Decent but unspectacular SRPG. Unambitious and safe, as expected of God Wars developer. Writing is the usual generic anime-y (which you might find acceptable if you, idk, are into shounen scifi anime or something). But if you play SRW you probably don't really care about the texts too much anyway. Some people might use phrase like "Space opera" to describe this game but it really is not that, don't expect Legend of Galactic Heroes kind of epicness, because even Infinite Space is much more epic than this. Then again the whole starchildren concept feels too fanservice-y and not realistic enough for me to take it seriously, but it is probably a plus for some people who want a cast/team full of waifus only.

Anyway customization is the usual jrpg system, can buy equipments, improve pilot skills and learn new abilities (active and passive) by traversing nodes that cost points (reminiscent of FF X sphere grid system), and they also add a way to upgrade mecha ala SRW. It has job system but it basically only branch into 2, and you can't even change starting job, so just think like every character has their own thing. Game is definitely on the easy side, and the fact that you can manipulate aggro and enemy targeting make the AI predictable (as opposed to say, Troubleshooter or Xcom where the AI can go for your squishy and kill it so you have to be really careful when playing in highest difficulty). The map design is also boring, because the battle take place in space basically so there isn't really terrain and such to worry about.

Another plus for the game is that, well it is long. It has loads of missions. And post game too. Some might say it overstay its welcome but I say you can always quit anytime and this is definitely better than those silly 20 missions games that takes <20 hrs to beat. Then again it is an average, mediocre game at worst, and maybe decent at best if you're into the whole scifi/mecha thing.

Someone was giving thumbs down on the game for having bad graphic and not having higher res than 1080p, I say who cares about those, it should be a positive that the game runs on potato and runs cool on laptops. All these uncapped framerate 4k UHD gamers should stay away from console ports and just stick to big budget AAA open world action adventure games, srpg is like the wrong genre for you. I'm just happy console games are getting PC ports these days. However, the lack of key rebinding option sucks, never liked using "backspace" as cancel.

Finally, it's unusual for JP company to have regional pricing, so thumbs up for proper regional pricing.

Overall I give this game a 7/10.

Bit premature since I'm not done yet but I don't see things changing too much. If things do change I'll edit.

TL;DR - Game is fine. Does nothing all that well, but nothing about it is really a dumpster fire. Probably worth it's slightly below AAA price. Have bought strategy games for more money that I haven't enjoyed as much I'd still recommend to people.

Nice long SRPG. I was in the mood for one of those, picked this up, and so far it's satisfied. Nothing about this game is really all that extraordinary. Story is whatever, not exactly good but at least it's enough I can pretend to care about it. Gameplay is fine, I'll break it down a bit more later but it's definitely closer to being good than it is to being bad. Heck I wouldn't even call it mediocre, it's very decent. From all the negative reviews I was expecting the keybinds to be godawful but no, they're actually really good WITH ONE EXCEPTION. Backspace being "go back" in menus is asinine because it's on the opposite side of the keyboard from everything else, but like, there's no way a sane person would consider one single stupid keybind in menus to be a dealbreaker. The rest of the options menu is sparse but really has everything you'd need. Plenty of options for combat animation speeds, how the grid is displayed, etc.

As far as gameplay goes things are pretty basic. there are 4 weapon types (technically 6 i suppose, not counting boss only weapons, but im not going to count "shield" and "smaller sword" as their own things) each with their own range. Attacking someone whose weapon shares the same effective range as your weapon gives them a chance to counter, although you can change ranges with abilities. Abilities are neat, plenty of meaningful buffs and debuffs to go around, and the enemy actually takes advantage of them too. Equipment and mech upgrading is very basic, mostly just "bigger number" and picking if you want to deal/resist physical or magic damage but there is enough equipment with unique passives to make some fun builds possible. Overall superior to your average SRPG that isn't one of the big names.

Maps are super basic. Normally there's just a few obstacles with a chest or two, although I will give them credit on the chest placement, some of them can be tricky to get at without either putting yourself at risk or accidentally finishing the mission. Still, the maps aren't even this way for any sort of artistic choice, it's literally just because the AI's pathfinding sucks. On maps with large walls etc. it's pretty easy to abuse the AI and trick a chunk of enemies into clumping up near that wall. THAT SAID the way you do this is by abusing mechanics built in the game for the soul purpose of manipulating the AI, and it is actually kinda fun tactically. If I can accept APC aggro abuse in advance wars (or the mere existence of psionics in OG xcom) I can accept this. It looks stupid but doesn't really detract from the strategic depth that much.

As far as balance and difficulty go, the one area I have to say the game has excelled at was the difficulty curve. With no grinding, on hard things have so far felt like I'm always at exactly the right sport where battles are just challenging enough I have to think a little but never frustrating. Lunatic mode this is not, but its not entirely brainless which is pretty good in my book. Balance wise... well it's not perfect but it's definitely better than say Three Houses or Triangle Strategy in that department. Aggro manipulation is quite strong though. Still, every character feels like they have some role to perform and no class has stood out to me as being super weak yet.

Overall I recommend this game. I think the price is reasonable, you get a lot of content of acceptable quality for not even a AAA price. It's definitely worth it on sale though. This game will never win any awards, but if all you want is an srpg that does not actively suck in any one department and has a decent amount of content then this is a fine game.

Relayer Advanced is a SRPG game developed by Dragami Games and is a more completed version of the original Relayer which was released as an exclusive console back in March, now come with a more end game content and overall QoL improvement.

The game mechanic was actually well done, they get the basic right and maintain a good pace throughout. Simplicity yet offer just enough good back and front experience in engaging the ever increasing difficulty as player dive deeper into storyline as well as gaining new allies whom every of those come with unique personal skill dedicated to their distinctly playstyle or focus on performing certain role, keeping your arsenal fresh from start to the end.

Story by itself focus heavily on human interaction between characters. Due to plot point being a simple very powerful alien want to destroy solar system and invade humanity, most of how the stories told are being through the drama between group of characters who are trying to get thing done under such circumstance, ideal clashing or finding the answer to their existing...etc those kind of things. While these drama clash the plot point and world building is slowly revealed through characters understanding of the situation. This is what people describe as "human drama" in japan.


Relayer Advance's storyline is narrated through VN section. Has basic option in similar to other VN like auto text, skip and revisit chat log. In this basic narration come with 100% voiced in case of main story.

In battle, Relayer Advance plays out like classic SRPG which unit when their turn come up, can choose to perform action. The battle field is a board grid indicated by square, a unit can "Move" in these squares and if there's unit within range of attack, they can choose to do so and enter the battle animation scene. In addition to "Move" and "Attack" the unit can use "Item" or "Defend" to reduce incoming damage while still allow to counter attack.

Unit levels up by earning EXP via performing those actions such as Attack or use Skill. The additional EXP can gained by defeating an enemy unit. In this game, alongside EXP, JP (Job Point) will also be granted through these actions which can be used to unlock various skill dedicated to a job class that a unit has been assigned to.

Turn wheel is indicated by individual based on their "AGI" stats. That means that turn is universal and order of which unit will be going to act will be differed. Character with higher AGI will get to act first on that turn. Some of fast act enemy can attack your team, and the slow one can heal or remove all the debuff you have inflicted them on during that turn, as such this game strategy will be greatly differ from standard player-enemy phase that most other game has.

The main selling point is "Aggro" system. Which is an only stat your team will be possessed. It's stat used to indicated whom will be targeted by an AI enemy attack within their range. By utilizing Aggro player will be able to control over the battlefield where for example they can make sure the slow support/attacker unit will not be targeted by a fast attacker from opposite front and have unit that can tank some damage take all the punishment instead. This system is especially more important as number of enemy are increased as well as their variety of units are expanded which can deal a blow to a team should player not be careful.

Each unit will be have their own job class and will inherited passive and active skill from respective one. There're total of 4 main jobs, which each job will have two branches, where there're total of 3 tiers from Beginner to Intermediate then Expert. Therefore there're total of 20 jobs in the game. Main job includes Assaulter, Tank, Scout and Sniper, Assaulter is a melee attacker, Tank will take on frontline and draw aggro to themselves, Sniper will snipe anything from range while Scout may be proficient in either buff or debuff. In additional to that each unit in player team will have their own personal skill which can be learnt in any of the branch and offer a unique play style to that only unit.

Before player taking off to battle. They can use this opportunity to upgrade their unit using the currency "SG" they gain from completing the mission and taking out an enemy, to buy a new equipment such as weapon, armor and chip to further bestow your unit's power as well as equipping them and equipment or skill they have learnt. Upgrading Mech. Learning new skill using JP. Or take on the simulation battle which is a free battle used to earn EXP, JP and SG as many time as player wish.

This is a general loop gameplay of this game, you tackle stage by stage, reading new story, then building an even stronger team to process to an ever increasing difficulty. The game takes as long as 40-60 hours to complete on main story, which will unlock end game content with even more stage to tackle and higher tier equipment to collect. It would likely take more than 100 hours to complete everything in a game that has to offer


As mention, story involves much on human interaction between characters. It helps that all casts are well written and greatly distinct from each other with them having role to play in this war torn universe. The overall plots are within realm of expectation but pairing nicely all throughout the end which manage to keep player engaged consistently while not over stay their welcome. The starting of story may sound obvious and nay feel underwhelming because player may not feel any obliged to relate to the character in story yet right away but it's generally warmed up later as thing start to connect and make more sense.

Music is on average side with little variety but offer just enough for VN narration. With this budget size music is probably never meant to be their main focus.


I personally enjoy it. There're quite a few missions end game to tackle and additional what if story in the end is a more welcome fun. I'm planning to 100% it and to see what all they have to offer. I would recommend to anyone who like SRPG with story within realm of anime character interaction but have enough gameplay to go with and is actually a fun experience one.

A fun turn-based tactics RPG.


The storytelling is visual novel-style. Character art is mostly static but will change expressions, and the art is good. Voicing is also good, especially the main characters Terra and Luna, and the main story is fully voiced. The story starts slow and generic but later on every character gets some development. There's some fun moments and the ending is satisfying.


On to gameplay, the mecha designs are good but there's not many designs. All Assaults share the same model, all Tanks share the same model and so on just with different colors. Combat animations and sounds are great, especially the "clash" animations when two units with the same weapon attack each other and one of them misses or dies. That said, instead of a variety of animations for the same attack, I would have preferred unique animations for different attacks. For instance a basic attack using one animation, Virus Bit using another and so on.


This is Relayer's weakest area by far. On advancement and customization, think of Relayer as more of a tactics game than a strategy game. The planning is very basic. Every character has a few unique abilities, and is pre-assigned one out of 4 possible classes. Once they master their basic class, they can choose two routes, so one decision affects both their intermediate and advanced class. Mech customization is also pretty linear. You upgrade six parts to level 10 and done. The only real customization is weapon type and accessory type, of which there's not a lot of weapon configs. I would have liked dual wield swords or machineguns, or a sword in one hand and a machinegun in another, or more weapons in general.

Besides that, other Japanese mecha RPGs usually offer a wide variety of mechs for each character to pilot, or alternatively parts to customize each unit with. Meanwhile Western turn-based RPGs tend to allow for deeper customization, for instance an open system where characters can multiclass and choose different areas to specialize in, such that no two playthroughs are the same. The systems are just too simple in Relayer.

Overall 6.7/10, buy if you like sci-fi and mecha.

I was super excited for this game and so far I'm pretty disappointed in the release. This needs some work before it's a good PC port.

Namely:

• X as A
  
• 1080p max output
  
• no controller buttons
  
• control scheme is kind of weird as well (left right dpad doesn't change selections, up and down do, other elements dpad just doesn't work on certain menus, this translates to the keyboard as well)
  
• zero graphics settings outside of 720p or 1080p, and windowed/fullscreen/borderless fullscreen
  
• can't remap buttons
  
• mouse cursor isn't auto hidden
  
• no way to quit game from battle menu
  
• no 1280x800 resolution support (for the Steam Deck)
  
• no steam save support

Does it play great, in terms of FPS?
5600x and a 3070 at 1440p and it's locked to 144hz, but this is an SRPG, you don't really need more than 30FPS really.

So that's a point in it's favor that at least the FPS is uncapped, but as it is now, the game is a really disappointing PC port and I'm debating refunding it merely for the lack of 1440p support, updating the icons to show the controller commands, and lack of being able to rebind the controls somehow.

I might "settle" (though I would prefer there was graphics settings to improve things) for no GFX settings, if they could just change the resolution support and keybind remapping, and controller button visibility, but right now they're kind of dealbreakers.

I'll come back and update my review if the developers fix these things.

I pre-ordered this game on PS5. What most people don't get or like about this game is the lack of turn based battles. The main focus of this game was always the story and the characters, the game play came second, and because of that it works in it's favor since a bunch of people criticize mechs games for mainly not having a decent or enough story but when they do have a decent or enough story, they complain about a bunch of minor crap. But yeah, I got off track. Give this game a chance, it has an interesting story but remember the game is mostly dialog that builds of the characters and expands the lore, so don't expect to much strategic game play.

This amazing SRPG (from the team behind the original Front Mission, just to remind you) deserves way better ratings. Most bad ratings just have to do with early technical problems like key binding and resolution, which I'm sure will be fixed soon. Based on my experience with the console version, I definitely recommend this game, especially if you like mech, sci-fi and anime girls.

This one is a huge improvement over God Wars, which has mostly to do with the amazing new battle animations in 3D and a story and characters that work better for me. Everything looks great and this is the improved version compared to the original console release, with a greatly improved UI and new content. It doesn't happen often that we get a great SRPG on PC and this one has actually good English voice over (I still prefer the amazing Japanese voice cast though). And the soundtrack is just amazing. You have to be in the mood for longer visual novel sections between battles, but they are well made.

I'm just so happy that this one has found it's way to PC :)

This is everything I hoped it would be. I am a huge fan of Front Mission so hearing the original FM team worked on this was exciting to me, and I knew I had to check it out.

While I will agree the story isn't exactly breaking any new ground, and the English voiceovers aren't going to be winning any awards, the gameplay is on-point for a strategy RPG. The character artwork is well-done as well, and only held back by the fact we are limited to 1080p. The fight/attack mini-cutscenes are beautifully animated however, with unique animations depending on a variety of factors. I have yet to get tired of watching them - but I confess I do love watching mech battles in general.

I am also unsure why or how everyone is having problems with the control scheme - using an Xbox controller everything has worked perfectly fine out of the box. There's no button prompts unfortunately, but it really isn't that hard to mentally associate what button does what after about a minute or two at most.

Well-worth the money overall, I would currently put it at a 7.5/10, solid above average.

Not a fan of Gundam or any space combat focused games but this one caught my attention with a nice discount. So far it has been pretty solid, clearly a budget title but damn those combat animations are stellar, pun intended. Also runs surprisingly well, easily reaching 144fps on my old 1070 making those animations butter smooth.
Shame it isn't getting more attention, hence the simple positive review added to the bunch.