The story found in Metal Max Xeno Reborn is pretty good. You play as Talis who journeys across Distokyo, which was the former location of Tokyo Bay, a real world location in Japan. The plot in a nutshell is that Talis is seeking revenge against the machines that destroyed his hometown and took his mothers life.
I know it’s not much of a description of the story, but I don’t want to give away too much. The story is one that is to be expected with a game like this, but has some surprises, kept me engaged, and was fun to play through. Metal Max Xeno Reborn plays a bit like what would happen if Super Battle Tank and Final Fantasy had a weird love child. I know I need to explain that sentence, so here it goes.
This game is both a turn based JRPG and an arcade shooter, which is a really weird combination. So you run around a post-apocalyptic landscape gathering resources, defeating monsters and bosses while at the same time rolling around the landscape with a fleet of tanks.
Enemies you come across in the world will either be moving about in a random pattern or sitting in wait for you to approach before attacking. When you engage an enemy there will be a targeting line which acts as both an indicator and oftentimes a line of sight for the enemy.
The game is a semi open world game, not unlike what you would find with the original Phantasy Star Online. You have open areas you can explore but these are a bit small and broken up into sections that are met with a loading screen. You have the choice to either engage in a fight or keep moving. Defeating an enemy will net you resources and experience that you can use to level up your characters as well as level up your tanks, customize them, and upgrade them.
Once you start a fight, you get to choose an attack, use a skill, or an item. This is the same being on foot or in your tank. When on foot, you can run around in real time and automatically attack an enemy as long as you’re within targeting range. This is good for dodging attacks and strategizing. You can also climb in and out of your tanks at any point but doing so is through the menu system, and not using a designated button. While in the tank, you can also attack automatically while moving around in real time.
Now I know what you might be asking, I thought you were indicating that it’s a turn based JRPG. Well it advertises itself as an action RPG which it is, if you turn on auto attack/battle mode. Otherwise, it is a turn-based JRPG with the ability to run around in real time. With all of the action RPG elements to the game, moving around in real time, and attacking through a menu, I would say that it’s ever so slightly a turn based JRPG.
Switching party/fleet members on the fly helps to keep your party moving and experience how each member of the party or tank fleet handles. This is a lot of fun to do, especially in intense enemy encounters.
I mentioned above an arcade aspect, well that would be with the tank battles provided you are using the auto attack mode. You can run around in your fleet of tanks shooting automatically at enemies that are within your tanks line of sight, which makes it feel like an arcade shooter. As bad or awkward as this may sound, it’s not. In fact it’s one of the most entertaining aspects to the game and is a lot of fun.
Metal Max Xeno Reborn is a remake of the original Metal Max Xeno. This remake was released on PC, Switch, and Playstation 4. It features enhanced visuals, an ATB system, and a revamp on vehicle physics.
Graphically, the game looks really nice. The world you travel around in is barren, but detailed. You have dust that gets kicked up into the air, large structures all around you, it all looks really nice, as hellish of a landscape as it is that you’re traversing. I guess you can say that there is a sense of beauty to the barren hellscape you’re in. The detail in the vehicles, buildings, enemies, and the characters all look very detailed and impressive. But with all of this, performance tanks a hit.
Though performance takes a bit of a hit, it’s a minor one. The performance issue the game has is in the camera movement when there is a lot going on. The camera will sometimes slow down if you’re trying to rotate it around you and with that, it will be a bit jittery. Given how big of a game this is, a bit of jittery and slow camera movement during rotation in large battles is a small price to pay.
Now the only other aspect of performance I want to bring up are the load times. So the initial load time getting into the game is anywhere from about forty five seconds to about a minute. This is true regardless if you’re loading a saved game or starting a new game. The load times between areas are anywhere from fifteen seconds up to just shy of a minute. I can’t tell if this is a limitation of the Switch 1 and Switch Lite platforms (as this may differ when playing on Switch 2), or a case of just poor optimization on the platform. I feel like there could have been a bit more done to optimize the game to bring down the load times, as they do detract a bit from the enjoyment I have had with this game.
This was the case both when playing on the Switch Lite as well as the original Switch 1 both docked and in handheld mode. I believe this to be an optimization issue with this port of the game. I would hope this isn’t the case on the Switch 2, and I doubt it’s an issue with the PC release either.
The music found in Metal Max Xeno Reborn is what you would expect in an RPG like this. Grand orchestrated tracks are what you get here. Featuring hard hitting highs and subtle lows, the music in this game fits like a glove. None of the music feels out of place and does an amazing job at helping to tell the story of the game. Loud hard hitting music during battles and softer tones during emotional aspects of the story, make the game feel more like a film than a video game. The choice in music gives the game an artistic quality and feel.
The sounds of your weapons either on foot or using the large cannons of your tanks even sound good. Each weapon has it’s own sound and the hard hitting sound of the cannons really make you feel like you’re hitting enemies hard. It just goes to show you that there was a lot of thought and purpose going into even the sound design here. This was a welcome surprise as I was feeling it would be more generic sounding and I was very happy to be wrong about that.
Metal Max Xeno Reborn is a game that is a unique blend of genres that works exceptionally well and it quite frankly has no right to.
If you’re a fan of action RPGs, lite turn based RPG elements, and arcade shooters, then you really have to check this game out. It’s unique, entertaining, emotional, and an all around amazing experience. I most definitely would suggest checking this game out as it’s a unique gem among RPGs.
In addition to writing articles, Ryan Byers also creates content for his YouTube channel called "Obscure Games and Consoles", collects video games, and dabbles in video game development.