Thoughts on the game after finishing True Ending

[Triggerpigking]

So i'm gonna start with negatives.

The lack of continues are absolutely atrocious, dying in a run 2-3 hours in is not fun and you get very little back for it it feels.
I feel they should be some sort of unlockable currency throughout the maps or allow for a failed mission per region.

Secondly I feel it should give you more upfront information on each map before you play them, telling me "it's a convoy mission" doesn't really tell me what to expect from map/enemy layout.
I died late into a run because the entire convoy was below me swarming with enemies and it was clear the route you had to take was up, but I simply had no way to attack it from above with 2 of my characters so I was forced to go down, and essentially be swarmed to death, couldn't focus on the truck because i'd die and when I did, well i'm now surrounded on all sides and unable to move forward.
It was also directly next to a wall making sync difficult even when down there.

It's for reasons like this that the difficulty feels like it jumps all over the place.
Some of the bosses like Abbas feel like they take a ridiculous amount of time, that one is a war of attrition, feel like i might've spent a quarter of a runs time on trying to whittle him down, the game says to be aggressive on him but he's swarming with enemies that'll destroy you and block any escape.
The boat boss is similar.

It also doesn't always explain clearly what is going on.
The bosses can have very confusing hitboxes, it's impossible to zoom out the map meaning sometimes enemies will have attack area's I can't see.
The game also really could do with a way to check the overall attack squares of the enemies, similar to FE.
Scrolling over them one by one takes time and can get confusing especially given as said it's impossible to zoom out.

And of course, the bugs, so, many, bugs.
If the game wants perfection from me, I expect perfection from it, thankfully I've not lost a run to any glitches but it's sure come close.
Bosses suddenly refusing to take damage, ruining my entire turn, bonus actions disappearing into thin air etc.
It's extremely frustrating.
__

So onto the good.
First off visual style is phenomenal, one of the main reasons I followed it, I love it so much and I kinda want an animated Metal Slug series now.
I love the structure of the game with the different regions, there's a hell of a lot of character variety and loadouts to boot, Fio is gorgeous, all that stuff is great and I think the tactics genre fits Metal Slug really well.
I also do really like the unlock system, incentives a lot of experimentation with character teams.

Overall really like it but I do think i'm gonna wait to return to this now until it's had some heavy patching and i'm hoping some QOL updates, spent about 27 hours in it so far though so good time for a break anyway.

[Koshimae]

It definitely needs a lot more polish, yeah. But damn does it get the roguelike elements while nailing it as a tactical rpg just right.
Difficulty tuning is alright imo, while some missions feel frustratingly difficult, others feel like a breeze. And the tough ones feel very satisfying to beat.

[Triggerpigking]

Originally posted by Koshimae:

It definitely needs a lot more polish, yeah. But damn does it get the roguelike elements while nailing it as a tactical rpg just right.
Difficulty tuning is alright imo, while some missions feel frustratingly difficult, others feel like a breeze. And the tough ones feel very satisfying to beat.

It really does, def one of the reasons I kept playing, quite addicting.
The difficulty admittedly wasn't too much of a problem, I only died once, but the problem I have is it's such a humongous setback later into the run, and you really don't know what each level will bring, it's turned me off wanting to play hard mode I must admit.

That convoy mission just didn't work at all for my team setup and it set me back like 2 hours, I feel the game either needs to communicate whats in a level better or add continues, though continues I think should be a precious and rare commodity if included.

Also on the difficulty note, i'm surprised how easy the final final boss was in comparison to the first two phases, was a lot easier to move around and hit him and just throw all the enemies into his line of fire.