Metal Max Xeno

« It’s refreshing in its earnest nature, and is actually more hopeful than nihilistic. But it is still on the simple and tropey side. »

« Combat is easily the strongest part of Metal Max Xeno. It’s quite awesome seeing different developers take on the turn-based combat fans of the genre know and love, and modernize it in different ways. »

« Postapocalyptic RPG mixing elements from Mad Max, Terminator and Armored Core with old-fashioned mechanics, storytelling and visuals. »

« Metal Max Xeno is one of the most average RPG's I've played in a long while. It's almost a comfort food in a strange way: warm and familiar but without any spice. »

« It does so with a title that takes the most popular features of the J-RPG, amalgamating them with the intriguing vehicle system and dropping everything into a fascinating and picturesque imagery. The discreet, but not exceptional, bulk of content, however, lends a side to a technical section too old to be able to fully satisfy an audience of players who, just recently, has met some members of the genre much more sumptuous, profound and solid. »

« I'm glad to see the Metal Max series make a comeback in the west. However, Metal Max Xeno's simplistic nature, monotonous campaign, and archaic presentation definitely detract from its more satisfying elements. »

« While some of the tank building and character class systems in Metal Max Xeno are moderately interesting, nothing else in this RPG is remarkable enough to stand out, which makes this a difficult game to recommend. At least the game's relatively short run-time and budget price means it's not a tremendous investment for those curious enough to check it out. »

« Although METAL MAX Xeno offers an intriguing mix of tank-based and on-foot battles, its low-budget and adherence to JRPG traditions makes it feel like a relic of the bygone age. The characters are largely forgettable and sometimes embarrassing. Then there's the story, which is competently told and not much else. Still, for whatever it's worth, the journey is a pleasant one. The player's experience won't be bogged down by needlessly long load times or a mind-numbing user interface. This post-apocalyptic trek, much like any decent vacation, is designed to be relaxing and convenient. »

« It's crazy fun to play with your tanks roaming the wasteland and fighting monsters, But the story is very slight and the characters a bit one-dimensional. As a fan of Metal Max games I enjoyed it but it's not for everyone. The tank customisation is brilliant and you will collect an impressive armoury of tanks and tank weapons. Dungeons are explored on foot and they are very similar in design and not very interesting, but exploring the wastelands in tanks is always fun. To do everything you have to play the game a number of times, although that's not too hard to do. »

« If you have a soft spot for 90's experimental JRPGs, then this is right up your alley. There's just not much else out there like this these days. To summarize: It's a turn-based JRPG where you primarily control tanks in your quest to look for other human life in a world ravaged by global warming and AI. The story is basic and straight-forward. And thankfully, it's not full of plot holes and dumb character actions, like many popular JRPGs are these days. It starts out quite rough, with your revenge-focused protagonist simply finding a tank and then using it to carry out his revenge. But the story expands as you quickly find an advanced shelter with a couple of humans and agree to search for other human survivors for them. Throughout your journey, you find several survivors, each with a different, but realistic take on this world where humanity is almost extinct. Some interesting ideas and conversations come up as a result, such as when you find your first female: she's worried that she'll simply be used to make babies in an attempt to prolong humanity. And the scenes dealing with sexual frustration are interesting and warranted given the characters' situations. These scenes thankfully don't go over the top and things stay reasonable. The story doesn't have a definitive end. After about 30-35 hours of play, you will defeat the biggest threats and get your base in a state where they can survive a bit longer, and that's about it. You don't quite get to the point of repopulating humanity or saving the world. Though it is a nice change from the typical "hero saves the world" story that is in 95% of RPGs. The gameplay is relatively unique. It's simple and arguably easy, but tank combat is more about your setup than skills. Essentially, you will be finding, creating, and modifying your tanks and weapons to do as much damage as possible in as few rounds as possible to kill bosses. For example, you can equip multiple cannons and guns to your tank, modify them so they're more powerful or shoot more than once per round, and equip chips or use skills that let you fire multiple weapons per turn. Oh, and ammunition for many tank weapons is limited, so you must pick weapons that have enough capacity to last throughout a boss fight or during exploration. Refill your weapons for free by returning to base. There's more interesting tank mechanics, such as upgrading their engines to add more power, installing dual engines, balancing available power between your weapons and shields, countermeasures that automatically take down enemy missiles, and more. Finding new tanks and configuring them differently remained interesting throughout my entire playthrough. I even played the new game+ briefly, which lets you replay the game (with or without the story), but with new and better weapon options. But that's not all - you also have non-tank ground combat. This isn't as interesting, but is great for variety. You'll normally switch to this type of combat when you enter building ruins looking for items, technology, or the next quest objective. Also interesting here are the variety of enemies you can encounter on foot. Some are too powerful to reasonably fight (some being the enemies that you normally fight in tanks), and it's usually best to run away. So while in a dungeon on foot, you'll learn quickly which enemies to fight and which to run away from. Along with that, your characters have jobs, where they gain access to different skills, depending on the job level. These aren't that amazing, with each job having only one or two skills that I found useful. But again, it adds to the variety without taking away from the rest of the gameplay. Overall, I enjoyed my time with the game. It's the sort of game I got burnt out on in the 90's, but since there's not much out there like it these days, it's a refreshing change. If you're an old-school JRPG fan and are looking for something a bit different, give this one a try. »

« It's not often that I say a game is better off without a story but this is definitely one of those games that would really be improved if they took away its story. The first playthrough is maybe a 1/10 due to being forced to sit through one of the most boring and terribly-written stories with characters that you don't really like. After that it's maybe a 6 or a 7 out of 10 since you just get to focus on the tank customization, monster hunting, and leveling up. The monster designs are great and some of the bosses are extremely challenging. If only they made it more like the original game and didn't focus on the characters when telling the story. »

« I am having fun with the game personally only downside is I the difficulty spikes that require grinding »

« Looks really old and feels a little weird, the menus look bad enough and the voice acting and animations feel like amateur work »

« Recuerda a los buenos rpgs de la PS2, es muy old-school, tiene mucho grindeo y a veces te hace sentir realmente solo , que seguramente es lo que **** combate es muy bueno y la customizacion **** peor seguramente con más presut hubiese sido un juego que hubiese triunfado más pero se quedó en otro jrpg low cost. »

« First, the game is really easy, that is if you play the campaign once, if you want a challenge I suggest you try and beat it first and then play it again in New Game +, trust me if you chose Hard, it gets real, the first couple of enemies are a breeze as you will start the game at a High Level Team, but once you reach the first Warshipsaurus, you'll know what I mean, it gets a whole lot harder. As for the music, it stays real to the series and still sounds great. I played the game for a whole 30 hours sitting, that is a first for me, I was hooked very hard. The only big complaint I can find is that the Trophies are untranslated, not that it is such a problem for me as I played all games in the series so I had to learn to Understand Japanese at least a bit. It's a 10/10 for me a great entry in the series that got me hooked. »