megaman star force 2 was a pretty alright game that had some significant improvements on the core gameplay of the first, but with some significant downsides to go with it.

firstly, is the story. the story feels way less connected than the first one, at least in terms of theming and the boss characters themselves. the plot feels less like the natural progression of things and more like "hey we have like 5 different concepts for bosses but idk how to string em together so things are sorta just going to happen." the game alternates between being quite emotionally intelligent and meaningful, and then having the whole joke of an area be "haha! our friend sure eats a lot! look how much he just looves this meat!"
there are some standout enjoyable side jokes though, such as a table that urges you to put things on it to the discomfort of the main character.

the gameplay is good, with some cool new mechanics, especially regarding how you move around the world. the environments are more interesting because you can now walk around on the ground even when in wave form, so you aren't only walking around on meaningless orange platforms above the interesting scenery. the new enemies and battle cards are cool, and i like the boss fights themselves. bonus points to the final boss for being very cool and engaging.

i hate random enemy encounters, and in the most populous area in the game, there is a random enemy encounter literally every 3-4 seconds of walking. it's absurd

also like holy shit the economy in this game is just kinda literally some black mirror shit. "link power," which basically just correlates to the number of friends you have, earns people in world free rewards and essentially better treatment from everyone, while people with lower link power aren't treated as well. for a game series that frequently has the theme of "friendship is stronger than anything!!!" this is very funny to me.

geo stelar is a tool of capitalism.