Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo Review

I have a fondness for Bullet Hell games, the simple but addictive gameplay mechanic of trying not to get hit is misunderstood by many. For some it is far too frustrating, but I enjoy the challenge. Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo falls well into the Bullet Hell category. Developed by HEY, the game is a homage to Genesis era of gaming. The first thing that came to mind when starting up Mecha Ritz was Ikaruga, one of my favourite arcade Bullet Hell games of all time.

The story is redundant during Mecha Ritz, you’re here to shoot things on the screen and dodge anything that comes near you. Regardless of its redundancy, it is pretty poor. The game revolves around some lass basically destroying mankind through inventing “Mecha”, then for some reason there is a “Mecha” imbued with human will (That’s who you play as) and that’s pretty much your motivation for the game. It’s never really explained why she destroys the world, she just does it because she wants everything, or something like that. Like I previously mentioned, it’s not great.

It doesn't win any awards for its presentation; Mecha Ritz is crude, simple and serves it’s purpose. It could be a little clearer at times, and tries a little bit too hard to imitate the interfaces and UI’s of the Genesis era. This is an issue because right from the off the game feels more archaic than it should, I love games inspired by specific eras, but developers should make more of an effort to modernise rather than outright imitate. The same could be said of the cut scenes between the levels. They feel cheap and are essentially just basic hand-drawn stills accompanied by a poor narrative.

I have to give compliments to the music, it’s an FM synthesized track that takes me way back to my gaming years as a child. It perfectly suits the gameplay and sounds excellently produced. It actually ends up making some of the other aspects of the title feel quite cheap by comparison.

UI and lazy narrative aside, the gameplay is actually pretty good. It’s what you would expect from a top-down Bullet Hell shooter. There are several different ships to choose from, all with varying weapons and bombs. I feel the developer has too much confidence in the replayability multiple ships can add as they really aren’t that dissimilar from one another. Each level features several bosses, all with different attack patterns and difficulties. The method of killing bosses rarely divulges from the established routine though. Luckily the game is relatively short, so it never becomes too tiresome.

There’s not a massive amount of content on offer. There’s one story mode to play through with a selection of different ships to use with a change of difficulty available; there’s a small amount of replayability here, but you won’t be coming back for weeks on end. The game can be a little unstable at times, Mecha Ritz crashed on me on more than few occasions, leaving me rather frustrated as it lost my progress. Much like Genesis era games, once you turn the game off, you have to start all over again when it is turned back on. This is something I quite like, it adds an extra layer of urgency - you just need to make sure the game is stable.

Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo is not a bad game, the shooting is fun and the enemies can often be challenging. It’s everywhere else that feels lacking for me, graphically it is very basic, and the narrative is virtually redundant. These downfalls ruin what could have been promising Bullet Hell game, problems aside, if you fancy a quick Genesis homage for a fairly cheap investment Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo would likely keep you entertained for an hour or two.