If you were hoping for the new Star Fox or Eve Valkyrie, this isn’t it. Manticore – Galaxy on Fire is so needlessly boarding, I couldn’t imagine anyone feeling the need to purchase a microtransaction in the free-to-play mobile version, let alone paying over $20 for the game without them. While I never found myself having to repeat a level for any reason, the game still manages to feel like a tedious grind thanks to lack of variety and dullness of the boring dogfight missions.
Repetitive simple missions with some areas being reused multiple times, ships and weapons unlock pretty slowly, and levelling them up takes a while. While microtransactions have been removed from this installment, you can definitely still feel their impact due to the way the gameplay is designed. The story is one of revenge, but it isn’t all that deep, and ultimately has every mission ending in just another space pirate to fight for information or for some other arbitrary reason, lather rinse and repeat. The dialogue doesn’t resemble real people having conversations, but instead is akin to disjointed, underpaid and under-directed voice actors stiffly reading their lines for the first time.
The voice acting, writing, and story of the Manticore and its crew are all equally horrible. Manticore: Galaxy on Fire (Switch) – image for this review provided by Deep Silver, Fishlabs, and Koch Media.
