It’s time for another retro game courtesy of the Nintendo Switch Online. I can safely say that this is a fun title but it doesn’t really stand out all that much compared to the other sci-fi titles that I’ve played. It’s a good game of course but eh it definitely could have been better if you ask me. In the end it needed a little more of a plot or some kind of super unique gimmick.

The gameplay is more of a top down shooter style. You are blasting away at all of the enemies that try to stand in your way. It can be a bit hard to tell when you are dealing damage since the visual indicator isn’t very obvious but keep on blasting and you will take the enemies down in no time. You can keep on switching the way that your robot fires its shots as well so I recommend experimenting until you’ve found the perfect blend for you. There are certainly many different ways to tackle this and you can also alternate between manual and automatic fire.

I found that the best firing method was the 3 guns style. It works well on automatic and you get a lot of coverage while you are moving around. There are wider guns like the 5 way but I felt like they didn’t do as much damage so ironically it was a bit tougher to use that one. I would often find myself being a bit held back there. You lost your extra firepower the more you get hit so it is important to dodge every blow. Seriously one wrong shot can send you all the way back to the basic gun which is the worst possible gun to have. If you’re down to that weapon you can pretty much turn in the towel at that point.

You can of course get the power ups back by hitting the collectibles but surviving that long is the tricky part. The bosses have a ton of health as well and they will drain your HP quickly. Your reaction times are probably the most critical part of the journey since that is what will keep you alive. The graphics are pretty solid for this time frame. The characters look solid and the backgrounds had a good amount of detail to them. The levels are also fairly different so it’s not like the same background is used over and over again or anything like that. Now that would have definitely been pretty lazy.

There isn’t a lot of replay value here but that’s pretty normal for a retro game like this. The main idea is to just complete it as you normally would and then it goes back on the shelf. You can probably have fun creating your own strategies like maybe trying to complete it while only dying 5 times or something like that but for the most part this will just be around for 1 hour. At least it’s an hour of quality content though. The soundtrack isn’t bad, no home run hits but it’s not a weak selection. It works pretty well with the look and feel of the game.

I do think the developers had a fun idea with the gun customizing and it feels like an early concept of what Armored Core would turn into. Customizing your robot can be fun whether it is in game like this one or pre game like the Leynos title. That said, it would also need to be perfected more. Each gun should have some kind of benefit to it and in this case some just felt like downgrades. Why would you ever use 2 guns instead of 3? Maybe one way you could do this is that you sacrifice more armor as you add more guns. That would be pretty fun or you could scale down attack power the way it seemed to work for the 5 way gun. That would make a lot of sense.

Overall, MUSHA is a good game to check out while you have the Switch Online. If you had to pay for it then I wouldn’t be able to recommend it quite as highly but there’s really not much of a downside when it’s free like this. Just jump in and have a lot of fun right? That’s really the way to go about it and a modern remake of this game could have a lot of potential. Even if this may not be the flagship title of the genre, I like the genre enough where it still works out in the end. Blasting away at enemies while zooming around is always a good bit of fun. I’ll do my best to keep on remembering the game at least for the remainder of the year. A true challenge indeed!

Overall 6/10