28.9 hours played
Written 15 days ago
I really want to like this game, but after 2 years of "release" and several more of early access and development, the game feels like it's unfinished. The concept is amazing, a giant mech tactics game where you can predict several seconds into the future and use that to plan your combats. But everything surrounding that core premise is half baked or poorly executed.
Contextually, there's nothing to sink your teeth into. The game has no story to speak of beyond a single opening cutscene. You know the red guys are bad, have a bigger army than you and invaded your country. As of writing, your pilots are faceless nobodies with no spoken lines and mechanically, they don't even matter. They're merely another resource to slot into your mechs in order to make them function. They have no specific personality quirks, do not level up or gain experience in any way and don't seem to serve any mechanical purpose. While the devs claim to have an update in the works to fix this; there is no solid release date for this update and are two years behind schedule anyway. This is something that should have launched with the game, no as a major update for their "version 1.4"
Mechanically, the game is horrifically balanced. One of the major boons for the game, is there's a huge variety of weapon types to choose from. Which themselves have 3 or 4 specific subtypes at least. The problem arises in that few weapons are even worth using. DPS or high projectile count weapons fall hugely short of burst damage weapons, as they generally require more commitment for less reward; giving the opponent more time to reposition out of your line of fire, attack back or even knock you over if they're heavier than you are. This is compounded with the gear leveling system implemented in the game, since being a lower level than your enemy (who scale directly with your best equipment and with game progress) results in you dealing less damage to them and you taking more damage from them. So much of the game relies on RNG meta progress of rolling high level, high rarity weapons of an actually useful weapon category and not the piles of useless shotguns the game loves to give you.
Heavy mecha are severely disadvantaged against lighter mecha, as the difference in HP rarely makes a difference in their survivability when they sacrifice so much mobility in exchange. Making it difficult for them to avoid damage; this is especially true as the game is a modern tactics game, so you're only able to take 4 mechs with you in vanilla, thus your characters are outnumbered 5:1 in many missions. As an extra cherry on top, they have worse heat mitigation on average which limits their ability to output damage as well as weight hampering their mobility.
The base "upgrades" are generally terrible. Most of them lead to dead end, useless things or impose an additional penalty that offsets the benefits you would have gotten. Why move 15% faster on the map if the enemies can now detect and see us 15% further away? Why would I want to carry 8 mech frames when I can only launch 4 mechs and I'm paying for that by drastically reducing my movement speed and allowing enemies to see me from further away?
All in all, the game had a lot of potential. But it's been squandered by poor design decisions and a lack of progress in recent years. There's too many things that make you scratch your head, and too many pitfalls to lead to an enjoyable experience in the long run. The game's general combat loop is exciting at first. But quickly becomes an exercise in exhausting micromanagement.
