Megaton Musashi W: Wired, the comeback of Level-5? – TEST

Over the years DS And 3DSnothing seemed to be able to stop Level-5, which had a string of successes in both video games and animation. And then, over the years, the public grew tired: multi-delayed games, localization which sometimes took years, poor project management… in poor financial health, the studio even closed its North American branch in 2020, enough to make us fear never seeing games from the creators of Layton. However, a few years later, the studio seems to be doing better: several projects should be released this year and in those to come, starting with Megaton Musashi W: Wired, which interests us today. First game Level-5 to be released in the West since Snack World: Dungeon Buffs, the title has a lot of pressure on its shoulders. So, a winning comeback or a damp squib?

Mecha, where is my crate?

It is therefore with a certain enthusiasm that I launch the game, and more particularly its story mode. We are immediately greeted by a tutorial that is not very well done but which already suggests many qualities in the combat system. And then there we go: storytelling. And more narration. And even. And even. In the end, fifty-five minutes pass between the tutorial and the first fight, fifty-five minutes which means that we have already forgotten everything we have learned by the time we launch into the battle. This is only a small flaw, of course, but it is evidence of a real problem that we will encounter throughout the ten hours that the story mode lasts: we are too rarely allowed to playpreferring to follow the tunnels of a weak narration with uninteresting characters and a very approximate translation (we will note for example a “reflex” instead of “reflection” in one of the game menus). When all the marketing focused on the mecha side, it's a shame. And as shōnen as it is, this story of teenagers going to fight aliens in large robots struggles to interest as it accumulates the clichés of the genre.

Furthermore, Megaton Musashi W: Wired has little respect for players' time despite the presence of a very effective fast travel and falls into the vagaries of J-RPG from another time, with a lot of repetitions, the controls given to players just to walk ten meters, or characters who arrange to meet you in location A only to tell you that they need to talk to you in location B. Not only is it annoying, but all that wasted time adds to the excitement of fighting (we're coming) falls like a breath and I have several times had to fight not to fall asleep. I am certainly not endowed with unfailing attention (and thanks to ADHD) but it's very rare that I get so bored watching a video game. All the more unfortunate that the settings and characters are quite prettyand the vector animation coupled with 2D movements is reminiscent of the charm of games Vanillaware.

Scrap ('n' B Fever)

Fortunately, in this ocean of mediocrity there are a few islands of happiness thanks to the customization of your mecha and the combat. Great classic of the genre that can be found in particular in the series of Armored Coreyou can create your mecha from head to toe. While fighting, you will pick up a large number of parts of varying quality which can be used to directly equip your robot, or can be dismantled to serve as spare parts for your creations. The quantity of loot may put off some: this is not my case but the sorting options could nevertheless have been more elaborate in order to be able to navigate more easily. You will also need to optimize your robot's motherboard according to the behavior you want it to adopt: more offensive, more defensive, focusing on melee or distance attacks? You choose ! You can even create chips to integrate on said motherboard, going through one of the most unimaginable skill trees I've ever seen. Despite this concern, there is a certain pleasure in the mechanical and visual optimization of his mecha.

It is the same for Megaton Musashi W: Wired's combat system, which is quite in-depth and offers a whole range of techniques to players : shots from afar, melee attacks, the possibility of parrying, a boost, a dodge, etc. All the changes made in the garage are a fortiori found on the ground and this helps a lot to make the universe credible. We move fluidly from one enemy to another, from one attack to another, we throw special attacks with cool effects (like the cockpit view) and very shōnen shouts from the characters and we feel invincible… and probably a little too much, even. Because that is the real problem with combat: apart from endgame (and even), they are way too easy. So why spend hours optimizing every detail of your mecha if spamming the Y button and special attacks will win the fight anyway? I have a love of the beautiful game, but you shouldn't push it too much.

Online, it's not necessarily better

You can possibly seek a little more challenge in the online modes, which offer missions to do in groups (with usually bigger bosses) and arena fights, but all this will really only amuse the most competitive among you, who can try to populate the servers are currently desperately empty : despite the cross playTHE matchmaking is very long and it often happens that the game simply cannot find a group mission to join. Not being able to really have fun with others, we push into soloing, desperately hoping that it will take off at one point or another, but that really never happens and we even end up getting tired of it. levels and enemies that all look the same.

Far from marking the fanfare return of Level-5, the title ultimately made me want to yawn. Even THE reboot of Sakura Wars 2019 version, which nevertheless suffers from similar flaws, amused me more thanks to its gallery of very endearing characters who compensated for its deficiencies in terms of gameplay. So turn to that instead if you're looking for a simple mecha game, or to Armored Core 6 Or DAEMON if you are looking for a challenge. Aside from fans of the anime, I find it hard to see who will be satisfied with the in-between made by Megaton Musashi W: Wired.