I do not trust Respawn anymore to make Titanfall 3 due to their handling of Apex Legends (which I play regularly), but this is still my favorite Mecha game ever. It's so fucking good in nearly every aspect, and its a shame it released at the worst time possible. I also feel very guilty for playing hundreds of hours of Battlefield 1 despite that being one of the reasons this game got destroyed when it came out but I still like that game a lot too. I really hope someday another developer tries to make a fast paced FPS mecha game, but until then, rest well king.
If you haven’t gathered by now, it's an immaculate supergame that I really, really like. I say without a doubt that it's one of the best FPS campaigns ever.

Continuing my recent foray to the deeper layers of the PSP library, here's a third person mech shooter that I have been curious about for a long time now. I first found out about this game when I saw a listing for it at a local game store about 13 years ago, and I distinctly remember that the store owner said that he never even seen this game before, and he didn't know how it got into his list of available games. This lack of knowledge would be a trend, as nobody I know seems to have an idea of this game existing. I'm here to say that this is a pretty fun shooter that successfully uses the console's limitations in order to make a fun experience in its own right.

The listing here is utterly incomplete (and I don't know how to add/change it) so I feel the need to explain this a bit. This is made by a Korean studio and it is only released in Japanese. The game is set in an alternate history 20th century setting where humans built advanced mechs to fight in wars against each other. From the quick translation I have seen (thanks to Google Lens), there's seems to be an ongoing resource depletion and you're a part of a resistance fighting against the tyrannical elite government. I wish I could explain more about the story but I can't use Google Lens all the time so it will have to do for now.

The core gameplay is a suitably simplified third person shooter, where you can only move your aim in the horizontal axis with the left and right trigger buttons. While this basically neutered the level design's verticality, it results in perhaps one of the more natural-feeling shooters on the PSP, as there's very rarely a discomforting moment in controlling your mech. Moving around feels snappy, and you can execute a forward boost to close the gap and such. You can restore health by picking up medkits scattered in the field, and there's also secondary weapons and ammunition to pick up. There's a decent variety of secondary weapons, but as you progress through the campaign, you'll realize that there's only one of them that is worth using (the huge revolvers), especially after you upgrade your primary weapons to a high-enough level. There's also smaller details like satisfying animations and sound effects that makes the gunplay a bit stronger.

There's basically 3 types of enemies: ranged small arms, close quarters melee, and ranged heavy arms. These enemy types adds just enough depth into the combat system. For example, taking hits from the ranged heavy arms enemies will stagger you, which allows the hard hitting melee enemies to get closer. Unlike the small arms enemies, you can strafe around to dodge their shots, which forces you to keep moving.

The difficulty progression is quite solid. In the later stages, the enemy placements and variety will get harder to deal with, as you are forced to find which enemies to focus on first, in order to minimize the potential damage that can be dealt towards you in a short time. There's also less medkits to find in the later stages.

The story campaign mostly involves going through linear levels and killing every enemy you see. Sometimes you have to place bombs in certain areas but that's really it. Mission variety is absolutely not a strong part of this game, but at least the game isn't long at all (maybe 5-6 hours ish).

While the game is quite lacking in expanding it's core vision, the moment-to-moment gameplay is more than solid enough to make it a worthwhile experience. It's one of those lesser known games that deserves a lot more attention and love, but unless some miracle happens and the game gets remastered to modern consoles, that's quite unlikely. Hey, at least another random person made a review of it.