Once again, the world is about to be taken over by the evil General Donald Morden and his rebel army. Only the Peregrine Falcon Squad, led by the heroic Marco Rossi, stands in the way of the rebels establishing their New World Order. This could be the plot of just about any entry in the Metal Slug series, which is at its best when you don’t take it too seriously. A remake of a microtransaction-laden mobile gacha tower defense game, Metal Slug Attack Reloaded does its best to keep up the zany tone of the series while editing out the worst parts of the 2016 version.
At least it tries to iron out the frustrating bits. The Switch version thankfully doesn’t have microtransactions, but it still feels very much like a gacha game that expects you to log in every day and grind your way to victory. The result is an uneven but still enjoyable game that’s limited by its roots.
Like most of the series it spawned, Metal Slug Attack Reloaded’s story is paper-thin at the best of times. Marco Rossi and the Peregrine Falcon Squad lead the charge to stop the rebel army from taking over the world. It’s unclear whether this should be done through expert strategy or brute force, as the gameplay that follows each short cutscene is an exercise in sending wave after wave of units at the enemy until you manage to destroy their base. It’s the kind of simple, mindless fun that works well as a mobile game but feels bland when ported to a console. Even the addition of a ‘sequel’ story, cleverly titled Another Story, doesn’t change the fact that there really isn’t enough plot to get you through the dozens of hours it can take to complete.
In each battle you buy units with AP (action points) and send them across the battlefield, where they will destroy the enemy base or die trying. More powerful units cost more AP, but you can upgrade your base so you can regenerate AP faster, allowing you to buy stronger units faster. That rather simple gameplay is interrupted when you activate a unit or your base’s special attack, but you’ll spend a lot more time buying units to send on a slow death march to the right side of the arena.
What little strategy there is in the game is really which unit you choose to take with you to each level. Choosing a unit that can attack flying enemies is usually not necessary until the game presents you with a level with almost exclusively flying enemies. Each unit can be leveled, evolved into a more powerful form, and given equipment to improve their stats. This is ostensibly done to tailor your deck to your playstyle, but in reality it’s a holdover from Metal Slug Attack Reloaded’s origins as a gacha game.
Every time you complete a mission you earn medals and tickets. Tickets are used to upgrade your units or base stats, giving you an edge on the next mission. Medals power the game’s gacha mechanics and allow you to collect a handful of units, unlocking one of the game’s 300+ characters from the Metal Slug series to fight for you. Metal Slug Attack Reloaded is considerably less predatory than most mobile gacha games, but that also highlights how shallow and downright unfair the system can be.
This system is the reason behind one of the biggest problems with Metal Slug Attack Reloaded: the brutal and often unfair difficulty settings that occur throughout the campaign. Every now and then you come across a level that is suddenly much more challenging than the last. No amount of strategy for how you deploy your units will help. Often it’s a matter of swapping units in your deck with others that are better suited to the enemy in question. However, it can mean trying to achieve a better, more powerful unit, a lengthy and sometimes frustrating process that was originally intended to encourage players to earn money to guarantee a rare or better unit. Without the microtransactions, however, it feels unnecessarily harsh to the point where it almost breaks the game.
Fans of the Metal Slug series will enjoy seeing some of the crazier armies and units featured in the game. There are the usual Rebel and Regular Army characters, but along the way you’ll soon encounter aliens from Mars, mummy dogs and samurai mechs. It somewhat breaks the game’s already weak plan to assemble an army made up of all these factions, but you’ll hardly notice as you summon a giant slug to engulf your enemies. The only downside is that the selection is only a fraction of the original game’s hundreds of units.
If the story mode isn’t enough for you, there’s the option to play against local or online players with your chosen deck. But be warned: just like any other gacha game, there will be people who spend hours grinding and simply wipe the floor with you and your team. That’s just the nature of the game, but luckily the online battles can be avoided altogether if you prefer to play casually.
When Metal Slug Attack’s servers shut down in 2023, fans probably thought their favorite Tower Defense Gacha game was gone forever. Unfortunately, they were half right. As it stands, we’re not convinced that the hours of grinding required to advance the plot are really worth it.
Conclusion
Metal Slug Attack Reloaded removes some of the worst parts of the original mobile game mechanics, but the scaled-back roster and brutal difficulty spikes highlight the excessive grinding required to make these types of games profitable and likely won’t meet the expectations of the most hardcore players comply. lovers of the original. For better or worse, this feels exactly like a mobile game ported to the Switch, warts and all.