[v0.102 demo review]
If you've played the previous EP games, then EP Metal should feel familiar. Like other games in the series, the gameplay and story are presented through a no dialogue minimalist style and gorgeous pixel art. This time around, it seems you're a bounty huntress whose goal is to eventually take down the Bounty Hunter Hunter. But before you can do that, you must first work your way up through the small fries before taking on the big prize. There's also a B plot involving what seems to be a fellow male bounty hunter getting involved in his own antics. How our two protags will interact with each other will have to be seen in the full release.
Gameplay so far is subdivided into 2 main sections: a top-down semi action mode where the player character takes on a more petite form which leads into a turn-based battle against waves of enemies culminating in a boss fight, which the protag transforms into a fuller bustier form.
Like in the previous games, you fight mobs while in top-down mode by running into them from either the back or sides to kill them. Killing mobs gives you EP, the series' currency, and unlike other games doesn't seem to lower your HP directly so you can theoretically grind as much EP as you'd like. Examining boxes on the map also grants you some EP as well as permanent stat boosts such as to your max HP. When in turn-based mode, you are given a variety of weapons to choose from, with more powerful weapons having different ammos and energy that you have to manage throughout the fight. You can refill ammo and HP at the cost of EP, but the costs will increase exponentially over the course of the fight. Upon losing, you can either continue at the cost of some EP or accept defeat whereupon you get the defeat H scene.
Outside of battle, you have the EP World as well as the home base. In the EP World, you can spend your hard-earned EP to level up your weapon's parameters for boss fight mode as well as unlock variations for H content. The home base has quite a number of locations but as of the demo their purposes are yet to be seen.
Gameplay is most similar to the previous game, EP Hero Youth, but a bit more streamlined. It remains to be seen if Metal-X will be as genre-busting as Fuyou's previous titles. Either way, I'm really hoping that this game tones down on the grindiness of previous titles which made getting to the ending very frustrating in the past. But it's unlikely that a foreign review on a pirating site will have any impact on the game's development, so all we can do is hope for the best.
