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Wake up, sister! The evil robots have traced us here

Super Alloy Ranger is a Mega Man clone that offers enjoyable platform-based gameplay. Although this game is more of a Mega Man X clone, as it has fast gameplay and the two characters you play as are like X and Zero. Despite having fun with the game, I did have a few issues with it that I will share in this review.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Fun shoot 'em up gameplay that is a little challenging
Two different characters for you to play as, each with their own play styles
Beautiful pixel art style

Cons

The story is a little confusing
Some of the backgrounds mesh with the platforming
A few boss fights are a little underwhelming


Story

So, I am going to be real here, I have no idea what’s going on with the story, it’s confusing to piece together what’s going on. From what I have gathered, there are two space hunters named Kelly and Rambos. Who are trapped on a planet known as Tanwada, however, two robot sisters named No. 3 and No. 2 appeared and asked to join them. While a mysterious program has infected the robot army on the planet Tanwada that makes them self-aware.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3480525183
That is all that I could gather, so I apologize if I missed anything, but that’s the story. I am confused about what’s going on here. There is lore you can collect and other characters you can speak to on your ship, but they don’t do anything. None of the main characters are exciting, nor is the main villain. There seems to be something here regarding the story, but with the confusing plot, it’s hard to keep up with it.

Gameplay

Super Alloy Ranger gives you the option to play as two characters: Kelly, who is your ranged character, and No. 2, your melee character. Make sure you choose wisely, as that is the character you are playing as through the whole game, you can’t switch between them. I played as No. 2, so any gameplay elements I refer to will be on her. However, I should at least explain how Kelly plays a little bit.
Kelly can shoot different bullets depending on the attribute chip that he has equipped with him; he can also do more damage by charging up his shot. Other than that, Kelly is pretty straightforward to play as. If you want to play it safe and prefer ranged combat, Kelly is the character for you. No. 2 is the melee-based character and has a greater variety of attacks than Kelly. You can switch between what attacks you want to use, which can be very useful for taking out certain enemies or dealing with bosses.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3480518599
You can do the standard things in platformers like jump, but your character can jump pretty high, so high in fact that I sometimes forget that you can double jump, dash, and wall bounce. You can dash after jumping, assuming you haven’t used your double jump, and vice versa. You can also play the levels in any order you so wish, so that’s a nice bonus. You character can also level up by collecting a certain number of orbs. Each stage has 100 of these, and for every 20 orbs you collect, your weapons level up and do more damage. You also have ultimate attacks you can use, which is very helpful for dealing with bosses or annoying enemies.
I noticed two issues with Super Alloy Ranger while playing, and while they certainly were not game-ruining, they were noticeable. Some of the backgrounds in the game sometimes meshed with the platforms or walls you thought had no exit, have one. This issue did not come up often and only happened on a few levels. Some boss fights were also underwhelming; you don’t do much while fighting them except just hit them, nothing unique or memorable happens with them, and they just feel empty. The enemies have charm to them because their designs look like characters from the Metal Slug series.

Graphics and Performance

The game uses a very beautiful pixel art style that I loved very much, which also reminds me of Metal Slug. I tested the game on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, AMD Ryzen 5 1500X Quad-Core Processor 3.50, and 16 GB of RAM. I had no issues while playing, and the game should be able to be played on any computer.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3480525536

Final Verdict

Super Alloy Ranger does not improve or do anything unique, and while the game's story is confusing, and only has a few hours of gameplay. For the price of 11.49 CDN, that is a fair price point for the game; however, waiting for a sale is something you can do. Other than that, the game doesn’t scratch that itch that Mega Man gives. It offers some fun gameplay that I can only play through once.
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