Its been out a while, but I decided to give this one a spin recently. I wasn't expecting much to be honest but i'm really surprised at how good the game is. About 15 hours in now and so far it really has been a lot of fun.
The closest comparison would be Romancing SaGa, it has the same open world giving you the freedom to explore without being tied to a main plot. In fact there seems to be even less plot to Metal Saga than there is in any of the R.SaGa / Frontier games.
You start the game with a scene as your character talks to his mum, who's a mechanic. You tell her you want to become a hunter, but she says she'd prefer it if you stayed at home and became a mechanic like her. You then get a choice as to whether you want to become a hunter or stay and be a mechanic, if you choose the latter, you'll get an amusing ending describing your dull life as a mechanic. Choose the first option, and the game begins. That's about it for the story so far, i've received a little bit of background info on the world and some of the characters, but nothing more than you find on the back of the box really. Anyway, from here on you're more or less on your own, but the game does give you enough tips to make it easy enough for you to get started.
There's a sort of introductory dungeon where you get your first tank - the Buggy - and fight your first outlaw - 'Trash Heap'. You don't have to do this, however, as you can go of immediately, but the game pushes you towards it, as you really need a tank to survive outside your hometown.
The tanks and outlaws are a big part of the game. Like in Arc 2 & 3 you have a hunter's office, from here you can find info on outlaws - monsters or people with a bounty on their heads - and by catching them you get paid. They get progressively harder, as you go along, sometimes there difficult to find, sometimes not so. There's usually a trick or weakness to each one, for some, having certain 'protectors' will nullify their damage so you can give them a beating without taking any real damage. For other's it seems you just have to be at the right level. But most so far have actually been pretty easy which is a dissapointment.
Now for the tanks, which are a pretty nice feature. So far i've only found 4 out of 18 (I think). You'll be relying on your tanks a lot and I rarely leave mine accept for when i'm going into buildings that you can't enter in the tanks. Each town has tank services, you can get new parts, upgrade these parts, paint your tanks etc. Its quite a lot of fun. The problem i've found is that there doesn't seem to be that much variety between the tanks, they all look different, but you can put the same parts on each one and they'll be more or less the same (so far - I have read on gamefaqs about the 'best tanks' so there must be some differences between some of them). They have a few starting stats, but its mostly the parts you have equipped on them that determines how powerful they are. So i'm still using my buggy a lot of the time, simply because i've got good parts, and swapping them over to a newer tank won't make much difference - they'll be more or less just as powerful. There are, however, parts that can only be used by certain tanks, for example anti-aircraft guns for specialised AA tanks, but most of the parts can be equipped on all tanks.
The battle system is good. You have skills but these cost money to use and you'll likely be using them less often than you do in your average RPG. And you can only have a few equipped. The battles can become tiresome, but you can speed them up by holding L2, making them very short and less of a bother. The encounter rate isn't bad either so you don't have battles coming every 2 seconds. All in all, I havn't actually found myself getting frustrated with the battles which is surprising and I sort of expected this to be the kind of RPG that just throws them at you constantly. Load times between battles are a bit annoying, there not too bad, and if you have a HDD connected you can install the game onto that (I'm not talking about HD Loader here, you can do this from the Metal Saga menu) and this supposedly lowers the loading times. Sadly I don't have a HDD connected to my PS2
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You can get different party members, so far i've got a mechanic called Misha, and a dog who you can equip with different guns and skills. You control your human allies but the dog is automatic (and surprisingly good!). In half the boss battles i've had, Misha has died, but the dog hasn't once - he's invincible! Another good thing, is the fact that there's no real negative consequences if you die, you simply get dragged back to you hometown, where a crazy doctor will resuscitate you. And then you just continue as normal, you don't lose experience, money or anything like that which is a relief. You might have to go back to wherever you were when you died to collect your tanks if you were using them, but thats it. It means you can try out different tactics on the boss battles without havig to worry about dying and re-doing a whole dungeon or so on. Its a really good system and makes the game a lot less stressful to play than a lot of RPG's.
There are a few bad points. The world is pretty big but so far i've found most of my time has been spent hunting outlaws. There isn't that much variety, lots of fetch quests really. There also isn't enough to variety between the tanks as i've said. And the skill system seems a bit rubbish (although I havn't really explored it).
The graphics are also bad. I've seen it compared to a PS1 game- which is rubbish, but it still doesn't look good, and it could maybe do with a little variety in the different dungeons, they are a bit samey - but not too bad.
In any case, the US version seems to be going for bugger all on play-asia so its definitely worth a look. Definitely a better game than the reviews will have you believe.
The closest comparison would be Romancing SaGa, it has the same open world giving you the freedom to explore without being tied to a main plot. In fact there seems to be even less plot to Metal Saga than there is in any of the R.SaGa / Frontier games.
You start the game with a scene as your character talks to his mum, who's a mechanic. You tell her you want to become a hunter, but she says she'd prefer it if you stayed at home and became a mechanic like her. You then get a choice as to whether you want to become a hunter or stay and be a mechanic, if you choose the latter, you'll get an amusing ending describing your dull life as a mechanic. Choose the first option, and the game begins. That's about it for the story so far, i've received a little bit of background info on the world and some of the characters, but nothing more than you find on the back of the box really. Anyway, from here on you're more or less on your own, but the game does give you enough tips to make it easy enough for you to get started.
There's a sort of introductory dungeon where you get your first tank - the Buggy - and fight your first outlaw - 'Trash Heap'. You don't have to do this, however, as you can go of immediately, but the game pushes you towards it, as you really need a tank to survive outside your hometown.
The tanks and outlaws are a big part of the game. Like in Arc 2 & 3 you have a hunter's office, from here you can find info on outlaws - monsters or people with a bounty on their heads - and by catching them you get paid. They get progressively harder, as you go along, sometimes there difficult to find, sometimes not so. There's usually a trick or weakness to each one, for some, having certain 'protectors' will nullify their damage so you can give them a beating without taking any real damage. For other's it seems you just have to be at the right level. But most so far have actually been pretty easy which is a dissapointment.
Now for the tanks, which are a pretty nice feature. So far i've only found 4 out of 18 (I think). You'll be relying on your tanks a lot and I rarely leave mine accept for when i'm going into buildings that you can't enter in the tanks. Each town has tank services, you can get new parts, upgrade these parts, paint your tanks etc. Its quite a lot of fun. The problem i've found is that there doesn't seem to be that much variety between the tanks, they all look different, but you can put the same parts on each one and they'll be more or less the same (so far - I have read on gamefaqs about the 'best tanks' so there must be some differences between some of them). They have a few starting stats, but its mostly the parts you have equipped on them that determines how powerful they are. So i'm still using my buggy a lot of the time, simply because i've got good parts, and swapping them over to a newer tank won't make much difference - they'll be more or less just as powerful. There are, however, parts that can only be used by certain tanks, for example anti-aircraft guns for specialised AA tanks, but most of the parts can be equipped on all tanks.
The battle system is good. You have skills but these cost money to use and you'll likely be using them less often than you do in your average RPG. And you can only have a few equipped. The battles can become tiresome, but you can speed them up by holding L2, making them very short and less of a bother. The encounter rate isn't bad either so you don't have battles coming every 2 seconds. All in all, I havn't actually found myself getting frustrated with the battles which is surprising and I sort of expected this to be the kind of RPG that just throws them at you constantly. Load times between battles are a bit annoying, there not too bad, and if you have a HDD connected you can install the game onto that (I'm not talking about HD Loader here, you can do this from the Metal Saga menu) and this supposedly lowers the loading times. Sadly I don't have a HDD connected to my PS2
.You can get different party members, so far i've got a mechanic called Misha, and a dog who you can equip with different guns and skills. You control your human allies but the dog is automatic (and surprisingly good!). In half the boss battles i've had, Misha has died, but the dog hasn't once - he's invincible! Another good thing, is the fact that there's no real negative consequences if you die, you simply get dragged back to you hometown, where a crazy doctor will resuscitate you. And then you just continue as normal, you don't lose experience, money or anything like that which is a relief. You might have to go back to wherever you were when you died to collect your tanks if you were using them, but thats it. It means you can try out different tactics on the boss battles without havig to worry about dying and re-doing a whole dungeon or so on. Its a really good system and makes the game a lot less stressful to play than a lot of RPG's.
There are a few bad points. The world is pretty big but so far i've found most of my time has been spent hunting outlaws. There isn't that much variety, lots of fetch quests really. There also isn't enough to variety between the tanks as i've said. And the skill system seems a bit rubbish (although I havn't really explored it).
The graphics are also bad. I've seen it compared to a PS1 game- which is rubbish, but it still doesn't look good, and it could maybe do with a little variety in the different dungeons, they are a bit samey - but not too bad.
In any case, the US version seems to be going for bugger all on play-asia so its definitely worth a look. Definitely a better game than the reviews will have you believe.
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