MACROSS -Shooting Insight-
Developer: Kaminari Games
Publishers: Red Art Games, Bushiroad Games
Platforms: Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 (Reviewed)
Release Date: Available Now
Price: $39.99 USD – Available Here
Overview
When someone thinks of a mecha anime franchise, their first thought will likely be Mobile Suit Gundam as it was practically the series that started it all and has been given consistent new anime throughout the years, keeping the franchise fresh in the minds of mecha fans. Another franchise that may come to mind is Robotech, an experiment in attempting to adapt Japanese animation to American audiences by creating an odd amalgamation of three separate series to try and create one story and creating an absolute nightmare for anyone wanting to license and watch one certain franchise that was used to create Robotech. Harmony Gold, the created company that Robotech, used the original Macross anime as part of its creation and blocked any attempts for the series to arrive in the West in any form, including the numerous anime sequels, movies, and limited games that were released as part of the Macross franchise.
While we could talk all day about the nightmare that Harmony Gold created, this situation finally resolved, partially at least, with Harmony Gold allowing everything except the original anime to be released in the West, paving the way for Macross to head West and now we have the first game to arrive from the franchise in the West in the form of MACROSS -Shooting Insight-. Attempting to celebrate nearly every major anime entry with a dimension blending shooter, has this shoot-em up managed to succeed for fans?
Story
Set sometime after the events of Macross Delta, an unknown woman is researching the power that songs have on the battlefield. Ever since the Minmay Attack (ironically the only mention of the first Macross series throughout the game), songs have been pivotal to space warfare and have even been able to create folds in space thanks to the power of Windernermerians and protoculture relics. In an attempt to try and learn more about the true power of songs and weaponize them, this new evil force has managed to create numerous dimensional folds that has managed to not only abduct songstresses across five separate eras, but pilots, their support staff, and enemies as well with everyone gathering at the legendary Macross 7 and using it as their base of operations.
Depending on what pilot players choose to play as, they will witness separate small scenes dedicated to that series’ characters and how they are dealing with being thrown into this mass crossover of pilots, including legendary fighters, generals, and even a certain neglected female pilot’s grandfather now young again, witnessing a pilot having to actually fight in space for the first time and use the transforming Valkyrie since they weren’t around in his time, or even seeing a respected commander gushing about his favorite rockstar being alive and performing in the middle of a battle. Seeing these little interactions is interesting and a great little bonus for fans of the franchise and characters mostly still act in a similar fashion as they would from the series they are based off of. That being said, it is rather odd what “side-characters” were brought into this crossover alongside the main pilots since more than a few are actually dead by the time the series ended, but no mention of this is ever made. It is also a little disheartening for some larger casts of characters in certain series to barely get any time, for example Macross Delta’s Walküre ironically only sees Freyja and Mikumo worth kidnapping, leaving the other three members alone with the rest of the cast as rare appearances despite their own ability to control fold waves with songs.
It is also interesting to note that in-battle interactions between the pilot and their bridge-assistant on the Macross 7, also varied depending on series, is unique depending on the chosen pilot but attempting to read these interactions is quite a challenge thanks to the way subtitles are displayed in the corner as the game’s stage plays out. Now, outside of the aforementioned reference to Minmay, nothing from the original Macross anime is included in this release and even in Japan was relegated as bonus DLC, making it something completely separate from the base game and likely never to see release in the West thanks to Harmony Gold.
The main storyline itself is straight nonsense and that is coming from someone that’s seen everything Macross has to offer. The overarching story is paper-thin and what little amount is explained isn’t satisfactory, using the main villain’s primary goal simply a reason for this crossover to happen in the first place. Even interactions with other enemies such as the small snippets featuring named foes from the past anime is kept to a minimum. This means that this storyline is purely for the fans and that is it, especially since there are five different versions of the story to be experienced as each character progresses through different stages and will interact differently throughout main scenes as well, though even then some fans may be disappointed that some of their favorites may not have made the limited character cut.
Gameplay
MACROSS -Shooting Insight- surprisingly locks all other gameplay modes until players finish the story mode at least once. The story mode itself is ten stages and, as mentioned before, vary in order depending on the selected pilot. Once players complete the story mode they will then unlock the other game modes including a standard arcade mode, an “Ace Battle” duel style mode where players will fight against a rival pilot in a challenging duel that includes those not fought in story mode, a boss rush mode, and finally the option to simply play through any stage at will. Now at its core the game is a shoot’em up through and through, though unlike many others that see players only needing to shoot at enemies either on a vertical or horizontal scrolling screen, this one likes to constantly flip the script and even throw in a few extra shoot’em up options as well, since Valkyrie’s are transforming mecha after all.
This means that while some stages may start with players fighting on a vertically scrolling screen with enemies zooming in from the top or sides of the stage, it can transition to a horizontal scroll with the player’s Valkyrie transforming to match. There are even plenty of stages that see the shoot’em up transform into something similar to a bullet-hell style game where players will be able to freely navigate the screen on their own to destroy objectives or deal with a boss’s numerous parts before transitioning to the next spot of the boss. These constant swaps between shoot’em up styles keeps things feeling fresh throughout every stage and lives up to the Macross theming, but there is one mode that is thankfully used very little and that is a “z-axis” style third person mode that is not only incredibly difficult to aim in but also dodge enemy fire, meaning players will definitely eat some damage in these sequences even if they try their hardest or modify the thankfully many difficulty options, but more on that in a moment.
All five pilots control the same but their primary fire varies in type, some pilots have rapid fire guns, others have lasers, some even have split fire rapid shots. Their secondary weapon, a missile lock-on, will also vary in amount depending on the selected fighter. Unfortunately while the missiles are powerful and can be freely aimed anywhere, aiming the missile lock-on completely halts primary fire, leaving players open and having to often choose between the two in some cases. Each pilot also has a dodge-roll of sorts too, providing a temporary immunity to dodge an incoming laser, missile, or incoming fighter. There is also a “support fire” meter that will fill over time and can be used to trigger a barrage of missiles from the Macross 7 to eliminate most foes, clear the screen of projectiles, and deal plenty of damage to a boss.
It is also worth noting that enemy attack patterns will also vary depending on what enemy they actually are as some stages will feature pilots fighting against Zentradi or Vajra while another may pit them against incredibly annoying unmanned fighters or Windernermerian fighters. There is also some plot irony in some of these cases as, for many of the pilots, Zentradi and even the Vajra are long allies by their time but have been brought forth as enemies once more. That being said, there are some wildly inconsistent difficulties in levels and their designs. Players may find themselves easily clearing a stage only to find themselves needing to retry multiple times, even at full health, to clear another, only to make it flawlessly through the next stage no problem. While this keeps players on their toes, a little bit more consistency would be nice, especially with some boss battles that are just incredibly lazy.
Thanks to the various differences in pilot weaponry and missile lock-on capability, there are just straight up certain pilots and characters that are better than others, making some feel completely useless in comparison to others which is troublesome, especially since there is no actual customization or even ways to improve their unit beyond upgrading their primary weapon’s attack capabilities by grabbing shards dropped by defeated enemies. Similarly players can obtain little collectables by destroying cargo boxes that appear from time to time and speed up the appearance of the Songstress’ singing buffs by destroying jammers that appear in the often cluttered battlefield screens. True to Macross fashion, and themed to each stage, whenever a songstress starts singing along with the player’s combat they will receive various buffs. This can range from decreased enemy health or projectiles to increased player defense and higher damage from their primary fire. It is a bit unfortunate that, while the timing is fitting, the only time most of these songs start playing is right before the boss battle, often meaning that players will be on their own for a lot of a stage.
Now as mentioned before, MACROSS -Shooting Insight- has a lot of difficulty adjustments that players can make and for good reason. Even as a shoot’em up, this is a very challenging game and sure, players can use the default settings to try and clear stages and place their names on the leaderboards but given the look of the leaderboards, at the time of this writing, this is an incredibly rare occurrence. Players can adjust things such as their total overall health as well as how big the support meter for the Macross 7 is across all modes and in story mode it is also possible to turn on an automatic healing mode that comes in two flavors. A slight healing mode to make sure players still have to play risky, and a “boosted” healing mode that will regenerate health at a solid pace even if enemy attacks still deal tons of damage when they land. It is worth noting that adjusting these option disables the leaderboards, and there are difficulty options such as Very Easy and Easy all the way to Very Hard for masochists or incredibly die-hard shoot’em up fans, so there are plenty of options here even for those who want more challenge than the game already dishes out.
Unfortunately, outside of completing the game’s story mode there really isn’t a whole lot of rewards to actually unlock. As mentioned, players can obtain little collectables while fighting and these are all little items that are call-backs to the five anime series and CGs are automatically unlocked upon seeing them in game. The only really challenging unlock are “memories” obtained by winning Ace Battles. Unfortunately these memories aren’t even subtitled scenes from the anime, they are literally screenshots from specific moments and nothing more, making them very disappointing rewards for a challenging fight, meaning that once players finish the story a few times, there is sadly nothing too satisfying to enjoy beyond this.
Audio & Visuals
MACROSS -Shooting Insight- has gotten the character portraits for its visual novel segments perfect. All characters, regardless of when they were summoned from, have been adapted with modern day anime aesthetics and they look excellent when talking during these scenes. The battlefields themselves are constantly changing thanks to the Valkyrie’s transformations but can be a bit too busy at times, making it difficult to actually tell what is a dangerous attack coming at the player or just some random thing in the background that won’t hurt them. This can get worse during a Songstress’ performance as the edges of the screen will glow as their song buffs the player, making it difficult to see enemies on the fringe.
Now the Western release of MACROSS -Shooting Insight- obviously only features the Japanese voice track and all of the characters have reprised their roles here but sadly actual spoken dialogue is rare. Most conversations in story mode simply involve character barks or the first word of a sentence with only a very few important scenes being fully voiced. Ironically, all in-battle dialogue is completely voiced but as mentioned the subtitles are incredibly difficult to focus on in the middle of battle. Now onto the best part of the game potentially for Macross fans, the songs themselves. The soundtrack features some of the best tracks from each of the respective series though it is clear that some anime were given a bit more love than others. For example, Macross Zero and Macross Plus are only given a single song while Macross 7 and Macross Delta are given two a piece and finally Macross Frontier is given the most with three total songs. Thankfully, nearly every song chosen to be included in the release happens to be some of the best each anime has to offer, so fans will be delighted to hear these tracks start playing over each boss battle and hoping they lasted a bit longer.
Overall
MACROSS -Shooting Insight- is a game made for fans only and even then this might be a bit of a rough ask even for longtime fans of the franchise thanks to its asking price being even higher than the company’s other niche anime adapted game, Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid. While the title plays smoothly, features some gorgeous looking character portraits, and of course some of the wonderful songs that fans expect from the Macross series, the lack of meaningful content outside of the story mode and even the story itself being a bit disappointing outside of moments of pure fan delight thanks to seeing certain characters interacting with one another and a rather daunting difficulty that while surpassable, may be off putting for some, makes MACROSS -Shooting Insight- a rough new start to the franchise in the West.
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