Recent reviews by acc0unt

Game will shutdown on Nov. 29th, 2023. At least the devs will ease the monetization so you can get all the locked suits starting Season 6, but at this point most people will either leave or just wait for the new content (S6, August 23; S7, October 25).
If you’re going to play, don’t bother spending Freemium currency (Capital) on lootboxes, you can use Tickets for that. Also don’t bother getting into ranked, there’s no reward to play it and you'll lose hair out of stress (ranked only available on Asian servers).

TL;DR: the game is a management tragedy, a result of idiot investors who thought betting on eSports so late into the party with a legendary IP backing it up was a good idea.

Been playing since launch (excluding S3), most of the time as a persona non grata due to region lock. At first I was waiting for GBO2 to come out, you may know how that ended, so I decided to play this as an “escape route”, even though I’ve never been interested into hero shooters.
It may seem like a joke if you look what other people say but Evolution can be actually fun to play and handle, the real problem is everything else in the game:
The developers and their management incompetence (Bandai) to NOT address almost anything and their inexperience at making this type of games, are the main reasons why this game sank and never recovered after launch. According to the dev team, they were told everything was going fine (Stadia flashbacks). Also it’s clear that this game got released in this state due to having to rush up the launch before Overwatch 2 (the mother of all irony is that the EOS was announced right after OW2 appeared on Steam).
Frequent network issues: just the average Japanese online game, it’s designed according to their high-end bandwidth and short distances, so it all falls apart when it’s out of their ideal environment (what’s happening with GBO2), therefore, crashes that took a while to solve; the lack of backfill (there are pros and cons with this) and being unable to see your challenge objectives during the match (got partially “solved” by removing the ‘Eligible Units’ section AKA the units you’ll have to use if you wanna complete the dailies) or to get back to your match after a disconnection (there is but it’s extremely rare for it to work).
Lack of actual content: so far this game only got 5 suits and TWO (2) maps (one of them is universally hated, the biggest offender of the lack of testing this project had) in 10 months, outright shameful (according to the game files there were AT LEAST 6 more maps in development. Half of them will never see the light of day since it’s gonna get axed soon); the majority of the content, instead, is filled with cosmetics like keychains for your weapons that nobody but the player will be able to see because of their small size, mere cosmetics with the only function of filling the pool of items obtainable through lootboxes.
The monetization and the FOMO mechanics for F2Ps: pure misery even for (American) gacha standards. You had to grind the whole pass to unlock a single (1) suit per season (not including special events and Beginners’ Challenges (This issue will be “solved” at the start of S6 as I stated due to EOS), examples of how bad the monetization was in the game could be;
-20USD for a pack that’s only available for that season including the new suit, a skin and a portrait.
-Special skins (like Char’s Zaku) only available through coins obtainable by getting lootbox dupes (there’s a rate up once you acquire Premium currency as well as buying the Premium Pass but chances are you’ll have to spend 400USD for a single skin). Devs learned the bad lesson after this and instead of bringing these skins for free or cheap to attract an audience, they started selling 20USD packs for a single skin with original SFX.
-You missed an item on the Season Pass or the special events? It will never ever become available again.
-80USD for the corniest skins you’ll ever see to attract COD-tier players at launch.
-And they made the Season Pass longer to grind during S1 ‘cause Japanese players were complaining about having no reason to play after finishing it (1-60 from 500EXP to 650, Extra lvls. 1-4 from 2500 to 4500, then added Extra lvls. 5-15 from 3500 to 6500).
At least if you paid for a single Premium Pass (10USD), and completed it until some point, you can recover what you’ve spent to buy the next Pass and so on.
Incomprehensible region lock.
EAC. Worthless kernel-level anti-cheat that doesn’t do ANYTHING: not even detect cheaters, the report system is useless.
Average Japanese PC game optimization and performance (you know).
This game turning into a brick after they pull the plug off the servers (average ‘game as a service’ situation).
The biggest offender of them all is that this game only exists because of eSports, a huge mistake right from the foundation. IF YOU WANNA BUILD A COMPETITIVE SCENE, YOU NEED A CASUAL AUDIENCE THAT’S INTERESTED IN THE GAME FIRST.

Those are the most notable issues I’ve found but there are also…
Unreasonable balance issues, either suits (enough people crying about melee units, also shield and stun meta) or matchmaking (no way to fix it with such a small playerbase, but most times, matches are simply one-sided stomps).
Absurd word filtering: censors Asshimar, Unicorn, night, coming and GM.
All Chat removal (being able to talk with the other team): Not because they were trying to save us from “toxicity”, but to respond to the Japanese claims and discontent towards English-speakers moving to JP and their idle-chatting.
The game rewards newcomers with Freemium currency with the Beginner’s Challenges, what’s the issue? That there’s no actual reward for the veteran (see the monetization point above) so this encourages smurfing. Also, during S4, if you were completely absent during S3, you were able to come back and get the same amount of Freemium than the user who spent +60 hours to finish the pass by doing nothing.
Gameplay loop can be tiresome for some people: Not everybody can play the same 11 maps for months without going insane. Learning curve can be steep for some people and won’t hold your hand.
The lack of customization and ability to be creative is another letdown, but kinda expected, no way we could get this in a Japanese service game.
Barbatos’ hit reg. and Mahiro’s latency-sensitive kit are objectively the worst issues out of the suit roster.

Despite all previously mentioned, I found some positives in this game such as… uhhh…
A cast full of mostly pre-2009 robot designs is miles better than Overwatch and others’ coomer material cast. Also their kits are fairly diverse, going to miss Turn A’s set.
The natural state of hero shooters, that is: pretty fast-paced, short TTK, pumps up adrenaline very easily and can be really chaotic, especially in Domination mode.
The dash gimmick is probably the most defining feature, specially in the hero shooter genre, adds plenty of movement variety such as half dashes, dash-jumps and weapon-change exploits. This and the lack of remarkable role definition between characters deliver a decent amount of freedom (and sort of solves the lack of map exploration) and are the most overlooked positive points
Despite what people say, unlockable suits are NOT pay-to-win (at least not now), they may assure a free kill, but they don’t assure a good performance, neither a victory.

In short, it’s a game “for smart people”, and “smart people” are smart enough to not spend money in a service like this. Glad I didn’t spend a dime on this.
The game should have gone the TF2 road instead of dying of greed attempting the OW route.

For more cases like this:
Rise of Incarnates (Extreme VS. without the Gundam IP), GBO2 on PC, Final Fantasy 7: The First Soldier. All three went to the same management hell like Evo.
If you want more Gundam, just give up on searching on Steam and dive into the 2000s games catalogue, that’s a lot to play. There’s no hope for this franchise in the West,

>>>If you're having issues with the mouse movement, this thread might help you<<<

TL;DR: Colonies and LP2 do have GFWL. LP1 (broken) and LP3 (blasphemy) not.
There is some light of hope implying the removal of GFWL. It's been a year and it's time to accept that Capcom won't bother about a +10 year old game with very little of a playerbase.
A good, over-the-top co-op game which main issues aren't related to the game mechanics or the audience. Sometimes it can get into your nerves.

• Games For Windows Live (although it wasn't a problem for me, just tedious to install).
  
• Sudden crashes for no reason (or after Alt+Tab’ing).
  
• The audio being SO LOW that I need to volume up to 100%.
  
• Being a Japanese game ported to PC before 2015 is such a curse.
  
• The usual with modern OS.

• I know this is how most console games worked during that time: Player creates a room; people get in and if the game already started, they have to wait until the round is done. But it would be "quality-of-life" to add an spectator mode, instead of stare at the same screen for 10 to 30 minutes in some cases. Also, worth to mention the lack of an in-game chat, LP1 has it and GFWL PMs do not count.
  
• My biggest issue with online-team-based games is that ALL of them have an expiration date, and I'm not talking about servers shutdown (could be too), but depending on other people for most of the game functions is a double-edged sword in long term (the mere presence of GFWL also scares a lot of people). Already happened to me with several games that forces mutuality as a core element. At least here you can find some randos in the campaign co-op, but PvP is a ghost town, you need to find them yourself.
  
• Playing the campaign solo may be a hit-or-miss, not because it’s boring, but sometimes it’s necessary to have someone covering your back, and the CPU does more obstruction than assistance.

• Big corp. trying to destroy the planet (again!) and former guys from big corp. want to sabotage their evil intentions in order to save the planet. Similar interests as LP1.
  
• Each episode is about small group of people from each faction which all come together to the ‘big one all-out’ conclusion.
  
• Each episode reaches to the point of boss fights with a lot of grandeur, ends up very satisfying. So over-the-top and ridiculous that it's hard to not love this, the same goes to the characters and suit designs.
  
• Like I said, it’s a simple story but executed fine, didn’t take risks about going in-depth on the plot or focus on characters like LP1 that, as far as I remember, it had over-exposure and characters/moments cringe-worthy and full of conveniences in their attempt to bring a sort-of serious action movie

• While playing this, I’ve already thought that the grappling hook/anchor had a huge improvement compared to the LP1. But replaying LP1 made me appreciate even more how LP2 went really in-depth with the hooks: holding the anchor to stay in a place; the ability to pick up T-ENG and [?] boxes and various techniques that weren’t possible in the previous game.
  
• The Training mode addition was important, not only for an extra on the single-player experience (still needs more, wasted potential to make their own VR Missions), but it made me find out about the new mechanics that you can do.
  
• Replaying LP1 also made me realize that the abilities to roll and sprint were essential to add variety on the moveset.
  
• Well-planned re-playability (unlike the lazy attempt of target marks on LP1), with the co-op function in campaign, the rank on every zone/chapter, the Good Job medals and the level grind.
  
• The way to tell the story with different factions, areas and climate in between, was a good way to add variety and customization to the player’s character and an incentive to keep playing and collecting stuff after you beat the campaign for the first time.
  
• I’ve seen someone complaining about the confusion between the input keys to get in/out of a VS and turn them on in some cases. But truly is an improvement to what we have on LP1, that you could have a mess by having the same button to interact with everything if the elements were so close in between. Instead, the lack of on-screen instructions on how to handle the VS is a real issue.
  
• Other people also complain about the lack of identity this has compared to LP1 and call it a “Monster Hunter with guns” but it went well in the result, even though I’ve never played any (yet). Also it’s curious to see that this and Just Cause 2 were released pretty close (another one to abuse with the grappling hook feature).

• – Inferior graphics: these were sacrificed in order to have more variety in elements and scenarios, it looks worse than LP1 but still has style.
  
• ± Pros and cons of a game intended to consoles:
  1. To get new content, most of it comes from the machine slot and there’s an option to put a code and get something special, like magazine shirts, yet this option only works for the console version.
  2. The PC version includes the Map Pack DLCs for free (can be used on PvP), yet Rush Arena is unavailable (and the crossover skins for obvious reasons).
  3. It’s understandable that most people refuse to get in contact with this version due to GFWL, and as far as I know, the PS3 version is more populated, including PvP, and you don’t have to check several times daily to find someone on co-op.

~
In short, it’s a really entertaining experience with eye-catching monsters and mechs, ruined by Capcom's negligence, being an online-based game, and hated because of “GFWL in current year”.
I have a dream, that Capcom releases a new Lost Planet game that is decent in all aspects (every installment has their issues) and tries to keep something from the first two entries, something more than the very core. Because it’s a shame that a franchise like this, ended up aimless, picking stuff from other IPs and turning into a mess, with no identity, even.

6,5/10

For similar stuff:
The Earth Defense Force franchise is Kaiju production-tier and way more chaotic and fast-paced.
Just Cause 2 released at the same time and both have intense use of grappling hook utilities.
The rest of the Lost Planet franchise, and Monster Hunter for this one.
Out of PC/Steam:
Freedom Wars (on PSVita, fits better on the “Monster Hunter with guns”).
E.X. Troopers (on PS3 and 3DS, from the Lost Planet series)
If you don’t mind about both suffering of high-contrast shiny colors and animewashing.
Out of videogames, the Blue Gender anime/manga, and I feel there’s a bit of inspiration on the creatures of Starship Troopers and Dune works.

Seguramente cualquiera que tenga una cuenta de Steam tendrá Ricochet sin saber por qué lo tiene, la gente no entiende lo genial que es este... hijo especialito de Tron, y el abandono de los jugadores al producto hizo que la ausencia en casi todo momento de un alma en los servidores haya sido la principal queja de los comunes de los mortales hacia esta curiosa pieza.
En el día de la fecha he sido parte de un grupo de diez personas para jugar esta joya y ha sido asombroso, con el simple y sólido objetivo de matarse los unos a los otros saltando plataformas y lanzando discos, en un cuasieterno enfrentamiento donde nadie gana, todos sufren pero también disfrutan al sufrir.

Cuando acabe el mundo volveremos a los '80 y estaremos en un limbo lleno de plataformas rojas y azules y gritos perdiéndose en el infinito para volver y seguir gritando­.

Puedo crear un chino negro.

rocket launcher is op