Before I start i know the game name is a bit long but i swear it’s not a fighting game, no Guilty Gear Core + Accent R XRD type of name, this is not i swear.
Hello and welcome to my first ever game review, my name is Nokuza and i love everything about video games, i have a burning passion for it, and today i wanted to talk about a game that i played recently.
This game being MGR Revengeance, i mostly wanted to play this game cause it is a third person action game that feels a lot like an arcade game like devil may cry and i love devil may cry, but i’m here to tell you what makes it drastically different than a dmc game and a really fun experiecne too.
First off, the story of this game, this is clearly not the highlight of the game so i’m going to keep it simple. This game takes place in the metal gear universe which already is full of stupid things ordered in a very chaotic way were nothing makes sense, you play as raiden who way after the events of mgr 2 joins a special force to deliver military security to countries and people who are willing to pay for it. Any military advanced group in this game has human android that are quite literally killing machines just like raiden, and your goal is to stop Senator Armstrong and his goons from making another world war because “it is good for the economy”, you know, capitalist stuff or whatever.
Onto the gameplay, which is the best part of this game, just like devil may cry you will most of the times fight horde of ennemies in your path and sometimes bosses that you will kill with your blade, the better your score is after the fights the more upgrades and moves you can buy at the end of a chapter, and that’s about it for the similarities with dmc. Now, two things that are really unique to this game in terms of gameplay is the parrying mechanic and the patented B-L-A-D-E M-O-D-E, these two mechanics are essential to play the game. You might say that parrying is not a unique mechanic at all and that it is present in a lot of games, which would be true but for god sake give me the time to explain before making claims.
This game has a parry system that negates ennemy attacks and if you perfect parry you get to do a combo after the parry or simply kill the opponent with blade mode but i will elaborate about this later. But parrying is not just about timing, but also about directions, it all depends on where does the attack come from, you need to move the stick at the direction of the attack and do a light attack to parry succesfully, and now you know how to parry, but you still have to learn about blademode.
To explain properly blademode, i have first to talk about this game body part system, ennemies have body parts which get weaker the more you hit them, which will make the body part appear in a bit of a blue color, once the entire body is blue you can perform a finishing move with blade mode or by parrying perfectly and pressing Y and B on an xbox controller. Blade mode takes full advantage of this body part mechanics. Blade mode switch you in a first person perspective where you can hit yout opponent vertically or horizontally and if you hit a weakened body part, it will fall off the ennemies body and he will be impared for the rest of the fight, making you able to incapacitate ennemies. If all of their body is weakened you can aim for a specific spot, slice it and press b to regain life and “blade mode juice”, since blade mode as it’s limit and can only be used as long as your blade mode juice is not empty. Since you need to use it for many things, having it refills is an important aspect of the game. Now that i have explained the mechanics and how the games works i can talk about bosses and what makes this game good.
Mgr Revengeance can be consider a short game, but there are plenty of other missions, you can unlock tons of personalisation on your character to keep the experience fresh, the gameplay is really satisfying, the game as a rank system for each fight were it take in account your longest combos, how many body parts did you cut, did you get his etc… etc…, many things to keep you coming back to perfect everything. But what highlights this game the most are the bosses.
All the bosses in this games make you use a mechanic to it’s fullest. while being memorable character even if you don’t see them for long. First is the metal gear you fight at the very beginning of the game, it’s a tutorial boss , makes you go around every mechanics, is quite a simple boss to understand not very memorable but the main theme of the game rules of nature is playing while you fight him so there’s a banger playing while you slice and toss around a robot 20 times your size. And now i have to enter in spoiler territory to explain you the other bosses so buckle up for this, it’s going to be even longer.
You then fight Bladewolf or as i’d like to call him robot doggo, which is what i just exactly said, a robot dog sent to kill you. And let me tell you that for newcomers that did not understand fully well parrying, this boss is a pain to fight. This is the boss that personally took the game to, this a neat experience to, damn that’s a really good game, this where i understand why parrying and blademode together are really satisfying and unlike dmc, you don’t even need to learn combos and moves, you can just press attack buttons and parry at the right time then use blade mode to slice your opponent, which i believe is great because it makes anyone able to enjoy the game. Also you don’t kill the robot dog of course, you beat him and then he becomes your friend.
Then in the mist of trying stopping a russian guy you encounter Mistral. A French/Algerian girl who lost her parents during a war and then thought to herself that killing was her thing now ( it’s how most of the characters are in this game, the further you get the worse it is). This one is an easier boss, she makes you learn that she has grabs that you have to evade and can’t parry. beside that she is a pretty easy boss to fight, takes a bit of time to understand her patterns and kill her, TOOK ME DEFINITELY LESS TIME THAN THE DOG.That’s also where you learn that after defeating some bosses, you can buy their weapons at the end of a chapter and use them, so say it with me, “it adds replayability to the game !”.
Now this next boss is the turning point of the game, a lot of stupid things happens. First a later boss called Samuel Jetstream who kicked your ass at the very beginning tries to question raiden constantly about how killing hundreds of people and calling yourself a savior might be wrong. So your character has a mental breakdown through the entire level, and culminates at the part where you meet Monsoon. get ready because it gets really stupid. Raiden learns that he killed people who did not have a choice to join the “bad guys” because they couldn’t pay money for their family and /or couldn’t find a job anywhere else, you know the drill. So he start having a breakdown and THEN, Monsoon makes a statement about human nature and memes that apparently triggers raiden for some reason who, and listen carefully, stabs himself to be really angry and says something along the line of i was made to kill, i was taught to do it very early in my life, i’m just killing people who deserves to die (the famous recurring theme of the characters about I HAVE TO KILL PEOPLE). So, the bossfight, it’s very hard, Monsoon makes sure you learned how to parry and how to use blademode, cause he yeets Tanks and other military vehicules in your direction and you have to cut them with blademode. Yes this game is badass. Pretty cool boss overall.
then Sundowner… I don’t have anything to say about him, it’s an annoying character that likes war and violence and talks about how kids are cruel and easily moldable to make them war machines, also he seems to be very in touch with his inner child, good thing i guess. He is a very annoying boss fight where you have to cut through specific parts of his defense wall to hit him because his defense wall is made of explosive and they explode if you hit the wall incorrectly, it’s very stupid and i hate it. All i have to say is that he just dies in a very satisfying way.
Now the two final bosses of the game. If you made it until here, thanks for sticking around this very long essay, i hope you had some music in the background to read this, but don’t worry, we are reaching the end.
The brazilian swordsman, Samuel Rodriguez also know as Sam Jetstream, is a recurrent character in the game, always challenges raiden and tell him to stop holding himself back with his beliefs and just fight for the pleasure of fighting. You meet him in a desert where you do a 1v1 to the death (final destination no items), this fight is the best one, the fact that the only thing i know for real plays during a fight against another swordsman with mechanics similar as yours, where you just go for parries and combos at each other unt il the end of the fight is the absolute best. This fight is just absolutely satisfying and also very cool and when you kill Sam it’s very sad cause the robot doggo is sad cause he likes sam and you equally. But now only the final boss is left.
The American Senator Armstrong, is the most extremist view of an american i have ever seen. he played football in his school and could have gotten into a known team, check. runs for president by trying to declare war to other countries by making kill the actual president, check. delivers the most insane political speech about how people should live their life how they want and not be restricted by others and reach their own hapiness no matter the costs. Basically a the strong gets to live kind of view. All this while he is punching you to death. But then raiden too as his EDGY TEENAGER SPEECH when robot doggo gives him Sam sword which apparently as been passed from generations and is like a legendary sword, i mean it makes sense in this world where everything can make sense, back to raiden. He goes on about how is blade was use for justice and not for vengeance but well this his not is sword so rule doesn’t count now. AH yes i completely forgot about the bossfight didn’t I ?
You fight armstrong in his mecha spider which took me quite a while because my brain forgot that parrying attack was a thing, pretty hit or miss boss fight, the ending where you cut off one of the robot legs and slice him with it in blade mode is pretty dope. But then the real boss fight begins. one on one Nanomachines against edgy boi with brasilian blade. This is of course the hardest boss fight in the game cause there is a lot to learn and understand about Armstrong patterns and when to parry, since most of his attacks will take a good quarter of your life away. It is really satisfying to learn his patterns and advance to an other phase each time, a battle that highlights every mechanics the game can offer, truly a golden ending boss to this game.
But a written essay can only say so much about the game so i recommend you try it out yourself if you are into the third person action game genre and you are looking for a good time. Thanks for reading this very long essay, hope i see you soon with a new subject (maybe, can’t promise, i really don’t know).
