Metal Slug Tactics (PlayStation 5) review "Sync or Swim"

General Morden of the Rebel Army is once again causing havoc after escaping prison, making Sirocco City his stronghold. Predictably, the Regular Army has dispatched the Peregrine Falcons Squad, led by Marco Rossi, to put an end to Morden's chaos. Once again. As you can tell, Metal Slug's storytelling is about as sophisticated as a Mega Man plot. Thankfully, people don't play Metal Slug games for their plot, but more for the fun run'gun action that is complemented by their intense cartoony visuals and animations. This latest offering attempts to continue such a tradition, albeit with a different take on the formula, one that requires a bit more planning.

Metal Slug Tactics is a turn-based strategy game taking place across forests, ancient ruins, and eventually the city itself, fending against returning regulars and favorites; whether it's Morden's soldiers in green uniform attire, desert native swordsmen, mummies, and more, there's plenty of foes to blast away. Angled in a fixed isometric viewpoint, you must navigate your three members through a stage, carefully using your one turn per character in an attempt to eliminate objective-based threats. From the beginning, you'll have Marco, Eri, and Fio on your crew, with other characters being unlocked after meeting certain conditions; while it's fine not everyone is available from the get-go, it is bizarre that Tarma of the "original four" was excluded as a starting pick.

The combat system, while not straying too far from the basics, does an adequate job keeping players entertained to an extent. Similarly to other tactical role-playing games, each of your characters is treated like a class with unique attacks and abilities. For instance, Marco has a default pistol with infinite ammo and a secondary machine gun with limited ammo, with one of his abilities allowing someone to attack twice in a row and another that calls in an airstrike. Eri has long-distance grenade and grenade launcher attacks that cause splash damage, and Fio has a shotgun and an ability that can pick up a nearby character, friend or foe, and move them elsewhere.

Typically, you'll need a specific number of points to activate abilities in these games, and while that's the same here, you start out with zero points for each character at the start of a stage. The catch here is that you gain points by moving your characters, and the farther they move, the faster you'll gain points to cast one. It's a risk-reward system that forces you to forgo piecemeal safety, and considering you can only use three characters per stage, on maps where you're constantly outnumbered and almost immediately surrounded, it's something that's recommended. Furthermore, you temporarily gain the power to dodge an upcoming enemy attack if you make long and abstract movements over different elevations.

Teamwork is also highly encouraged with a feature called Sync. In the simplest terms, two or more of your crew has to be in firing range of the same enemy; for example, Character One can be in firing range facing the enemy, while Character Two, depending on the weapon equipped, needs to face the enemy from another firing angle. When Character One uses their turn to attack said enemy, Character Two will immediately perform a follow-up attack. This is very important for one vital reason: all characters attacking after the first character are considered free turns. Yes, you are usually outnumbered in every stage, but the game gives you the means to take them out efficiently if planned right.



Since nearly every game nowadays seems compelled to have it, Tactics also incorporates roguelite elements into its structure. This becomes immediately obvious when you lose a battle for the first time and the punishment is having to restart from the very beginning. You won't start from scratch since any leftover money you've accumulated carries over to the next session. With this currency you can buy several stuff, such as weapon and ability buffs, new loadouts with different weapons, and one-time-use special items, like summoning the titular Metal Slug, to aid in your fight against Morden's forces.

Roguelite aspects in turn-based titles are not a new thing, and in fact a lot of them work really well. But for Tactics, it often feels like it gets in the way of what could have been a much better product. The game is "short," having only four areas and about eight to nine stages each, with the exception of Sirocco City's four, totaling at 30 stages. However, you're only allowed to play three actual stages per area, with the fourth forcing you into a boss stage, so realistically 16 stages if you try to liberate each area; the game gives you the option of going straight to Sirocco City after beating just one area, so eight stages in that scenario.

The reason for this forced limitation is due to said roguelite elements: rewards for finishing a stage include ammo refills, buffs, extra revivals, or more money, which you're aware of prior to starting a battle. Obviously, having the option to play every stage in an area will make your characters overpowered, but there could have been a better way to go about this pick-up-and-play method the devs were likely going for. Ultimately, however, it all comes down to how fun the game is to play; since the devs have gone out of their way to devise an interesting combat system, they surely have done the same in making the actual battles just as interesting, correct?



The developers do a great job implementing the Metal Slug aesthetics with references to locations and enemies, as well as doing their best to replicate the dramatically-rousing soundtrack from past titles; all of this makes for an entertaining playthrough on your first session. But then you begin replaying for a second, third, and so forth time, and it immediately feels repetitive. Stages are randomly shuffled around per area and you have some variety in terms of challenges, but they're not as distinct as you'd like to think.

In one area, you'll come across stages where you defeat all enemies, defeat specific enemies, or survive a number of turns. Then you move to the next area... and they involve having to defeat all enemies, defeat specific enemies, or escape a stage. See? Diversity! Again, fine if executed well, but that's not the case. It's quite the red flag when one of the biggest things considered "variety" is literally a spring board that moves you to a different location in a stage. If anything, the best thing Tactics does is the way it handles some enemy types: one such example involves getting smoked by a mummy, which then temporarily turns you into a mummy with new attacks! So it's a shame how most of the rogues gallery doesn't follow suit in favor of Soldier Shoots Gun #2 and #3, or Man Stabs #1 and #2.

As mentioned, turn-based games with roguelite aspects have worked in an efficient manner, but Tactics is an inefficient game. It's "long form" in execution due to the game still acting with a traditional strategic turn-based arrangement, meaning you'll spend an hour or two getting through two, maybe three areas because of all the thinking and planning. Of course, combining that with unremarkable stage objectives and designs, along with a replay "short form" structure, and you're left with everything clearly not gelling.



Tactics could have been a legitimately great title with all the mechanics and features that are currently in the game. The devs could have made a tighter and more compact version with the roguelite elements, creating a better version that works with the replay factor. On the opposite spectrum, the team could have made a normal strategic turn-based game where you actually played through all 30 stages in a somewhat linear form with a fleshed out story, with more variety in terms of objectives, scenarios, and more stages. Or, even better, they could have done both in separate modes: one as a story mode and the other as a "quick play" mode.

The most frustrating thing about Metal Slug Tactics is that it sits comfortably at being just slightly above average. It's functionally an okay game. It's frustrating because it had enough pieces at play to make it more than that, but squanders the opportunity. Metal Slug fans will get the most mileage out of this product, however after a few hours of game time, even they might contemplate moving on to another game over having to replay this one more time.

Community review by dementedhut (May 22, 2025) Interestingly, despite my huge love for the Metal Slug series stemming back to the '90s, I've only ever wrote five MS reviews for the site. Well... six, if you count the original Xbox Metal Slug 3 review I took down for the new one.