Battle Suit Aces
Good but not great
Why
- Interesting lane-based combat with different archetypes
- Giant space mechs will always be cool
- Story/characterisation is delivered in a variety of ways
- Whole other game included in the roguelike mode
Why Not
- Voice acting is bland enough it kinda detracts from the experience
- Nothing to make it really stand out from similar games
- Gives you too much leeway; I never felt in danger of losing
Impressions
Another review where I bemoan Steam's binary thumbs up/thumbs down; I definitely can't give a game this good a thumbs down but it also doesn't really do enough to set it apart from the absolute flood of deckbuilders.
One cool point of differentiation is that it's story-based, with no half-hearted attempt at roguelike elements to ride that wave (though there is a full-hearted separate roguelike mode, making this pretty great value for money). This was the main draw for me; if I want to play a deckbuilder endlessly Slay the Spire 2 is right there. Unfortunately the story joins more or less every aspect of the game in the 'well-made but unspectacular' bucket.
There are distinct and likable characters, but the overall plot is very much just a way to move from point A to point B. There's voice acting, but unfortunately the performances are bland enough that I started enjoying the story a lot more on mute, skipping through as fast as I could read, something I never even considered in Inscryption. I'm a sucker for deckbuilders which use lanes as a concept but this isn't as creative with them as something like Cobalt Core, and the game never pushed me enough to feel like the different combos on offer were necessary to really think about.
It sucks because the devs clearly put a lot into this game, and they succeeded in making a very competent story-based deckbuilder. But the other games I mentioned in comparison have stuff that set them apart and made them immediately come to mind when I looked for comparisons; I can't say Battle Suit Aces will ever do that for me. If you're looking for a deckbuilder with a story that ends (not that it has to after they added the roguelike mode for free, almost a year after launch) this is certainly one of the options, and you probably won't regret it. But you probably won't remember it in a year or two either, so given the endless sea of fantastic games clamouring for your time this is a tough recommend.