I really want to love this game, I am a big fan of turn-based / tactical games.
The game as very nice features, and overall if can be fun, but I really don't like the game mechanics, the fact that the game force you to move in order to gain "shield", the in order to gain shield you should move you players as far as possible, that's basically the main tactic of the game. this "feature" affects everything in the game, from the way the maps are being built to the way the enemies plays.

in addtion there is no "overwatch", that was replaced by a sync move - if the other friendly players are in range, they will attack afther the selected player finish their attack. which is nice

ALSO THIS IS A ROGUE-LIKE GAME - it was not clearly mentioned anywhere...

overall I am disappointed, the all things getting a bit boring after few levels. - move far, sync your players...

I will give this game a few more hours and if I will change my mind I will update the review...

I wanted to like this game, I really did, but as of this writing I cannot recommend this game.

First off, I love tactics RPGs. They might just be my favorite genre of game. I've been playing them since Sega Master System era and I still continue to play them to this day. This game fails at several basic tenants of tactics games. First off, you are always a team of 3 max and the enemies can be more than 10 units deep. The further you move, the more likely you are to dodge attacks and attacks are made in straight lines.

Did you find the issue there? A game where you have to draw straight lines to attack expects you to base longer movement on your ability to not get hit. To further complicate things, you can't move after you attack (in most cases) so you have to choose between taking more damage next turn and getting a shot off or moving to the safer place and not doing damage.

Next, the difficulty between RANDOM maps varies so greatly you can face an easy map that you could beat without issue or it could be a heavily stacked against you map where you are sure to die. In a tactics game, having first area maps that can wreck you is just BAD GAME DESIGN.

Another big issue is text pacing. It has a delay to it so you can't quickly skip it, it's slow to display so fast readers have to wait for words to appear, and once you CAN skip it, it will skip displaying the rest of the text in the line you are in. It's bad for fast readers, slow readers, or people who just want to play the game.

Nostalgia for Metal Slug is also exploited here. If you wanted anything even remotely like Metal Slug, turn around and find another game to buy. While they use Metal Slug sprites, you don't feel like you are playing a Metal Slug game or as Metal Slug characters at all. This could just as easily be reskinned to a different cast and no one would even notice. It doesn't fit with any other Metal Slug title. By using the name "Metal Slug" they are trying to speak to your nostalgic interests because they couldn't sell this game on it's own merit.

Sounds in the game feel underwhelming. The soundtrack is quiet, and vocal samples sound "off". Even turned all the way up it's quieter than other content.

I went into this excited to play, and I left wishing I had played it within the refund window.

I am a fan of turn-based tactics games such as the GOAT: Final Fantasy Tactics. I have also been an enthusiast of the side-scrolling shooter genre & played all of the Metal Slug games up to Metal Slug X. I knew that, barring any colossal failure, I would enjoy this game.

What surprised me was the movement mechanics. Just camping and spamming isn't an option anymore and that is appreciated. There's nothing incredibly innovative, but the developers managed to add their own spin to things and that has made it exciting to me.