Wartech: Senko no Ronde Review

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But what does the game actually involve? It's basically like a beat 'em up meets shoot 'em up. Visually it's got the small sprite appeal of something like Bangai-O: like Bangai-O, it's a quirky shoot 'em up, featuring tiny big robots. Like Bangai-O, while it looks like a conventional 2D shoot 'em up, it's not. And like Bangai-O, it's pretty brilliant, but it won't appeal to everyone. But the comparison to Bangai-O is only partially instructive.

A better comparison, and the game it most closely resembles (as about a million other people have already pointed out) is Virtual On, but from an overhead perspective. And for anyone who doesn't know one big robot game from another, what that means is that you control one or two big robots who circle around each other in an arena, trying to shoot each other out of the sky. Except in this case the big robots are small, and viewed from overhead.

This is what the game normally looks like: lots of bullets, tiny sprites (but big boss suits).

Structurally, it resembles a beat 'em up: you pick one of eight characters, each with their own particular strengths and idiosyncrasies, and then play through successive stages to reach the end of the (frankly inexplicable) narrative, or to achieve a high score. Towards the end of the game though, there are a few stages where it does play like a conventional top-down shooter - you memorise patterns of incoming bullets, and devise the best strategy of dodging them to target enemy weak spots.

And it's a shame there aren't more of these, because they're very entertaining. But that's almost missing the point, because the main part of the game is pretty enjoyable too - as a direct result of the very fact that you're not confined to memorising patterns and a limited range of manoeuvres. Instead you've got a massive range of tactical options.

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