Mech Armada

Genre: Turn-Based Strategy-RPG / Roguelike

Players: 1

.

Review:

Note: This review has been directly sponsored by a kind donation from Jamie and His Cats. Thanks again for your generous contribution!

When it comes to Turn-Based Strategy-RPG Roguelike games featuring mechs, the one game that’s sure to come to mind for most people is Into the Breach, which made a name for itself with its minimalist take on the genre and high level of challenge. Mech Armada, released in 2022 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, combines all of these same elements, but the game this results in is actually quite different from Into the Breach, and in some rather clever ways.

The premise of this game is that the Earth has become overrun with a massive “swarm” of monsters from an unknown origin, and one scientist thinks he has come up with a solution to rid the planet of these creatures: autonomous, self-replicating mech robots. Players take control of these robots, choosing their battle strategies and determining what new robots to create as they progress to ever bigger and more formidable enemies.

What’s clever about Mech Armada is its approach to mech customization. Players can craft new mechs throughout their campaign, but only start out with a few pieces to do so. They’ll get more pieces as they go (as is typical for Roguelikes, the way you get them is somewhat randomized), and can mix and match these pieces in any combination of traversal method, body, and weapon/tool, but the better a part is, the more energy it adds to the cost of any mech created using that blueprint. So the trick here is to make blueprints that are effective, but only as expensive as they need to be, especially since you’re constantly scraping for energy, and your supply is usually going to be extremely limited.

Mech Armada is pretty challenging, as not only is your supply of energy limited, but your mechs cannot take too much abuse before being permanently destroyed. Your starter mechs can only sustain one or two hits from even the weakest of enemies, and most enemies will take them out in a single blow, and even if your mech is tough enough to take a hit, that damage will remain even after the battle is over. As such, you’ll be trying to move in a strategic manner to avoid taking damage whenever possible.

This challenge level is mitigated somewhat by some “Roguelite”-style permanent upgrades, but these are slow to accrue, so don’t count on this being a major factor in your progress. Rather, this is going to come down to getting good randomized mech parts, choosing good mech constructions, and being shrewd in your battle tactics.

When it comes to flaws, I do think the controls are a bit clunky and take some getting used to, and it’s frustrating that even though this game is 3D, there doesn’t seem to be any way to change the camera angle.

On the topic of the visuals, the 3D graphics in this game are not very impressive. The character designs look nice, and the modular mech constructions are decent enough, but the overall resolution is terrible, and there are visual elements that appear a bit glitchy on the screen. These visuals are joined by some decent sound design and a decent intense cinematic soundtrack.

Overall, Mech Armada really surprised me. It doesn’t look like much, but the mech creation and customization using Roguelike elements is pretty unique, and makes for some fun strategies in the Strategy-RPG gameplay. I do feel like the graphics and controls could stand to be polished a bit better, and the overall progression could do with being a bit faster, but this game manages to carve a niche for itself in the genre and give players a good reason to go for this even if they already have Into the Breach.

tl;dr – Mech Armada is a Turn-Based Strategy and Roguelike that has players earning random mech parts in each run and combining them to make mechs to fight hordes of monsters. The controls are clunky and the visuals are far from impressive, but this game’s approach to the Strategy-RPG and Roguelike genres is enjoyable and unique enough to overlook its flaws.

Grade: B

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Jamie and His Cats, Ben, Ilya Zverev, Andy Miller, Homer Simpin, Johannes, Francis Obst, Gabriel Coronado-Medina, Jared Wark, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}