Mech Armada, tried the curious indie strategy that promises clashes between kaiju and mech
Mech Armada
We appreciate all committed and deep video games, but sometimes it's also nice to get your hands on a beautiful ignorant title pervaded by the sacred fury of the purest tamarria. And if we talk about excessive games and with little artistic pretensions, there are few more appropriate premises than that of Mech Armada, which sees large mechanical exoskeletons armed to the teeth dealing with kaiju (the monsters like Godzilla and company, so to speak) .The work of the small independent team Lioncode Games (practically carried out by a single developer named Sergio Garces, with the help of a handful of external collaborators), however, is more caciarona in name than in fact, because this formula perfectly suited to blunt beating and showmanship is actually part of a turn-based strategy.
For heaven's sake, there is little better than kaiju if you have to choose between various amenities to fight and the magical world of mechanics has always offered almost infinite ideas for units. Mech Armada therefore starts from a foundation full of potential, but will it really be able to build on it a system bright enough to be worthy of the genre it belongs to?
We tried it for a few hours in its most recent build, for groped to understand it.
A plot full of monsters
Things can get chaotic in Mech Armada It is not a case of expecting a super production from this title and it must be crystal clear immediately. Indeed, to tell the truth it is the game itself that makes it clear what it is made of after a very short time, since it introduces its plot at the speed of light, and throws the user practically instantly in the middle of a battle.The premises are very simple: the bad kaiju have invaded the earth bringing humanity to near extinction; A brilliant doctor then discovers how to materialize enormous war automatons using particles of energy and decides to send the horde of monsters to the creator with an endless army of giant robots armed to the teeth. A perfect excuse to field some healthy fights with opponents with various abilities, no doubt about it.
This base translates, however, into a simpler structure than expected: there is no 'is a campaign with a lot of storylines in Mech Armada, or at least it does not seem to be there (we did not reach the possible conclusion during our test): we find ourselves having to deal with battles of increasing difficulty, in a loop that restarts every time the kaiju defeat our troops.
A battle outnumbered We are, in short, before a game that proposes a model similar to that of the very remarkable Into the Breach, with rather minute maps on which moving is a procedural element that always makes you find different opponents on the field. However, the dice rolls do not seem particularly elaborate and at least during the initial battles you encounter enemies of more or less the same type. The difficulty of the battles varies according to how quickly you develop and how many resources you manage to maintain from one fight to another.
Yeah, because built mechs don't regenerate with every fight, and in the maps it is It is very important to recover energy and resources not only to always produce new ones, but also to continue the search when the fight is over. You arrive battered in a battle against a miniboss, and you will have to start from the beginning, possibly with a smarter strategy to protect yourself.
Gameplay: metal for slaughter
In Mech Armada the variety of pieces not lacking The basic idea is not bad, and if well applied it can work great, but Mech Armada seems to sin quite heavily in the balance that favors (at least in the initial phase) units with very limited energy costs and specific weapons with a high range . The kaiju units in fact, do not lose attack power even when partially massacred, and it is therefore always advisable to eliminate them from afar, where at the same time too expensive and armed to the teeth mechs can be deleterious, since they are unable to manage the masses of enemies.Strategically, therefore, we often find ourselves using low-cost mechs as a temporary barrier, to reposition ourselves properly and make sure that our most useful weapons can hit the enemies undisturbed: one basic strategy but which seems to fool artificial intelligence the vast majority of the time. The absence of particularly complex maneuvers outside of movement and attack only reinforces similar plans.
Two factors make things more difficult: the randomness of the progression, since the pieces for the robots are not always the same and from game to game one is therefore forced to change certain tactics (or perish when the parts obtained are mediocre), and an electric storm that appears behind their troops at every clash, put there just to prevent the player from becoming too turtle-like and excessively abusing the infinite production of mechs.
A fight in the rubble of a city There are obviously other elements of complexity - from enemies with area attacks to rough terrain that force you to re-evaluate the maneuvers made - yet on the whole we do not think that Mech Armada is a particularly refined strategic one, and certainly does not even come close to the subtleties of the title. or from which it partially draws inspiration. A shame, even if it is still a game capable of giving satisfactions, with some potential for improvement after a few patches and a good amount of feedback from fans.
Rather simplistic from a mechanical and non-mechanical point of view. perfectly balanced neither in the procedural elements nor in the difficulty, Mech Armada seems to be a partially wasted opportunity, despite the premise full of potential. The ideas are there, but there is a lot of room for improvement and we are curious to see how far the game will evolve in the future.
