Rare Metal War: The sins of memory Steam Demo Review
Verdict: Maybe
An action survivor roguelike where animal pilots defend earth in customisable mechs, functional enough but nothing on th
Rare Metal War: The Sins of Memory is an action survivor Roguelike where humanity has fallen and animal-pilot rebels climb into customisable mechs to push aliens back off Earth. My starter pilot is Ina, a red panda. The tutorial handed me a full-power mech with a sword, a shield, and an area-of-effect ultimate, and for a good stretch I felt unstoppable. Then the real game started, took all of that away, and never let me get back to it. I hit level thirteen and still could not dent the boss.
Maybe. Rare Metal War is functional and it looks fine, but every upgrade is the standard survivor-roguelike menu with slightly different flavour text on top, and I never once felt powerful even at level thirteen against a boss I ran three focused builds at. The mech customisation hub is the one part I wanted to keep touching, and most of it is still locked behind the demo scope. If the full release tunes the boss health, tightens the damage feedback, opens the hangar up, and keeps that shop off the pay wall, this gets closer to a Play. Right now the demo shows me the shape of a competent survivor-mech game without giving me a reason to come back for the next run.
Pros
- The mech customisation hub is a highlight, even with most deeper slots locked in the demo
- Ricochet plus attack up produces the one moment the game lets you feel strong
Cons
- Damage feedback is thin, it is hard to see where hits are coming from when you take them
- The story-mode boss stays a bullet sponge even at level thirteen with a focused build
- The hostage-throw mechanic does not explain whether you can pick them up again or whether the earlier ones come back
The tutorial mech
After the intro cutscene and Ina's memory-loss setup, the tutorial dropped me into a mech carrying a rifle, a sword-and-shield loadout, and a shift-key special that cleared the screen. I lost the tutorial fight, which I later worked out was scripted. Story mode then began proper and my kit had shrunk back down to a basic rifle.
The tutorial was showing me what a fully-kitted mech feels like. The Roguelike structure kicks in from there. The run resets, the perks reset, and the rest of the demo is a slow climb back toward that feeling that never quite gets there. The tutorial is also heavy on cutscenes. I skipped through most of them once the gameplay was up and running.
Build mechanics and combat
The Action reads clean once a ricochet build clicks. Every level I picked up ricochet, then attack up, then more ricochet. Bullets bouncing between three enemies meant rooms cleared without me needing precise aim. Aiming is manual, with a soft auto-lock that nudges the crosshair toward the nearest enemy, but it is not doing the heavy lifting.
What does not work is combining piercing with bouncing. I took piercing on top of ricochet in one run and my damage collapsed. Shots pierce or they bounce, they do not do both, and the game does not warn you before the pick. Underneath that one build, the upgrade menu is the standard survivor-Roguelike set: pierce, bounce, crit, attack speed, laser beams, life steal. Slightly different flavour text on top. Not bad. Not new.
The story-mode boss at the end of the first level does not go down easily. First run I did the maths on his damage output, ignored him to level up, spent gold on health and attack, and still barely scratched him. Second run I went single-target: attack up, crit up, laser beams. Third run I hit level thirteen with everything focused on damage, ran a ricochet build on top, and he was still standing when I ran out of health.
Damage feedback makes the fight worse. When something hits me I cannot tell where it is coming from, so dodging turns into guesswork. Being engaged because I might die is fine. Being engaged because a boss is a bullet sponge is not. Survival mode plays looser after that wall. Waves and perks, no boss wall, but it is a shallower loop.
Hostage rescue and customisation
Story mode drops hostages into levels. Get close to a containment unit, a hacking bar fills, and the hostage becomes a tactical drone that follows you around. I could then throw the drone at enemies as a projectile. Some came back after being thrown, some did not, and the game never made it clear which was which. I ended up with a mix of freed hostages, missing ones, and no idea what the mechanic wanted from me.
Between runs I dropped into a hangar hub with weapon-swap, colour palettes, a maintenance panel, and a roster of pilots. I gave my mech a leopard-print paint job and it looked pretty cool. Ina is the starter red panda pilot, Abo the dog joins as an unlockable second pilot, and the fox turns up as a guide character rather than a playable pilot. Most of the deeper customisation slots are locked in this build, so what I got to touch is paint, a couple of weapons, and the pilot swap.
The shape of the hub is one of the better parts of the demo, and I would come back to it if the full release opens the deeper slots up. A couple of the character portraits lean into fan service, meaning pinup-style anime art that is a bit too erotic, which sits oddly in a game otherwise about mechs and missions.
The shop
On the main menu there is a shop that felt out of place for a demo. Crafting slots, currencies I had not spent anywhere in play, a maintenance panel. It looks like the plumbing for micro-transactions. I could be wrong and those currencies might just be craft materials.
Sipher Odyssey reminded me of this game. Mechs clearing waves of aliens, similar map layouts, similar upgrade cadence, and it charges real money for micro-transactions on Epic and mobile. When the same shop shape shows up here it puts me on watch. Worth monitoring before launch.
Developer: White Iron Games
View on Steam
Tags: Action, Roguelike, Survival, Indie
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