This section goes into a few details on how to play the Star Force games. This is currently a work in progress and may not yet be complete.

		GAME PLAY

The main game play is fairly typical and resembles any console RPG. You can walk around, talk to people, and search things. Enter the Wave World by using waveholes, which look like large orange whirlpools when you have your Visualizer on. While you walk around on a wave road, you may be attacked.

Screen shot from Capcom.

Once you enter battle, things get a little more confusing.

You fight enemies on a battle field that is a grid of 3x5 squares. MegaMan is restricted to moving on his row of the battle field. That means you can move only left and right. The enemies get the rest of the space. Most of the time you view the field straight forward, over MegaMan’s shoulder. But at certain times, the camera will shift around. (You can turn this off during battle by pausing, then turning the camera off on the resulting menu.)

To attack, fire your buster or use special items called Battle Cards. You can select to use up to six cards per “round” (when the bar on the right of the screen fills up, you can open your “Custom Screen” to choose new cards); however you are restricted in what sort of cards you can use at a time as explained below.

Cards that you pick up throughout your adventures are stored in your Card Box. Cards that you have prepared to use during battle are in a “Folder.” However, during battle you can’t pick just any card from your Folder; when a battle starts, you are given a choice of six cards picked randomly. When you choose to use one or more of the cards, in the next round the ones you used will be replaced with other random picks.

Each card can only be used once per battle, and you must use the cards in the order you selected them. You can see which card is up next and also how many you have left to use based on the icons at the bottom of the screen.

		BATTLE MOVES

Move

MegaMan is restricted to moving on the three panels on his row of the battle field. That means you can move only left and right. When enemies use attacks, the tiles that will be affected will flash briefly, so this helps you to know which way to dodge.

Fire

MegaMan’s buster charges automatically whenever you are not using it. Hold down the button to blast enemies with a rapid-fire stream of shots. When the buster is fully charged, press the button to fire off the super-shot. You lose your charge if you take a hit, use your shield, or use a Battle Card.

Screen shot from Capcom.

Shield

Your shield can be used to defend yourself. It lasts a couple of seconds, though sometimes you can cancel it early. The shield will block most shots, but note that some attacks are “piercing,” which means they will go through your shield. Also, you cannot guard against enemies that hit you with direct bodily contact. You must learn through experience which attacks to block and which to dodge.

Custom Screen

When you open your Custom Screen, you will have six cards to choose from. Normally, you can pick any two cards as long as they line up in a column. You can also select multiple copies of the same card, no matter where they are located. (Certain things that you get throughout the course of your adventure may alter these rules.) Furthermore, white Battle Cards (the ones with the gray-white border) can be paired with any other card regardless of position.

When you are editing your Folder, you select six “Favorite” cards. These cards are treated as white cards when they come up in the random draw (so don’t bother selecting white cards as favorites).

Screen shot from Capcom.

Lock-On

Press on the control pad to initiate your lock-on. (You don’t have to hold the down button. Just press it.) You can only lock-on in certain directions; arrows point in these directions to indicate this. Once an enemy is lined up in your sights, a target cursor will appear on him, and that’s when you use a Battle Card! This will cause MegaMan to warp forward and then attack.

You can use this to hit enemies that are far away using short-ranged attacks like swords. However, this works for almost any card, except those that dim the screen. Note, though, that when MegaMan jumps forward, he’s not invulnerable. You might end up warping yourself straight into an enemy attack, so use this wisely.

Screen shot from Capcom.

Counter Hits

When you hit an enemy with a Battle Card during a specific part of its attack sequence (usually, this is when the enemy is starting its own attack), you will trigger a Counter Hit. When this happens, you are given a random card from your equipped Folder, and you can now use this Bonus Card as if you’d selected it from the Custom Screen yourself.

You cannot get Bonus Cards by countering enemies using a Bonus Card.

When you are using a Star Force form, any Bonus Card you receive becomes a “Star Force Big Bang” card for as long as you hold the form.

Star Force

		TIPS AND STRATEGIES

• Your buster has statistics that differ depending on what weapon you have equipped:
  • Attack (AT): At the start of the game, every shot from your buster does 1 damage. (Charged shots are 10x the normal damage.) Each point in Attack increases this by 1. This might not sound like much, but it can really add up.
  • Rapid (RA): This affects how quickly MegaMan will fire when you hold down the buster button.
  • Charge (CH): The higher this value, the faster MegaMan can charge up his buster. This does not affect the actual power of your charged shots (the Attack rating does that).

  Screen shot from Capcom.

• Enemies and Battle Cards might be one of four elements:
  • Fire: Characters of this type are weak against Aqua. Use Fire attacks to burn grass and do double damage to anyone standing on it at the time.
  • Aqua: Characters of this type are weak against Electric. Use Aqua attacks on someone standing on ice panels to freeze them.
  • Electric: Characters of this type are weak against Wood. Use Electric attacks on enemies trapped in bubbles for double damage.
  • Wood: Characters of this type are weak against Fire. They regenerate health while standing on grass panels.
• Battle Cards come in four basic types:
  • Standard: Yellow-gold borders. These are your normal Battle Cards.
  • White: These have gray-white borders and can be picked with any other card in your Custom Screen. (Cards that you mark as your favorites become white cards.)
  • Mega: Blue borders. These are typically summon cards, but you can find other Mega-class cards as well. There are more restrictions regarding how you place them in your Folder than standard cards.
  • Giga: Red borders. These cards are generally very powerful; therefore, you can only put one of them in each Folder.
• Remember to use your Visualizer to uncover secrets.
• Be sure to view people’s Transers to get an insight on what they are thinking.
• Search everything. Sometimes you can uncover new waveholes by turning on objects in the real world, which you can then access via the Wave World.
• Revisit the Wave World frequently; green Mystery Waves will reappear there on subsequent visits, and the enemies in any given area don’t get any more difficult, so it gets easier as you go.
• Pulse into everything. Most of the minor devices (such as vending machines) that you can pulse into each have a blue Mystery Wave somewhere inside, just waiting for you to come pick it up.
• You can get knocked out of attacks, which causes you to lose the Battle Card you were trying to use. Be careful!
• Most bosses and mini-bosses (anything but a virus, essentially) will turn invulnerable briefly whenever they take a hit, just like you do. Make sure your target isn’t flashing before you try to use a Battle Card on him!
• To use enhancement cards such as Attack+10, choose the card you want to enhance first, then the enhancement card.
• When enemies place objects (such as time bombs) on the field, you can destroy them with your shots. However, any object that you place is invulnerable to your weaponry. Your shots go straight through your own objects. So fire away!
• Cards which auto-aim for the nearest enemy (such as CancrBuble) also consider inanimate objects like blocks to be enemies, which is something to watch out for.
• When you defeat a major boss, that boss will usually reappear later in the Wave World. This is so that you can fight him and try to earn his card and improve on your speed records. To find such bosses, try walking down to the very ends of dead-end paths in the Wave World.