Metal Slug Tactics Review (BibleblackONLY)
Good game for the first 20 hours or so. But gradually, the freshness runs out and you start to see the frustrating side of the game.
1. Bugs and endless bugs
Now in my save i've unlocked every upgrade, BUT the game thinks there's 24 grenade upgrade when there's only 23, and keeps reminding me to go there and get the last NONE-EXISTING upgrade. Like every time you go to the lobby, there's a giant exclamation mark that forces you to look at the bug, truly brilliant design.
Saving a game mid-battle for dinner, and come back later, load the battle -- guess what, the map intractable are gone, disarmed traps were active again. And there's more to it, sometimes you load the game, and found there's no one in the map. Only to find ALL CHARACTERS including enemies are stuck in a SINGLE TILE by the corner of the map.
Finished a difficult unlock but the game doesn't recognize it (throwing an enemy with Clark, and let sticky bomb explode on a mind-controlled enemy). If you want to make unlocks so specific and niche, please make sure the game could properly detect it.
2. Repeated and Untested stages.
Firstly, there's only so few mission types/maps, and the game kinda encourages you to play through 4/4 areas every run (for true ending you'd have to). Resulting in a heavy amount of repeated experience. Honestly, i'd like a game better if it's 3 areas rotating out of 5, which extends the life-time and freshness a lot.
Other other hand, it has very poorly tested stages, especially escort.
It seems like they didn't test the jungle escorts at all. You got a VIP to protect and every single turn, the VIP will move to an exposed tile within 3-5 enemy's attack range. Plus the jungle maps are filled with multiply height levels, so some enemies are just none-approachable/not worth to approach. You might need to meat shield VIP a couple times but even that is bad, since being a meat-shield and not killing enemy results in more enemies to kill next turn.
On the other hand, you got mini-boss with 30 hp, that got downed in a single turn. Yes, the difficulty is THAT random.
3. Very inconsistent character skills
You get special skills that allows you to kill 20 enemy in one turn (special action kill returns action point), that just carries the game. Or skill combos that stacks damage easily (dodge talents + burst). And on the other hand, you get skills that gives +1 to mind-controlled enemy, which you have no control over.
I mean....i like randomness but this is a bit on the cheap side really, the game is to the point when you see a certain pick-up, you know how the rest of it plays. The pool is made not deep enough and poorly combined for repeated runs.
Conclusion:
Like i said, if you plan to just play for 20 hours than it's quite potentially a good pick. But the problem is that, the developers seems to have made a blurred decision on the life-span of the game. On one side, they seem to want to extend the game's life by lots of very specific achievements(and you need them to fully unlock character/see their ending), and rather slow unlocks that's tied to achievements. However, on the other side, they seem to expect the game to be a lite/short-life experience, looking at very small pools of upgrade/maps. With addition of all those bugs (which is still not fully fixed until today), i can't give a recommendation so far.
If they fix ALL the weird bugs, i'd recommend the game for a short-period fun (around 20-40 hours).