I can't stop playing. Its hard to understand what to do at first but once you get your grips the game loop sinks it's teeth in you. Before you know it, you've grind mech parts and disks for hours without even realizing it.

My only gripe is the pixelation filter on higher resolutions. For the best visuals set the resolution to 720p windowed and use a third party app like borderless gaming to stretch the window fullscreen. I hope the devs will give us an option to lower the resolution while borderless or fullscreen with a ui scaler.
Before - https://imgur.com/a/MFDb87m
After - https://imgur.com/a/ovfRTv7

Dear Dev,

I am sorry i questioned your brilliance.

First two stages being gear / strat checks is fine and fair.

Third stage being locked by chips was a bit frustrating, but once i learned i just needed to spend some points making sure i had enough resist + tenacity, i could finally make mincemeat out of third stage.

Cant wait to put another thousand hours into this game.
Hope you can keep it fresh.

Fairly short for a roguelite and with little variation, but makes up for it with an extensive suite of between-run customization in the form of collecting passive skills, mecha parts, and weapons. The feel of any given weapon is more or less identical amongst all weapons of the same type, but what really got me was the way that different torsos and legs drastically change the feel of your movement due to their varied booster configurations and modes of locomotion, something I haven't really felt since the early Armored Core games.

I'll be honest though, while Metal Bringer feels like it could have some serious depth to its combat, all of that goes out the window around Stage 3, where you hit a hard grind wall in the form of nigh-endless waves of enemy mechs, all utilizing a tier of parts higher than you've seen at that point in the game. The first few times you get there, you'll probably die within seconds, it's that brutal of a difficulty spike.

It's at this point that Metal Bringer trips and falls on its face by forcing you to spend several runs simply grinding out defensive passives, which make Stage 3 possible, but also mitigate any further difficulty the game might have had, making subsequent floors, bosses, and even the entirety of NG+ a button mashing breeze that feels like a victory lap instead of a climax. Even the very concept of a cohesive build flies out the window at this point, as your stats will be so bloated and you'll have so many app disks and parts dropping that you'll accumulate virtually every skill in the game before you even reach the final boss (even the ones with tradeoffs), and still likely demolish everything in your path by simply holding dash and spamming attack.

Afterwards, there's really nothing to do but... grind more, unlocking more parts and building cool mechs to steamroll the too-easy content. It's a bit disappointing, but I was also sort of expecting this to happen, given the nature of meta progression in these sorts of games. Overall though, I had fun, likely due to the fact that even with the grind, the game doesn't overstay its welcome. Besides, even after the difficulty spikes and then falls straight off a cliff, it's still a very pretty game with flashy visuals, and it offers excellent customization if you like building lil robot guys. Plus, it kinda scratches that musou itch, y'know?

Recommended, though I suggest you play the demo first to see if the visuals gel with you, since as many negative reviews have mentioned, that nauseating pixel filter cannot be turned off.