Mech Armada hits early access in a couple of days and looks phenomenal. Roguelike with meta progression. Modular mech building where you research parts, then plug together transport, body, and weapons to make your own designs.
Quick update: Mech Armada has left Early Access. I generally avoid Early Access but my brother did some PR for this and gave me a key last year and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. It’s had numerous additions and no doubt improved a lot since then too.
I am playing Mech Armada and like it so far. I dislike not being fully healed between missions. I researched the healing gun. I read there is a tech needed to have the heals happen between missions but no idea where it occurs. Research is random so some luck appears to be needed in a run. Its on sale for 15 bucks or so I do think it is worth the price.
Oh nice! Haven’t thought about that one in a while
Also playing Mech Armada, also rather liking it.
The heal between missions thing is one of those passive buffs that you can choose as the reward for clearing a stage. It is not, afaik, available any other way.
At first, I disliked the lack of options to heal between missions too yet I evolved to rather liking running a diverse lance of mechs including a dedicated buff bot which can heal and boost damage.
This game feels good. The tactical combat is thoughtful enough to be challenging and require some careful choices. There is a lot of comparison to Into The Breach. I would say the combat is very, very different. To me, the “combat” in Into the Breach was more like a Rubic’s cube, meaning it was very, very puzzle-y, and it felt like there were just a few “correct” options. In contrast, combat in Mech Armada is much more similar to say, Urtuk, or a tactical RPG. Some of it is a bit more formulaic as a result, but I feel there are many, many more viable paths to success, and less need to find the one or two optimal solutions in every turn and battle.
So far, my ongoing dream team is a lance of five mechs with . . .
One pair of double-machine gun mechs with mega-walker legs that let them move, fire and move again, and torsos that boost the range of adjacent mechs
One pair of flying-mine laying mechs, which typically fly along with the range-boosting mechs and through mines into the path of anything which could make it into range
One buff bot, on tracks, armed with a heal and a damage booster ‘gun’
It does seem like there are lots and lots of great options though. I am yet to try out most of them.
Total aside, but if anyone is looking for a game with heavy inspiration from Into the breach, check out Tyrant’s Blessing:
this feels like a remake of a web based game I used to play back in 2008 or so. Loved it, will check this out.
I have just complete a full run. I say “full”, but the ending gives a strong hint that there is a different, “true ending” which may take multiple runs to reach.
Things I am liking . . . .
Seems like there is a lot you can do differently about assembling a lance of mechs. Different chassis (body), transport (legs, wheels, tracks, jets) and weapons and buffs. I read about various mech designs and lance designs in the steam forums that I have not even touched yet.
Meta-progression. Not everyone loves it, I do. I welcome that there is a progression treadmill to help me feel like something useful is happening just thanks to playing, win or lose. In this game, your meta unlocks new research that can enable new mech parts and passive buffs for future runs.
Tactical combat. Simple but often quite thoughtful, and again, quite a few different ways to approach it. Some for example, avoid ever getting hit, but you can also use damage reflecting shields, mines, drones, close range high damage etc.
Things I like quite a bit less . . . .
Okay, plus and minus. Plus is that at the beginning of a tactical battle you get to choose where to deploy your mechs in a starting line. That is a good thing. Bad thing is that during this deploy phase you are locked to a camera view which sees all those mechs line up in a column, which means they overlap each other. Fiddly. The actual battle cam can be rotated and the view is just fine.
Run duration. Actually, unsure about this, but if you compare a run of this to say, Monster Train or Slay the Spire, or Roguebook, this probably takes twice as long as those. That said, it may be similar to the likes of Across the Obelisk and Hand of Merlin. Part of the time is what you spend fiddling around with mech parts and upgrades between missions. The actual combats are probably similar to the duration of an elite or boss fight in those other games. Given the combats take a bit longer on average, I am not sure I would ever want to climb Ascension / Calamity / Covenant levels like in those games with shorter combat.
Thanks for the writeup. I’m tempted but Gordian Quest is only a day away! But I’m tempted, oh so tempted.
Between the two, I would go Gordian Quest for sure. Mech Armada is pretty fun already, but definitely in a less polished state, whilst Gordian Quest has benefitted from years of development in early access, and the polish and content are both far in excess of Mech Armada right now.
Of course, this says nothing about how much you enjoy one or the other. I really enjoy both. There is simply a lot more to enjoy of Gordian Quest already!
Mech Armada is out of early access!
This is such a big thing for me. I much prefer shorter runs.