REVIEW

Metal Max Xeno Review

by Jake Stewart, January 7th, 2019

Metal Max is a relatively unknown series in the west, as it’s pretty uncommon for one of these titles to leave Japan. While Xeno may be the sixth title in the series, it’s only the second title to make it westward. Luckily, Xeno isn’t connected to the previous titles in the series so don’t worry if you don’t have a translator on hand to play through everything else.

The setting of Metal Max Xeno is a pretty fresh world for a JRPG. Rather than an advanced sci-fi world, or a mystical fantasy setting, Xeno takes place in a Mad Max-esque wasteland, Dystokio. A supercomputer known as NOA has wiped out the majority of humanity, creating this lifeless wasteland. A young man by the name of Talis has committed to stopping NOA and its machines from completely finishing off the rest of the humans. Our story sets off from this point.

In the grand list of interesting protagonists, Talis is a far shot from ranking up. He lacks much characterization other than just pure rage at the machines and doesn’t particularly show any development across the course of the journey. His party members aren’t much better either. Most characters stick to a stereotype and don’t break away from the norm, either the girly-girl, the boyish man, the tough guy, etc. The most they contribute is a voice to be heard, but in a story with little world development, there is very little for these character foundations to branch off of.

Fans of the JRPG genre may be a little off-put initially, as Metal Max Xeno is actually fairly linear, which isn’t particularly common in this genre. Rather than being one giant map, the world is based on a level system, consisting of going to a level, killing the monsters, then going to the next. There are almost no NPCs in the world, and no side-quests, meaning that the entire dynamic of the game is just killing and looting, with very minimal story development in between.

Combat takes form in two different ways. The first and most prominent one is the Tank gameplay. As you traverse the level, metal creatures will be roaming around that can be viewed on the map, engaging with these creatures begins a turn-based style fight using your tanks. Combat is extremely bare-bones and doesn’t offer much room for strategizing. Four options are presented to you, either Attack, Skill, Items, or Defend. Defending can be used to reduce incoming damage, and items can be used to help restore HP or SP. The two offensive options either use a basic Attack or allow you to choose one of your Skills, using SP to deal a more powerful attack to potentially multiple enemies.

The other mode is when your party is outside of the tanks, exploring areas that are too big for the tanks to fit. Rather than seeing the enemies on the map, they will appear in random-encounter fashion, thrusting you into similar turn-based combat. The mechanics are pretty much identical, the only difference being that your crew is outside of their vehicles and using hand-weapons instead.

The only area that Xeno really shines would be the tank customization. Every members’ tank can be customized with different weapons that deal different types of damage. The only place where these really stand out beyond preference is boss fights, as each boss will have a shield around them that can only be broken with one type of weapon. Otherwise, it just comes down to whatever weapon you think is the coolest.

The customization isn’t entirely necessary for progressing the game, however. As most enemies and encounters can be pushed through by repeating the standard attack. Very rarely (unless in a boss situation) is it necessary to consider using the higher skills or items to beat the foe, making every encounter feel like a chore rather than an event.

Unfortunately, the low-budget of Xeno rears its head when focusing on character animations and environments. Any sort of movement performed by the characters seems pretty static and jagged, and you’ll be noticing plenty of the same buildings and other models littering the world. While this isn’t a horrible detractor, it’s another flaw on a pretty high mountain of them.

Overall, Xeno is a relatively short game, around 15 hours or so in length. Most of which will be spent mindlessly squashing enemies until you reach a boss, where it’ll take slightly longer to mindless squash them. A distinct lack of characterization, exploration, side-quests, or really anything to pad up the experience keeps this unique take on the genre from being memorable.