Mercenary Kings: Reloaded Edition Reviews

In general the game's great - nice art, silly and crazy guncrafting, great co-op. I've put in plenty of hours and enjoyed them, which is why I'm recommending the title. However...there are some caveats: 1) The platforming and movement can feel unresponsive or sluggish, especially since equipment weight factors into jump distance and movement speed. Why the developers did this, I have no idea. It detracts heavily from the action and punishes you for using fun, large magazine weapons like machine guns. Balance might be a consideration, but larger magazines already lower damage-per-shot, so what purpose does further punishing you by making your movement sluggish (in a timed platformer, no less!) serve? Nothing, in my opinion - it's a decision at odds with the gameplay style. Yes, I'm aware there are ways to overcome this - you can put away your weapon (in an action platformer? nonsensical), you can craft bionic mods (which often come with their own penalties), you can use radioed-in crates to extend your jump... but should the player have to go through all this rigmarole in an action platformer? 2) Some of the maps are tediously designed, with one false move ending your attempt to pass the mission and requiring you to restart the map completely - that's on top of the ever-present timer. They also require very specific setups in order to make it to the end, which you'll likely not realize until you attempt and fail it once. Rush'n'retrieve at Captain rank comes immediately to mind. 3) The timer - every mission is timed. Some are more generously timed, generally when you have to find materials or rescue hostages. Others have such small time windows that they require a flawless run to the objective or fail. 4) Material grinding. It's a tedious way to pad gameplay hours, especially with the RNG loot drops. I put up with it because I played a lot of my time co-op, so it was mostly all done with friends. However, if this bothers you, be warned it's a major part of the game. I'd recommend cheating your way around it, but part of the enjoyment is unlocking new parts because you earned the materials to do so. Be warned.

Its great, played thru the whole game, a bunch of things could be better that are explained in other reviews. not that long ago there was alot less on steam in the pixel art platformer department and this was a stand out for its time of release

Mercenary Kings is a game I greatly enjoyed, but it unfortunately overstayed its welcome. In regards to negative reviews, it seems to be a result of people expecting something different than what it delivers. I can understand that- It's a very creative game that is trying to do it's own thing by mixing a bunch of genres/games together into a new thing. To simply break it down: - The art style of Scott Pilgrim vs the World - The the animation style of Metal Slug - The controls of Mega Man - The reloading style from Gears of War - The Hub/Mission/Crafting structure of Monster Hunter Out of this you get a decent game. I was able to play with a friend, and we had a blast. You build your own gun, equip character perks, and jump into a mission in an large open 2D environment. You have a set amount of time to complete your mission task: Rescue, Kill, Capture, or Collect. Combat feels perfectly retro- it's a bit stiff but very familiar for precision platformer players.There are quick text cutscenes that play after most missions to provide fun and lighthearted plot development. There are two major issues this game has that may turn away some players. One is that many enemies, including bosses, are recolored and reused throughout the game multiple times. For example, you might have a boss that's in a tank. Well that tank is reskinned for a frost, fire, and electric tank with no changes to boss behavior at all. It gets repetitive to a shocking degree- making it very obvious they ran out of development money or time. Instead of making the game short and sweet with the content they had, it is instead milked as much as possible. The second issue is that bosses are bullet sponges, and it's really easy to exploit stun locking using stun grenades. You can cheese many bosses and will often do so towards the end of the game, because it's so hard to dodge their attacks.