Even with the 80% discount this game is a hard sell.
Now, it is a bit sad to leave a negative review as this game does have good points, but personally, I found that this game really struggled to be worth the time invested into it, let alone the money.
It is functional, but that's about as good as I can call it.
Might be worth to some with the discount, but otherwise I would recommend looking elsewhere.
The word "tragedy" is a very succinct summary of this game.
For every thing this game does right it almost certainly fails to capitalize on or even finish implementing it.
Let's start with mech customization.
I am not a nut for making nice-looking models, but the customizer seems potent enough, and, according to other reviewers it has just enough stuff to let you make a decent mechs.
Really, the only complaint I can offer here is that the customizer does not support mouse to move the camera around, and using arrow keys makes it feel really cludgy.
Customizer does not really give much of a bother about anything, you can attach everything almost anywhere, clipping be damned.
There are only a few, quite liberal, limits, and a simple max-weight mechanic.
I think this is the only game that let me equip 10 miniguns at the same time, and the fact that something so fun-sounding as this is not enough to squeeze out a recommendation should be telling.
But let's say you made your mech and you want to go take it out into the field now.
What awaits you is a very clunky, boring, and sometimes baffling, experience.
The main, and the most debilitating problem is that all weapons have an incredibly short range.
I do not think there are many weapons that shoot past 200m.
Because of this, rifles simply outclass every other weapon you might want to use as they strike hard and strike far.
Even something like a rocket launcher simply explodes once it reaches range, and stuff like mines has a forced few-second fuse that makes them explode prematurely.
There is simply no reason to use anything other than rifles, because rifles outrange most enemies, and enemies hit quite hard if you come close.
Aiming is quite frustrating because mouse controls are either very stiff or very fast, best way I can describe it is as if you have low sens with high mouse accel, so it is very hard to start moving but once you do you go flying.
The aim reticle is really a suggestion as your weapons fire from where they are, and if you happen to attach them to a part that moves they will fire all over the place randomly.
Weapons have ammo that is very easy to run out of, which is how I guess the game tries to force you to swap mechs.
There is nothing you can do about the ammo because all weapons are split into 2 firing groups and all fire at the same time (+melee group, but that does not have ammo).
At best you can set one weapon as "critical" to give it a different button, but the rest will belong to one of the two preset groups.
You do not really get the time to swap mechs as enemies concentrate only the player unless there is a decoy active (which there is a limited number of on the map that you first must capture), or they have other objective to kill (that will fail the mission if they do).
In particular, they will actively ignore your allies, and charge straight at you.
That is, if they spawn with an active AI, as sometimes enemies spawn literally braindead.
Your allies are not only useless, but downright harmful as they stick to you like glue and ♥♥♥♥ up your dashes.
For some reason there is a time limit to waves, which, while generous and I never really exceeded I can not understand the reasoning for.
Enemies have pre-determined spawn locations and do not give even a sliver of a damn if you happened to be near.
This means that the game is not below spawning a death-ray mech right behind you that obliterates you immediately.
One mission actually spawns you right in front of an enemy that will nuke you if you do not move within 1s of getting control.
Mech parts are, of course, as one might expect, drop as random boxes from enemies that you must pick up.
While there is a shop that allows you to buy any part you want of any rank as long as you had seen at least one copy, the economy is so oppressive that you really can't do much with it without extreme grind, think one-two missions per weapon part, which are the cheapest.
Stuff around the mech combat, which is the story, voice acting, map usage, etc, I do not have complaints about.
I think only Japanese VA is available, but I found it to be quite alright.
Story is serviceable, nothing too extraordinary, but that's not why you would want to play this game.
Maps seem to be reused, but honestly, that is not a significant problem.
In total there are 40 missions, plus 10 in the EDF DLC.
Game forces you up to tier 3 difficulty out of 5 on your first playthrough, and that only drops parts for small mechs.
Parts for bigger mechs drop at difficulties 4 and 5, and while that would have been a complaint, bigger mechs felt so depressing that honestly that was a good thing it limited your access to them during the first playthrough.
Difficulties are sane, enemies do not seem to become significantly tankier, but do seem to damage harder (which is a no-issue since you outrange almost everything anyway)
Total playtime is about 15 hours with the EDF DLC, about 10-12 without.
To summarize, this game had great ideas, but it ran them completely into the ground with poor execution and design choices.
It is functional, and one could play it, just that the game does not really offer you anything for the time you put into it.
I guess one note is that EDF fans might want to witness the EDF DLC of this game because they made EMC tank and barga cursed, but that's about it for memorable points.
Only get on sale if you must, and do not expect too much.
