Robotech was the first anime I ever saw, though I was too young and dumb to understand any of that, it was just a cool show with transforming robots and more talking than my six-year-old self could probably handle. For those who don't know, Robotech was the Frankenstein creation of Carl Macek who wanted to bring Super Dimensional Fortress Macross to the U.S. but due to broadcasting standards at the time that required a minimum episode account he couldn't. His company, Harmony Gold, also owned the rights to Super Dimensional Calvary Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber Mospeada which were all associated with Tatsunoko Productions (Speed Racer and Gatchamen) and had similar designs. The other two series were probably not going to do well since they were not successful in Japan like Macross was, so Carl came up with an intriguing idea to simply merge all three series into one long generational epic about mankind's war with alien invaders and the secrets of Protoculture. Frankly, he did a pretty good job, despite what a once vocal anime fan base use to say back in the day. I'm also sure modern anime fans would be even more appalled, since the fan base has only seemed to grow more snobbish as the years went by.
So after finally resolving most of the legal disputes concerning who owns what of the three franchises, Harmony Gold decided to bring the series to a new generation and started expanding the scope including a few video game tie-ins. Battlecry was their first venture into gaming, and they teamed up with TDK (yes the same guys who made that awful Aquaman video game but bear with me) and created an original story set in the Macross part of the Robotech universe that captured the original series.
Battlecry is the story of Jack Archer, a former soldier who is drafted to work on the SDF-1 project and becomes the leader of the Wolf Squadron for the RDF. The opening missions follow the Macross Saga and its major events, explaining what Jack had done during the war with the Zentraedi and the eventual devastation of Earth's surface. The bulk of the game takes place in the post-war part of Macross, where the survivors of the war try to rebuild earth, prepare to go to space to deal with future alien threats, and deal with the social troubles of integrating the surviving Zentraedi into human society. Jack's Wolf Unit is one of many units that deal with Zentraedi Rebellions in the wastelands, and he eventually has to stop Zeraal, a notable Zentraedi General who is gathering malcontent Zentraedi to build an army to crush the RDF and return home. So it's basically the plot of Macross's third act, with just new characters replacing all the main series characters. Despite that, the story is still pretty solid and thankfully doesn't mirror the original series too much outside of broad strokes.
As a licensed game, you can expect that the biggest draw of this game is the fan service. There are several returning characters from the show, all voiced by the original 80s VA cast, and almost all the new characters are also voiced by the old cast. What makes this a real treat is that the designers seem to have purposely cast everyone in an opposing type from the original. Cam Clark (Max Sterling) goes from talented wing man to main character Jack Archer, Rebecca Forstadt (Lynn Minmei) who played a finicky 16-year-old idol singer, plays the serious military mission support Izzy Randal which basically makes her playing the same type of role as her romantic rival in the original series Lisa Hayes, whose VA Melanie MacQueen got the wonderful job of playing the bat trout crazy Zentraedi Ace Kiyora. I know this probably doesn't mean a lot to any of you, but as a fan, this is all super cool to me.
Battlecry has you playing using the infamous Veritech Fighters through a variety of missions that incorporate all three of the mechs modes. Search and destroy, as well as defense missions take advantage of the Battleoid mode, Radar Escort and most space battles require Fighter mode, and occasionally you have to do human escort or grab important item missions which require the awkward Guardian Mode. All three modes play differently, with Fighter mode being like using a fighter jet, and Battleoid mode being a third-person shooter. Guardian is the odd man out as it allows you to hover and grab things, but it lacks Battleoid Mode's Auto-targeting lock on, and its missile attack lacks the punch of the Fighter mode. On the bright side, like the anime, you can actually switch between all three modes on the fly, which can seriously help cover the faults each mode has. The gameplay works for the most part, but there is room for improvement, Guardian mode is mostly useless, and you'll dread any mission that requires you to have to use it. Fighter and Battleoid modes are also a bit clunky, but not to the extreme as Guardian, so they feel better in comparison, but on their own it's obvious they could have tighter controls. Escort missions are the bane of your existence since often times, the escort is actually sturdier than your own fighter. I'm also annoyed by the Battleoid's gun kind of having awkward power output. You can go into a sniper mode to pick off targets, at which point the gun does ridiculously high damage, but the regular machine gun mode just does cherry tapping type damage to everything. A happy medium would have been nice, especially in the boss battles, as it feels like Battleoid mode is mostly useless, and your strategy often devolves into zooming back and forth in the small arena in Fighter mode to launch a few missiles every pass.
The game allows you to collect and use both the models of every Veritech in the Macross Saga, but also the paint scheme of all the heroes, including ones that never show up in the game. Sadly, barring a few units, most of the Veritechs only have minor stat changes between each other and serve largely a cosmetic choice. Then again, this is pretty accurate to the source material, so the gamer side is not too annoyed. Still, it would have been nice to be able to use the Destroids for some missions and add in a bit of variety to the gameplay.
The game also has a versus mode where you can go head-to-head against another player in a dog fight which is super cool but depending on the rules set up for the fight, it can transform quickly into "whoever gets their full Macross missile attack off first wins" or "the longest drawn out fight in history". Still, I had a blast recreating a fight from Macross Plus with a friend, we even turned down the game music and switched in the OST from the Macross Plus for the full effect.
As I fan of the anime, I appreciate all the nods and references to the series proper. As a gamer, I felt it was a nice first effort, but could have been a lot better. I was very sad when the game's sequel Invasion was reduced to being a crappy Halo knock-off, cause FPS games had really taken off by that point and the developers wanted to capitalize on it. Even more irritating is that the sequel takes place in New Generation and the Invid Invasion, which is one of my favorite parts from a setting perspective.
As a fun fact, I've actually met Tommy Yune, who was a producer from Harmony Gold on the project and also the character designer. He and his brother Steve (also from Harmony Gold) signed my copy of the game and even got Tony Oliver (VA of Rick Hunter and a crap ton of other things from my childhood) to sign my game copy as well. So yeah, the dumb fanboy is real with this game, and every time I do run into them at conventions, I keep asking for a real sequel.
Last edited by Wolf Kanno; 03-11-2023 at 08:19 AM.
Reply With Quote