Relayer Advanced Definitive Edition

Genre: Turn-Based Strategy-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

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

Relayer is a Turn-Based Strategy-RPG originally released in 2022 on PlayStation 4, then ported in 2025 to Nintendo Switch 2 in this Definitive Edition containing all of the game’s DLC. This game follows a crew full of mech pilots hunting down the titular “Relayers”, human-like creatures who use gravity-based attacks on humankind to speed up entropy… or something… for some reason.

Look, I’ve got to say, this game’s plot is the worst sort of sci-fi garbage. You know, the kind that throws a barrage of proper nouns at you in rapid-fire fashion without giving you a proper explanation of what any of it means or, more importantly, why you should care. Relayers, Starchildren, Quasars, Dark Energy, Original One, There’s a glossary in the menus where you can look this stuff up, but even then you’re left with a bunch of made-up terminology and little reason to be invested in it.

Let me show you what I mean. Starchildren are this game’s “chosen one” people capable of doing… something… involving the “power of the stars”. What are the “stars” in this context? How are the starchildren chosen? What is this power they receive? We’re told it gives them a control over gravity that enables them to control the mechs, but we never see this power used outside of that context, and also some starchildren also have other powers for some reason?

As if this wasn’t bad enough, the story centers on some truly groan-worthy tropes. Namely, a main character with amnesia (except for her formative traumatic event, naturally), whose sister was previously thought dead but is soon discovered to be alive and now has a totally different personality, is inexplicably evil, and is working with the villains who want to kill a lot of people. Because that’s a natural response when your sister failed to keep holding on as those same villains’ gravity weapon pulled the now-evil sis away, apparently.

If it seems like I’ve been dwelling on the dumb story for a while, that’s because the game dwells on it too. It pushes a lot of story at you, despite how terrible it all is. ironically, I think the voice actors who portray the game’s fully-voiced cast all do an excellent job with what little they’re given, but even strong line delivery can’t save an awful script.

The rest of the presentation is a real mixed bag. I’ll start with the positive: The anime-style character portraits are gorgeous, with some really nice-looking designs. Unfortunately, there’s little variety to their static poses. And even more unfortunately, the 3D visuals that form the rest of the presentation are pretty underwhelming, doing little to take advantage of the Nintendo Switch 2’s hardware beyond keeping a nice framerate and occasionally taking place in locations where you’ll have backgrounds with a lot of activity, like a bunch of asteroids in an asteroid field. Otherwise, this is a pretty standard-looking mech Strategy-RPG. Oh, and it’s backed by an orchestral soundtrack that is similarly forgettable.

This mediocrity extends to the gameplay. It’s fine, but there’s little here that’s especially interesting or ambitious in any way. At the very least you have some decent control over your characters’ equipment and there’s an experience-driven skill tree you can upgrade. Beyond this, it all feels pretty bog-standard.

If you enjoy Strategy-RPGs and mech games, and have a high tolerance for poorly-told sci-fi stories, you’ll likely find Relayer to be an adequate entry in the genre, but in no way is it an especially good game. Given that there are already better options in this genre on Nintendo Switch 2, I recommend playing one of those instead.

tl;dr – Relayer is a Turn-Based Strategy-RPG where players use mechs to fight evil alien mechs in a pretentious sci-fi story that accompanies fairly standard Strategy-RPG gameplay. Fans of the genre who like mechs may find this game worthwhile, but most players are much better off playing something else instead.

Grade: C

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