Metal Wolf Chaos is incredible and terrible in equal measure across every element. The story concept is completely insane and hilarious, but the game feels like it's missing 80% of the cutscenes that explain how anything gets from one point to another. There's a point where you talk to a character, it fades to black, and in the next cutscene they've been kidnapped and ask if you can ever forgive them for betraying you. There is zero explanation for this series of events and it is never addressed afterwards. The voice acting is "terrible" in the best way, but the writing itself is clunky with abysmal broken English and lines of dialogue that get cut off mid-sentence. The action is completely over the top and it feels great to save America by blowing most of it up, but weapons do a seemingly random amount of damage on every shot, anything that's not a rocket launcher is effectively useless, and the bosses have unbelievably cheap attacks that tear through your health faster than an executive order. A total lack of checkpoints guarantees you'll be slogging through entire levels, bracing for the return of a boss' third-phase invisible attack.

To the outside observer, Metal Wolf Chaos is loud, obnoxious, deliriously over-the-top, with explosions and patriotism as far as the eye can see. To the player, it's a series of half-baked systems designed to undermine the entire experience and, in some ways, actively work against its enjoyment.

To put it simply: it's the perfect American game.

Beaten in spirit, not technically (put a pin in that).

As a remaster, barebones. As an original Xbox mecha game with proto-Armored Core 4 controls? Pretty damn fun.

It has some poorly explained mechanics (how investment works isn't really explained in an understandable way) but the core gameplay of fuckin up shit is just enjoyable on such a primal level.

It has some wild difficulty spikes (battleship level and Liberty Island level say hello) but once you have two of the top-tier energy chainguns you can just farm Arizona for an hour and never need to worry about money again.

The writing and voice acting are top tier kitsch, with everyone clearly enjoying their ridiculous lines. Especially the actor for Richard Hawk who is loving every second of playing an over-the-top villain.

The musical score is great, with the main two contributors being FROM's own Kota Hoshino supplying some nice rock jams and contractor Shohei Tsuchiya doing most of the soundtrack. Tsuchiya in particular does all or the majority of the unlockable tracks which are almost all bangers. "Boku no Moku" especially.

Back to the pin. I say beaten in spirit because I basically got to the end. However both times I was either close to finishing Liberty Island, something bad happened. First my computer's hard drive died completely. Then the PS4 kept crashing on victory. My copy is clearly cursed, and I dare not tempt fate.

In closing, I will leave you with one of the strongest quotes I've seen in a piece of fiction recently, from the ending to the Chicago level of this very game:

"I looked up, and saw God. And you know what?

"God is made of steel."

Seriously fuck this game man

This game is funny right, funny xbox game with silly voice acting and voice acting and yeah japan made american game haha. I love all that that's all great.

The actual gameplay fucking sucks though. The entire game consist of your big dumb mech running around and slowly destroying identical towers over and over. That's almost the entire game. It's so fucking boring and tedious.

There are some little variations in gameplay but I'm serious that's almost the entire game.

Rescuing all the hostages and collecting all the cells is super tedious and annoying, so I mostly just collected whatever I saw and that was it.

The level variety is decent. I will say that.

The guns are so unbalanced. It makes no sense why some guns are so powerful while others aren't. Also you have to know before you unlock and buy the guns what is good or else you're actually fucked over. It's such a fucking annoying system and I legitimately just couldn't beat the final boss because of this.

The hit registration is terrible. Things will just constantly not take damage despite you clearly hitting them. meanwhile enemies will also constantly shoot you through walls.

Missions can be extremely long, like taking more than 20 minutes long, yet there are zero checkpoints to be found. If you die, you go all the way back to the start of the mission. It's so painful cause you have to slog through all the mind-numbing process of shooting down buildings over and over.

This is especially annoying in the final boss, where if you fail, you have to go through the timed slog of going up an elevator very slowly then shooting a bunch of objects to open a door. You must do this every single time you fail the boss fight, it takes up so much time.

The boss fight itself is so horrendous. It isn't fun whatsoever. It's a giant tank that just spams missiles at you infinitely. Apparently I chose the wrong upgrades because everywhere I looked people said to use guns I didn't have. I refuse to go back and play the other levels to get more currency to unlock those weapons so I'm basically soft-locked.

Also on the boss fight, you can't damage it with energy weapons, so if you've been using rail guns all game, too bad dude the game fucked you.

I dock this game down a full star cause of that fucking boss fight at the end, it's such bullshit. There is literally no way to avoid some of the missles and attacks the boss throws at you, the boss also dishes out attacks that can one shot kill you, thus now you must spend another 10-15 minutes to get back to the point you were at where you died. It's infuriating and time-wasting.

This game fucking sucks, it's a funny little joke with silly stuff going on in the story, but the actual gameplay is so trash. Don't play it.

Copied from my Steam review:
Fantastic game. Super fun, super funny, with plenty of unlockables, secrets, and replay value. As much as the "AMERICA **** YEAH" type of humor doesn't necessarily land the same these days, it absolutely works here. Everything is completely absurd, and President Michael Wilson and his secretary, Jody Crawford, are a constant delight. Even the nasty conservative coup-leading villain is hilarious with how oddly delivered all the dialogue is.

If you like robots even a little bit you gotta try this. It's the best game FROMSOFT ever made.

---

I would like to add on to this, and mention that the game does have some pretty big flaws. It can get a bit too janky and frustrating at a few points, and unless you start a brand new file there's no way to revisit some of the between-level story segments, which make up a LOT of the plot.

This game brought a constant smile to my face. The gameplay is simple and satisfying and the music is dumb and catchy. But what will really make this game stick in my head forever is the dumbass story and voice acting. It's so nonsensical and absurd that it constantly got a laugh out of me. ESPECIALLY Jody and Richard. Richard is just so fun to watch, I don't think I've seen a character as cartoonishly evil as him in a long time. He's so fun. Uhh I guess it can get kind of annoying and repetitive sometimes but who cares, game's cool

This was a very fun game about blowing things up with a giant robot. The story is hilarious and over the top, the explosions are satisfying, the soundtrack is incredible and unique with its funkiness, the graphics look great for a game made in 2004, and the missions are really fun. However, this game also has some serious issues. The difficulty curve is all over the place. The game is either way too difficult, or stuck on easy mode once you get the higher tiers of machine guns and bazookas. If you grind the early missions a little bit, you'll unlock the best guns in the game by upgrading your research all the way to the top for machine guns and bazookas. This is an automatic way to win the game, and completely neuters the experience. That being said, the game is far too unforgiving without these weapons because it kicks you to the beginning of the level if you fail. There's really no "happy medium" when it comes to the difficulty, so it ends up being as satisfying as a wet fart. This is not the "tough but fair" FromSoft challenge that you'll get with their other games. The final boss was also complete garbage. He's far too difficult to fight fairly, but taking pot shots at him from behind a piece of level geometry makes the boss far too easy. Thus, emblematic of my entire experience with the game. It still gets 3.5 stars because it's still a ton of fun, and the cheesy story and voice acting made this fever dream of a game live in my head rent free. Plus, the game is set around the current year and our next president will be our 47th, so I'm looking forward to president Michael Wilson, 2024!

it's so unbelievably funny that the game fromsoftware would make for the american xbox to be published by the american megacorporation microsoft was a power fantasy filled with unfeasible amounts of american stereotyping. the excessive craving for hollywood heroism, the cultic obsession with freedom, and the unapologetic use of violence to get what one wants, alongside some other idiosyncracies like the freedom of the press and glorification of the military, metal wolf chaos is like a game trying to appeal to americans from an outsider perspective. and as an american it works because it makes for such a ridiculously funny game. pair that with the terrible voice acting and batshit insane plot, the hyper-american reality of this game's world becomes beyond entertaining. blowing shit up because "im the president of the great united states of america," stomping on tiny army men and rescuing hostages because you "believe in your own justice," saving the country from richard hawk's tyranny because i want him to "suck on my missile punch." the absurdity of its combat scenarios and the stupidity of its dialogue are so good, im probably gonna be quoting this game for a while now and my friends are gonna think my mind's deteriorated more than it has. and that soundtrack? jesus christ. kota hoshino, but also shohei tsuchiya, are fucking insane. the music is so good, ranging from hip-hop anthems to sporadic jazz to inspiring rock music, the ost takes a trip through the musical history of america while providing banger after banger. desperately need to play evergrace more than ever now to hear that soundtrack.

metal wolf chaos is basically as what i see most people describe it as, a worse armored core game. but in the writing and jank of its combat, it's wholly a new experience. a road trip through american iconography. a figurative slice of americana that comes close to being as sweet as apple pie. a must play for anybody checking out fromsoft's older ludography, or anybody wanting to play a game that's "so bad that it's good."

god is made of steel, and his name is michael wilson.