Mercenary Battle Company: The Reapers Reviews

Great game im really enjoying it still need to beat difficulty 10 but thats it I have everything unlocked

Game is ok. unlocks take way to long to achieve, should be able to unlock basics after 1 run but takes several runs to unlock basic upgrades which are necessary due to game initial difficulty. Game definitely needs balancing. upgrading you gear does not feel very impactful. When doubling my bullets I should feel like enemies are dying 200% faster but they at best feel like a 30% boost. No real technical flaws necessarily. I feel like the Y button and L3 should be swapped. L3 on controller should not be dash and Y should not be a button it should be more like a L3 or R3 input. but I have a macro controller so I can remap using steam controls.

edit - The dev responded below, which is a positive sign. I would've refunded otherwise, but want to give this game a chance. Once the progression is rebalanced, assuming it is well implemented and developer tested, I'll be able to recommend this game. As far as the auto-aim issue, I just retested briefly. The dev indicated middle mouse button toggles this, but that did not work. The game briefly flashes the controls at the start of the match, and I noticed it has the toggle mapped to RMB. Since the game has full controller support but gave a mouse button, I had to experiment a bit to find what that was - click Right Analog Stick in. This really needs to change to another button. Clicking the right stick in is probably the most accidental button press possible during fast paced shooter game play...but at least it's there. This is why games like this should NOT prioritize controller support. Progression suffered since time and effort were expended to implement a feature inferior to what we would've had available to us with Steam's controller support. I don't blame the devs for this - I blame the curators who hold reviews hostage by making controller support a requirement. *****orig review********* I like the game overall, but there are 2 major issues that make it impossible to recommend. I'll update the review if these are ever addressed. 1) Auto-aim: it's extremely disruptive. Can not be disabled or tuned down currently. Monsters attack from all angles and you end up fighting against it, constantly. It's too slow to be relied upon but supersedes a player's direct input from the analog stick. I can not stand auto-aim to begin with, but can tolerate if it's not intrusive. It's far too intrusive if you're playing on a PC with a controller. Game needs an option for it to be turned off entirely. 2) Progression: The game's progression setup could've been a lot simpler. There aren't a lot of upgrades (at least that are visible), but there are 4 tiers of resources. After playing 2 matches, which equated to 30min of game time, not a single upgrade point could be spent into anything or unlocking anything. The unnecessary complexity with the multiple tiers of upgrade resources immediately made me think there may be a cash shop for MTX, but there aren't any signs of that visible in the game menus at least. The positives are that the game graphics improved slightly from the demo. The environments are pretty average and appear to be large, infinite maps. The mechs are on the slower side, so you'll never move far. The monsters are much faster than you are, but you're not overly slow. There is also voice acting, albeit annoying character banter, but most survivor games don't have this at all.

What I really wanted to check out was this dev's other game, Crimson Tactics, but I couldn't convince myself to spend 12$ it while it was on sale with the reviews as it was. I haven't written many reviews, but I thought I would point this out. Both Crimson Tactics and M.B.C. look like they have this potential, and they just don't finish the race properly. The reviews for Crimson Tactics parallel what I felt playing this game. Its like they built it out, and then skipped quality control and balancing. New mobs come out every couple waves, and they just get more and more "bullet sponge" factor, and that is it. By the time I was fighting a real boss there is a mass of scorpion looking ranged units shooting purple at me nonstop from the center of my screen while I circled. There seems to be only one build that works (lifesteal), I don't see how any other build would survive that. Its really just not fun. I haven't played many games in this genre, but Artifact Seeker does it sooo much better. I've played all of the heroes before they add new ones (which this game won't be doing) and tried a variety of builds and they all take off in to this satisfying ramp to being a walking weapon of mass destruction. . which is what I expected to be piloting a Mech vs Bugs.

This game is half baked at best, more like an unbalanced early access title than anything. Controls are explained in a single fleeting popup at the start of each run, there is no tutorial or explanation. Controls are awkward and not remappable. It's easy to accidentally click the stick, turning on auto-aim while you're trying to manually aim, and if you're manually aiming, the dash button is impossible to hit, being mapped to the xbox "B" button. Controls in menus are also incredibly awkward for the controller, always resetting to the topmost item when you back out of a menu, and getting into a run requires a half dozen button presses per menu. The difficulty is cranked to a degree normally expected of a pay to win title on phones, as is the meta progression currency, though the dev has promised no microtransactions ever, which is a definite point in their favor, and they do say they are going to rebalance it, so after some control and resolution fixes and meta rebalance, I'll give this another look. There is the core of an excellent twin stick mecha shooter here, it just needs some more time in the oven. Edit: The dev's response to a number of the issues has been swift. There are still some rough edges, but the meta economy's been cleaned up, and it no longer feels like you're doing scut runs that die at the first boss until you earn 25000 credits for a minor buff. You can have faith now that the issues you see will be addressed with pretty good speed.