Battle Suit Aces

People ragging on the dialogue are (I think) missing the point: this game quite literally advertises itself as a Saturday morning cartoon. It's meant to feel like the shows you watched as a kid, and I think they nail it! The gameplay is fun, the voice acting is great, there is a lot of content and I can see myself playing it again.

It's good and it's gay.

everybody's gay

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.

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

"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.)

The card gameplay is solid, but you keep going for the story, characters, and that "I'm playing in a nostalgic cartoon" feeling that the whole game captures so well. From the opening title riffs to the warm characters, and the silly moments. The whole game drips charm and passion. I hope the studio keeps this up with its future work. They have my attention for whatever they do next.

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 !