A very bizarre game I personally only stumbled onto due to trying to fill a vacant, mecha-shaped, hole, after devouring multiple playthroughs of 'Armored Core VI', rather than due to any enduring renown which surrounds the original PS2 release from 2003.
Much of that reaction might be due to my frame of reference for mech-based action being spoiled by FromSoftware's aforementioned 'Armored Core VI', one of the best and most-recent exemplars of the genre; much of that reaction might be due to me brushing up against the Hideo Kojima zeitgeist and its very-particular genre of strangeness for the first time, having never touched a 'Metal Gear' or 'Death Stranding' game before; or possibly, more simply, balking at the intricacies of a game over twenty years old, given it's a dubiously-polished remaster nearly ten years ago; but what's here is possibly the strongest contender for being simply the most odd game in my Steam library, in terms of the surrounding accoutrements moreso than its core mechanical content.
It's a remaster of a twenty-three year old sequel to an even older game... not available on PC in any state whatsoever. It has built-in VR support, natively, in which you play the same content from a first-person perspective, for... some reason? It buries you in upgrades, giving you a new tool nearly every twenty or thirty minutes of gameplay... but the story is so short, and has so few missions in which you're allowed to use the entire kit you've been given, specific missions and bosses having specific gimmicks mandated to get through them. Missions beyond the campaign are available... but only if you find them as hidden collectibles, or enter the Konami Code at specific points. The English Dub is so atrocious, and poorly done, among the worst I have ever experienced in a game or anime, that it wraps around to being good if you can enjoy the camp, rather than expect to engage with the story seriously. I am finding out it is by the same developers as 'Umamusume', somehow, only just now, as I am typing this review.
It overall makes for a jarring experience, the more of that experience you get through, stumbling over some very specific design choices and their limitations in the midst of very tight and polished, fast-paced, hack-and-slash gameplay (and accompanied by a soundtrack infinitely better than the English translation of the narrative you're presented with). If you can tolerate the flawed characteristics of the era and place in which the game was made, and the hit-and-miss quality of the port onto PC, the cheesy nature of the English dub, and appreciate the game as an antiquated piece (or, are just desperate for a mecha game for VR use), what's here is solid and finds an audience for a reason, but probably only worth considering if you see it on-sale.
