The Red Juggernaut Reviews

So Im at the end of the game, and came across a ship called "Big Tiny" This thing has 3 actions per round. It has a laser cannon, 2 machine guns, 4 power generators, a launcher, and 2 shield gens. I also have 4 power generators, and I generate something like +45 energy per round. HOW is Big Tiny able to fire a Laser (75 power) launch a torpedo (25 power) and either fire a Machine Gun (15 Power) or refresh its shield (50 power) EVERY ROUND?! So I blew up 2 of its power generators. Guess what? nothing changed. It was still able to do over 100 power worth of actions every round, with only 2 remaining power gens. And this guy isnt a boss! And the point that you encounter him at? Theres no save point for the last third of the game. I am ready to just lose the war of attrition against this game, and walk away. The only reason Im still playing it is that my ship hasnt blown up yet. Ive also had to keep the app running in the background on my PC for two days now because have I mentioned there's NO SAVE POINT for the last third of the game? Oh and the music volume option? Doesnt work. Its like 8 notes repeated indefinitely. Had to mute the whole thing from volume mixer. This sucks because I really enjoyed the first half of the game, even with the janky music. NOT recommending this game saddens me.

[i] My Experience [/i] The idea of this game really piqued my interest - a modular ship-building RPG. I tend to appreciate it when games give me a lot of freedom to customize my character and create a build, and in [b]The Red Juggernaut[/b] you quite literally create the build by adding blocks to your ship. I also appreciated that the game is focused on a single character (ship) - JRPGs often lose my interest when I have to manage an entire party with pre-existing personalities and skills. However, once I got out into space I found myself a bit lost. I would've welcomed a bit more tutorializing when it comes to ship building/components and the in-game menus (radio? warp? search?). I was victorious against the first few simple ships I faced, but after a while I found myself damaged and vulnerable. You can repair your ship a limited number of times during combat and at a station (?), but I couldn't figure out what the limiting factors here were. Eventually, I was unable to repair my ship and was defeated. Afterwards, I just wasn't motivated to try again. I wasn't interested in "feeling my way" through these inscrutable systems, and the random battles felt like such a time-wasting nuisance - anytime I wanted to do anything, I had some random little green turd show up to "pew pew" at me with its tiny little lasers and wear on my patience. Perhaps I'm not the target audience for this title - one of the in-depth Steam reviews on the game points to nostalgia for NES JRPGs as a factor in their enjoyment. And although I'm pushing 40, I didn't play many NES games growing up. I've never much liked JRPGs either, but it seemed like [b]The Red Juggernaut[/b] was shaking things up enough to appeal to me. Perhaps if you have the patience to decipher the systems and to do a bit of grinding (the aforementioned review mentions this as well), [b]The Red Juggernaut[/b] will be your speed. Unfortunately, it wasn't mine.

I'll start with the obvious, this game is not for everybody. Now with that out of the way, this is a great NES-style game, by that I mean that after a bit of storytelling, it drops you into the world and you are expected to figure things out. You are expected to grind at the start to survive but after gaining 1-2 levels, you are in much better shape to tackle the maze-like areas to reach your next objective. I was tempted to take out my old notebook and draw a map as I went along. The battle system is turn-based ship to ship combat. You can pretty much fully customize your ship, getting new parts as you level up and buying or finding new weapons. Each part you add increases your hit points and also adds new functionality depending on the part. An extra engine allows you to evade farther, a power core gives you more weapon power so you can add more weapons and so on. You can target individual sections of the enemy ship, at first just hitting the cockpit works but later you may want to target other systems such as particular weapons or maybe the engines to prevent them from evading. The music is great as it fits the mood and atmosphere but they are short tracks on repeat so they may get on your nerves after a while. The only thing missing is an instruction manual to provide more lore and explanations to certain stats and so on. I'm still not sure what the CC stat is or what the Captain Rank does. It's basically a love letter to NES jrpgs, encompassing all that was good and even the not so good aspects, it's all here. It even has an (optional) CRT filter if you wand a really authentic view. For the price, you can't go wrong with this look into the past of gaming, I would have loved it back then as I love it now.