Let me start out by saying that I love giant robots. I have one tattooed on my right arm. That's how much I like them. Why? I have no idea. I am from the 70's and giant robots were really a thing. I got to see Ultraman, but he's not really a robot. At least I don't think so. Anyway, when I saw my first episode of Starvengers, I was hooked. So there is bias in this review.
This game...it's the game I wanted to play as a kid. Now that I have it, I'm in all the way. The bottom line is that this is a premier games of mech blasting each other to kingdom come. Tanks too. They don't escape the carnage. The trick is that the player mechs have an AI chip that allowed them to predict everything. Because of that, you are able to react to what your enemy is doing before it can act. While that sounds like a huge advantage, the enemy is far more numerous than you are, and without this AI prediction capibility, you would be meat on a platter. And it's brilliant.
The tutorial is the start of the game, and it teaches the basics of the game. It looks really complicated, but once you get into the groove you will be fine. The sequence is to move around a map towards objectives, outfit your team with mechs that are hopefully suited to the mission, and then pop into tactical combat. After missions, you geet to salvage a certain number of points of gear, see how your pilots and mechs faired during the battle, and then get back at it.
The tactical combat is really fun. Nice camera controls mean that you can view the battlefield from all angles. Your mech can move fast or slow depending on the mech's performance. Early in the second area you get jump jets which allow you mechs to flit around the battlefield and avoid getting creamed by the enemy. Better weapons with affixes that pump up the power. All weapons have ranges and projectile speed, which you must take into account as you run around. Weapon accuracy is affected by range as well as mech movement for some weapons. Meanwhile, your shotgun doesn't care if you send a blast off as you beat feet for cover. Every action adds heat to your mech, and if you go over the heat threshold, you will take damage from the heat. It's a balancing act, and I've found it's better to wait for a good shot and conserve your heat for when you really need it, like when you run completely around a mech and blast it from behind. And yes, you get an advantage for attacking from behind. If it's raining, your heat goes down a bit. If you are immersed in water, it goes down a lot. Terrain has levels and is destructible, which is cool when you decided that instead of outmaneuvering someone, you'd rather get rid of their cover instead. But don't do it in towns, as you may lose the mission because you wasted too many women and children. Morality? Maybe, but this is war. We need hearts and minds and all of that rot.
Between missions, once you get your mobile base, you can rest your pilots who are fatigued, fix your damaged mech and swap out parts. Apparently these mechs are very modular so you can change anything on the mechs in moments. There are many weapon choices, so you can fine-tune your mechs into lethal killing machines. Customization also allows you to paint your mechs in a variety of colors, although it's fixed to certain color patterns and you don't have 100% freedom. It works for the most part. You can also customize your pilots' names, callsign and portrait.
Speaking of pilots, we must discuss progression. Almost every action the damages an enemy earns pilots victory points. These points level up your pilots, and give them skills to make them more lethal. Many of the levels allow the player to make a choice, so you can further make your team in the image that you want. The gear that you can salvage is sort of loot-shooter type stuff. Each piece of equipment has a rarity value, and once you get parts that aren't vanilla, you can usually attach mods to every part to suit your needs. There is a wide range of mods, and they do things like add extra armor to a part, lower the weight of the part, extra damage from a weapon, and that sort of thing.
The physics of the game world work well. Every mech has a powerplant, and that powerplant makes the mech move. When you start adding parts, you add weight, and weight slows you down. Finding the balance for the type of team you want to run is key to the game, and in this game it feels like maneuver is what keeps you in one piece. But if you want a heavy mech that moves 4, you can do that. Just make sure you have a shield.
Speaking of shields, the weapon varieties are plentiful. You start with assault rifles, shotguns and shields, along with side arms. You will soon get more types of weapons; sniper rifles, rocket launchers, beam guns, smgs. I just made it to my third zone, and got a sword. Now I need to decide if I want to give up my primo smg for it. Obviously a sword requires close proximity and is devastating, but to get close, you got to stay alive. Tradeoffs!
Early on you will get the mobile base I mentioned earlier. Once you have the base, you can start building your own gear, including frames for mechs. This is important to have, even if your team can only pilot some of them because of the way the missions work. I'll get to that next, but being able to manufacture parts is key to outfitting your team in your own image as you can never be sure what parts you will recover from battle. The parts that you salvage are almost always damaged, which is obvious since you blew them all away. But if you manufacture a part, it's clean and ready to go. No need to start from a disadvantage anymore. On that front, if you can somehow knock out the enemy pilot, you might capture an almost pristine mech, which means better parts and cheaper salvage. Oh yeah, you don't get to keep everything you salvage. You have a limited pool of salvage points so you need to really evaluate your needs during salvage. Also, salvaging enough of a certain type of part adds it to your workshop for manufacture.
The game world looks really big. There is a strategic map where you can see the zone that need liberation. Click on one and you drop into that zone. The travel map is topographical so there are hills, forests and even mountains to traverse to get from one mission or another. If you take too long to get around, the missions reset, as does the enemy progression. The key is to do enough damage to get the "showdown" mission to appear. If you beat the showdown mission, the province is secured and you move to another one. And your choices for zones seem to fall into two flavors: main objectives and optional objectives. Each zone has traits, such as heightened enemy resistance or local resistance units that will aid you in battle. There may be more types, but I haven't seen them yet. But each zone has an outpost that you can travel to and rest\heal your pilots and fix your mechs. But again, that takes time and if you do this the enemy forces will keep regrouping and you have to keep trying to beat them down enough to get the end mission to appear.
Pilots can die, either from an exploding mech or because they have too much trauma. Each pilot earns one trauma if they are knocked out in battle, and once they get three, they die. Im not sure if "knocked out" means lose consciousness taking them out of the fight, or if they survive even if their mechs are destroyed. But do that three times and you will need a new pilot. Pilots are recruited at the friendly base, and you can usually get a rookie or a vet. The vets are usually more expensive in terms of supplies but are already far more lethal than a rookie. Again with the balancing act.
There is one thing that bugs me though. There isn't a simple heat readout that I can see. Heat plays such an why there isn't a simple number to look at boggles my mind. But that's it. Otherwise, this game is perfect for me. If you like robot combat, buy this game.
