Metal Slug Tactics

Fun tactics game with great art and music, but can be complicated. It doesn't do the best job letting you know some of the mechanics and it can be hard to get a grasp of the roguelike elements. Overall really enjoy the game so far.

This could have been a pretty good tactics game along the lines of Into the Breach. It's not as good as ItB even conceptually (the balance is nowhere near as tight), but on the plus side, it does have a stronger theme and more difficulty options. Unfortunately it has been released in a totally unacceptable state and barely seems to have been tested at all. Variously I have encountered soft-locks, missing tooltips, many instances of mouse-clicks not doing what they're supposed to first time, and miriad cases of abilities not working as described. One special ability only sometimes deals any damage as it's supposed to (no obvious pattern); two more (on the same character) are supposed to give bonus dodge, but one never does, and the other does only sometimes. For some reason most of the other reviews are pretty glowing. The games problems, while glaring, are not *very* obvious in the first few hours of play, as the three starting characters and their loadouts *mostly* seem to work, as does the first region of the game. But by your second run, you will be drowning in bugs. Basically uplayable. Also, there is a patch out (it fixes many bugs, but there's a long way still to go), but predictably, it doesn't seem to be available on GOG yet. Caveat emptor

The game might not be super complex but it has a lot of things going for it. It is different than most tactics games in a good way. While in a lot of games taking cover is essential here it is just a bonus. The most important thing is to keep your units on the move. This grants the units evasion(damage resistance) and also some of the levels require constant movement chasing after target, protecting someone or just because the ground behind you is disappearing. having powerful weapons is good but having well planned synchronized actions is even better cause the units can attack multiple times, have free actions, free movement, gain adrenaline and so on. The over-world map reminds me of Into the Breach - you can select you sector then in the sector you can select different missions and see what are the main and the optional rewards. Very fun game. I am surprised that it took Metal Slug to get a turn based tactics spin-off so the genre can have something fresh and different. If you are feeling fatigued by the standard turn based tactics games and just want something simple and fun that won't take you a month to complete (one run is about 6 hours give or take but you unlock stuff so it is intended to be replayed) then this might be what you are looking for.

It took a while to connect with the game, but once it clicked on the initial character loadout I was able to complete the 4 areas. The idea of the game is similar to Into the Breach with 4 areas with different enemies. Beyond the four areas and being a roguelite, the games are pretty different. As others have mentioned, movement is key. You gain abilities by moving long distances, and use character placement so that one attack triggers your partners to attack as well. It's a lot of fun, and I think the new characters that keep unlocking should be interesting.

I was a surprised that the game was a roguelike so I was a little resistant at first, but the game won over with the deep interactions of your squad and but also simple to get a grasp. So if you like Metal Slug and tactic games is a no brainer to have in your library.