I’m a sucker for a good tactics game – which is why Star Wars Zero Company already has me buzzing. It’s a genre where almost any game could announce a tactics spinoff and I’d be down. Persona 5 Tactica? Sure, why not? Rayman Raving Rabbids and Super Mario forming a strategic alliance? Hell yeah. The power of a good tactics RPG even works when I’m not into the series itself; I’m not huge into Final Fantasy, but damn if Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles isn’t an all-timer. And my Marvel fatigue was swiftly cured with a helping of Marvel’s Midnight Suns.
And then there’s Star Wars. I’ll be frank, The Rise of Skywalker stank so much that any love and interest I had in Star Wars left me. I haven’t watched any of its many TV series, I never played Star Wars Jedi: Survivor – despite loving Fallen Order – and I haven’t had any desire to go back and watch the older films I actually do like… but the series’ upcoming strategic foray has me looking from across the room like your da staring longingly at that photo of him holding a big fish.
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But that’s the thing: Star Wars seems perfect for the tactics RPG treatment it’s getting with the rather XCOM-like Star Wars Zero Company. As fun as the space wizards and midi-chlorians are, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate that the world is a lot more interesting outside of the Jedi and Sith. Sure, you have a Padawan on your squad, but having an R-series droid offsets that. I just know for a fact there’s going to be a point when you face off against one of those magical bastards and things are going to feel bleak, like Darth Vader at the end of Rogue One bleak. I live for it. Plus, one of your team is a former boxer called Kabb Uppercut and if that isn’t “Glup Shitto” adjacent I don’t know what is.
But, thinking about how interested I am in a franchise I had sworn off of due to the virtue of it becoming tactical, it got me thinking. Why the hell has there never been another Metal Gear Acid?. If you know me, you know I may like Metal Gear, perhaps even a lot; and obviously Metal Gear is a massive series, but if there was ever to be something about it I’d call niche it would be the PSP duology.
Here’s the pitch: first, take Metal Gear’s tone, world, and somewhat approximate versions of its characters; second, make a story that is somehow more out there and silly than the games it’s based on – the first game opens with psychic puppets hijacking a plane – and finally, adapt the stealth gameplay into a tactical RPG and imbue that with a deckbuilder with cards based off of older Metal Gear and Kojima games.
A stealth-based Tactical RPG deckbuilder doesn’t sound like something that should work, and yet the duo of games stick out as two of the best games the PSP has to offer, and I’d say Metal Gear Acid 2 is among the best tactics RPGs ever made.
While it’s not as punishing or hardcore as XCOM, what Metal Gear Acid does best is tension. The stealth aspects are extremely important on some missions, as – just like in the main series – you are not equipped to take on an army with ease. Which means every turn, and every card you can use to make a move, takes on even more importance. It’s the same logic that means my Astromech GOAT in Zero Company will be racking up a sith kill count one way or another.
The deckbuilding itself also rules. Rather than just playing with cards each turn, your cards are given values like you’ve seen in games like Slay the Spire, except the catch here is rather than not being able to use cards if you don’t have enough points, you can use whatever you want, as instead, points contribute to your turns, with the points you use needing to be counted down before you can take another.
This in-turn blends into the strategy RPG elements nicely, as something like the Metal Gear Rex card – which does 300 damage – is very powerful, but unless you are ending a battle with it or are far enough away from the next enemy, you’re going to be at a major risk since it’ll cost you 30 points to use. Again, it’s the kind of balance I can also see Zero Company leveraging to explain why its ensemble cast aren’t simply only to fight together, but complement one another.
Deckbuilders and tactics games have probably never been more popular than they are now, and so I ask, where is Metal Gear Acid 3 Konami? I see the publisher handing off Castlevania’s reins to Dead Cells dev Evil Empire and think of what the likes of Fights in Tight Spaces dev Ground Shatter could do with Metal Gear. I know the series is still in a bit of limbo without Kojima, so why not bring things back gradually with a new iteration of one of its best spinoffs?
With such a lively franchise, a more ambitious attempt at the concept without the PSP’s constraints could allow for some fantastic tactics design within that universe. When I see the cast of Star Wars: Zero Company combining moves, I can’t help but think of the Rat Patrol’s synchronized, nanomachine-enhanced teamwork in Metal Gear Solid 4 – those are the kind of team moves I’d love to orchestrate. At the very least get the Acid games into Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Volume 2 or into PlayStation’s growing Classics Catalog of PSP games, I beg of you.
Can’t wait a long time to visit the galaxy far, far away? Check out our best Star Wars games for what you can play in the meantime!
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