This game does an excellent job of making you feel a part of the Macross universe.
I got this game on a whim. I like big robots and since the Valkyrie was also used for the Transformers character Jetfire back in the day, I thought what the hey. I was pleasantly surprised. This is good fun and pretty cool.
The game is a shooter and you use your Valkyrie to do battle with various nasties in fighter mode (jet), Gerwalk mode (freaky jet with legs) and Battroid mode (robot). All three modes are required to do successful campaigns and switching between them is easy and intuitive. Each has pros and cons. Jet mode is fast and has lock on missiles, but the machine gun is tricky to use, gerwalk has missiles, machine gun is pretty nifty, but it’s a little slow on the movement side and due to its VTOL skills very tricky to get the grips of. Battroid mode has machine gun lock on, is the fastest and easiest way to fight in confined spaces, but it lacks the missile power.
If you are reading this, then you probably have some idea about the Macross series. You will therefore be pleased to know that in this game, various packs are available for your Valkyrie to be kitted out with. There's a booster pack, strike pack and a funky looking radar pack thing as well as some others that I can’t think of off the top of my head right now. They are given to you when following the story mode, but once the mission has been completed, you can mix n match them a bit, but it’s not completely free-range. I still haven’t been allowed to use a booster pack in the atmosphere.
Story wise, there are two chapters. You can select to either work with the Prometheus or the ARMD 01. They both lead to a different arc and missions vary as well. Missions in the game are good fun and what would start as one “Shoot the baddies” mission will change mid-way to “catch the falling pod” for example. This keeps you on your toes and adds variety to most of the game.
The controls are pretty good. With a bit of experimentation, you will be swapping modes, blasting nasties, and dodging missiles all over the place. That last aspect is very cool indeed. When an enemy has a lock-on on you, you get a warning noise, once they release a missile, you can see how close it is by watching the radar (conveniently located mid-screen, but it doesn’t get in the way) when the missile is so close it looks like it will hit, a quick side-to-side with the controller makes you do a barrel roll and if you time it right, the camera will go to an cinematic view and you can watch your jet easily avoid death. This works in all modes as well. I had a situation with about 6 missiles coming from different directions, which I managed a dodge and looked very very cool!
A really nice effect is how the Valkyries handle differently in space to earth. I was dog fighting a particularly quick baddy and thought to do a 360 degree loop, I knew that in a flight-sim I wouldn’t be able to pull it off from the maneuver that I had just completed, but I thought, Hey this is a Macross game. Well, lo and behold, I reached the apex of my roll and as my plane was vertical and had been for a while, I couldn’t go any further! I lost control of the plane, as it fell and had to wait for it to get some air under its wings as it was falling like brick! That surprised me and adds an excellent extra challenge that goes to show how well made this game is. The option is also available to control the banking of the plane as well, if you’re like a more flight-simulated style of play.
Occasionally some of the missions are a bit unclear as to what to do, I spent many days trying to clear one and all I had to do was catch a falling robot, but I had to be in battroid mode, not Gerwalk or fighter mode (as I had tried to do it before). Once you get the general idea, this game is a lot of fun
Learning how to read the radar is a must in this game and until you do, you will find it very annoying, especially as a chick comes on the screen corner yelling “DAMAGE!!” every time. Learn the radar to shut her up!
The graphics are a little dated now, but do the trick. Just don’t look too hard at the Battroid, or you can see that it doesn’t have any thumbs. The Valkyries look slick and the backgrounds are nice too. Even if an object is so far away that it is out of the arena, if you fly towards it, it will increase in size, which I think is a nice touch that could have been easily left out.
The sound is good. A few rousing themes in there as well as some more colder sounds for the space missions. Music is often not heard due to the noises in battle, FX are all quality with Macross perfect machine gun and missiles etc
All up this game is pretty damn fine. It’s the closest thing to flying a Valkyrie until Valkyrie Flying Sim 4000 and it severely beats the pants off of Robotech Battlecry. Well worth the price of admission, even for those who know little of Macross.