Battle Suit Aces

I would love to wholeheartedly recommend this game, but I just can't. Maybe buy it on sale. I'll probably keep chipping away at it but, as I see it, the game suffers from three key problems: the story, the character interactions, and the deck building. The story, to keep it simple, is extremely positive. It seems like there is no problem that arises for anyone in the crew which isn't brought up and solved within the space of the same scene or over the course of a combat. Every character is extremely positive, happy go lucky, and a real team player to the point that it makes me wonder if humans are all partially lobotomized as infants in this universe. The characters that you get to interact with are memorable, they all have a quirk or specialty and their art is great, but none of them seem to have any emotional depth. We bounce from emergency to emergency, solve them immediately, and move on. Nothing has consequences, nothing feels tense, nothing has stakes. Oh no! The frenzied are attacking! We beat them it's fine. Oh no! A character has a dark past! It's ok, we accept you immediately, it's fine. Oh no! The government won't support your mission! It's ok, you get all your own resources anyway, no one is hurt, it's fine. Oh no! A relic suit is angry at the pilot or something! It's ok, they suddenly learned to be besties, it's better than fine. This might be OK if the characters had deeper interactions than they do. In between missions characters have little scenes. They don't seem to matter, mechanically, but they happen and it is nice. The voice acting is good and the art is good. Seeing this, I rushed to unlock all the other characters from different factions... I assumed that if there were more people on board, there would be more of these little dramas playing out. I'd love to see if people hooked up or developed rivalries or even disliked each other. Yet nothing happened. I think there are only like 3 pilots I haven't unlocked and I have gotten maybe one extra scene with the ones I have... Mirabel, I think, got a scene besides the default one where Healthcliff questions the newbie. I just wanted more here, but if you've decided that your story will have no friction the people inhabiting it are just bland. Finally, the deckbuilding. I'm six hours in and have done every side-quest I can do at this point. As stated above I have been mainly unlocking new pilots when I get faction rewards... almost exclusively really. Only now do I have the option to leave some cards on the bench. For all this time I have been at or below the minimum deck size allowed. You can alter cards, you can even change their energy type if you want to focus in on using one of the three suits (red, blue, or green)... but usually there is only one of these you can do at a time and you will have just like two off-color drones in your deck leftover that don't work with anything. It doesn't really matter though because combat is simple. If you think that adding more damage to folks who hit more targets is good, then guess what? You've figured this game out. You can make some neat defensive synergies with spikes, shield, and reflecting... but it is all just OK. There is always at least one battle in each scenario and boy does it get same-y. Look at the enemy, read their little entry to know what trick they'll use to screw you, try and adapt. I guess I have one more tiny qualm which is that the word "energy" is driving me INSANE. This is a galaxy spanning civilization... I don't expect the writer(s) to be astrophysicists but jeez... EVERYTHING IS ENERGY. "Did you see that energy reading?" "Yes, it is the energy." "No wait! It isn't energy, it is energy!" "What?! How can that energy be interacting with energy?" "It's his energy! It's energy-ing the energy of the other energy and ENERGY!!! GARRRH" Did you know there are different types of energy? Kinetic energy, potential energy, elastic energy, radiant energy, chemical energy, internal energy, gravitational energy, nuclear energy, vibrational energy... but they never get more detailed than Pholian Energy... which is different from... energy... and I guess Frenzied have their own energy... Ugh. Ok, so if all that didn't dissuade you, buy it on sale I guess. I might try and finish it... I dunno... the game just decided that we need to [spoiler] stop hunting the star devouring monsters because a gang crashed a party to steal stuff. [/spoiler] So... I don't really care as much as I did before.

everybody's gay

It's good and it's gay.

Fun game, mechs are normaly not my thing, but the stroy and mechanics are really compelling.

This game is so fresh and engaging. I love the Saturday morning theme they try to evoke - the amount and quality of voice acting in this game is honestly not something I get to experience in games at this price level. I can honestly recommend it to everyone itching to dive into a lighthearted sci-fi cartoon story.

This is a recommendation with a [i]massive citation[/i], or perhaps more accurately a series of citations that will be shown in the "things I didn't like about this game" section of the review. [h3]A TL;DGAF version of this review would be:[/h3] Battle Suit Aces is an interesting visual novel with an equally interesting visual style and art that also has a fairly fun card game attached but struggles with multiple things like balancing, character writing, narrative pacing, as well as some parts of the game's visuals that straight up don't look finished among multiple issues that warrant me recommending you get this game when it's on sale (unless the $25 USD full price doesn't bother you). There will be spoilers in the review below, so read at your own risk. Okay, now let's get into [h1] The Good [/h1] The game has an interesting Saturday morning cartoon-esk story, as it follows a group of mech pilots trying to fight against a growing evil called The Frenzied. The Frenzied are a grouping of creatures that are hungry for any and every energy source they can find, including stars and even the energy of the super special mechs that two of the main characters pilot (though you start with one of them, you get the second one around the halfway point of the game). I really do like the vibe of the story, and it's very much rooted in the "Power of Friendship" and "Believing in Yourself" mentalities and mantras acting as the stereotypical methods of overcoming adversity (which I don't think are bad, per say, but have been done to absolute [b]death[/b]). I'm also a big fan of the visual direction, art, and designs of each character and their respective mech; the planets and backgrounds also have visuals that really showcase a large, living universe. Something that comes as a bit of a surprise is that this game has a fairly deep card game attached (though not overly complicated compared to other similar games) and allows for multiple different types of deck "builds" that you can run. There's a decent amount of room for player expression and creativity in the deck building, which is neat (but again, it's not completely like it's possible contemporaries). Now it's time for me to cover [h1] The Bad and The Ugly[/h1] Let's start with something I [i][b]truly[/b][/i] don't understand about this game: [b]You can't manually save the game[/b]. A game released in 2025 does not allow you to manually save your progress, it's only auto saves. Why? If I wanted to go back to a point before a fight I'm struggling with (which is a single digit amounts of fights, but still) to see if I could get more items, do other missions, or just go back [i]I can't[/i]... Something else that doesn't really make sense is [b]why so much seemingly unfinished art is present?[/b] Genuinely, there are multiple mechs that don't look finished (with sketch-like lines that stand out WAY more compared to the finished ones), there are parts of characters that look like they need just a bit more detail, and even parts of the game's "cutscenes" (in a visual novel, I am aware how odd this sounds) that look like they're story board-ish / not finalized versions of what the art should look like. In a game that's almost entirely focused on being a [i]Visual Novel[/i] and [i]a card game[/i], how did SO MUCH UNFINISHED ART GET IN HERE?? It completely boggles my mind, especially given Battle Chef Brigade's great visuals! During your in-game journey, you recruit your units and acquire gear from multiple different factions you unlock as you play through the game. Something that confuses me yet again though is: [b]You cannot get everything from each faction[/b]. Whenever you level up, you can only choose [i]one[/i] reward from the faction that leveled up. Each faction has a max level, meaning you can only get a fixed amount of items and characters per faction and each faction caps off at around level 8 or 10 (depending on the faction). There's also a particular character you get from the faction called The Hunters (or something like that) named Robynn with an attack that hits three enemies, and if she gets a kill [i]she activates her attack AGAIN[/i] (this could trigger infinitely given specific circumstances btw). She only becomes stronger with mods that buff damage and chance to crit (x2 damage), so she throws off the games difficulty quite a bit. Whenever you complete a mission on a planet and return to your ship, there's certain events that can happen with characters and something called the SIM Station (or something like that) where you can run simulated battles that help progress your "core" faction's level for completing them. There's two issues with them, though: 1. [b] They all are fights that need to be beaten in one turn[/b] 2. [b] If you choose the skip a SIM and move to the next planet, that SIM is GONE FOREVER[/b] So, there's no variety to the types of win conditions needed to complete each SIM and each SIM [i]needs[/i] to be completed before you leave for the next planet if you want the faction XP (but you don't need to do all of them to hit max level with your core faction, but ik completionists will go insane). Another unfortunate thing about this game is it's not too popular, so guides for completing SIMS are few and very far between (I was unable to beat [b]one[/b] SIM that I could not find a guide for, so I moved on). While I do enjoy the story and characters of this game, there are points in the story that feel rushed / confusing as to why they happen. One example of many is with [b]the final boss of the entire game[/b]. Throughout your journey, you're trying to figure out how to stop The Frenzied from destroying everything; so you would think you'd be fighting some sort of hivemind monster, or perhaps locate The Frenzied homeworld / origin right? Wrong. The final big bad evil guy of this game is...a gang leader...? The brother of this gang leader gets onto your ship after he tricks you with a disguise while claiming to be a prince of some kind (there's even a DNA / background test done to confirm this fake identity but I guess it's somehow wrong[it's not specified how it's wrong from what I remember]). But the brother reveals his disguise is fake after he hacks your ship and his brother / gang gank you then run away as you're about to beat them. The brothers review the info that they stole from your ship regarding the special mechs, and eventually find the last known special mech in the games lore. Conveniently, the brothers had been trying to find a way to fully take control of the mech (as it seems to be fighting the leader brother's attempts to fully control it) via...a liquid form of The Frenzied that they inject into the mech, which makes it go haywire, drive the leader brother insane, and turn both the brother and mech into the true final villain called [b]The Suneater[/b] which can control / summon all of The Frenzied. Great. The final boss is...not a fun fight either. The first "phase" of the fight is very manageable; but the second phase is [b]evil[/b] because the boss just gets an attack that hits three of your units for [u]14 damage[/u] OVER THE COURSE OF MULTIPLE TURNS UNTIL THE NUMBER GOES DOWN, so I sure hope you have tanky units or units you're willing to burn (like drones) that doesn't ruin your set up for whatever sort of strat you're playing. There's alot more issues I could talk about regarding this game, but I think this is good enough. Overall, I did enjoy most of this game, but the ending and parts of the story / character developments (like two romances for two separate character pairs that develop over the span of [b]a few in universe days each[/b]) really soured my opinion of the game. Not enough to hate it, by any means, but certainly harming my confidence in recommending this to other people.

A game so good, even some of the 'phobes like it. Positives: - Relentlessly positive about humanity's communal potential. - Characters so endearing it often hurts. Cheesy anime tropes, without the "anime ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥" that many of us have come to know and tolerate. - A moderate level of card game depth, but not especially difficult - enough to sink your teeth into, especially with the beta's Roguelike mode. - Solid soundtrack and sound design. - If you're a fan of character sprites, this is a real treat. A lot of love was put into these. - Unapologetically queer. The world's worst people are mad about it, but even they have trouble actually hating the game itself. Negatives - Weird pacing on some stories, some of the plot points didn't get enough time to feel real. - The plot ends at what feels like the second of three arcs. You'll feel it when you get there. - The difficulty does not scale beyond moderate. Those with a mind for strategy will not find hard mode or the current beta's roguelike particularly challenging. Yes, this is in both pro and con.

Loved it ! ♥ The game does kinda feel like it's sectionned in episodes like a mech show and I really appreciate that. Found it after watching Deep Space 9, I was looking for an endearing crew with a little bit of slice of life and it delivered ! The illustrators, writers and voice-actors did a great job bringing the ensemble cast to life ! Honestly i'm a little sad I couldn't find any fanfictions for the game, there's a lot there to expand on ♥ The card gameplay is fun and effective, you can do cool combos and will definitely end up with your own MVPs by the end of the game ! Overall I totally recommend !

"Deckbuilding" Devs should be able to remove tags people give them. Also people need to learn genres. I do not recommend this if you are looking for a deckbuilding game. It's very easy so far and I am sure the characters and story gets good, but it seems a bit cheesy and they never tell you what a cycle or rotation are tho they use them every other line... (I think a cycle is a week and a rotation is either a month or year? I assume year since rotation like a year irl is, but who knows.)

great deckbuilding game combined with a good scifi visual noval. It is nice to have a mix of both here and the game is fully voice acted. Could not ask for more in this kind of game.