Beat. I had no idea what to expect going into this and I was pleasantly surprised. The intro gave Dead Space and Doom 3 vibes while the gameplay was similar to Armored Core. The menu allowed custom keybinding so I switched look up and down to triangle and X while putting thruster and use on the analog stick. This made the platforming a little more difficult but I liked this control scheme. I liked how each stage had a briefing before play showing the layout and objectives. The in game map was a little annoying because it rotated automatically rather than manually, and triangle was hard coded to cancel so if I wanted to move the map properly I had to rebind look up. The levels were not that complicated though. I liked how most levels had secrets for items, new weapons and new power ups. I started off with a full complement of weapons: a rifle with 1000s of ammo, a laser, a homing missile, a homing mortar and a huge area bomb. I stuck with the rifle for the beginning and powered it up 10 points since at this point I did not know there would be better weapons. Total waste of weapon upgrades. I also gave a few to the missile. Got killed a few times on level 2 to an enemy type that fired missiles, and had a difficult time hitting the little beetle like bots that strafed my shots. Enemies did massive damage and I had to improve my play. 1st thing was to go into the options and turn off the sight that obscured most of the middle of the screen. Awesome how each individual element of the HUD could be turned on or off. With the sight off I could actually see properly, though I lost the crosshair and red circles showing which enemies were targeted by homing. Not that either was needed. Then I used the shield, which made the mech entirely immune to damage as long as the button was pressed, but depleted energy at a constant rate not based on damage absorbed. Energy slowly recharged over time and also powered the laser. The shield was an awesome mechanic that helped with obvious incoming damage like missiles, and to react to flanking. The other aspects I improved were circle strafing and cover use, but that clear visibily was the real game changer. There were a lot of items to collect and I loved how there were no capacity limits. I hate not being able to hoover everything up into my bag of holding. There were healing items, energy restore, time bombs, flares and permanent upgrades for max hp, max energy, weapons and resists. I put 1 resist into missile early on and the rest into physical until it was maxed. I figured bullets and lasers could be dodged and missiles shielded while there was nothing really to counter those damn fast flying enemies that slammed into me from above and behind. By the mid game I was taking negligible damage from melee. By the end I had 30% in missile and 10% in bullet and laser.

1st boss took a couple tries. He was slow and used missiles so I hid behind crates and pelted him with the mortar. Could have gotten more loot by making him destroy more crates. 2nd boss was the opposite as he jumped on top of me, so I shielded the drop (even though it did not hit very hard due to my physical defense focus) and circle strafed around with the rifle. The platforming got more difficult as the levels progressed and sometimes I had the time limit down to the final 5 minutes. A couple times I skipped optional loot so as not to fiddle with the platforming again. None of it was the instant death variety though, so it was just annoying and put pressure to beat the timer. I missed some power up options and weapons. I had been hoarding all the weapon upgrade points since I realized there were new weapons to get, but at stage 14 I decided to pump the best rifle and laser I had; tri shot rifle and synewave laser. Both did high damage per shot. This made enemies so much easier to kill, and that was very important for this stage because it was all about platforming while dealing with infinite enemies. Every stage had infinite respawning enemies, which was annoying at times. Especially since they always spawned out of sight on the flanks. I did farm a little bit early on and it seemed like they stopped dropping loot after a while. Next boss was easy as my maxed tri rifle made short work of him and it was trivial to avoid his attacks using shield. I just stood there blasting him for most of the fight. By the later levels I was going under 1000 bullets and had to start using the laser mostly. I discovered that certain enemies were much weaker to certain weapons, so I switched between rifle and laser as needed. Missile was good for sniping and those annoying fast fliers. The final boss took a ridiculous amount of damage but I barely took any. I nuked him with 6 bombs, 200 each of missiles and launcher, and he was still not dead. I was down to 500 bullets but plenty of energy items for the laser and he died soon after.

My 4 equipped options were movement speed, turn speed, reduced laser cost and faster energy recharge. I used nightvision for a couple dark places and for those invisible laser puzzles. I had radar equipped for most of the game until I found that charger. Testing out the other weapons, the Greg rifle was standard like the default while my tri shot paid for its high damage by using 3 bullets per shot. So the more standard rifles would be more efficient. The rapid fire was like SMG. My laser seemed the best but the hydra was a massive damage lock on that consumed a lot of energy. Would be good for bosses.

Missed:

Enemy hp scan in stage 11 (where the building collapsed)

Weapon thing in stage 17 (I assume improved damage)

Rifle in stage 3

Best rifle in stage 19

Polar ray in stage 7

Dual missile in stage 12

After beating the game it had me save again. Loading that save was new game +. Things that carried over: weapons and their upgrades, ammo (bad since I spent almost everything) and 50% of resistance. Notably items and options were reset, but you could get missed weapons and max out every weapon and resist. No idea if difficulty increased.

This was a well made fun game with surprisingly good story, characters and cutscenes. I did not like the reused scenes between levels though as it made no sense. Maybe if each stage had a different scene that actually showcased something interesting instead of the same opening a door or going down an elevator again. There was also a flow chart full of acronyms which I assume were the various systems on the mech, but this never came up at all in the game mechanics or story. So why bother to include it at all? There was also a lot of unnecessary voice acting for the descriptions of weapons and options. Like do you really need to spell out the model numbers? Who cares about that? Despite the flaws, how was this never a series?

7.8/10