Having never played the series in its original form, back when I have no doubts it felt more revolutionary, I’ve had mixed feelings about these remakes overall. There are elements of their geopolitical storylines that have their moments, including some that can feel prophetic about our current world, and on a general level I’m not going to complain about combat featuring mechs, but in execution they often felt like a slog to get through. With this third iteration, while many of the core aspects of the series have remained roughly the same, I’m at least thankful that some of the more burdensome elements have been refined, making for what I’d consider the most playable of the series… at least for newcomers like me.

When it comes to the story, once again there’s a mix of political and human drama, but at least the main characters Kazuki and Ryogo keep things fun with their hot-headed brashness. Perhaps their interactions and motivations can be a little suspect or overwrought at times, but considering the tough odds they’ll tend to face, and the world they live in, I suppose it’s appropriate. The thing is, you could easily ignore the majority of the story beats, complete with various news stories and other secret tidbits you can find by scouring the in-game web, and still have a decent time if you enjoy turn-based tactical combat, which is the game’s signature feature. 

As in the previous titles, these battles can tend to have their ups and downs. Your mechs will initially be outfitted in set ways, which will at least tend to introduce you to different weapon options you’ll have, but aren’t always ideal. Once you’ve gotten rolling, and have accumulated some spoils from your battles, you’ll then have the ability to set them up to better suit your preferred style, ideally considering more role-based weaponry that you can make better strategic use of. That said, even with the number of people in your team, and those you’re facing in a typical battle, being reduced from the previous iterations, combat can still be a slow grind. While at first the sometimes dramatic angles and visual flair can be fun, once you’ve really seen it all it’s hard not to wish things would move faster. The fact that you’re still unable to specifically target enemy mech parts, in the interests of being a bit more efficient, is also aggravating, though some of the skills you’ll be able to use do incrementally help provide smarter opportunities than pure randomness.

While this still isn’t quite right in terms of the pacing and the susceptibility to RNG unpredictability, it can still have its moments, and does offer up its own pretty unique style of tactical strategy play. Where sometimes this genre can be quite brutal in terms of the difficulty level, it also feels like it errs more on the fair side, so it’s also pretty approachable as long as you don’t mind the relatively slow pacing. I still wish it could have been tightened up in a few spots, but among the other options in the series, this feels like the overall one to go for, at least to someone without a connection to the originals.