A linear turn based strategy game about children that end up using an ancient giant tank to drive an invading army out of their homeland. Breaks in the combat sections allow you to upgrade parts of your tank, cook to temporarily increase stats, explore dungeons, and have the characters talk to become better partners in battle and to access three story scenes between each of the 12 characters. A powerful weapon, the soul cannon, can be used to instantly destroy boss enemies by sacrificing one of the children.

Beautiful art, illustrations, and expressive character animations when walking around the tank and good though limited variety of music.

A fun and interesting battle system that has you constantly swapping characters and teams and positions to make use of the type of weapon they use as well as character abilities and team attacks against a wide variety of enemies. Each character fires a cannon, grenade launcher, or machine guns with different speeds, damage values, critical hit chance, and skills. Enemies can be knocked back down the turn order list if they are hit by certain types of weapons. Some enemies are faster and are harder to hit with the stronger cannons or grenade launchers. Machine guns can break armor off defensive enemies to weaken them with their users skills. You can have three characters actively preparing to attack at a time on your top, middle, and bottom guns, with each of those three supported by another character and swap out characters every three turns (even using this as a way to move them around to get slower characters their turn faster). Each child has their own support skills that might increase damage, heal the tank, recover SP, allow for faster recovery, prevent injuries or fear effects, etc and if the pair has improved their relationship they can charge a powerful link attack over time that you can use right away or save all the way to the chapter boss. Each child also has a hero mode they can activate if the desire they had on a checklist was fulfilled (eating a type of food, performing an activity, talking to someone, upgrading something, etc) putting them in a powerful mode for five turns where they can do things like heal for twice as much, double the power of skills, gain another turn as long as skills are used, normal attacks fire twice, break all of an enemy armor and delay them, etc. Even with so many characters using the same type of weapons and some skills being shared their stats, unique skills, and unique abilities make each one of them useful and different.

While the battle system and art are great, the game is lacking in almost everything else. The story is fairly uninteresting. The three possible scenes between the characters are short and of varied interest but you will be spending so much of your downtime doing other things that raising your relationships to the levels to see a lot of scenes isn't practical on your first playthrough. An issue with the battle system is that every combat gives you a ranking and high ranks increase your XP and character relationships by as much as an additional 1.5 multiplier, meaning it punishes doing poorly and really punishes doing poorly early on as you learn the game. Like a lot of games with temporary ability increases, one of the cooking options gives you more XP and relationship points during the entire section you are in until your next rest point, meaning you should obviously always cook that dish. The game can further punish failure with almost everything you do in the down time having a percentage chance of failure, so it's great when you waste 1/4-1/3 of your time failing 80%-90% upgrade chances where you could have been getting to know the characters more. The dungeon exploration elements it adds to the game are extremely dull, you just pick three kids to walk around an area that might have simple obvious traps or enemies where you pick up items until you find a key to open a chest that will have a larger cache of those items.

Each chapter has about three breaks in it where you do the side activities. You get a break, travel through spaces fighting battles, picking up items and materials, and driving over health an SP recovery crates. You do that again, and then after your next break you get a large health and SP pick up and fight a boss. This is linear and automatically driven with you being able to see a few sections in your path ahead for what is going to happen and you will get route splits of safe, normal, or dangerous routes. Dangerous routes giving you enemies worth more XP (even if you were to rank lower) and better quality items. I chose the dangerous route every time, this was fairly difficult in a few early chapters but then the entire game became very easy (even with my conservative playstyle of saving almost every link attack for the boss and never using any of the healing or special ammo items ever, you know, because I might need them later) and bosses were pitiful. I imagine going the other routes would make everything easy in normal gameplay and the bosses maybe almost slightly threatening.

Like a lot of games with permanent death features, in this game's case through the use of the Soul Cannon, it is a pointless feature that takes away from the game. To begin with, there is just no practical reason to ever use it at all, so other than being a minor narrative feature it serves no purpose. If you did use it you are only going to be losing out on unique characters. By having something like this it would also mean that the game would have to be designed so that anyone could be dead at any point which means that many sections are just filled with generic style of dialogue that can be filled by a character at random instead of a more meaningful story or character moment. Though the times that there is more focus on a particular character I would be interested to see how events play out differently (like if you don't have Sheena when you get Britz) but I'm not going to replay the game in a more boring fashion to see that. Even the paired endings with sibling characters just give you no text if you were to kill one of the siblings, giving you no unique illustration or ending for the surviving character.

Recommended to turn based fans for fun main gameplay, art, and good music, though would be a stronger recommendation if the balance, story, and side activities were improved on.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1463636996610351106

TLDR/Closing at bottom.

Coming from Tail Concerto I can't really get over how jarring this game is, gone are the entirely character-driven story dialogue and comfy 3D world with nooks and crannies to explore with lovely flavor text that hits like chicken noodle soup on a cold winter's morn; replaced now with interaction grind akin to dating sims of all things to get any new flavor text; the characters will always be in the same little ship they command.

The game also is given a much more tonally dark story and themes, and it goes as far as to make you sacrifice a literal child in the tutorial to show you its hook (the Soul Cannon) they so proudly showed off in the trailer; except (and this is a spoiler kind of but also not really, as it's made almost immediately clear) you will never have to use it, the tutorial tells you to reload your save and then play without it, even for narrative reasons; the game is perfectly doable without it (and you're rewarded w/ an achievement for keeping all party members alive). That said, the story itself is literally only "There's a war, these kids' parents/homes were kidnapped, now they hijacked an ancient tech tank to go find them." The real meat is in their interactions but it doesn't contribute to the overall story, it's just cute, generic filler and a lot of "wow that's kinda fucked up" when they inevitably melt some totally-not-nazis "BERMAN" (or "Bermin?") soldiers and generals.

The gameplay, or rather, the half or two thirds of it that is the action queuing party combat is especially good for a JRPG, but then there's this other half or third of the game that's just doing menial chores that have a chance to fail and do nothing or explore "ruins" for materials; said ruins are generally only 4 or 5 chambers with 3-4 enemies that are insultingly easy, things like the walking and shooting animations of the child characters frankly look really bad as well.

The music is pretty solid, but it's kind of weird they felt the need to reuse the bit with the fictional language from Solatarobo during a key scene.

The 2D artstyle is great though, when the characters aren't walking sideways with their funky 3D models lol.

TLDR - - -
It feels like Fuga: Melodies of Steel completely misses what makes the previous two mainline Little Tail Bronx games have cult followings, and trades a lot of the unique gameplay mashups of those in favor of slightly above average JRPG combat based on an action queue/timeline; probably to both appeal to a wider audience, and to cut as many corners as possible (which is wild to think about since it's been 12(?) years since the last mainline title). JRPG fans will probably really enjoy it for the combat alone. Here's hoping they try to rekindle and refine the old formula, but given how much better this did financially I very much doubt they'll do that again.

It's a charming game with an interesting storyline with some fun twists. The combat is fun and engaging, but some of the mechanics do get annoying.

I'm especially glad I don't have to see Malt talk about how he was the oldest, because wow did that get annoying. Like you're the oldest by not that much and you're all still children, stop making it your entire personality.

Most of the characters had traits I found annoying and wish they'd grow from them. All characters had plenty of good traits though and I thought all of them were good characters. One downside though, is that outside of the last child to join the party, there isn't much character development/growth for the cast.

The ending was great, and I thought it wrapped this game up very nicely.

Clearly it's a game that you have to play for the gameplay, which is simple but has a lot of subtilities that make it interesting enough to have fun over the 20 hours the game offers. But the structure can be tiresome (you do the same thing during the whole game). This is not my case as I found that it put enough break between two tactical sections, but you have to like the small management section for that too. And if you want to play it just for the soul cannon mechanic, I never used it. The game gets easier and easier after the halfway point and I even find the bosses easier than the elite encounters. Since you can only use this mechanic on bosses, and they're not particularly difficult, you're not pushed to do so (it's still a cool mechanic, but it seems like they didn't want to frustrate players and made the game too easy to avoid forcing you to use it). And there is another option that makes the game too easy too, it's the possibility to go back to the last checkpoint. There's no limit to that, and I think it would have been nice to limit the number of uses per save, especially on the bosses where you're not really punished when you use it.

But other than that, the gameplay is really nice. The characters form duos in the guns and these duos become more and more powerful as you keep using them. Each character also brings a passive to his colleague, so you get some nice combos. Every enemy is weak in one kind of attack, so the game pushes you to vary your duos, which is a good thing. On the map, you have to be careful with your life and mana resources, you have to plan how much you can use in battle so that it's fast enough and still have enough mana for the next fight. This is important because if you are too slow you gain much less xp, so the game becomes harder if you play badly. You can also take risks by going on more difficult roads and fighting elites that give you more xp and resources to upgrade your tank, but you always have to watch your mana stock. This resource management is one of the things I liked the most, always plan several fights in advance rather than limiting yourself or throwing everything into one fight. You have to find a good balance and I would say that this is perhaps the most 'complex' part of the game. Especially since you have some strong skills that require a lot of mana, particularly in the first chapters.

I said it was a game that you had to play for its gameplay, and that's because the story is not really exciting. It's easy to follow, and the narrator does a great job for that, but it's pure shonen. The characters lack of development too, but they have quite marked personalities while being cute which makes them engaging. On the other hand, the music is good, especially the ones with a choir, but the loop is messed up on some of them which is a shame.

I loved this. As a long time fan of the Little Tail Bronx games, this is an entirely different feel from the rest of the series. The characters were lovable and the story was very solidly written. The gameplay, while occasionally repetitive at times, is very referencing and has an innovative combat system. The combat system is honestly a top 3 RPG combat system for me. I adored many of the characters and loved the different endings. One thing that is a major draw to this game is it’s soundtrack. It has a beautiful mix of violin and choral tracks that set both and adventurous and meaningful tone to the game. The soundtrack is incredible in all of the games in the series but this one is likely my favorite or at least on par with it. Truly an incredible experience, please buy this game and support its creators. Or at the very least, listen to the soundtrack.

A tank tactics game.

Fuga: Melodies of Steel has players joining a group of children in a tank and fighting against an invading army, hoping to save their parents. The game focuses on advancing on a mostly linear path and trying to fight against each enemy group, which they battle using a trinity of weapons, each of a different color, and each with a different purpose. It’s a solid tactical game with interesting characters.

The downside is this game can be very long-winded with its story. The combat is tactical so far but I haven’t seen anything too challenging outside of the boss combat, and even there it’s mostly just blocking at the right time. There’s a moment I would talk about in the prologue but I don’t want to ruin it. Oh, and everyone’s a furry, though it works well here.

Pick this up if you like tactics games. Their anime-style story at the core here is good but you’ll be spending most of the time in the tank or trying to improve your gear or team so you can keep moving forward. This was a pretty enjoyable game.

Before I get to the last game I’m going to cover a couple more. During the TGS 2022 game show, Microsoft just announced a ton of games coming to the service include Fuga. I've played the rest of these previously and so I’m going to just give you quick looks at each of them due to limited time.

If you want to see more from me: Check out my video on this last month of Game Pass games: https://youtu.be/5_7MTcN1-Ac

Maybe its time that I start up my local chapter of Felines against Fascism...

Jokes aside, Fuga: Melodies of Steel is a game, that on paper is just about everything I love. For starters it's a tactics game, a genre that I find myself more in tune with, with each release I dip myself into. Secondly the setting is right down my alley. Something about media (in particular anime like Full Metal Alchemist and games like Valkyria Chronicles) that take place during that creative interpretation of the inter-periods between World War 1 and World War 2 just gets me hooked. From the get go that's exactly what Fuga is, it jumps you into a world of anthropomorphic cats and dogs that are at war as Nazi-Germany (I mean come on, the villains are called Bermans) and France standins, with the latter fighting off an invasion by the former. From the get-go I was completely sold on this idea, especially when coupled with some beautiful character design and illustrations and a phenomenal backing soundtrack that was right on the money for the time period and vibes the game gives off.

Mechanically speaking, Fuga is pretty simple which initially drew me even further in. I'm all for tactics games that get more difficult or add in extra conditions and actions that change the game, however sometimes simplicity in combat and in understanding the mechanics of each character can go a long way. There are three weapon times, a machine gun (blue) mostly used to take out air targets, a small cannon (yellow) for the ground, and a larger cannon (red) also mostly meant for ground units. These operate in a sort of Fire Emblem weapons triangle style, not that one beats the other (because only the player equips the three types) but in the way that they all are necessary to take advantage of enemy weaknesses throughout the game. Each party member is coupled with another, meaning that you're pretty much operating in a six man squadron of three pairs. It gets cool here because each of these little canines and felines possess unique support passives in addition to their main skills. I ran with a yellow-yellow, red-yellow, and blue-red for most of the game because of the way this was able to use these secondary skills. My healer was able to take advantage of heir pair's passive that lowered skill point cost, my red big cannon was able to take advantage of her partner's increased critical hit chance. This made for an interesting game of constantly trying to find the best and most optimal pairs. Another aspect of Fuga that makes this pairing of characters nice is that it uses a Final Fantasy X type turn wheel in that it shows the player who will act when, and what the consequences of switching characters out will be. Switching is free at any time (provided you're not doing it too much,) but you want the right weapon at the right time.

Now I'd said a lot of good about the game but I'm giving a 3.5/5 for a reason, and unfortunately that 1.5 is a big 1.5. Fuga is fundamentally a tactics game, but it operates in its mission structure on a sort of roguelite/like mantra. A chapter consists of story beats, intermissions where you can upgrade your tank and take care of your party's needs, treasure hunts, fights, and places to heal. On paper this doesn't upset me too much, having a base camp to upgrade your party is pretty standard for tactics games (see recently Valkyria Chronicles 4 and this year's Triangle Strategy,) but the way its built into Fuga is most unfortunate. This is the only place to upgrade your equipment, it is the only place to bring back characters who have been knocked out and correct their status effects, and its the only place where you can battle prep. Status effects in Fuga are just downright annoying. You can be knocked with the "afraid" bug which is okay... because it only halves your accuracy for a few turns. Should you be tacked with "depression" though, which can be sprayed by certain enemies throughout the game like a normal attack, your party members cannot use skills or linked attacks until you talk to them at one of these pre-set intermission points. These can be few and far between in chapters meaning that you can go forever without being able to heal your party through skills and are forced to use items. In that same vein, if your party is KO'd, which can happen just because an enemy used an unavoidable move (which defending does no good against,) then they will remain KO'd until you can sleep and revive them at this intermission. I didn't game over more than once after the first two chapters but this made the playthrough beyond aggravating at times.

In all, Fuga was priced at the right point (Game Pass.99) but I probably wouldn't rush to buy this on my own unless it was on sale. It's got a lot of things going right in its aesthetics, design, and overall vibe, but has much to work on in the realm of mechanics and its roguelite elements. I hope the sequel addresses my complaints when it releases.

Been waiting for this since it was announced in 2019 and it definitely didn't disappoint. CC2's just incredibly committed to their little furry game series and I can't help but admire the amount of passion and dedication on display here. It definitely made me feel like a terrible person at several points. I absolutely had a big silly look on my face when I saw how it tied into Solatorobo.

I can only hope that they get to keep on making their own stuff rather than being tied down to anime fighting games. Would really like the unlockable movie that you can get to go somewhere because I'd love to see them do more with this.

Gorgeous, heartfelt, satisfying and charming. Fuga is a hidden gem that knows exactly what it is and doesn't try to bite more than it can chew; every element in it fits perfectly with the rest and forms part of a very well balanced, elegantly designed experience.

If you like short RPGs (took me 14 hours), with relatively large playable casts and where narrative and gameplay are closely intertwined you absolutely have to give it a try.

One of the better experiences I had in 2021 and the biggest surprise by far.

Cool game! Whilst I don't have real strong feelings towards the game overall, it's still something I appreciate as a passion project for the dev team with wonderfully drawn art, cute anthro designs and a lovely soundtrack set to their vision of a fake franceland full of cats and dogs at war. Ther fact they even chose a french dub over an english one shows how commited they were to their setting (and it's appreciated).

Whilst aesthetically the game is great, the gameplay felt a little to be desired. Battles kinda lost their luster for me after the ten hour mark and the S O U L C A N N O N was kinda a let down. When it got introduced, I was really excited at the possibilities of it, the gameplay narratives that would unfold from being put in situations where I might have to sacrifice one of the children, dealing with the consequences and just having that choice, that THREAT, looming over me as I played through the game! But in the end, the difficulty meant that I was generally steamrolling dudes so I never felt the need to use it at all. OP healing spells + just reloading a checkpoint if things get REALLY bad meant that the cannon was kinda wasted mechanically which is a huge bummer! I think if maybe the difficulty/gameplay had been tuned differently or something then they could've had something really special with it, in terms of both the soul cannon and just enjoyment.

Which honestly is the biggest shame, because the game is generally good and it wraps up nicely but apart from it's aesthetics it didn't really leave any lasting impression with me.

El juego nos pone en la piel de unos críos que están sufriendo los estragos de la guerra y, por cosas del destino, acaban en una especie de tanque tochísima. La trama irá avanzando en pos de acabar con la guerra con algún que otro girito de guion pero que tampoco te explota demasiado la cabeza.

La gracia está en su jugabilidad, todo a una carta, con combates contra unidades que podrán ser relantizados según con qué arma se le golpee, habiendo un total de 3 y de las cuales cada uno de los 12 niños será especialista. La cosa va en ir juntando a los niños por parejas, usar el arma y/o habilidades que mejor vengan en ese momento e ir controlando los puntos de habilidad y los de salud para no tener problemas mientras vas siguiendo una ruta en la que de vez en cuando hay bifurcaciones. Es algo así, para ponernos en contexto, como el sistema de combate del Final Fantasy X, pero en vez de varios personajes "únicos" (aquí entraría también el tema del tablero pero sería ya una movida), lo que tienes son 3 tipos de armas y las habilidades de cada personaje que, según estos tres tipos, suelen ser prácticamente idénticas.

A parte de esto, tendremos creo que dos parones por capítulo en los cuales entra el juego un apartado algo escueto de social link, donde tenemos 20 puntos de acción a gastar según nos convenga, teniendo en cuenta también una lista de acciones que les gustaría hacer a los críos que hará que entren en modo turbo más pronto. Entre estas acciones tenemos desde descansar en camas hasta subir de nivel o ampliar algunas instalaciones del tanque.

En general es un juego entretenido y bastante asequible, pero al final es increíblemente repetitivo, puesto que su jugabilidad consiste en ir combatiendo contra las mismas máquinas (cada vez con más fuerza y vitalidad, pero la diversidad de enemigos es casi nula) usando estrategias muy lentas en las que cada dos por tres tienes que parar el combate para cambiar a los críos para finalmente pegarle al jefe de turno del capítulo. Y así durante 12 capítulos. Son unas 15-17 horas lo que te lleva y lo cierto es que hubiera prefiero que durase la mitad teniendo en cuenta que después de 2-4 horas, es todo el tiempo lo mismo pero elevando un pelín más la dificultad. Le daría un 7.

The Little Tail Bronx games continue to be, to me, a symbol of what I have come to appreciate and love about video games over the years. From its humble origins as a quirky PS1 platformer, to the ambitious, gorgeous, and incredibly fleshed out successor on the DS, this series has spanned two decades of very little success, but undeniable passion. CyberConnect2’s team very clearly has a love for this series, and despite losing a lot of money due to the series’ lack of being known to the world, they are still at it, expanding this world, and with the release of this game, a trilogy despite a lack of success. There is a lot I can say about this series as a whole, but I want to start by saying, I believe FUGA: Melodies of Steel is once again another triumph of a game from this team. A new direction for this series that has changed complete genres, tone, and feel from their past platforming entries, into a strategy RPG, life sim, visual novel based adventure. It is such a bizarre little game that has just about everything that the series is known for baked into its DNA despite the extreme shift. I love it wholly with all my heart.

These games are niche simple little adventures that don’t often feature the most enriching gameplay experience, at least for most people. But they make up for it with their insane visual detail, beautiful world, and intriguing lore and characters that make the games such a treat. Personally, I actually really enjoy the gameplay loop of Tail Concerto and especially Solatorobo; even I have to admit they aren’t the most in-depth games. They’re like the comfort food of games to me, something where the simplicity is able to make way for depth or become it.

With FUGA, a lot of those similar arguments come up, and I think I personally heavily disagree with the criticism lauded towards its gameplay loop. This is a very different take on strategy RPGs where you technically have a full party of 12, but they all share the same HP and Mana system. And it is also very difficult, decently long, and honestly exhausting. A full chapter can take a good two hours, and if you are not careful, you can instantly find yourself in a terrible situation. I can definitely understand it seeming unappealing, but personally, I really found myself adoring the loop of the game. Much like the war these children are facing, battles feel like they take real doing in order to succeed, you need to be paying attention at all times or else everything will be for naught. Resources are scarce, you don’t even get money in this game, so deciding to take a more dangerous route is a genuinely risky move that can certainly pay off, or shave an hour away from your game time in total shame. And the exhaustive feel really plays well with the tone, this is still definitely a kid’s game, but even in concept, having to deal with twelve children dealing with the effects of essentially World War II is just grim, and you can feel that wear in the gameplay. I love it dearly, it can definitely veer into the more egregious habits of the series at times, but I think they absolutely nailed what they were going for here.

However where this game truly shines is that aforementioned passion that you can just feel here. The characters you get here are incredibly simple, but the charm that makes a game like Solatorobo shine is still present and wonderful. I love all these designs, and with such a wide range too, and considering the situation they’re in, there is a real threat that they can just die if you feel yourself desperate enough to sacrifice one of them. The music is once again amazing, with tracks like the main boss theme really standing out as a truly wonderful and haunting piece that plays as you are likely dealing with the stress of incredibly powerful attacks. Gasco feels as fleshed out as any of the islands you visit in previous games, and most importantly, the art of this game is absolutely unreal. So many gorgeous pastels, and water colours make every character pop. And there is just so much wonderful art, even getting all of their ending chapter cards from a bunch of Pixiv artists was just such a treat. The aesthetic is just wonderful, you can really tell they had a ton of fun with it.

I think it can be very easy to be critical with games like Fuga because by no means is it a masterpiece. I can definitely make a lot of critiques about the game being shallow or frustrating, and I definitely do have some nitpicks I would like to see addressed in the second entry. But honestly, I’ve come to realize with games I want something that interests me and is willing to show me something in earnest. Even in spite of its darker premise, Fuga is still the same comfort food that made me love Waffle and Red’s previous adventures. It is a game that welcomes you with open arms and wants to show you all the cool ideas, and art, and worldbuilding that it has come up with, and there is just such a wonderful joy to it all. With this game being a financial failure, the fact the team essentially looked at it, and essentially went ahead and announced the sequel a year after its release is a sheer sign of love. And it's a love I too share for this wonderful series. I urge you all to give it, and the other Little Tail games a shot. I can only hope you would get as much from them, as I did.

This game had some interesting ideas but ultimately failed to grab me after getting about 50% of the way through it.

I really enjoyed the premise of the game. The whole idea of a bunch of kids stuck in a machine they can't understand was very reminiscent of early Macross or Gundam. I liked that the battle system was simple yet had just enough tactical depth to it. Managing and upgrading the tank is cool too.

The big selling point of the game is the Soul Cannon and this is where I have some issues with the game. The problem is that I never felt the cost of the Soul Cannon was ever less than just starting over from the last checkpoint. Losing a crew member in this game is HUGE, and I never felt like it was better to do that than to just lose 30 mins to an hour of game progress to try a boss fight again or to redo a run through a chapter.

While I enjoyed the premise of the game, the plot never really grabbed me. I never felt really attached to any of my little Muppet dudes and found all their personalities really bare bones.

This is an interesting proof of concept but it's missing a few elements to really bring it together. I'm interested in the sequel to see how they improve things.