Manticore: Galaxy on Fire is a Sci-Fi space shooter with a story to tell & some ass to kick. It is a mobile port that breaks the usual stereotype that mobile games tend to carry of being of questionable quality. Plenty of voice acting & pretty damned good visuals put it way above the average mobile game.
The plot is… not amazing. You play as a freshly recruited no-name mercenary getting dragged along by your boss on the never-ending quest to find the culprits of ‘The Shattering’, a rather catastrophic albeit cool event the crew & you just happened to witness then survive. Thus begins your career. Voice acting is great for pretty much anything that can talk, be it your AI partners or even the bosses, which is a welcome addition. However, ultimately the small quips, plot info or taunts tossed by the bosses are meaningless considering you never actually leave the ship & encounter them face-to-face. Your AI partners might as well be non-existent as they never get developed & provide very little, in or out of combat. As you play you will collect bits of lore about the species in the galaxy, tech, etc., but as mentioned it falls flat as you never see these things have any bearing nor see them in action when pew-pewing the faceless masses.
Combat on the other hand fares a whole lot better than the plot. You will be given a decent amount of variety in the quest types, ranging from straight-up combat to wave defense & escorting cargo ships and other vessels to safety, all culminating with a boss fight. The difficulty is fair for the most part, though a couple of missions took me a fair bit of trial & error to make it with enough health all the way to the boss fight & survive. Health pick-ups are something that I definitely wanted more of to spawn & sadly the game is stingy with them. Coupled with the boss’ rather high health pools, which takes them a bit too much into the bullet sponge territory, & deadly gimmicks to contend with that will certainly have you wishing for more health.
Fighting in these space arenas is certainly is a sight to behold. Flying through space stations with a shattered planet in the background gives a certain Wow factor. Needless to say, the game has a fair bit of variety in its locales. Speaking of variety, you get a decent arsenal of weapons, ranging from your standard pew-pew lasers to a plasma shotgun to conventional bullets & missiles, as well as gadgets that work on a cooldown but provide some helpful effects like an AoE stun or cloaking. Slower to unlock but nonetheless present are various ships, each specializing in different aspects such as a higher energy charge for boosting or extra hull for a higher health pool & shields. All of these can be upgraded with a special mineral you receive after clearing missions, up to a certain point dictated by your level (serves no other purpose) which raises from normal gameplay. A small barrier to keeps things fair.
After all is said & done, having dealt with the enemy threat, you are left to explore the current map you find yourself in, in search of hidden caches of lore entries & a special ship part. This scavenger hunt ranges from somewhat easy to ‘Holy hell, where the hell is the last collectible?! ‘as the little AI scanner bot that is tasked to help you in a ‘Hot & Cold’ style is not at all too useful & oftentimes will track through the terrain, which in a 3D space can be frustrating. Ultimately, there is not much to break the monotony that sets in in-between combat & “exploring” the maps which can get exhausting. Certainly a game to play in short bursts rather than long play sessions.
As mentioned earlier, Manticore boasts some pretty decent visuals with the option to pause the game to allow you to take screenshots using the Switch’s in-built capture, albeit a very basic one, lacking, for example, a simple zoom at the very least. Audio, on the other hand, was serviceable, with sound effects being on the weaker side of things & not giving the impression of power behind the wreckage as you blast down enemies. Its voice acting is a welcome thing, though its failings stems from the painfully average plot not making great use of it. Performance in & out of docked mode is top-notch going for that 60FPS. Controls I might suggest adjusting the sensitivity to be lower or possibly turning on auto-aim. A rather odd flaw occurs when using the D-Pad to navigate the menus, becoming unresponsive & taking multiple presses to come to its senses, stick to the joysticks.
All in all Manticore: Galaxy on Fire is a decent budget title that does one & one thing only & does it well enough, but certainly could be a whole lot better. Using the maps as a method to collect resources or overall just something to break the monotony of shooting down faceless enemy after faceless enemy would have gone a long way. Would I recommend Manticore? Yes, if you get it for around 6$ while on sale, as I did. That is a fair price for the slightly above average, albeit not groundbreaking deep space pew-pewing, otherwise, there are probably better games in the genre out there.
- NISA To Raises Prices On Select PC Games Come July 19th. - July 1, 2021
- void tRrLM(); //Void Terrarium review - July 30, 2020
- The Alliance Alive HD Remaster review - October 4, 2019