Reviewed by CL on 8/15/2004
Robotech: Battlecry appears to be a game that tried to cash in on the cell-shading craze while hoping that the cool art would cover up mediocre gameplay.
Robotech: Battlecry plays a lot like a watered down Armored Core. You only have the choice of a single Veritech Fighter without any customizable weapons. The cool thing is that you can transform into three different robots at the touch of a button. The transition is seamless and it’s pretty fun to blaze around in jet mode and then drop into robot mode to investigate a city. Although this is a nice feature, the robot and guardian mode feels distinctly clumsy. The robot is way too slow and not very nimble. In fact, it seems that any time you try and fight somebody; you always take a couple of hits yourself. I hate these types of games where it turns into a war of attrition instead of a game of skill.
Another problem is that although it is super cool to be able to transform your fighter/guardian/robot on the fly, you never get a very good chance to use them. If you're flying on in the space missions, you'll never use the robot mode because you'll get blown out of the sky quickly, and when you're in the city missions, you'll never use the jet mode because you'll constantly be crashing into the walls.
The only kind of level where it is useful is the canyon levels. That basically covers the only kind of levels that you play with in this game and it gets pretty boring quickly.
On the positive side, the cell shading of the game does look pretty cool and fits the Robotech theme well. The graphics when firing multiple missiles is very cool and the game has some nice controls in fighter mode.
In conclusion, this is a very disappointing game that is simply too tedious and cumbersome to be worth your time. In fact, I only played about half way through the game before quitting because it simply got too repetitive and the gameplay was only so-so. Even if you're a fan of the genre, I think that you'll have a hard time enjoying this game.
