Fuga: Melodies of Steel 3 - Solatorobo: Red the Hunter Costume Pack (DLC)

I went into Fuga: Melodies of Steel braced for a mid-tier curiosity from a studio better known for licensed anime brawlers, and came out roughly 20 hours later genuinely shaken by a game that earned its Metacritic 84 honestly. CyberConnect2's first self-published title is a turn-based strategy RPG built around a cast of 12 anthropomorphic children piloting a giant tank called the Taranis through an occupied warzone, and the mechanical hook underneath that storybook exterior is one of the smartest pieces of pressure-design in recent memory. The combat loop is deceptively layered. You field six kids at a time, three active at the gun turrets and three in support. Each active slot runs one of three weapon classes: machine gun for consistent light damage, grenade launcher as a well-rounded middle option, and cannon for heavy, less reliable hits. Which child operates which gun matters as much as the weapon class itself, because the support trio builds a relationship gauge with the active gunner ahead of them. Max that gauge and you unleash a link attack. Pair the wrong kids and you leave damage on the table. The turn order timeline at the top of the screen means you are constantly stacking delayed attacks and managing action economy, which gives the whole thing a feel closer to a miniature grand-strategy problem than a standard JRPG fight. Route selection between battles adds another resource layer: easier paths keep the kids healthy, but harder paths yield more experience and rare upgrade materials for the Taranis itself. Get greedy, take too many dangerous routes, and you burn your intermission Action Points on recovery instead of tank upgrades or bond-building events. The intermission phase is where Fuga genuinely earns its sim tag. Between combat chapters you walk one child around the tank, spending a hard cap of 20 Action Points on conversations, facility upgrades, cooking, farming, and exploring ruins. Every kid has a stated preference for what they want to do that break, and satisfying those requests deepens bonds that feed back directly into combat link power. The kitchen, the farm, the workshop, and the bunker all get upgraded through materials you haul in from tougher routes. The resource loop is tight enough that it rewards planning but forgiving enough that newcomers are not immediately punished for a suboptimal afternoon. Now, the Soul Cannon. The Taranis carries a superweapon that one-shots any enemy on the screen. The fuel source is a child, permanently removed from the game. The developers have stated on record that the cannon is not supposed to be used regularly; it exists so players feel the weight of not using it. The battles are balanced to be survivable without it, and leaning on the cannon actually makes the endgame harder because you shrink your roster and lose the link combinations built up over hours of intermissions. Skilled or optimizing players will find the game leans toward manageable, and some community members have noted that aggressive route choices compound into a power surplus by the late chapters. The flip side is that the emotional architecture only fully works if you resist the urge to min-max your way out of every crisis. There is also a fair criticism that when the Soul Cannon is used, outside of the opening chapter the other children do not react in ways that feel commensurate with the loss, which slightly defuses the narrative weight the mechanic is clearly reaching for. For players who show up expecting free-form JRPG exploration, Fuga will feel constraining. There is no open world, no level grinding away from the main path, and the entire game takes place inside or immediately adjacent to the Taranis. What is here instead is a polished, focused design that respects your time and does not pad its runtime. The roughly 20-hour playtime has a true ending tied to survival choices, and New Game Plus gives a reason to revisit with better knowledge of the resource curve. If you like turn-based tactics where every intermission decision has downstream consequences, or if you want a war story that takes its stakes seriously without abandoning warmth, this is a game that earns attention it largely missed at launch. Diego, Scout Team

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