Microvolts: Recharged

Microvolts: Recharged

released on Sep 09, 2023

Microvolts: Recharged

released on Sep 09, 2023

Microvolts Recharged is a quirky lobby-based third-person shooter with a unique toy theme. The game features a fun character cast and freely swappable 7 weapon types. Battle it out across dozens of large well-designed maps and frag your enemies!


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voce tinha que estar la pra saber

O relançamento certamente está melhor do que a versão da Rock Hippo, que era completamente contaminada pelo pay2win. Mas, infelizmente, o jogo tem uma base de jogadores muito pequena e, os que estão presentes, são todos veteranos que estão retornando pela nostalgia. O alcance do jogo está muito baixo por "N" motivos que desconheço, mas, certamente o fato de ser uma comunidade veterana — que, ainda, provavelmente jogou bastante em servidores alternativos — deve influenciar no afastamento dos novatos que tentam iniciar, já que não conseguem competir num jogo que exige tanta mecânica.

Para além disso, faltaram novidades no game. É o mesmo de anos atrás!

People who play this are probably fueled by nostalgia, like me!

There's been a couple of "Microvolts Revival Projects" (games that simply rerelease the dead game for a while) and this seems to be the latest one. This one's currently available for free on Steam, but there is the RT (paid currency) system like before.

I'd rate this game 6/5 if I could. It's such a fantastic game to play, and nothing comes close to the 'feel' of this game. The closest I had was zero-build Fortnite, and that's an entirely different experience.
The characters are cute and funny, there's decent weapon variety and there's very fun and creative maps.

...so, why the 3 stars?
It's because of the current iteration of the game, with its current developers. Unlike the other Microvolts revival projects, this one actually features pretty major gameplay changes. Weapon rebalancing, MP/RT costs and rewards, revamped upgrading system, and some minor things too.
In my opinion, these changes are actively taking away some of the fun. Let's start from the top - weapon rebalance.
Weapon rebalance sounds good, right? In the original MicroVolts, people usually ran the same loadout since there were pretty clear winnners and losers. In this iteration of MicroVolts, they opted for a 'A/B/C/D' solution. In the original game, there were 3-4 different 'archetypes' of every weapon type. For example, rifles: 'Pepper' was the prefered choice, boasting high fire-rate, decent accuracy and a big mag size(clip?), but it dealt the least damage. On the other end is the 'Sherlock' rifle, dealing high damage per shot and being much more accurate, but losing out on fire-rate and mag size. Then there was the third option, 'Hornet', which attempted to be a mixture of the two, but ultimately worse than both.
In the new iteration, all weapons have the 3-4 archetypes built in. You can have a Pepper (A) which acts exactly like the old school Pepper, or Pepper (B) which acts like the Sherlock, or Pepper (C) which acts like the hornet. (I don't remember the letters for every archetype, just pretend I'm right.)
This leads to an interesting scenario: weapons don't matter, their archetype does. Which weapon you pick is cosmetic, the only thing that matters is type.
Since the game allows you to purchase basic starter weapons right at the start, there actually is no reason to buy anything else. A 100 mp Cricket (A) will perform the exact same as a weapon 100x the cost, or even costing real money. They function the exact same.
This causes a scenario where no purchases matter, since everything is basically unlocked at level 5 (20 minutes of play) and you have the exact same weapons as someone with 200 hours into the game. This sounds like a good thing, but this is problematic because there's no reason to actually play the game besides for fun.
One of the big reasons I quit playing Overwatch 2 is because there was absolutely nothing to play for. No progression, no levels, nothing. You just play because you enjoy playing, which I wasn't in OW2. MicroVolts has this exact same problem now.

There also used to be 'special/hyper' weapons back in the day. Most noteably are the God weapons and the Military weapons: The God Weapons were extremely expensive and very overpowered, giving the game the fabled 'P2W' label. And the Military weapons were extremely unique, such as the AK Rifle having ABSURD damage, but also ABSURD recoil, making it hard to actually hit. This went for every weapon in this set, making them extremely unique. These weapons no longer exist, which is a good thing for the God Weapons since they were just the standard ones with insane stats, but the military weapons were actually incredibly fun to play with and would incentivise playing the game a bit differently.
The devs seem very stuck on 'nothing must be OP, so everything must be the same', which gets boring quick.
MP/RT costs ties into this. Both are currencies - one is earned from levelling up, the other from spending money. But what is the point? Nothing you buy matters.
Though it doesn't matter, I should mention that MP can only be earned on level up. Previously you'd get it from every match you play. This change is...stupid? Yeah.
The only reason to spend MP/RT is for cosmetics. Since MP is so limited, you're probably spending real money if you want cosmetics. 95% of the cosmetics are behind a gacha system which cost somewhere between 50 cents to 2.50 to roll, once. You could very easily spend 100 bucks and not get what you want - no pity system either, just bad luck!
Also, buying RT is pretty expensive. They introduced this 'pass', you log in every day to get a small amount of RT, which should profit you if you log in daily. The amount you get is very very low and you don't profit very much. You also don't get rewarded too much for spending a lot at once, like you would in other games. The 100 dollar bulk option is basically the same as buying the 20 dollar item 5 times, which isn't how it works in most games.

My final gripe is actually the biggest one, the upgrade revamp: with the current upgrade system, you simply pick 1 stat and it upgrades it a lot. For example, you can upgrade the Pepper (a) with more Power. It now deals more damage.
In the original game, upgrades were done in levels - there are 9 of them. You select a stat you want to upgrade, and have to upgrade it 9 times for the biggest upgrades. A cool feature about this is that your weapon would change with levels. The weapon's model will change colour, the bullets will change colour and leave behind a nice colour trail, and at max level the weapons will even have a pretty glow when held.
This alone made upgrading worth it back in the day - it looked cool!
Needless to say, this doesn't exist in the current iteration. You can't tell if your opponent upgraded their weapon, or what upgrade they picked.

This game unfortunately needs to undo the reworks they did for people like me to start playing it again, or it will struggle to keep the playerbase engaged. There needs to be a reason to play, something to work towards.
The reworks made the game more balanced and easier to get the best weapon, but I don't think people will play for longer than 1 day.

Also please add the RIO441. I need my baby back, I love that weapon. And please don't forget its authentic heart-attack-inducing SFX.

Sorry for the long read! I love you mwah mwah! <3