I'm not the biggest Level 5 fan, but this game has giant robots in it, so I had to buy.
The game is available for Switch and PS4, with these impressions based on the latter. I think, however, Level 5 built the game on Switch and later ported it to PS4 by just upping resolution, because this game really likes to load. This is how parts between missions go: you start somewhere, you want to move to another location, and the game loads. Naturally, nothing wrong with that. The location you get to has a cutscene, and after the cutscene the game loads again. Your character is there, most probably all characters from the cutscene are there, the background is the same, only that there are more secondary characters that might or might not be interactive. This is the loading I don't quite understand, esepcially on PS4; the loading itself is short, between 5 to 10 seconds but it's very distracting, and on PS4 the game has a 11GB install...I could understand all of this on Switch with its limited RAM, but even there I doubt the console wouldn't be able to hold a couple of screens worth of background, common character animations, and a few audio files that could be easily streamed from the original media.
Yes, I'm making a storm in a teacup out of this, but it's something you notice.
Anyway, Megaton Musashi is divided into tw main parts: the adventure part and the action part.
In the adventure part you go around as the spike-haired Yamato interacting with people trying to figure out the plot and hit the correct locations and/or dialogues to proceed to the next action phase.
The base story is that aliens have invaded Earth and wiped out 99% of its population, and the remaining few are housed safely in a city-sized shelter unaware of what's going on. Our Yamato is very good at an arcade game about giant robots, and gets recruited by the defence force to pilot the Musashi along two other characters.
How events unfold is very anime-like, and the character design tries hard to recall Kill La Kill, but kinda fails to do so because it's not as over-the-top as that anime and the various cutscenes lack exagerated camera angles.
Once you get all the required plot points you can progress to the action segment, where you control Musashi directly and lay waste on hordes of hostile aliens. You have the usual assortment of ranged and physical weapons, dashes, jumps, guards, special attacks, and heals. Controls are fluid and responsive, though movement feels a bit floaty and your close-range hits go through enemies like they were butter, lacking the weight and impact you'd expect from a giant robot. The mission areas look a bit sparse but render at a constant 60fps, and while the fighting isn't particularly deep or technical, it still feels good. But then again, my latest action game was Senran Kagura X Neptunia, and even Kuro No Kiseki has a more engaging and in-depth action combat system than that...
Musashi can be upgraded with parts collected during missions to improve basic stats or change weapon loadout. There's a good variety of weapons, although they don't feel all that different from each other, but this might be just because I'm at the very beginning of the game.
During the first mission your offensive systems come online one-by-one, and I must say that was pretty cool, although I was able to defeat the boss by spamming the first special attack before the other two came online...oh well.
And then it dawned on me: an anime boy going around locations talking to everyone to progress to the next action part? This is 13 Sentinels! It's 13 Sentinels without Vanillaware's awesome art and most probably without the complex story (really, the subtitle for Megaton Musashi could be "giant robot anime cliches: the game"), but the structure is pretty much the same. Whether this will be a bad thing or not it's too early to know.
The game is available for Switch and PS4, with these impressions based on the latter. I think, however, Level 5 built the game on Switch and later ported it to PS4 by just upping resolution, because this game really likes to load. This is how parts between missions go: you start somewhere, you want to move to another location, and the game loads. Naturally, nothing wrong with that. The location you get to has a cutscene, and after the cutscene the game loads again. Your character is there, most probably all characters from the cutscene are there, the background is the same, only that there are more secondary characters that might or might not be interactive. This is the loading I don't quite understand, esepcially on PS4; the loading itself is short, between 5 to 10 seconds but it's very distracting, and on PS4 the game has a 11GB install...I could understand all of this on Switch with its limited RAM, but even there I doubt the console wouldn't be able to hold a couple of screens worth of background, common character animations, and a few audio files that could be easily streamed from the original media.
Yes, I'm making a storm in a teacup out of this, but it's something you notice.
Anyway, Megaton Musashi is divided into tw main parts: the adventure part and the action part.
In the adventure part you go around as the spike-haired Yamato interacting with people trying to figure out the plot and hit the correct locations and/or dialogues to proceed to the next action phase.
The base story is that aliens have invaded Earth and wiped out 99% of its population, and the remaining few are housed safely in a city-sized shelter unaware of what's going on. Our Yamato is very good at an arcade game about giant robots, and gets recruited by the defence force to pilot the Musashi along two other characters.
How events unfold is very anime-like, and the character design tries hard to recall Kill La Kill, but kinda fails to do so because it's not as over-the-top as that anime and the various cutscenes lack exagerated camera angles.
Once you get all the required plot points you can progress to the action segment, where you control Musashi directly and lay waste on hordes of hostile aliens. You have the usual assortment of ranged and physical weapons, dashes, jumps, guards, special attacks, and heals. Controls are fluid and responsive, though movement feels a bit floaty and your close-range hits go through enemies like they were butter, lacking the weight and impact you'd expect from a giant robot. The mission areas look a bit sparse but render at a constant 60fps, and while the fighting isn't particularly deep or technical, it still feels good. But then again, my latest action game was Senran Kagura X Neptunia, and even Kuro No Kiseki has a more engaging and in-depth action combat system than that...
Musashi can be upgraded with parts collected during missions to improve basic stats or change weapon loadout. There's a good variety of weapons, although they don't feel all that different from each other, but this might be just because I'm at the very beginning of the game.
During the first mission your offensive systems come online one-by-one, and I must say that was pretty cool, although I was able to defeat the boss by spamming the first special attack before the other two came online...oh well.
And then it dawned on me: an anime boy going around locations talking to everyone to progress to the next action part? This is 13 Sentinels! It's 13 Sentinels without Vanillaware's awesome art and most probably without the complex story (really, the subtitle for Megaton Musashi could be "giant robot anime cliches: the game"), but the structure is pretty much the same. Whether this will be a bad thing or not it's too early to know.
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