Fun game with a funky difficulty curve. Let me save you some trouble.
The action is fast. Combat is fun. A LOT of the game is trial and error, but once you figure out the game's tricks, you can have loads of fun.
Pay attention to your mission objective, only focus on that. Listen to ALL of the mission briefings at least once. Don't focus on destroying every enemy in the level. That's a great way to run out of ammo, get killed, or lower your mission rank. Plus, the game just becomes tedious and boring if you do that.
How to have fun with this game: set your own personal goals, like
1. Complete the mission within a certain amount of time
2. Finish a mission using only a blade
3. Try not get shot at too much
IMPORTANT advice on picking your initial AC: This is the one that you will be using for the majority of the game. How hard, how easy, how difficult, how FRUSTRATING the game can be is mostly dependent on the initial AC.
You can't customize these, because they belong to the company. You have to build an identical one out of unlocked parts you have (thankfully, the game does this for you). This costs LOTSAMONEY.
Buying these parts, and then changing them out too frequently (get this, it costs money to REMOVE PARTS), will sap all of your cash if you bother with this at the beginning of the game.
Depending on what AC you initially pick, parts belonging to other types of ACs will be locked away for a long time.
If you are patient, and you find a lot of today's games not challenging, this game may be for you. Just be patient, and stick with it.
If you want to discover the game for yourself, stop reading. Because I'm about to reveal some tricks that could:
1. Not pertain to your play style, and spoil the game for you
2. Lessen the difficulty and frustration of certain parts the game
3. Increase the difficulty and frustration of other parts of the game (I'm stuck on the mission SEA OF BLOOD, so my word is not the gospel).
If you want to beat SWARMS OF RED EYES and save yourself a boat load of FRUSTRATION : PICK AN AC WITH A MACHINE GUN (not gatling guns, many have a lower ammo count). There are only two initial ACs that have machine guns (to my knowledge), they are under the HARD handing class. One is called the SALAUX, the other is the 03-ALIYA.
If you want to S rank a lot of the missions on your first go, you want an AC with a blade. The white EASY handling AC (your first option) with the blade is good at that, and has decent air time and over boosting, BUT IS ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE AT EVERYTHING ELSE. I would not use this one.
The 03-ALIYA? It has a blade!! And a laser cannon!! It's REALLY fast on the ground, and provided you are a dedicated and clever pilot, will get you S ranks.
THIS AC IS HARD CLASS FOR A REASON. This is a ground based AC, it does not have a good amount of air time, only just enough for it not to be a big problem. The blade is VERY short, you will need to be very precise when doing melee combat (the DESERT WOLF mission will require some retries before you get it right.) Over boosting is non existent with this AC. The one time this is a necessity is during the mission SHARPSHOOTING: you will barely make it across the water. This AC's laser will drain your boost meter quickly, so it has the potential to be the ugly duckling of your weapons.
I am currently stuck on SEA OF BLOOD, a water based mission. This AC performs very badly over water if you have to perform a lot of quick boosting (this is a battle versus a NEXT type AC, so this is a given.Read full review
