War Tech Fighters

This game Gundams harder than any Gundam game I've ever played. If you like mechs in the style of Zone of the Enders, or Gundam, you will love this. Armored Core fans may feel a lack of creativity, given the mech systems are always consistently similar, but the customizability is still there in different appearance and weapon type options, though some are still objectively better than others. Different ways to work your way to the top.

W.T.F. War Tech Fighters should be called, Wasted Time Forever. A giant turd that can't even hold a flame to Mobile Suit Gundam: Encounters in Space, a decade old PS2 game. Video games shouldn't feel this bad to play. Even the UI feels cheap and painful to use. Not Recommended

This game can be super janky at times; you might fly too fast and get stuck inside another ship, you might get trapped in an unwinnable sword-clash loop, or you might bounce off the game entirely when you play the first mission which for some reason feels faster than human eyes can follow. Allied mechs have a weird tendancy to stay in the center of your camera view, so they're constantly in the way when you want to shoot. The English language version has several errors and oddities, likely a rough translation job by the tiny team. But if you can accept those issues, this is an amazing experience. You just have to give yourself time to adjust. The game speed feels too fast at first, but then you start getting used to it, adjusting the control sensitivity to human levels and setting buttons to something easier. After a short prologue fight in someone's plot armor mech, there's a rough transition to the main story and you're given the option of three starting mechs. This choice matters a lot! Whether you choose the slow, tough mech or the fast one or go balanced, that's your core and every part you buy afterwards will modify that. The only way to try another core is to start a new save! Then you're thrown into a mecha-enthusiast dream / gear-shopping nightmare with your own ship base and upgrade spreadsheets and tech research and experience levels and text boxes explaining each new thing. Take it slow, don't be intimidated, the fun is about to begin. In the Simulator room, there's a few tutorial maps which teach the basics, and you'll be able to replay mission levels here to find research you missed or get extra experience or test your newest mech, plus there are Challenges which you can grind for cash. A tough Survival mode will be your biggest money maker when you've got a better mech, but remember to only reach the target level and then lose because there seems to be a max reward amount you can get each time. Once you've adjusted the control settings to your liking and played for a few hours, the game comes together as a simple yet satisfying space mecha pilot fantasy. Some missions are rough but they do get better with time and the difference in power between the starter and an upgraded mech is scary fun. There's also a nice variety of mission types: escorting a supply ship along a path, gathering materials while hiding from the nearby sun behind asteroids, sneaking into a base by flying close to a larger ship, laser puzzles, deactivating doomsday weapons, and several boss battles. The story isn't anything deep or fancy. You are the talented captain of an ace mecha team and your job is to protect the fleet which travels around gathering resources in space. There's a fleet commander who issues orders, support staff who figure things out for you, and your team which sometimes join you in missions. An evil empire is at war with the universe, and you want to defeat them. A couple characters die in over-dramatic scenes of deep anguish, but the war must be won. The sci-fi setting has some neat elements but remains in the background. Combat on the other hand is great. This is one of the better space flight games I've played recently for battles against large and complex targets, like bases covered in turrets or huge warships. The jetpack-style maneuverability isn't exactly realistic to space, but allows you to smoothly zip around shooting highlighted weak points. As a comparison, Strike Suit Zero attempted this and looked fantastic, but felt bad combining two styles of flight where one wanted to crash into the target while the other was awkward at moving and had a time limit. Against smaller targets, you become this terrifying deity chewing through health bars in seconds. When most small ships are below half health, you can perform cinematic finishing moves which also heal you quite a lot; you'll want to use the light weapons so they don't explode from one shot, and this becomes a powerful tactic at the higher challenge levels. You battle opponent mechs from a distance, then move in for flashy sword battles full of special moves, shield blocking, perfect counters, stun chances and sword clashing. These are the only fights that feel fair and equal, yet provide nice breaks from the chaotic space battles. The gear upgrades screen only looks overwhelming at first. Your mech has four armor components: the head tends to affect your aim, the arms and torso give you light and heavy weapons and missiles, the legs change your speed. Some parts are better for health or energy or speed, and you will have to choose between trade-offs. There's also a sword and a shield which can have special properties, from energy theft or breaking enemy guard, even auto-regeneration. Some gear can't be purchased until you research certain technologies, which you do by first finding hidden items in the missions, then purchasing the research. You can also buy research that improves your mech directly, or you can research custom mechs with unique designs. The unique mechs are powerful but can't mix and match parts, so once you start using one of them, you can focus on buying research that benefits that mech the most – and then some missions and challenges can't be beaten unless you make the right mix and match mech. After you beat the main game, there's a New Game Plus mode which upgrades the enemies somewhat. You'll start the same story over with the same core and everything you purchased before, so this is more like a victory lap as well as a great time to try a harder difficulty setting. Once again, as janky and rough as this game is, that can be forgiven because the amazingly small team made something really fun. The combat tends toward overpowered fantasy at the easier difficulty settings or once you reach higher levels, though there are a few challenge spikes which force you to upgrade. Play this for that power fantasy, not the average story, and you'll have a great time.

Plays a lot like project Nimbus but has quite a lot of new features to set itself apart from it. Will be playing more of this.

Is fun but i had enough of radio tuning what is called hacking lolz :(

Pretty cool game feels like the love child of Armored Core customization with Zone of the Enders speed mixed with combat from Rebel Galaxy. I think I paid like $5 for it, and it was well worth it!

The game would be OK if they characters would STFU and let you play, but they run their useless mouths every 3 seconds, interrupting the action and ruining the fun. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD JUST SHUT THE FU%$ UP AND LET ME PLAY THE DAMNED GAME!!!!!

This game has some good ideas, but its flaws prevent this from being an overall good experience. The good: - The performance was good. I played it from start to finish on the Steam Deck with no issues. - The controls are mostly decent, with a couple glaring issue that I'll mention later on. - There's decent variety with the combat, puzzles, stealth, and radiation sections (though I'm not too fond with those in particular). - The graphics are quite good for a game of this scale. - Most of the mech designs were middling, but the cruiser designs were good. - The soundtrack is enjoyable. The Black Hound theme was great, especially with the intro. The bad: - There's a poor difficulty curve. The first half of the campaign is relatively easy, but once you reach the "Black Sails" mission, the difficulty shoots up. Enemies will spam homing missiles, easily killing you. This will happen repeatedly from that point forward, so finishing the game becomes a chore. I'm not opposed to having an increase in difficulty, but going from a few enemies having homing missiles to nearly all of them having them is unfair. I couldn't even come up with a real strategy to beat them; it was just a matter of slowly whittling down the numbers, retreating to gain distance from the group, hoping to recover some health before being shot down. I played the game on normal, so I shudder at how people would have played on the two higher difficulties. - This game encourages grinding, but there's little reward. You can replay missions and do challenges, but those either give you XP or materials (the latter which is more important). Once you complete one of those, the reward for attempting it again drops to 10% of what you originally got. Also, any materials you find in replays will NOT count toward you obtaining any, which is unfair (even if it is a "simulation"). - There are points where you'll play as a different character, which is fine on paper, but the missions where you play as someone else from start to finish was unnecessary. Given how this is a game about building your own mech and customizing it, being shoehorned into another mech for a whole mission goes against that idea. Switching between characters during a mission was fine, though. - The chase missions were not good. You have to head to a specific point in order to progress. Tailing a ship does not count. So even if the person you're following is within close proximity and clearly visible, because you followed them instead of the target, you failed. Going back to the control problems I mentioned, you boost by holding down the left thumbstick, but after a certain amount of time, your thumb will get a little tired and let slip, slowing you down. This can cause you to fail the chase (or guarantee a failure in final segments). Additionally, if you bump into something like an asteroid, your movement is so slow if you try to fly up and down to move out the way. This problem is just as bad when you're trying to fly away from missiles and hit something, causing you to be pinned down until you die. - The story is pretty forgettable. It's not bad, but it's average. The plot twist at the end had no real buildup, so the reveal didn't feel earned. - Not a major thing to lose points over, but there were some typos in the dialogue/a few moments of the dialogue didn't make sense. If it weren't for the insane difficulty spikes and forced grind, I would say to buy this on sale. But those factors dampen any fun you'll have from when you first get started. I can't recommend War Tech Fighters.

This is not a great mech game. It is clunky and focuses too hard on an uninteresting story. The mechs are ugly and the customization lacks variety as many parts are objectively better than others. The game tries and I can appreciate that but it falls short of the $10 price tag. Pick this game up on a sale for around $5 bucks like I did. I wish I could give it an okay rating. 5/10

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