15.1 hours played
Written 26 days ago
With the sheer number of games under my belt, I can't say this often. But I don't understand this game. Like... I can play it fine, I'm having fun, but its nonsense. Let me just dive into details... I swear my rambles will make sense.
For those that don't know, METAL MAX is a series of open-world RPGs where you build tanks to explore the world but also can fight on foot. This game continues that legacy... sortof.
This is the most linear open-world game I've ever played. I don't mean this like you travel from A to B to C... but that the world is one long corridor with lots of events you can do in any order. So, you have this feeling of freedom in how/when you accomplish things but "exploration" generally consists of looking for hidden breakable walls that may require weapons from a future zone.
As far as I've found, there's no other towns. No living worlds. It's all about walking towards the next zone and just picking up all the items on the way. Maybe I'm missing something though, because I was 4+ hours in and level 30 before I found my first ally.
This gets really noticeable with the series classic "Wanted Monster" mechanic. Imagine a unique super strong monster that's wandering in a zone worth a large cash bonus. They advise you to run away or avoid combat and fight it later. But every single one I've encountered has been smack dab in the middle of the only path forward! Yeah... you can get by but it feels bad.
Basically, it feels like the intended way to play is to rush past monsters to hit fast travel points and then teleport back to base to recover. But I'm sorry, that's stupid. Give me ways to sneak around. Give me stealth items to abuse. Give the strong monsters a patrol pattern that you an avoid. ANYTHING to make it interesting.
But I can follow this design logic enough to say its dumb. I can't understand what they were thinking on combat.
Combat is an ATB style system with real time movement and aiming. The thing is... the movement doesn't matter. There's no positional bonuses, you can't use cover, you can't dodge. You can't even really aim because it acts more as a "real time Selection cursor" than choosing where to fire.
What gets really confusing though is that you control all 3 characters at once. When a character's turn comes up, you're put in control of that unit to select an action and it stays in control of them. This means you're teleporting around the battlefield every 2-3 seconds meaning you CAN'T use the real-time movement.
Here's the problem... if I want to run away? It keeps switching me back to the character nearer to a enemy! Good luck spreading out your units so that you don't all get hit by an AOE. This constant control switching means it's extremely difficult.
I've had the game glitch (Or maybe there's a trigger I can't find) and movement was disabled in the fight. Combat felt so much better like as a standard JRPG. The rest of the design choices made sense in this context. But I shouldn't have to hope for a glitch to make the game feel good. (At this point, I just hands off the controller and avoid moving.)
As for story, METAL MAX has never been a big story game for me, but feels particularly lacking. It sounds like the base game took a pervy humor approach, and the remake cut that content without putting anything else in its place. Now I'm seven hours in and remember little more than an opening story and a few "I met a person" scenes. I almost feel that it would have been better to cut ALL the story. Introducing characters and doing nothing with them just stands out.
But despite all my ranting about it being insane, poorly thought out, disappointing, etc. I am having some fun.
Progression is extremely fast and that means that I've never felt like I wasn't making progress. Levels come at an extremely quick rate, and you can sell a lot of the high value gear you want to buy some OP weapons. Once your using some ridiculously powerful weapons you can drive through the linear areas fighting things and it feels better than running past.
There's a level of satisfaction that comes with building up your tank and coming up with ways to use skill chips to enhance it.
I do suspect that I'm going to put in the time to finish this one, but it's still a hard one to actually recommend.
*Edit: I accidently beat the last boss in 3 attacks so post game thoughts. Everything above is still valid including the "I'm having fun"
The game does great at keeping on foot and tank combat unique and interesting. Your tank grows through equipment while your levels only impact on-foot. On-foot combat uses learned skills to get temporary advantages while tanks are hardcore weapon brawls. I was genuinely glad later in the game when I started encountering more dungeons, even if most were underwhelming in design. After each dungeon, I was glad to get in my tanks. I liked this feeling.
One other thing worth noting there is a line spoken "That thing will kill us. We should avoid it if you don't want to die." It turns out there is a skill tree and mechanic hidden behind dying there.
For a game built around running past strong enemies... they really should have said "Attack this thing. It'll go well, we promise" so I knew to unlock said mechanic and probably plot. I'm a bit grouchy over that.
