The 3rd installment in the Gearhead series (or the fourth, I am pretty sure there was another at some point, but maybe it is the one that ended up being turned into Gearhead caramel?).
So, like in the previous ones, you get to salvage and customize mechas, find lancemates, complete missions.
You can import your character from GearHead Arena, and you get full control over your party in combat.
Your mechs have 2 actions, and have access to more weapons than they can fire. They have an energy jauge and the pilots have a concentration jauge that don't replenish in combat. Both are used to perform special attacks (chaining shots, linking weapon fire, ...).
Customization is pretty cool, with tradeoffs to make between protection and dodge, and accuracy and destructive power, and it plays much smoother than Battletech (and also feels closer to Crescent Hawk), and the mecha sprites are cute.
The non mech part is weaker, with little to do, except find missions, recruit pilots, and go on shopping sprees, but like in Crescent Hawk, you have ground missions with your pathetically unfit pilot doing grunt work (I gave implants that tank body for piloting attributes and skills on mine). The character portraits are also off-putting (they were better in GearHead 1 IMO).
Note that wasting time to stroll around towns is something I despise in a lot of RPG (I wish many more used the Darklands approach), so I don't think it is worse than the "genre standard" in this regard.
You can find the game on itch.io, where the previous two opus can also be donwloaded for free, and the source code on github.
So, like in the previous ones, you get to salvage and customize mechas, find lancemates, complete missions.
You can import your character from GearHead Arena, and you get full control over your party in combat.
Your mechs have 2 actions, and have access to more weapons than they can fire. They have an energy jauge and the pilots have a concentration jauge that don't replenish in combat. Both are used to perform special attacks (chaining shots, linking weapon fire, ...).
Customization is pretty cool, with tradeoffs to make between protection and dodge, and accuracy and destructive power, and it plays much smoother than Battletech (and also feels closer to Crescent Hawk), and the mecha sprites are cute.
The non mech part is weaker, with little to do, except find missions, recruit pilots, and go on shopping sprees, but like in Crescent Hawk, you have ground missions with your pathetically unfit pilot doing grunt work (I gave implants that tank body for piloting attributes and skills on mine). The character portraits are also off-putting (they were better in GearHead 1 IMO).
Note that wasting time to stroll around towns is something I despise in a lot of RPG (I wish many more used the Darklands approach), so I don't think it is worse than the "genre standard" in this regard.
You can find the game on itch.io, where the previous two opus can also be donwloaded for free, and the source code on github.
but when I played it last the UI was pretty horrendous. Needed a lot of work.
