Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo Review
The bullet hell shmup always been a game genre that fascinated me.
Sadly, I have not played enough games in the genre to call myself anything close to an expert. Still, I’ve watched the insane no-damage Touhou boss runs on YouTube. And, like a small child deciding they’ve got what it takes to be a meteorologist after watching the weather report in the evening news, I thought “I can do that,” only to be shot, crashed, smashed, and bombarded into oblivion. Thankfully, Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo brings things down to my level, but it still presents plenty of challenge to hardcore veterans.
Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo tells the story of a young girl prodigy who uses her vast scientific knowledge to create an army of Mechas. These Mechas then proceed to wipe out the entire human race. Only, one of these machines carries a human body within its frame, which carries the remaining will of the entire human race. Roughly, their mission is to destroy all the Mechas and the girl. Oh, and did I mention that a large portion of these robots are named after coffee?
I don’t want to spend too much time on the story, since it’s not the game’s main focus. I will say that it would have been easy for the developer to forego the story altogether, but instead HEY put in the effort to make a thoughtful character-based narrative. This, combined with branching narrative levels and a doomsday plotline, really hearkens back to Drakengard. Whether intentional or not, it hit the right notes for me.
On to the most important part of any game: the gameplay. Anyone who has ever played an autoscrolling shooter game should feel right at home with Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo. Up, down, left, right, shoot, bomb. Pretty standard stuff. From the get-go, there are three ships available, each with their own bullets and bombs. Players unlock more through continued play. Every ship has its pros and cons–for example, one Mecha shoots a beam that erases all bullets it touches, yet has an incredibly slow firing rate – but they balance well.
The shooting is a total blast. That’s a good thing considering you never stop shooting. To some this may sound dull – constantly tapping or simply holding the shoot button for 30-minute stretches of time – but this game earns its passage by supplying every level with new enemy types, bullet patterns, and a plethora of colorful bosses. You can dispatch these either through brute force or by destroying key components on their bodies. As you play and replay levels, you find quicker and more efficient ways to dispatch of these goons to increase your score, time, and rank.
Now, about the rank system in this game: from the outset, it gives you a default rank of zero. Your rank increases by destroying enemies quickly and from close up, and decreases from taking damage or dying. As your rank increases, the game’s difficulty also increases. Don’t get me wrong, even if you coast through from beginning to end in the 0-20 range, it will still put you through the wringer. However, if you’re truly insane, you can modify your starting rank into the 100s, 200s, or (lord have mercy on your soul) 300s. I don’t know how high it goes, because every time I return to the main menu, it increases. It’s unclear if this is intentional design, a demon possessing my game, or some combination thereof.
Everything I have mentioned above speaks to Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo‘s incredible ability to be accessible to just about anyone while also providing a whale of a challenge to anyone up for it. The biggest underlying issue is that there are so many factors at play in the game, but it explains so little. Nothing in the game itself tells you about rank, the Heat stat, branching levels, or why the robots say coffee sizes when they explode. The README acts as a sort of manual, but most players probably won’t figure that out. Even after reading through the file there are some things I don’t understand. Is unlocking new levels based on time, rank, both, neither?
It’s also a bit annoying to have to restart the entire campaign after losing all your lives. The main story lasts only about 30 minutes long, so it’s not the end of the world to start over, but this design philosophy is just a bit outdated. Players could still be penalized for using continues by instantly reducing their rank to zero, as well as keeping their timer at where it was when they died (or even setting it to zero). For a game with so many accessibility features, this can be a pretty egregious barrier.
Those minor faults aside, Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo is a wonderful little game. The pixel art is strong, wiry, and grainy. The FM Synth soundtrack creates an effect like watching an 80s action movie on a dusty VHS cassette. The cherry on top is fast-paced dodge-and-destroy gameplay against a rogues gallery of killer robots. Now, if only somebody could explain to me what’s up with all of the coffee references.
