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Exo-Force was pretty good. I got one of the books, written by GregF, and also one of the sets. The story was good, but the set I got wasn't the best IMO. It's look was really good ad I love the minifigure, but the set kept falling apart and didn't move that well. Maybe I built it wrong, I don't know, but I ended up taking it apart and using its pieces for other things.It's really a shame that LEGO ended Hero Factory without giving it a conclusion, which shows LEGO is willing to drop a line without a care for its story, which is really worrying...

Well, it shows LEGO was willing to do that back in 2008. And in the cases of some not-heavily-story-driven themes, I'm sure they would also do that. But BIONICLE's end later on at least showed an effort to wrap up the story and sets in a way that does them both justice, even if that effort was limited by the budget for the theme's final year.I never got any of the Exo-Force books-- how are those compared to the BIONICLE books? I really enjoy Greg Farshtey's Ninjago books so that's one reason I'm curious. Do the Exo-Force books seem geared towards younger readers at all?The sets in the first year of Exo-Force had serious stability issues, but TLG improved on this by 2008. The last 2008 set I built was the Hybrid Rescue Tank, which I bought on a damaged-box clearance at a LEGO store. It's a really nice design, and I was pleased to learn that it was designed by Mark Stafford, one of my favorite System set designers and MOCists (who also designed several sets for the Power Miners, Space Police, Atlantis, and Ninjago sets).
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Exo-Force was pretty good. I got one of the books, written by GregF, and also one of the sets. The story was good, but the set I got wasn't the best IMO. It's look was really good ad I love the minifigure, but the set kept falling apart and didn't move that well. Maybe I built it wrong, I don't know, but I ended up taking it apart and using its pieces for other things.It's really a shame that LEGO ended Hero Factory without giving it a conclusion, which shows LEGO is willing to drop a line without a care for its story, which is really worrying...

Well, it shows LEGO was willing to do that back in 2008. And in the cases of some not-heavily-story-driven themes, I'm sure they would also do that. But BIONICLE's end later on at least showed an effort to wrap up the story and sets in a way that does them both justice, even if that effort was limited by the budget for the theme's final year.I never got any of the Exo-Force books-- how are those compared to the BIONICLE books? I really enjoy Greg Farshtey's Ninjago books so that's one reason I'm curious. Do the Exo-Force books seem geared towards younger readers at all?The sets in the first year of Exo-Force had serious stability issues, but TLG improved on this by 2008. The last 2008 set I built was the Hybrid Rescue Tank, which I bought on a damaged-box clearance at a LEGO store. It's a really nice design, and I was pleased to learn that it was designed by Mark Stafford, one of my favorite System set designers and MOCists (who also designed several sets for the Power Miners, Space Police, Atlantis, and Ninjago sets).
I guess you have a point.As for the book, it's called "Escape from Sentai Mountain". I don't where it is right now, so I'll review it out of memory:The book itself is quite short and is around the size of a BIONICLE guidebook. It has a lot of color pictures of scenes from the story, so that shortened it even more (I have to say, though, the art was well done and made the book more enjoyable. The plot is basic, involving the blue-haired Exo-Force member rescuing the red-haired member's family from the other side of the mountain.The action sequences in the book were alright. Good use was made of each machine's ability, which pleased me, since I like creativity when it comes to fighting. The characterization of the protagonist is pretty good, he was a well-rounded character given how short the book was (It probably helps that GregF mainly focused on him throughout the whole thing). As for whether or not the story is geared towards a younger audience.. I'm not sure what to say. The lines weren't really corny or childish or anything like that, but at the same time the story wasn't really dark at all and it was pretty simple; no one gets hurt, aside from a few robots, and everything turns out fine in the end, and the pictures suggest its mainly for younger children. The writing was fine, not one of Greg Farshtey's best works but still good.I've read your review on the Ninjago books and they look quite good. Now I regret not buying one when I came across a few of them a little while ago. Edited by toa kopaka4372

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Yes it's definitely Ryo lol.NNH

I did some checking, because I was sure it was Ryu...And my childhood has just been crushed. I thought for sure it was Ryu! Maybe it's just me being old.I liked Hikaru better anyway.
I saw that post and was like" Ryu? Never heard 'o him XD" realized just now who you were referring to. :sigh:

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Ha-Ya-To was probably just someone in LEGO's translation department deciding to be funny. I refer to him, therefore, as Hayato. Always have, always will. =PUnless... Now that you mention it, I wonder if it's the first two characters of each of his names...? Still could be Hayato for his first name, though. xD

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I assume Ree-oh. I haven't seen any of the old promotional videos for a long time but I know they had all the names in so if it was different I think I would remember.EDIT: Yes, the unbelievably so-bad-it's-bad promotional video from 6 years ago (!) says Ree-oh. Ryo himself has only one line of course, the immortal words: "Hmm, the valves need oil?" I don't know why he says it as if it's a question, but he does.I'm guessing we still aren't allowed to link to YT so I can't share the video.NNH

Edited by NNH
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Wow; 6 years ago... It makes sense, but it's interesting to realize that so much time indeed has passed.And yes, it's Ree-oh. I beleive there was a movie on the Exo-Force site about that too, but who knows if that's still up either.

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And Exo Farce is like 5 and a hald years old now too... that's strange to me as I was writing it at secondary school and now I'm at university. :| Feels more recent...Time for a commemorative special "LIMITED GOLD EDITION!!!" EF set to be released I think. NNH

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Maybe they'll release a 'special edition re-release' of the Golden Guardian then. =P Or the Aero Booster. And I'd get the Aero Booster if they released it, probably. xDBut yeah, it is definitely shocking when you consider things about time. Time definitely goes by quickly.

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well, there is something funny i noticed in exo-forceso, there's this character in beyblade: metal fusion who is named hikaru, and the exo-force minifig is too. so, they both have blue hair, and combining a few minifigs, i can make a hikaru(beyblade) minifig, with correct hair from hikaru(exo-force!)pretty cool, huh?i'm glad that the series ended, in a way. the battle mechs were too expensive, draining my pokeball(where i keep my money since i don't have a wallet LOL)but i'm sad that it ended, because ANIME HAIR

so...this is...my sig...

i'll put some stuff here soon...

don't really know why i'm typing this...

i'm so pathetic...

it's bulk 3.0 time!

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Ehthak/HFChibis/bulk3.0.swf

props to Xidash for the sig, got it from the epig sigpet shop!

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Shame that in the three years, they only had two hair molds in five colours. It would have been good to have more new characters with different hair etc. considering Hitomi was the only character in the whole theme that wasn't there at the beginning and she didn't even get a new hair piece. Some different robots would have been nice too. Unusual for a LEGO theme really, to go for so long with such a small group of characters... NNH

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Shame that in the three years, they only had two hair molds in five colours. It would have been good to have more new characters with different hair etc. considering Hitomi was the only character in the whole theme that wasn't there at the beginning and she didn't even get a new hair piece. Some different robots would have been nice too. Unusual for a LEGO theme really, to go for so long with such a small group of characters...NNH

Good point about the low number of characters, but of course it has to be considered that Exo-Force was pretty story-driven. I think it helps story-driven themes to stick with relateable characters, hence why I dislike when some people suggest Hero Factory should completely stop releasing characters who have appeared so far and introduce a brand-new team. The abandoning of older characters in favor of new characters is one reason Knights' Kingdom II's last year was so controversial.Speaking of Knights' Kingdom II, did anyone ever notice that the hair colors of the Exo-Force main cast almost exactly matched the armor colors of that theme's main cast? The only difference is that Takeshi had Bright Green hair (37 Bright Green) rather than regular green hair (28 Dark Green).
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Shame that in the three years, they only had two hair molds in five colours. It would have been good to have more new characters with different hair etc. considering Hitomi was the only character in the whole theme that wasn't there at the beginning and she didn't even get a new hair piece. Some different robots would have been nice too. Unusual for a LEGO theme really, to go for so long with such a small group of characters...NNH

Really, the storyline was so good, i didn't need new characters, IMO.

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Shame that in the three years, they only had two hair molds in five colours. It would have been good to have more new characters with different hair etc. considering Hitomi was the only character in the whole theme that wasn't there at the beginning and she didn't even get a new hair piece. Some different robots would have been nice too. Unusual for a LEGO theme really, to go for so long with such a small group of characters...NNH

Good point about the low number of characters, but of course it has to be considered that Exo-Force was pretty story-driven. I think it helps story-driven themes to stick with relateable characters, hence why I dislike when some people suggest Hero Factory should completely stop releasing characters who have appeared so far and introduce a brand-new team. The abandoning of older characters in favor of new characters is one reason Knights' Kingdom II's last year was so controversial.Speaking of Knights' Kingdom II, did anyone ever notice that the hair colors of the Exo-Force main cast almost exactly matched the armor colors of that theme's main cast? The only difference is that Takeshi had Bright Green hair (37 Bright Green) rather than regular green hair (28 Dark Green).
Yeah... I think I did....Except there was no purple haired...owait.....There was no....Never mind. WAIT!EXO-FORCE DIDN'T HAVE A GUY WITH A CROWN FOR HAIR! HAHA! (:P)
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Yeah I noticed the KK colours matched. I guess it's all to do with the "you can't have yellow LEGO people because then it's like they have no clothes" thing. Purple is the only alternative really. :PI didn't really notice the lack of new characters at the time because it was certainly fine without, but for the sake of minifigures it would have been nice. Eventually each member had 4 or 5 battle machines each which was a bit silly with nobody to help them out.NNH

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Unless the old BMs were given to other unnamed pilots, like how some of the people used to use the older BMs at times. =P

I always got the impression the original ones were somewhat mass-produced and driven by groups. Those epic shots of multiple GT's facing off the robots in '06 come to mind.

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Yes, that too. =P That was actually one of the scenes that I was thinking of. And of course the mass amount of BM switching for the pilots in 07; where every Pilot had piloted everyone else's BMs at one point it seemed. xD(Case in point: multiple uses of the Golden Guardian while Hayato while flying around in the Aero Booster; Hitomi using the Blazing Falcon when Ryo wasn't...)

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I always thought Blazing Falcon was meant for Hitomi anyway but they wanted her minifigure to be exclusive to the Golden Tower so they just put Ryo in the set.I was more talking about the minifigures in terms of the extra battle machines too rather than the characters, because obviously there were meant to be a lot of extra generic pilots... which sort of contradicts a lot of the story seeing as most of the time it's as if there's only 6 humans alive.If Exo Force had carried on I would have really liked it if they did more sets with things other than battle machines in (buildings etc.) and included civilians and more generic characters to give it a bit of depth and scope for people to be inventive with their own characters. A set of the robot base would have been amazing... Meca One's throne, some human prisoners, maybe a special mold for that giant black robot head that's meant to be on top...NNH

Edited by NNH
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I agree there.And actually, there's 7 humans alive... =PHikaru, Takeshi, Ryo, Hayato, Hitomi, Keiken, and... whats-his-name-the-generic-pilot. =PBut yeah, more than seven would be nice. Even if they hinted at the fact that there were more... They just got captured by the Shadow Crawler/Mobile Devastator. =PBut a Robot base would have been pretty nice.Me, I just created my own minifigs anyway. :rolleyes:

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I reluctantly take Mobile Devastator as the best we're going to get for a Robot Base. Even though it isn't. It's kind of a mobile hub for the robots, if you want to be imaginative though.But an actual base would have been great. And they could have thrown so many robot minifigs at it to make it even more worthwhile.

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I still think one day with a revamped style for the minifigures and sets, like with the level of detail in Ninjago, Exo Force could have a great comeback. I really think it's the only theme in years that had that kind of feel to it similar to Bionicle that got people properly hooked.PLEAZ GIV US the LIMITED GOLD EDITIONZ LEGOOOO.NNH

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Hikaru, Takeshi, Ryo, Hayato, Hitomi, Keiken, and... whats-his-name-the-generic-pilot. =P

Genki? :DAnd, again, memory's rusty, haven't read the comics in years, but weren't there random people in the background of various scenes? Yeah, in the sets we had seven humans living on the mountain, but, well, hey. Maybe some of them were clones? Or twin brothers? Ya never know with these anime-esque stuff. =P

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I think Keiken had a few slaves who just passed orders around. There were probably more in the books as well (Takeshi's family I know of) but I never read them. They had a lot of freedom though and not much link to the sets and the main story.NNH

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Whatever happened with the whole Takeshi's family sub-plot? I never got the books, so don't really know. I was kind of hoping they'd just leave it as it makes his character a lot deeper and more vengeful, given the possibility they're dead. Discovering them alive means he doesn't have as strong a motive to fight so fiercely. Of course, it depends on how they were handled....Wait, NNH, where's Ryo in your banner?!

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