, along with the Pokemon franchise and about 90% of all Japanese games.But the dorkyness doesn't stop at the title, oh no. Apparently, you play some little kid named Geo... Geo, something. I don't remember. Sta- something... Anyway, you play as this kid. The guy is in freaking Elementary school! He's like, 8! How on Earth am I supposed to kick some butt with an 8 year old?
Oh right, that's how.The story is basically that this Geo kid is infused with OmegaXis (I think that's right...) who is some cyber-beast from beyond the grave. He glows and everything. OmegaXis is called Mega, for short, and this 8 year old is apparently a 'man', so when the two fuse and go fight viruses, they become Mega Man. Oooh, scary.Plot: ???But, the plot from there is mostly solid, and it does make some sense when you play the game. I won't spoil it for all of you.The game itself is a mix between RPG and action, and I really, really, enjoy it. You walk around, buy stuff, talk to people and such, much like an RPG, but when you go to fight... Bam! It's suddenly this awesome game that is also a mix between a card trading game, and action game. Just trust me, it's quite fun.The difficulty is pretty tough. The boss battles can be rough, but often the bosses are easier than the viruses. Just with more health. There are plenty of viruses to fight, and the way you encouter them is a little confusing to explain... Basically, EM waves control everything, and EM waves travel along 'wave roads'. You, as Geo, cannot see or travel on these 'wave roads', but if you 'EM wave change' and become Mega Man, you can travel on these roads. On the roads, you encounter viruses randomly RPG-style.These random encounters are probably the worst part of the game. The game is solid and quite fun in almost all sectors of gameplay, but for some rason thehy decided to revert back to old RPG ways with the random encounters. Even with that said, the random encounters aren't really all that random, because it seems that instead of it being random, there is actually a certain scripted distance you can go, and then you run into a virus. Annoying as this is, the viruses are usually easy, so they mostly just slow you down.Another good part about this game is the lack of a leveling system. I am not a huge fan of grinding hours into leveling a character just for the point of beating the game. The leveling system does not have experience, instead, you just collect better and better 'battle card' as you progress through the game.
Nice Boots...Speaking of 'battle cards', this is where the game's strategy comes in. You have a deck of 30 cards (more, later), and during the battle you randomly draw 6 from your deck to use for that part of the battle. Except for one, 'default' card, that you draw automatically at the start of the battle. Regrettably, you can only use cards that are of the 'common' rareness as your 'default card', though you can see why that is practical.While continuing through the game, you earn, buy, or otherwise 'acquire' (heh heh heh) better 'battle cards' and switch them with the cards in your current deck. You can have more than one deck in your deck holder, but I don't see why you would want to withhold some cards from your main deck.Now: THE SCORES!Presentation: The story is actually good. For parts of the game it's more laid-back, until later, when it gets a little more intense. Still, this game would never be made into an action movie, if you know what I mean. You get to make a story choice in the game that will affect the story, but unless you actually care about the characters, it doesn't matter. The plot has a good structure with the world they're in, but the evil enemy is really, really, cliched. Also, Geo is a dork cool guy. 9/10Graphics: The main part of the game is in shiny 2d, but the battles are shown in 3d. Everything looks really crisp, and i'm glad that they didn't try too much with the graphics in the game, but the didn't settle for too little either. Everything is reminiscent of the first two games, but with some upgrades. 9/10Gameplay: Really, really fun. And for a game with many RPG elements to have battles this fun is really a step forward for the genre. Instead of dreading mindless random battles, they are somewhat fun. The difficulty can be frustrating a few times, but if you use the right combo of 'battlecards', you should make it out okay.Sound: The sound is good. Everything sounds as it should, the music is techno, but no voice acting. That's okay, because it doesn't sound bad. 8/10Lasting Value: Multiplayer, multiplayer, multiplayer. The Wifi battles are perfectly implemented into the game, and everything works. It can lag a little, but mostly its pretty fun. Your going to want to play the story a while before playing though. The only thing more annoying than the lag, is that when ever you use a non-attack card, it freezes the battle for a few seconds while you, or the other person, uses a shield, or a divide line, or what ever. This gets a little annoying. There is also a friend system, so you can set up tournaments, or just duke it out with your buddies online (I don't know who has friends that play Megaman, but still). 10/10Total score: 46/50 (My highest score to date) A-Get. This. Game.
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Oh and for more reviews like Space Camp and Unit 77 (all by me) go here: http://blitzkreigmop.wordpress.com/

Needs some improvement in terms of content. As a matter of fact, it needs more content. Lose the 'Oooh scary' stuff and the smileys. Otherwise, I am pretty much solid with the review. Good luck in the future.

wow, someone's a Megaman fanboy...I was using sarcasm to describe what I thought of this non-scary character. If people don't like it, just don't accept it. I believe i'm meeting the requirements, so personal choice of words is up to me. Smileys... I use one, and yeah, it is a little misplaced, but it sums up the plot for me.

I'm going to point out that you tend to refer in the first person a LOT.
It's not entirely a bad thing, but after reading, "I'm going to say this, I think this, I would say this,..." it gets really old really quick.You can simply just say whatever it is that you're going to say.
It's better to say, "Megaman is a great game," instead of, "I think (or I believe, or I'm going to tell you that) Megaman is a great game."I'm not going to quote your entire review, but one part that stood out was "I'm going to start with the name." This doesn't really do anything useful and I would just omit it. In fact, the majority of your text in between your first and second pictures can be omitted. Most of your text doesn't tell me much about this game. I mean yeah, you say that the plot is good and it makes sense when you play the game, but there has to be more than just that. Tell me why the plot is good, or tell me the plot and I'll decide if it's good. :)Also, if you can't remember something, like his name, you can look it up instead of trying to remember in your review.Like I said, a lot of your statements are there, but you don't really back them up with anything. You said that the difficulty is hard...How? Why? What makes it hard? etc.Onto the material at hand.
I'm not a fan of card-based combat simply because of the game of chance. I like going into a battle, knowing EXACTLY how it's going to turn out, and no stupid chance things happen like killing one of my allies randomly or whatever. I don't like winning based on luck. Oh you killed that dragon ONLY BECAUSE you got a +Attack card or it healed your entire party. You can't duplicate those results.I like leveling for a reason. If you get stuck on let's say that same dragon, you can go back, level up a bit and come back. If your game is all gear-based statistics, then you surrender your freedom because the game WILL bottleneck you at several key points in the game. For example, FFX bottlenecks you on Ability Spheres until you complete the Luca Stadium Blitzball tournament, and it also bottlenecks you on Level 1 Keyspheres for a LONG time. Also, if you fail to collect all of the nice gear, the game gets exponentially harder as you go, instead of keeping a balanced difficulty.

Why I kept referring in first person is mainly because I would come back and write a paragraph or two at a time, every day or so and I guess I didn't notice I was making that kind of mistake...And the plot... That's the confusing thing. I wish I could tell you why the plot is good, why I think that's it good, at least, but even I can't quite put my finger on why it's good. The setting, perhaps? Hmm.And the part about omitting some of my statements, well I mainly agree with you. That is simply my filler text, and has no real purpose, but it does it's job well, make the review more... Filled?Also on looking up his name, I'M A MAN! I don't look up names! I just look stupid trying to remember them! On a serious note, his name is Geo Stelar. Sorry about that.I like a bit of chance in my games, so I'm not going to argue about personal choice.Oh, and to dmac, i'm sorry if my post made me sound like a douce (doosh?), I was having a crappy day.

Nice review but...Please post more screenshots.

Fripplebubby · #5And the plot... That's the confusing thing. I wish I could tell you why the plot is good, why I think that's it good, at least, but even I can't quite put my finger on why it's good. The setting, perhaps? Hmm.And the part about omitting some of my statements, well I mainly agree with you. That is simply my filler text, and has no real purpose, but it does it's job well, make the review more... Filled?Also on looking up his name, I'M A MAN! I don't look up names! I just look stupid trying to remember them! On a serious note, his name is Geo Stelar. Sorry about that.

You could just say that you can't explain the plot because it would spoil the ending or whatever.Filler is not generally good...I usually have wikipedia open, an IGN review, and anything else that has like an encyclopedia of the game (Item/Weapon list, Character list, etc.) when I'm reviewing a game. I usually put it in MS Word and make most of my drafting process there, and then I'll post here and add in screenshots and edit anything else.Also, about additional screenshots, try to vary them a little bit, instead of having "here's megaman killing a monster," and "here's megaman again killing a different monster." Try to capture different aspects of the game, maybe a menu, a cutscene, a battle, etc.

Fripplebubby · #5Oh, and to dmac, i'm sorry if my post made me sound like a douce (doosh?), I was having a crappy day.

Its okay, I understand... I kinda am a megama fanboy though :P
And the word is 'douche'
Hope to see more from you in the future.

You only have two in game screenshots. Try to vary it up a little bit. I like where you are going with this but I just feel that it is missing something. For example you only discuss the graphics in one sentence at the end when you grade that aspect. That should be a brief summary of a larger more in-depth discussion on graphics within the main body of your review and not in the conclusion. Your last two reviews were of more simple games, but if you are going to review a long game such as an RPG, the review has to be a little longer because there is a whole lot more you can say about the game. Otherwise I like some of your ideas and please don't be discouraged and try edit it :) Good work.

Fripplebubby · #5Also on looking up his name, I'M A MAN! I don't look up names! I just look stupid trying to remember them! On a serious note, his name is Geo Stelar. Sorry about that.

You won't look stupid looking up his name. In fact, it shows professionalism and dedication. How is someone meant to take your review seriously if you are not willing to take it seriously yourself?! Just a few pointers.