Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Tiny Metal Review (Nintendo Switch)

Written by Bernard Julius Paje


Title: Tiny Metal
Developer: Area 35
Publisher: Unties
Price: $24.99
Genre: Simulation, Strategy
Also Available On: Steam, PS4



I have been a huge fan of turn-based tactical/strategy role playing games since my younger years, and one of the games that made me love this genre is a portable game by the name of Advance Wars. I was really enthralled by the simple yet deep mechanics of Nintendo’s debut entry in this tactical/strategy RPG series, and have since played every installment of the franchise. Sadly, the last Advance Wars game came out around ten years ago, and fans of the series like me have been left itching for a new installment for it ever since. Fast forward to today—many modern takes on the tactical/strategy RPG genre have been made by various game developers, but sadly no game has actually managed to capture the feel and mechanics of an Advance Wars game. Until now that is...

Enter Tiny Metal, a not-so-tiny game from independent developer Area 35 and publisher Unties. To say that this game is inspired by Advance Wars is an understatement, because at times it feels like Tiny Metal inherited—if not intentionally copied—a lot of mechanics from the former. Thankfully, Tiny Metal got a lot of things right and it is a blast to play, regardless of how it borrows elements from Nintendo’s classic franchise.




You follow the story of Nathan Gries, a young commanding officer of the Artemisian Army who is currently in the thick of battle against the Zipanese Army. During this ongoing war against Artemisia and Zipang, you will take control of various units and cross paths with various allies. You command an army composed of various infantry, tank and aircraft units, each sporting both strengths and weaknesses against other units. This follows a sort of rock-paper-scissors approach to unit matchups, which means no single unit can be considered too overpowered.




Again, similarities to Nintendo’s Advance Wars games are ever present everywhere in Tiny Metal. Capture buildings using infantry units: Check! Create units from factories on every turn: Check! Have units that cannot move and attack at the same time: Check! Units level/rank up after capturing a building or every kill in battle: Once again, check! Again, Advance Wars veterans will definitely be familiar with a LOT of Tiny Metal’s mechanics as soon as they enter the battlefield. Tiny Metal does introduce some original elements of its own that adds some more depth to strategy, like letting multiple units attack a single enemy unit at the same time (Lock On/Focus Fire) and giving up your unit’s first-to-fire advantage during attacks but at the same time driving out the enemy unit from the tile that it is occupying (Assault).




On the storytelling front, I found Tiny Metal’s approach to be a bit bland and lacking. The overall story itself is good—involving common war tropes like the loss and betrayal of comrades-in-arms—but the way it unfolds feels kind of dated for a modern game. The story cutscenes are only available via Japanese voiceovers, and unit voiceovers in battle are set to English by default. This makes the audio feel disjointed because as soon as you enter a battle the default languages do not match. While unit voiceovers can be switched to either Japanese or English, it feels inconsistent in a game design standpoint to not have English voiceovers available for story cutscenes. It would have been nice to have the option to have matching language options for both cutscene and in-game voiceovers.




Another gripe I have for the game is in its battle scenes, which for me made the flow of the game feel really slow. While battle scenes can be really enjoyable to watch initially, you will probably end up turning them off entirely because some of them take awhile to finish—especially when you use the Lock On/Focus Fire mechanic a lot. Also, I encountered some minor bugs during my playthrough of the game, like text overflowing out of dialog boxes and some misspelled words. Again, these are very minor and will not affect the fun you get from playing the game in any way.




Some stages will also enable you to find alternate routes by searching some buildings for documents that contain war logs and intel. These stages add an element of non-linearity to the campaign and extra replay value to the game. Be warned though, for some of these extra stages (as well as the maps near the end game) can get really tough and will test your strategic mettle a lot. Some maps will also have you doing a bit of trial and error in the beginning to gauge the layout of the enemy forces, but this is mostly the norm for a lot of tactical/strategy RPG games. There are also dozens of maps available for you to play in Tiny Metal’s Skirmish Mode, adding even more replay value to the game. A downside to the Skirmish Mode is the game’s AI, which does silly things at times—in one map I played the AI all of a sudden stopped moving its units. Sadly, Multiplayer Mode is still not implemented as of this writing, which is a shame because it would have been a nice and fun feature to have for the Nintendo Switch version in particular.




Overall, Tiny Metal is a good but flawed tactical/strategy RPG that fans of the genre should check out. Fans of the Advance Wars franchise will either love this game or hate the fact that it copies so much from it. But either way the game has its own merits, even though the overall package feels slightly undercooked at times. Had the Multiplayer Mode been ready at the time of review, I feel this would have added at least a point to my overall score. Hopefully this will be patched in soon, and when it does I will update this review with my opinions on the mode.



YAY!
  • Good tactical/strategy RPG gameplay in the vein of Advance Wars. 
  • Fun campaign mode, with some secret unlockable stages as well as dozens of available maps in Skirmish mode. 
  • Has some interesting new mechanics unique to the game, like the Lock On/Focus Fire mechanic. 

NAY!
  • Can feel a little too similar to Advance Wars at times. 
  • Flow of battle feels kind of slow if combat animations are turned on. 
  • Some maps have a sudden difficulty spike, which may turn off some players. 
  • Multiplayer Mode is not available, despite being labeled as ‘Coming Soon’ since the game’s release three months ago. 


REVIEW SCORE: 6.8/10

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