With the amount of hype and mystery I’ve heard about this game from various youtubers, there’s absolutely no way that it will live up to the hype that I’ve built myself (my fault).
However, even if It’s not the masterpiece I think it is, it’s still a great game with plenty of surprises that delighted me (justifying the reason why most youtuber will just suggest you to play the game instead of listening to them ramble and possibly spoiler you).

Another thing, I’ve grown to hate roguelikes over the years, it was one of my favorite genres back then. But with the oversaturation of indie roguelikes (both bad and good), I got bored, hated it, then just blocked the entire genre on Steam. So if you’re like me but are curious about this game, you should try it.

I didn’t find the roguelike elements as annoying as in many others(Hades, Dead Cell, Binding of Isaac, Slay the Spire, etc). It’s also relatively easy so I managed to pull through with a minimal amount of replay.

This game is okay, maybe even good, if only it’s not called Metal Max.

I like some stuff in this game, like the artstyle, the tank customization, the enemy design, and the best of all is the seemingly infinite power scaling (obviously there's a cap, but it will take hours to get there).

There’s level, at first you start with max level of 99, then you can get items to increase your max level to 999.
Then the tank customization, it feels like I always get better weapons in every playthrough, even though I’m not doing much different. Even after you get the best weapon, you will still be able to increase its power through modification.
There’s also chips (I think this is the name, I forgot) that you can equip to your tank to give it skills like firing weapons multiple times or firing every weapon you have at once.
Not only that, your characters will also have skills of their own depending on their class level.

And there are maybe more stuff that I forgot to mention, the main point is that this game has a lot of grinding and customization.

But that’s the only resemblance with the previous Metal Max game. Xeno might seem like an open world game, but it is actually very linear unlike the previous game. The world is also empty of people, so no side quest or quirky NPC to entertain you, the only NPCs are the people in your base and they’re mostly boring.
There are dungeons, they are the worst part of this game because they are so long winded and boring to explore (+high encounter rate, but this has always been the case with Metal Max), there’s almost nothing interesting to discover in the dungeon except for the occasional tank.

Then there’s the story, it exists. It’s very basic but the character's motivation and conflict are so artificial it’s annoying. Okay so the basic gist is that humanity is going extinct, there are less than 10 people in the world (presumably).
The MC is Talis, his only motivation is that he wants to get revenge against the monster because they killed his parents, that’s his only motivation and he will tunnel vision with only that in sight for the rest of the game. Then on the journey he met a lot of other party members, the most notable is Toni, because she's the first girl the base has ever seen, and what does that mean? Reproduction.

Okay but Toni doesn’t wanna do it with anyone else except Talis, but Talis doesn’t wanna do it with her because he doesn’t care about anything other than hunting monsters, it becomes a longass drama, even though it can be solved in 5 minutes. Then there’s the fact that Yokky (another party member) likes Toni, but Toni doesn’t want him.
God it’s so annoying because none of them are even willing to make a compromise even knowing full well that extinction is on the table.

Then you found Maria and Ittica, both girls, but Ittica is still too young (and also the fact that she comes from an experiment tank). Maria is the perfect age for reproduction though, but I don’t think anybody ever mentions anything about reproduction anymore after the Toni debacle, it’s bizarre.

Overall, I enjoyed the multiple playthroughs just mindlessly grinding for the platinum, but it’s a far cry from the previous Metal Max game.