Hello hello, how have you all been? Anything interesting going on in your lives? I've been fine enough, ish. Something rather unfortunate happened a week ago, but things have been fine since then. I'm working on more stuff as usual, I hope you all look forward to it.

I've decided to write something different this time around - game reviews! Do tell me if you're interested in something like this from me! Anyway, this time I'm reviewing Metal Unit.

DEVELOPER: JellowSnow Studio

PUBLISHER: NEOWIZ

RELEASE DATE: Jan. 2021

GENRE: Rougelite, Action RPG

I can't lie, I bought this game cause of the cute female protagonist and the cool mechs, haha! I'm not really into rougelikes, but I thought I'd give it a try as it was on sale. TL;DR: Get it on sale only. Now on to the actual review.

THE GOOD: The combat is quite fun! Combos feel satisfying and there's actually a lot of weapons that are either drops or craftables, and many have a lot of flair. Traversing through the levels is interesting as there are a lot of hidden sub-levels and secret rooms that can give you extra loot. Really scratches that exploration itch. The boss fights were pretty decent as well. You can regain lost gear if you have enough mastery points on it, so that's a nice failsafe. And on a VERY personal note, I enjoyed the obvious aesthetic and thematic inspirations from Evangelion.

THE BAD: The story is really bad - it starts off with an interesting premise, but on the 4th chapter everything starts suddenly going at x10 speed and then it... stops, and no character gets a satisfying conclusion. This is also reflected in the game content itself - there are are only three real levels in the game (each with a sub-area), the final fourth one being a very underwhelming boss rush where you face off with some random monsters, then the final 'twist villain' boss that was honestly rather easy.

The level design is also very, VERY bland, and since you have to traverse through each level over and over again by virtue of it being a rougelite, every level gets extra stale extra quickly. And you WILL repeat levels a lot, as many enemies deal a shit ton of damage - and the insane amounts of visual clutter make it hard to discern what EXACTLY is hitting you. Also, out of the three sub-areas in the game, two of them have absolutely insufferable bosses. Since you get nothing of value out of defeating them and you lose your gear on death, I just gave up on them.

CONCLUSION: I can't help but feel this would've been better as a platformer or Metroidvania. This is EXACTLY the type of game that has made me shy away from Rougelites. All the repetition and trial-and-error feels like heavy padding, and breaking through roadblocks did not feel like a rewarding experience but a tedious one. As such, I was more relieved than satisfied when I was finally done with it.

This game clearly has about 20+ hours worth optional, endgame content, but a lot of the reviews on Steam clocked in at 13-15 hours. My playtime is at 14 hrs. and I have ZERO desire to go back for even a single hour. Again, I recommend you only get it on a sale and you're a diehard rougelike/lite fan, and if you don't have any other games on your backlog you might wanna try out.

Phew, that was a lot of MUCHO TEXTO. Anyway, that's all for now. More art coming up soon!