TL;DR Great core mechanics and gameplay, brought down a bit by some jank with English text not showing up in the menu and lack of explanations for Star Fields mode.
(Note that this is a relatively low playtime review, I will most likely update it once I got more playtime)
Basically it's Macross/Robotech combat simulator (it even plays similarly to the PS2 Macross game by Sega). Surprisingly there's a splitscreen PvP and Co-op mode (you can use Remote Play Together to play with online friends probably) which is pretty neat.
Combat is very good and each transformation modes feels unique to each other, and of course their own situational uses. Your weapons in each modes are different and you can customize the loadouts.
The game have 3 modes
- Star Fields (which I presume is also the main Co-op mode): you go around a very small map (it's not open world), do training combat simulations, trade with merchant ships, hunt Bugs and No-minds(?) which are the generic baddies of the "story", find plane/mech blueprints and craft them (I honestly have no idea how this works, but it's there).
The devs explained it as "adventure mode where players can travel with a carrier on a star map, collect resources and defeat bosses" (I paraphrased).
- VS mode: the classic 1v1 PvP mode.
- Free Battle: combat mode against AIs (can be played with 2 players). You can freely choose which enemy to spawn, the quantity and even spawn points, you can even make an endless mode. Arguably the best mode.
I will now proceed to list some pros & cons.
Pros:
- Solid combat gameplay. (the biggest reason to buy this game, if you don't like it go refund immediately)
- Decent variety of fighter crafts and mechs, although some have limited transformation mode(s).
- Spiltscreen PvP and Co-op. (possibly great with Remote Play Together)
- Steam Cloud support and Steam Leaderboards.
- Got a level editor.
- Good menu music.
Cons:
- No native controller support. (thankfully we got blessed Steam's controller config, but still a bummer nonetheless)
- English texts not showing up on the menu. (I know it exist, because sometimes it show up)
- Star Fields mode is poorly explained.
- Graphics options are lacking, can't even go complete 1080p full screen. (this might be a deal breaker for some people)
- Battle music (except the boss music) sucks, especially annoying because it gets repeated a lot.
Some extra informational stuff:
In the Control settings the texts would be in Chinese at first, but you can see it in English if you select the P2 or Mouse tab on the top left of the screen, and then select P1 controls again (you can't rebind the default Yaw controls to something other than Q & E for some reason). Hopefully this'll get fixed by the devs, though I won't hold my breath.
I also submitted a Steam Controller configuration for DualShock 4 users with English explanations, feel free to modify it to your liking.
