where I stopped this game: on the Kill Struggle Leader mission (~25 missions in I think), there's a part a little over halfway through where you will almost certainly fall down a very large pit and are forced to climb up by doing precision platforming, on platforms you cannot see without pausing and looking at a very finicky map based on line of sight. I don't believe this mission is optional so I just gave up; this mission was probably the most cruel I played in the game by far. perhaps the platforms are visible when not played on a small-ish CRT running popstarter on a ps2 but it still was completely ridiculous
+rather deep mech design tools with many configurations possible. shockingly enough each part you buy can be resold for the same price, a very user-friendly move that makes experimentation very feasible
+failing a mission will deduct money from your account but in many cases will not significantly impede you (except on that Kill Struggle Leader mission... I now wonder if I had died rather than aborting the mission whether it would allow me to pass). you can even go into debt a certain amount without any penalty, and if you get to -$50k you'll restart the game but with stat perks, which can be stacked if multiple failures occur
+yea it's tank controls but thanks to the strafe options it actually feels pretty good. bunny hopping around or even just strafing with the four-legged mech variation will almost always do the trick for you
+the outside scenes are actually rendered rather convincingly for a '97 game, with some cool locales and only infrequent environment reuse
+mission objectives range wildly, and often unexpected twists can occur, forcing you to prepare your loadout for any outcome
+I first experienced this in spiritual successor daemon x machina: the emails you get both from your handler and the corporatiosn you work for. I find these so novel lol
-the interior missions suck most of the time, with long missions, copy-pasted layouts, and usually only a single enemy type throughout an entire level. these make up about half of the missions (out of what I played) and are never fun
-combat really struggles to get more interesting than "strafe and shoot", with maybe some hand-to-hand combat if you can get close without taking missiles to the face
-the menus for the shops and such are extremely beginner-unfriendly, and I had to use a guide for much of it until I learned the ropes. so many options, and it's so overwhelming when you first look at it
-even though I'm glad that the game doesn't punish you too harshly for failing a mission and moving on, I still wish there as a "mission retry" option. the alternative is just reloading a save, which takes a significant amount of time and is rather annoying
-the camera controls really would've benefitted from a second joystick, rather than using the triggers to move it up and down
-the lock-on feature seems to not really work in many cases? at least while strafing. if I lock-on to an enemy with heat-seeking missiles I would expect the missiles to hit the target and not veer off wildly
I admire this game in some respects for its depth of play and interesting difficulty mechanics, but it's way too ambitious for a game on the psx. I may try later entries down the road to see if they feel better and have more interesting level design. this game certainly has cult appeal and I do think they actually accomplished much of what they set out to do, but overall I didn't feel like most of it was very fun at all beyond the feeling of progressing in a difficult game.
+rather deep mech design tools with many configurations possible. shockingly enough each part you buy can be resold for the same price, a very user-friendly move that makes experimentation very feasible
+failing a mission will deduct money from your account but in many cases will not significantly impede you (except on that Kill Struggle Leader mission... I now wonder if I had died rather than aborting the mission whether it would allow me to pass). you can even go into debt a certain amount without any penalty, and if you get to -$50k you'll restart the game but with stat perks, which can be stacked if multiple failures occur
+yea it's tank controls but thanks to the strafe options it actually feels pretty good. bunny hopping around or even just strafing with the four-legged mech variation will almost always do the trick for you
+the outside scenes are actually rendered rather convincingly for a '97 game, with some cool locales and only infrequent environment reuse
+mission objectives range wildly, and often unexpected twists can occur, forcing you to prepare your loadout for any outcome
+I first experienced this in spiritual successor daemon x machina: the emails you get both from your handler and the corporatiosn you work for. I find these so novel lol
-the interior missions suck most of the time, with long missions, copy-pasted layouts, and usually only a single enemy type throughout an entire level. these make up about half of the missions (out of what I played) and are never fun
-combat really struggles to get more interesting than "strafe and shoot", with maybe some hand-to-hand combat if you can get close without taking missiles to the face
-the menus for the shops and such are extremely beginner-unfriendly, and I had to use a guide for much of it until I learned the ropes. so many options, and it's so overwhelming when you first look at it
-even though I'm glad that the game doesn't punish you too harshly for failing a mission and moving on, I still wish there as a "mission retry" option. the alternative is just reloading a save, which takes a significant amount of time and is rather annoying
-the camera controls really would've benefitted from a second joystick, rather than using the triggers to move it up and down
-the lock-on feature seems to not really work in many cases? at least while strafing. if I lock-on to an enemy with heat-seeking missiles I would expect the missiles to hit the target and not veer off wildly
I admire this game in some respects for its depth of play and interesting difficulty mechanics, but it's way too ambitious for a game on the psx. I may try later entries down the road to see if they feel better and have more interesting level design. this game certainly has cult appeal and I do think they actually accomplished much of what they set out to do, but overall I didn't feel like most of it was very fun at all beyond the feeling of progressing in a difficult game.