XOL: Space Mech Wars

This one hurt to have to refund, because the gameplay is solid. But, the fact that it uses generative A.I. for the voice acting makes me unable to support it - as someone who does voice acting themselves. If the dev replaces all the A.I. dubbing with actual voice acting at some point - I'll change my review, and repurchase. As the gameplay itself is what I want from a mech game.

I initially wrote XOL off after the demo — it felt far too rough to justify buying. And yet, it stuck with me longer than any other demo I tried that week. Despite the jank, XOL nails a very specific fantasy: being a disposable Zeon grunt piloting a basic Zaku. The mech combat is flawed, but compelling enough that I took the risk on release and don’t regret it. There are real issues — placeholder voice acting, generic music, unreliable charged shots, invisible boundaries, poor zoom, limited radar, and no key rebinding. Several systems feel underdeveloped, especially ship combat. But the core experience works. When XOL clicks, it clicks hard. With refinement and polish, this could be something special. Recommended — if the fantasy appeals to you and you’re willing to tolerate jank.

at the moment it has terrible performance and no steam deck support. will wait for future updates before i buy again

need to play more, but this is a pretty strong feeling 'Gundam Simulator' 6DOF shooter if you see people talking about the 'performance', the XOL's cockpit screen runs at a lower FPS than the game is reporting, you can increase it in the graphics options to help motion sickness but you can also open the cockpit to get an unobstructed view so the cockpit being low FPS has a mechanical purpose AI voices sound bad, I'm not here to moralize about it but the quality is bad enough to distract from the story being told solid groundwork I think, a game like this in a more sandbox/rogue format with more mechs and maybe co-op would be a real killer IMO

probably the best gundam ace-grunt experience you'll get on Steam, if I'm being honest. You don't have a fancy mech with cool gizmos or changing forms or even a special reactor. You have a not-zaku, a cannon and missile banks, and your beam cannon with beam-bayonet. No one has any faith in you coming out alive, and to your higher echelons you and the team you're on are disposable fodder. It's rough around the edges - the ai voices aren't great - but its got a real soul to it and it's got a really solid core of combat mechanics. Beam swording things in this game without colliding with them is rough, but once you get it down you can get some really cinematic swipes with them. Give it a try; its worth the 14 dollars if you really yearn to be the mecha grunt you were destined to be.

I'm cheating a bit with this review because I'm playing the game with a heightened experience by using 2 Thrustmaster T16000m flight sticks, which i cannot recommend enough even though the game doesn't natively support them. Regardless, its been a fantastic experience. Despite the game not having proper voice acting, making the story a bit hard to follow and the characters feel like all the same person, this game knows what knows what mech fans want from the mech genre. its high action and fast paced, but its also a sim. a completely diegetic HUD thats mapped to the cockpit of your mech and not your character helps put you right there in the seat of the mech. seeing the world through the mechs display and being able to open the cockpit and see the world in full resolution, while seemingly having no gameplay purpose, really adds to the experience in a way you just dont get from other games. Typically im not a fan of fast paced flying mech games, but when they put this much effort into the sim aspect of it i cant help but fall in love. theres definitely some crude aspects to the game and a few jank areas, but the visuals and art direction are just strong enough to keep you immersed without trying to assault your screen with high fidelity, over detailed models. where the game really shines is both in audio and mission design. the sound effects, whether they are all hand made or from stock, fit the aesthetic perfectly and have that strong, space age, sci-fi punch that is indicative 80s-90s mecha anime without sounding dated at all. one of your weapons is a cannon that fires a single, massive, highly destructive, highly explosive round that absolutely decimates the massive warships and the sound of the round hitting a ship and exploding feels like it will singe your eyebrows off. the humming and whirring of the mech itself, zooming through space, feels so strangely familiar yet i cant tell what it reminds me of, other than that its exactly what you would expect a machine like this to sound. its one of those pieces of ambience that really hits the back of your skull and tickles your brain in all the right places especially when using the thrusters. as for mission structure, im extremely impressed. a lot of mech games think they can just throw you into a mission and have you shoot things and expect that to be fun enough for 6 hours, but XOL knows better. each mission feels completely different from the last as you go about executing multiple objectives through each mission that flow perfectly into each other. even if the moment to moment gameplay wasn't fun, the mission design would be strong enough to carry the game, thats how good i feel it is. you really never feel any monotony. as for the moment to moment combat, its surprisingly nuanced despite having features like auto lock. going up against massive capital ships that have multiple cannons that can decimate you in an instant may seem like an impossible task for a single mech, but you have so many ways to approach the situation that even when you are extremely low on armor, you still feel like you have a fighting chance that doesnt require you to slow your pace down to a grinding halt. simply approaching situations from a different angle can give you the advantage and if you really use all your tools effectively, you can really break this games ankles. Don't let the graphical fidelity or "voice acting" fool you, this game really is THAT GOOD.

[h1]BGMは「颯爽たる〇ャア」で[/h1] ガン〇ムっぽい機動は大体できる、オマージュとしては良好な操作性 チャージショットも命中補正してくれるのでニュータイプばりに当てれるのもポイント高し ただ寄り道してるといつの間にか味方が沈んでたりするのでちゃんと露払いはしないとダメです。 あと敵艦は砲台狙いのほうが撃破は早い。 ジ〇ン側なので〇ャアでもデュバ〇少佐でも好きなキャラになりきってプレイするのが吉なゲーム。

This game is rough around the edges for sure, but truly a diamond in the rough lays underneath. Want to feel like a pilot in a gundam universe? Done, write the check and go to the bank with it. Movement, weapons and an earned sense of unstoppable power lay in wait. Like just look past the AI voices and the rough english, this game is good for what it is trying to emulate. Hit me up developer, if I get more games like this? I'll do voice acting and translating for free.

This is a short sweet and well made game that I do hope the devs go back and remove the AI voices with any money they get off this. it's absolutely great and I can't wait to see if they do more in this genre or even expand upon the game with maybe some of the earth forces side stuff or more playable mecha.

Best game to feel like a mobile suit pilot on the market, great to play after watching 0079.