If there is any gaming IP living heavily on nostalgia, it is Mega Man. To date, most of the main series, side series, and spin offs have found their way onto modern consoles through various legacy collections. Do not get me wrong, as a huge fan of spin offs like Mega Man Battle Network, I think that is great. What I did not expect, though, was for the Nintendo DS-exclusive Mega Man Star Force games to receive the same treatment.

That is mostly because every single person I have ever talked to about these games seems to dislike them, which is perfectly fine by me, because it meant I was able to grab most of the original releases for cheap long before a legacy collection was ever even discussed.

To be fair, Mega Man looks more badass in these games than any other.

Mega Man Star Force takes everything learned from the Battle Network series and quite literally turns it on its side. Instead of the traditional side-on battle view, the Star Force games shift the perspective into something that almost resembles a third-person shooter. You are still battling on a grid-based board, but rather than having a full 3×3 space to move around in, your movement is restricted to a 1×3 strip, meaning your only options are moving left or right. It is an interesting shake-up, but the perspective shift can also make dodging attacks feel a little awkward at times, which becomes far less enjoyable during the faster-paced boss battles.

1HP and a dream!

The Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection includes a handful of new quality-of-life features, as you would probably expect. One of the most important, in my opinion, is the addition of auto-save. These games can be brutally difficult at times, and few things make a game feel more off-putting than losing to a boss only to realise you have not saved in the last 30 minutes. Enabling auto-save will save you a great deal of both heartbreak and headache.

You can also adjust how frequently random encounters occur. Since this is not a traditional RPG where grinding for levels is the entire point, lowering the encounter rate really only affects how much money you are likely to earn, which, honestly, is not the worst trade-off in the world.

It’s not very big.

Other additions in the collection include a music player and gallery, letting you listen to tracks from all seven games while browsing character and location artwork from across the series. The final major addition is cross-platform online play, which allows you to jump into 1v1 multiplayer battles against players on any platform the collection is available on.

It is a great way to experiment with different attack combinations and put together some genuinely brutal chip combos. I found it especially useful for testing ideas before taking on some of the nastier post-game boss encounters, such as DreadJokerR.

The character art is just so cute!

This might be one of, if not the final Mega Man Legacy Collection we ever see, but I think it is an important one. This is where the Battle Network formula ultimately ended up, and where that particular branch of the series came to a close. The Star Force games have always received what I would argue is a somewhat unfair amount of hate, much of it stemming from the shift in perspective.

Hopefully, with the passage of time, the Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection gives people a new perspective of their own. And who knows, maybe this is the fresh reset the series needed to finally justify some new games. Because after replaying these myself, I was quickly reminded of just how much fun they can be once you adjust to what they are doing.

Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection is available now on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One.

Reviewed on PC.

A copy of Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection was provided by the publisher.