Small furry children drive a legally distinct Metal Slug into war to save their families and eventually destroy God.

A clear passion project from CyberConnect2 in the Little Tail Bronx series, a prequel to Tail Concerto and Solatorobo. Unlike those two action-adventure games, however, here we have a somewhat unique take on a turn-based 3 kids in a row RPG. The entire game is set on a linear track that the tank moves along automatically, only stopping for combat, intermissions where you get to upgrade and/or see the characters hang out together, very short and very simple puzzle-based expeditions, and menu-based pit stops in towns/villages between chapters.

The gameplay is surprisingly snappy and fast, you're making decisions pretty much constantly with very little downtime. The combat works quite well, targeting weaknesses to set the enemies back on the timeline feels good and being able to freely swap the party members without taking up a turn (on a 3-turn cooldown) makes it feel pretty fluid and probably more strategic than it actually is. The only downside is that the battles do get somewhat repetitive, with not much variety to the enemies and the strategies required to defeat them.

The characters are quite endearing. The game definitely succeeded in making me want to protect them. Though, while they are written well enough for the most part, they do seem a little too mature for their supposed ages. Part of it is the fault of a somewhat stiff, but thankfully accurate, English translation. Another issue is that pretty much the only development each kid gets outside of their introductory chapter is only present in the optional affinity events with the other characters - and even then it's usually rather shallow. Other than a few exceptions, they aren't meaningfully included in the main story, most likely due to the permadeath mechanic meaning that at any point in the story any of the kids might not be present for the scene.

The visuals and the music are both lovely. Everything from the vehicles and the backgrounds to the character portraits and plentiful CGs looks great. The music is worth highlighting as well, with the vocal tracks being particularly gripping.

The difficulty has mostly been just right out of the gate, but you seem to scale faster than the enemies do. This is especially true if you don't shy away from the "dangerous" routes, the latter half of the game became fairly easy. Also, a lot of the enemies, including elites and bosses, are not immune to status ailments, including stun. I'm sure you can put two and two together.

Everything you thought was cool when you were 12 is what is actually cool:
Arnold, war, guns, riding in a giant tank that looks like it is going to fall apart at any second, all of it.

This is a beautiful franchise made with great care and love, even though today you can only emulate the other games in the series, these Fuga Melody of Steel games are a good gateway, mechanically they are not that great and it is a relatively easy game, the story and the music are magnificent.