When Leikir Studio, a group I was not familiar with, and DotEmu, whose work I adore, announced Metal Slug Tactics in 2021 (in an E3 Direct, if memory serves), I was as confused as I suspect many of you were. For those who’ve not been in a Pizza Hut lately, Metal Slug is an old-school SNK series that appeared on NeoGeo systems–including the Pocket–and has players running and gunning their way through cartoony Middle East locations to fight countless enemy grunts and, usually, encounter some scene-stealing aliens towards the end. These arcade games were as quarter-munchy as quarter-munchers got, but they were a lot of fun and demonstrated SNK’s unparalleled pixel artistry. You can get them all now, separately, on the platform of your choice–I’m slowly collecting them on the Switch thanks to the Arcade Archives series (there's also an Anthology that's often on sale).

So I was down with the Metal Slug part of Metal Slug Tactics. Unfortunately, my luck with strategy games has been testy. I enjoyed Warcraft 2 (in 1995), definitely did not enjoy StarCraft, could not understand Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and because of that, avoided what’s usually hailed as the best modern tactics game on offer: Into the Breach, although NWR alum Nathan Mustafa has levied an impressive campaign to convince me to buy it. And after learning that Metal Slug Tactics pulls a lot from that game, I might finally give it a whirl.

Metal Slug Tactics (MST) somehow manages to be both a run-and-gun Metal Slug game and an easy-to-learn Tactics game that rewards experimentation but doesn’t require you to have a PhD in “strategery,” which I appreciate.

You’ll start things off as series stalwarts Marco Rossi, Eri Kasamoto, and Fiolina "Fio" Germi, who are your units on the chessboard of Metal Slug Tactics. Marco is a support character who can buff other characters’ offensive capabilities off the bat. Eri focuses on movement and comes alive when she can “synchronize” with her comrades. Fio is interesting in that she can literally move allies and enemies into more favorable positions for better synchronization. Synchronization, by the way, is what happens when one of your units attacks an enemy that’s also in range of a friend. If Marco fires on a grunt that Eri can also attack, then they both get an action bonus, which is critical to your success.

Movement is the game's most important action. All of your characters are encouraged to move as far as possible whenever possible. The farther somebody moves, the more Adrenaline they build up, and Adrenaline powers their special abilities. Staying still is heavily discouraged, to the point where your commanding officer will radio in and scold you for doing it. Special abilities are initially underwhelming, but completing missions and leveling up lets you choose new weapons, weapon mods, or special abilities. However, and this is where the roguelite aspect comes in, those upgrades are randomized.

The game has four areas, and you must complete three missions in each area before a boss shows up, which gives you plenty of time to accrue upgrades. By the time MST “clicked” for me, I was mowing bosses down without much trouble. Marco could eventually call in airstrikes, Fio was killing distant enemies in a single shot, and Eri was hopscotching all over the map with bombs that went off in two different directions. They all had interesting weapon mods, too. However, everybody’s alternate weapon (machine gun, grenade launcher, etc.) has limited ammo. Mission selection comes down to “how easily can I survive this” and “what’s my reward for completing it?” Sometimes you get health, moolah, an ammo restock, or extra XP. If one of your units dies on the field (which will happen), you can revive them, although there’s a cap on revivals in each area. And if things go completely to hell and you botch your actions, you can reset your turn twice per mission, which I found extraordinarily helpful.

You start with Marco, Eri, and Fio, but completing various tasks during the game will unlock new characters and new mods to add to the pool. You’ll also either unlock or be able to purchase different loadouts for these characters. One of Fio’s alternate loadouts, for example, starts her off with pretty puny weapons, but those weapons become crazy powerful with just a few mods. Between levels, you can buy or sell mods…if you have the casheesh, which is either weirdly hard to find or I just don’t understand the game’s economy.

MST is a beautiful game with unreal spritework and animation that captures the expressive, zany energy of the Metal Slug series without making anything hard to read. Things did start to chug during boss encounters, however. Anytime the screen was filled with a giant mech, attack indicators, and enemies–all of which have idle animations–there was a noticeable drop in the frame rate. This was more of a problem during docked play than in handheld, wierdly. However, in handheld, the small size of screen text becomes an issue.

One unexpected thing that impressed me about MST was its glossary. At any time, you can click the R stick and highlight any term onscreen. This doesn’t always clear things up, but it usually does, and it’s way more than most tactics games offer.

The only real downside, right now, is that the game is buggy. Especially in regards to mummification (which is a temporary state), you’ll often appear to be back to normal but only have the mummy attacks, and dying while in a mummified state usually results in your character being normal and standing, seemingly fine, but actually dead. Those aren’t deal breakers by any means but are immediately noticeable.

I was genuinely shocked by how much I wound up liking MST. It’s bizarrely true to the source material while somehow succeeding in being a completely different game that’s still super fun. I’d talk more about the roguelite aspects of the game but they aren’t intrusive, which is honestly a surprise, because roguelites tend to overemphasize the “roguelite” aspect. How many times have I said “does this have to be a roguelite?” on this website? It’s a lot! But not today. Not today!