Macross -Shooting Insight- Review
Macross -Shooting Insight- brings across protagonists and enemies from five different Macross subseries.
The game is divided into four main modes, Story mode, Arcade, Ace Battle and Boss rush. Story mode allows you to choose one of 5 pilots from each series, each with unique stats, shot type and lock-on abilities.
Noticeably absent is the VF-15 from Macross: Do You Remember Love?, which I’m guessing is due to licensing issues as I know for certain it is available in the Japanese release. It’s a shame as it leaves a visibly empty slot in the character select screen.
The story is told via still images, completely devoid of any animation, which is another missed opportunity to make something a little more interesting. While story segments aren’t fully voiced, they do use brief, one-word interjections to add emphasis and it’s annoying as it sounds. It seems they had the voice actors record at most 3 separate soundbites and they seem to be thrown in almost at random. It’s very off putting but perhaps the gameplay will make it a bit better?
Gameplay
The main gameplay of Macross -Shooting Insight- is split up into four different playstyles, vertical, horizontal, arena and a behind-the-character perspective.
Vertical mode plays a lot like your traditional shmup, taking on waves of enemies while slowly progressing upwards.
Horizontal mode plays identically as vertical except for moving left to right, often in mech form.
The arena-style mode gives the player free rein of movement asking you to destroy a set amount of targets to progress.
The ‘behind the character’ mode plays a lot like Afterburner or Space Harrier with progression similar to a rail-shooter.
Across the game’s 10 levels, Controls are shared regardless of the level type. This does help somewhat as it can feel a little jarring suddenly being thrust into a new perspective.
The controls take a little getting used to, especially true for having to use the second analogue stick to lock on missiles. My main gripe with the controls was the dodge button being mapped to the face buttons, it felt while also trying to use the right stick. Luckily, I was able to remap the dodge to one of the right shoulder buttons which felt much more natural
To aid our protagonists, getting enough points will trigger a performance from one of the series Songtresses. This is arguably my favourite part of the whole game as these classic tunes play out in their entirety and offer unique buffs such as additional firepower, or the ability to take a little more damage. Very cool stuff!
In terms of difficulty, Macross -Shooting Insight- offers a range of difficulty modes from very easy to very hard. There’s even additional modifiers that allow you to augment your stats further but you’ll be exempt from scoring on the leaderboards.
Overall in normal difficulty, I found the gameplay to be challenging enough, mainly due to finding it hard to get to grips with the dodging mechanics. I was often racking up 10x score multiplier and getting S++ Ranks but I still died a lot. Each pilot I chose felt a bit fragile for lack of a better word.
Boss fights are a highlight, often filling a good chunk of the screen. These were where I suffered the most during my playthrough. After a few attempts, I would usually have the enemy bullet patterns down and be able to breeze on through.
Conclusion
Macross – Shooting Insights- is a competent shooter with an identity crisis. The constant switching of different playstyles is jarring and I wish the game would pick one and stick with it. It is a Jack of all trades, master of none type scenario which is a shame. That said, I had an enjoyable time with Macross -Shooting Insights- and I’m sure die-hard fans of Macross would get a lot more enjoyment out of it than I did.
6.5
The publisher kindly provided a review code