I liked these games. I never played 5 or 6, though I wouldn't mind giving them a spin.
In particular, the action-RPG battle system was really well designed. The story was passable, which is all you really need.
A while back, I got my hands on the first Star Force game for five bucks. Holy shit, I couldn't believe how awful it was. The battle system was an actual downgrade from the GBA titles. The level design was lousy. Visually the series was unchanged from the GBA titles, and the writing was actually worse as well.
The Battle Network games already seemed to be very small projects, improving only incrementally over previous installments. The series was handled lazily by Capcom. Yet somehow, they outdid themselves with Star Force, apparently putting less than no effort into the spinoff/sequel. I understand that sales were probably declining, but Capcom had no one to blame but themselves for that. If they wanted stronger sales, they should have made better games.
I really want to see what this series could have become. Battle Network's mechanics should have been expanded with the switch to the DS, but instead its depth was diminished to nothing. Such a shame.
