It's more of a metroidvania than a soulslike, emphasis is on exploration. Combat is present, but really not the centerpiece. Besides, difficulty is selectable, unlike most "we're gonna crush your sweet hand now, n00blet"-inspired misery simulators. They nailed the level design, it's pretty close to DS1 with how absolutely everything loops everywhere. The main char has a...err...let's call it a wolfish critter sidekick that helps him or her, and the dialogue between to two is adorable. Nice to hear some non-american accents for a change. Decent selection of weapons, you are encouraged to use all of them for the boosts they unlock, there's no upgrading them besides consumable runes, and they're all viable. On the downside, the optimization is downright horrible, and the controls aren't quite as tight as I'd like them to be. 3.9/5, but I really liked the voicework and level design here.
For the books, the first Front Mission game dates back to 1995 and was released for the Super Nintendo. What is offered here is a port of the Switch version, finally no longer hampered by the Switches anemic hardware. The port runs flawlessly, supports modern resolutions, has excellent mouse and gamepad support, offers the full range of common PC video options, multiple selectable languages, and has decent camera controls if you select the "modern" display option. The mechs use 3d vector models, as opposed to the pixel graphics of the SNES and PS1 version. Content-wise, you're looking at about 30 hours of content, 2 campaigns, one of which was an addition to the Playstation port of the game (2003), several difficulty levels (which affect enemy HP and Damage only) and some New Game + surprises the the form of unlockable parts, The game is a turn-based strategy game featuring customizable mechs, and while it's not exactly Battletech, there's plenty of options to fiddle around with. The story is a bit basic by today's standards, but serves well enough to tie the combat missions together. And let's be honest, we're not here for the writing, we're here to watch mechs (here: Wanzers) blowing each other up, and blow each other up they will. Does it cure cancer and bring everlasting joy to the world? Doubtful. Does it offer a complete game without MTX, addons, season passes and other modern inconveniences? YEP. Does it entertain? Your mileage may vary, I however am having a blast. But, having tried to play the SNES version back in the olden days, I might be a tad bit biased. Still, I appreciate a getting a second chance to beat it, this time with decent controls and updated visuals. The game also has achievements on Galaxy, if you care for that sort of thing. If the rest of the remakes stays at this quality level, us ancient mecha fans shall be eating well in the near future.
This (inexpensive) little DLC adds some much needed armour varieties with different stats to Wildermyth, vastly improving the build options for the character classes. It's not just cosmetics here, there's some tangible benefits for various builds. The other addition is more skins for the various transformations, which helps differentiate transformed characters which tended to look rather same-y once the transformation took full hold of them. There also have been some gameplay fixes and improvements accompanying this DLC release, which are however distributed via a free update. Thumbs up for that bit as well.
