I was pretty excited to start this game when the dice rolled it up. The trailer looked awesome and lets face facts, giant robots are always cool. Put them into a hectic battle or three and it could be absolutely amazing. But I think all the excitement was a little bit premature, as half-baked ideas included with the battle pretty much spoiled it all.
Story: "..and then the war began." Literally these are the words that will greet you as the opening video to the entire game. And they don't really get explained... ever. What you are given is there are a group of colonies fighting as resistance to a galactic empire. Were these colonies once part of the empire? Was it trying to reclaim them or are they trying to break free? Why is any of this happening? You honestly are never told. Sure there is an archive in the game where you can read about the various sides, but there is little to explain what is going on to set the stage for what you are about to experience.
Nor is that story particularly well defined either. What is here is the outline of that completely undefined struggle in the form of cutscenes between some of the missions you will take on which will vaguely advance the scenario: A scenario, I might add, that the game has given you absolutely zero reason to care about. Yes, there is some dialog between your pilot and other characters in mission and it's clear they want to make you care about character connections, but it really falls flat since you have nothing but the banter of the moment to fall on.
Long story short if you came here to experience some awesome space opera or war story, you are sadly in the wrong place. There isn't so much a story here as a rather nebulous setting.
2/10
Graphics: Unlike the story, I can say absolutely nothing against what this game puts in front of you. Simply put, this game is gorgeous, playing up the space environment to it's fullest. Asteroids, mines, and stations litter each battlefield, lit properly by local suns for an amazing looking arena. And while the fighters are fairly standard to what you might expect, giant battleships are pretty impressive in their own right. This is especially true as you see the detail put into them during dismemberment and destruction.
And then we get to the War Techs... aka the anime-style mechs. This is what you will pilot through the entire game and these simply look amazing. Fully animated, they range in armor and arsenal, showing off every minute detail of your and any other machine in the skies! It simply looks amazing.
But sadly I can hardly call it perfect. Where the world is rendered fantastically, there are critiques with the interface. I mean it is serviceable and light enough to keep out of the way of the action, but it can also be unintuitive and so out of the way you wind up forcing yourself to watch it so you can figure out what it does. The health and energy bars are prime examples of this, as you will likely forget they are even there while in battle.
And I have to take special note to the characters. The art style used for character profiles against their helmets sometimes clashed enough to make some of them pretty ugly. Still, these profiles are not on screen long enough to ruin anything so it's more of a note for how much they stick out against the amazing work from the world itself.
8/10
Sound: If I were to tell you there was no voice acting in this game, I would be lying... but not by much. There is really very little here and most of the time all you will hear is what I think is supposed to be the voice of your mech's AI relaying details about your immediate status: a handful of short statements you will likely hear a lot and fall quickly to the background.
The only other voice in the game is a narrator during the handful of cutscenes the game provides, giving you a small window into how the war is going. Again, this work really doesn't stand out against anything else you might hear in any other game you play and is pretty brief. If anything I wish this one had been extended simply because that war is so generic and with no obvious cause or start (and to be blunt, kinda weak finish) that they could have given this guy a lot more work just to put in some background to get people more invested in the plot. He is criminally under-utilized.
Soundwork is hardly worth a mention either, since it's fairly generic work. The guns sound appropriate for what they are, metal clangs, explosions boom, but nothing feels meaty or exceptional. They serve well but that's about all the sounds of battle here do.
The music, on the other hand, is going to be more impressive, at least at first. There are not many tracks here, but what is here is dominated by some heavy metal riffs that will stick with you for at least a little bit before the length of the game repeats them enough for it too to become background.
6/10
Gameplay: This is one of those games that strives to give a first impression you will enjoy and remember within seconds of starting up, and it really does succeed at that. As soon as you click "New Game" you are thrust into the suit, your camera behind it. The right-bottom quarter of the screen will show you the basic controls and you are given a single command: "go to the next location." Fly over and you are in combat against some basic space-ships, shooting down some, but also being shown with a popup how to do this game's version of a glory kill. The combined result looks glorious, feels simple to do, and makes you feel like a powerhouse: a hint of what they want you to expect later. Simply put, this is one of the best introductions I have ever seen in a video game... I just wish the magic lasted.
This basic combat is actually descent for the most part. In essence you will go into battle with three long-range options: a rapid fire weapon, a heavy weapon, and a missile launcher. The balance in their use is decided by how much of your energy reserve they will require and how their lock-on systems work. In essence your target reticle has two different sized targets: if the enemy is in the larger one, your rapid fire lock-on can zero in on them as long as you hold down the trigger... and this lock-on is aggressive. You will literally keep on this enemy so long as doing so wont require your mech to turn faster then it should be able to or they move out of your range. And while this is likely going to make PC gamers annoyed most of the time (what's the point of aiming with a mouse when the game aims for you?), it makes sense for a mech-based weapon system to behave like this where onboard computers would assist your pilot. What is going to aggravate everyone is when things get hectic and you will find yourself tracking the wrong target from time to time. It's a hassle that just frustratingly gets in your way. The heavy weapons may well behave the same with the smaller reticle, but I can not be 100% certain as I never used it much... I favored the 3rd option.... homing missiles.
These will have their targets marked by a yellow hexagon around them before you let lose with a batch of them. (That's right, you fire these in batches, not individually.) The amount of energy variations between these choices is about as you would expect and not using anything will let it recharge, creating a balance system you can feel pretty quickly.
But that energy is not just used for your ranged weapons. You will also have to spend it when engaging boost rockets and sometimes when fighting other mechs. The same buttons that let you finish off an enemy (and get health back in the process if you need it) also engages a melee fight in which you and the mech you challenge draw blades anime-style for a one-on-one duel. These too are fairly simple to control: quick slashes, heavy slashes, raising your shield, or dodging are all in your arsenal. In addition if you manage to clash blades directly you enter a challenge of strength you where you will be required to center either the mouse or one of the sticks and hit a button to overcome, stunning your opponent so you can get several free hits in.
In addition to these systems you have some serious offers of customization to the player as the game also offers several intertwining branches of upgrades. You have the obvious choice of upgrading and replacing parts to your mech as well as researching technologies to improve them all in general as well as unlocking new ones. You also have a leveling system which will improve your general stats as well, so there is always a way to improve and gain an edge on your opponents.
But this is also another crack in the game. You get cash to upgrade from completed missions and challenges. While the challenges are static offering exactly one possible amount of cash, you can collect additional resources you find while on the battle as well as for performance during the battle. But you get nothing if you fail either, and there are serious restrictions to replaying if you need to build up. That amount a challenge offers is respectable the first time you play it, but an absolute pittance if you repeat them even once, severely limiting the motive to repeat them if you need more then a few extra bucks, and missions offer you zero cash to repeat in the simulations. Rather that treats experience for leveling like challenges do cash. So while it is impossible to corner yourself, you can get effectively close.
Still if that was the game's only issue, I would be raving about it being a great game. But that is not the case. The next major issue to bring up is your allies. In addition to the combat, this game as an ally system, and if you expect them to have a brain and try to follow your lead, you are in for a bad time. You have two basic commands they will follow well enough but if you remember making fun of the braindead enemies watching someone next to them die and not move cause they are too dumb to react, you will be very familiar with the level of initiative these guys will take.
I found this issue out countering an odd issue I had fighting a specific mech I had already been getting frustrated with due to timing and weapon choices. (Doing the battles in order, I had just found the required tech to use laser weapons so I of course got one... only to have this asshole in the very next mission be immune to energy weapons as punishment for wanting to play with my new toy. Oddly, they REMAINED IMMUNE to my good old chain guns I restarted the mission with.) Apparently my ally mech was just flying around doing nothing because when I told him to target that mech it died in seconds.
But the real game-ender issue here was something I have to blame on game design instead of issues or bugs with the game itself. Sometimes, variety is the spice of life, but other times, it kills a product. This is a case of the latter. About 1/3rd through the game, the developers decided what they had for combat wasn't enough and started introducing stealth missions.... in a giant mech. It's every bit as awful as it sounds. When you start this mission you are given an eye icon which is used to measure how detected you are, but do not expect to see what sees you right away. They are very small and hard to see and you will lose repeatedly learning to identify them.. and god forbid you fire a weapon in site of one... instant game over. Add to this guidance portions where leaving a "safety sphere" or "attacking" are an instant game over (despite mines you may not see as the ship you are staying near blocks your view of them, but they can still detect you through said ship) and you have a terrible experience because the devs decided they needed more variety in their game rather then polishing their combat system that much more to let it remain fun that much longer.... one that will stop most players dead in their tracks since the game gives you small batches of missions: all of which must be finished before you can proceed, souring the game with a completely unexpected game style.
4/10
Bugs: Despite everything else wrong with the game, it actually ran pretty smoothly. The only possible bug (and I'm not 100% sure it was one) is the mech who was supposed to be immune to energy weapons was basically immune to weapons in total I talked about in the gameplay. It may have been deeper then that, but I just do not know.
Score: I went in wanting to love this game. After all, giant robots are awesome and a fast-paced action game of mechs blasting everything flying around in hectic combat sounds great! But in practice the system behind it is relatively simple relying on how you customize your mech to keep combat fresh, even as it can and will punish you for playing with what you just earned, getting in it's own way. Instead the devs chose to change up the style in the name of variety... including stealth missions requiring movement that just isn't supported well by the engine and rules the missions themselves break shortly after establishing them. They frankly should have taken the effort to it took to make more mechanics and polished what they already had working fairly well. Instead of having fun idea ruined by badly made sections, we could have had a well polished indie classic on our hands.
5/10
System Requirements:
- 3 Ghz Dual core processor
- 6 GB RAM
- NVidia Geforce GTX 650
- 4 GB hard drive space
- Windows 7/8/10 (must be 64-bit)
System Specs:
- Ryzen 7 (2700) 3.2 Ghz
- 16 GB RAM
- Nvidia Geforce 1660 (6GB VRAM)
- Windows 10 (64 Bit)
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