Tiny Metal: Full Metal Rumble – Review (PC)

Tiny Metal: Full Metal Rumble offers players intense tactical turn-based action with the second entry in the series. This is a game where you’ll have to balance priorities such as unit management, battalion movement, and map coverage in order to progress through levels and take down enemy forces. Japanese developer Area 35 look to build on the frantic arcade war-gaming action introduced by the 2017 original with more of, well..everything.

For those unfamiliar with the game’s predecessor or the Advanced Wars series, Tiny Metal: Full Metal Rumble is an anime inspired war themed turn-based strategy game. Its battles play out on grid-based levels where the player will need to carefully plan and maneuver their soldiers to ultimately outmaneuver enemy soldiers of the Dinoldan army. Each battle starts out on a map with varying terrain and conditions and a small battalion of friendly units. A fog of war blocks out large portions of the map and players will need to advance their units to see enemy movements and encampments.

In Tiny Metal: Full Metal Rumble, players will once again take on the roll of Lieutenant Colonel of these small battalions. Your company consists of several different units including riflemen, lancers, infantry carriers, helicopters, tanks, mobile radars, and more. Each one of these units possesses unique strengths and weaknesses. As an example, Lancers carry rocket launchers – giving them substantial fire power against vehicles. This, however, comes at a cost of movement as Lancers can only traverse a short distance away with each turn. Riflemen, on the other hand, can travel long distances with a single turn but inflict negligible damage on anything other than other infantry units.

With careful planning and maneuvering, you can quickly surround enemy soldiers and perform combo attacks with up to four of your units – an incredibly satisfying part of the game. But as satisfying and rewarding as many of these actions can be, it’s generally preceded by too many turns of nothing really happening. We often went up to half a dozen turns before we even saw a single enemy. A single mission can take in excess of thirty minutes to complete, and the majority of the fighting will only take place near the end of a mission.

In addition to eliminating enemies, players can also take the upper hand in skirmishes by taking control of buildings. By simply placing an infantry unit on a building tile, you are able to capture it as one of your own. The cost of doing this is having to remain stationary for several turns while the building is fully captured. The payoff is unfortunately not worth it in most cases. There are camps to be found that, once occupied, can create additional units. While this is incredibly useful, there are few other example of structures that are worth capturing. You’re better off spending your time advancing units as a collective further towards the enemy headquarters. In most cases, the Dinoldan HQ will have to be captured in order to clear the level.

Each campaign mission begins with a short cutscene introducing the events leading up to the next battle. This will focus on a given commander, or main character in the story line, whose perspective you’ll be playing as in the mission. Each commander possesses a set of passive abilities that will aid your units in battle. Some have defensive buffs while others will give bonuses to building capture times. Where the different commanders really shine is when their Super Power can be used. Once enough turns have been completed and units have successfully carried out attacks, this special ability can be activated and grants a huge advantage to all of your units for the next turn. These normally come in the way of substantial attack defense boosts and can really help to turn the tide in battle.

When all of these parts are brought together, what you get is a lighter toned strategy game that seemingly should offer a lot for players to do and a number of different ways to do them. There are a number of varied unit types to play with in a vast array of settings. But, given that the parameters for victory change so little from mission to mission, it all just feels like you’re doing the same thing over and over again. The majority of levels require simply capturing an enemy headquarters and/or defeating all enemy soldiers on the map in order to move on. Given that each level can feel like a slog after taking so long to clear, we found ourselves having a hard time wanting to move onto the next. The inclusion of modes like Skirmish and Multiplayer should help but, given those are just the same modes without the story, they really don’t since the core gameplay is so stale.

For fans of the original Tiny Metal game or the older Advanced Wars games, Tiny Metal: Full Metal Rumble will likely be right up your alley. Those looking for a tactical turn-based change of pace with lighter approach to graphics and story telling may also find something to like. However, given the slower pace, lack of mission variety, and repetition between levels, we suspect many gamers will bore quickly with this one.

Tiny Metal: Full Metal Rumble releases on Steam and Nintendo Switch on July 11th, 2019.

Tiny Metal: Full Metal Rumble was provided to the reviewer by the publishing company but this fact did not alter the reviewer’s opinion