Full Metal Furies – Review (PC)

After the death of Prometheus, the king of the gods, the titans waged war on each other to seize control of the world. The first great war left the world in ashes and the titans withdrew to re-build their forces. This world cannot withstand any more; someone must end the second great war before it starts. Enter the furies: Triss the tank, Alex the fighter, Meg the sniper, and Erin the engineer. Together they will drive back the titans, save the world, and make a lot of really corny jokes.

Cellar Door Games, the creators of the hit game Rogue Legacy based out of Toronto, are teaming up with Microsoft to create a co-op brawler experience called Full Metal Furies. The game takes the classic brawlers of our childhood like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games and re-imagines them into the world of action RPGs. Full Metal Furies features an all-female cast of quirky characters with a variety of skills and playstyles, skill trees and equipment that can modify a character to fit any player’s preferences, and hidden puzzle elements that bring in a deeper level of lore and even change gameplay. 

Full Metal Furies can be played single player, or up to four player. When we play tested the game, the more was definitely the merrier. Solo gameplay was still very enjoyable, but much more dynamic and fun with four players. Some elements in the game only really show themselves with multiple players. For instance, when the enemies come into the screen they occasionally have a certain color barrier around them that corresponds to one of the four furies who must “break” (i.e. deal enough damage so that the shield goes away) that shield with the corresponding color. Once the barrier has been broken, that enemy can be damaged by any player. This dynamic forces all of the players to work together and coordinate with each other to progress through each level.

Each titan has its own personality, army of unique minions, environment/terrain, and even set of dumb jokes and/or puns. As players move through the world to defeat the titans, they will have to learn and re-learn how to combat these changing circumstances. If you’re expecting Full Metal Furies to be the stereotypical button-masher that this type of game often turns into, prepare to be surprised. Blind button-mashing rarely works in this game, the enemies are to smart and the game mechanics rely on players to make smart, intentional moves to defeat the minions that come on screen.  BE WARNED: The bosses in this game are no slouches, they are very difficult and will change as you fight them. Players may find themselves very frustrated with the game (and each other) while trying to defeat the bosses, but players will certainly feel an enormous sense of accomplishment when they are finally able to defeat the bosses.

One of the most surprising elements in Full Metal Furies was the significance of the skill tree and equipment system. For this genre of gaming, these elements at first felt out of place. With further gameplay, each player was taking advantage of the skill tree and equipment to enhance the “role” that they played on the team. This unique addition to the game added a level of strategic entertainment for the gamer.

Equipment can be found throughout the game, granting totally different functions for the characters move sets, allowing characters to customize to their own playstyle. However, each piece of equipment has character bonuses to unlock when the character achieves “mastery” with that piece through extended use. This means that though every player may find their favorite pieces of equipment, they may have to use other pieces for a while to acquire the character bonuses that are so helpful throughout the game. The skill trees also provide a wide range of character customization, allowing characters to be modified for offence, defense, support, protection, explosives, etc. It would be extremely wise to play consistently with the same four players (a “squad” if you will) so that they can maximize the effectiveness of these customizations.

The new title from Cellar Door Games will be available for $19.99 USD on Steam, Windows 10 Store, and Xbox One with full cross play abilities. Full Metal Furies is an incredibly enjoyable party game to play locally or online. It is more than worth a $20 investment for the estimated 15-20 hours of gameplay to finish the story your first time through. 

*Full Metal Furies was provided to the reviewer by the publishing company but this fact did not alter the reviewer’s opinion*