Everyone knows gen 5 (or at least this game, i'm not quite sure about Verdict Day) is mostly a multiplayer experience, and it shows. the single player campaign is not only boring, but even the customization that's a literal staple of the series is almost non existent if you're not willing to grind boring side missions, because shop components get unlocked in the shop as your team level progress, and the only way to do that is to play missions, whether it's the 9 story missions (yep, not a lot of them) or order missions which are just "kill those enemy units/AC"
Thankfully it doesn't really matter, as the game is piss easy. Enemies usually do chip damage to you, and as long as you get one (good) weapon of each type (there's of them and you got 5 weapons on you), you're kinda good to go. Sometimes harder enemies do appear, but the missions have multiple checkpoints (thankfully, as they're pretty long), and even garages allowing you to get back to full HP/ammo and change parts if needed, so unless you really did not go out with a good enough build it's just a matter of retrying.
The base gameplay is interesting on paper, but never really clicks here. You're way slower than in previous games (especially coming from gen 4), there's no more flying around, movement is closer to gen 1 and 2 but even more slow and grounded. However, you can use bursts of energy to dodge in each direction, and also wall jump, and i think it's sick on paper, you can really gain some cool speed and height this way, the maps are even built around that since they're mostly city streets. sadly few are the moments where the game throws anything at you that showcases the potential of the system.
Scan mode is terrible tho. Having a mode where you can't shoot but can analyze enemies to find their weakness (and also get your energy back faster) is neat on concept, but, and that's one of the biggest issue with this game, that mode is damn near unreadable. Your screen gets a blue filter that makes everything look terrible, the scan UI is unreadable in the middle of action, and everything in this game is like that. The HUD is terrible, and every time you get hit your screen "glitches", the game already has a pretty terrible esthetic (it's the classic 7th gen gray look) but the on hit effect makes it worse
The music is absolutely phenomenal tho, everything else is kinda just ass
Thankfully it doesn't really matter, as the game is piss easy. Enemies usually do chip damage to you, and as long as you get one (good) weapon of each type (there's of them and you got 5 weapons on you), you're kinda good to go. Sometimes harder enemies do appear, but the missions have multiple checkpoints (thankfully, as they're pretty long), and even garages allowing you to get back to full HP/ammo and change parts if needed, so unless you really did not go out with a good enough build it's just a matter of retrying.
The base gameplay is interesting on paper, but never really clicks here. You're way slower than in previous games (especially coming from gen 4), there's no more flying around, movement is closer to gen 1 and 2 but even more slow and grounded. However, you can use bursts of energy to dodge in each direction, and also wall jump, and i think it's sick on paper, you can really gain some cool speed and height this way, the maps are even built around that since they're mostly city streets. sadly few are the moments where the game throws anything at you that showcases the potential of the system.
Scan mode is terrible tho. Having a mode where you can't shoot but can analyze enemies to find their weakness (and also get your energy back faster) is neat on concept, but, and that's one of the biggest issue with this game, that mode is damn near unreadable. Your screen gets a blue filter that makes everything look terrible, the scan UI is unreadable in the middle of action, and everything in this game is like that. The HUD is terrible, and every time you get hit your screen "glitches", the game already has a pretty terrible esthetic (it's the classic 7th gen gray look) but the on hit effect makes it worse
The music is absolutely phenomenal tho, everything else is kinda just ass