Fuga: Melodies of Steel - Ultimate Edition

I went in expecting a lightweight anime curiosity and came out genuinely unsettled, which is the highest compliment I can pay CyberConnect2's design instincts here. Fuga: Melodies of Steel puts a group of children inside a massive tank called the Taranis and asks them to drive it through enemy-occupied territory to rescue their families. The premise sounds warm. The execution is not, and that tension between the watercolour visuals and the weight of the decisions you face is exactly what makes this game worth your time. The combat loop is cleaner than you might expect from a three-genre label. Three characters man the tank's turrets each turn, with the remaining kids slotted into support roles behind them that activate passives or trigger link attacks between paired characters. The Taranis runs on shared HP and SP pools, so every resource decision compounds across the whole party. Weapon types break down into three colour-coded categories, and matching the right type to an enemy delays their next turn, which is the central tactical lever you pull all game. Boss encounters stress-test your grasp of this system hard, and the turn-order timeline at the top of the screen rewards players who think two or three moves ahead rather than just reacting. Between battles, intermission points let you upgrade the tank, manage crew wellbeing, and build affinity between characters through expeditions. Harder branching paths yield better rewards, so there is a genuine risk-reward calculus to every chapter's route selection. The Soul Cannon is where the game's mechanical and narrative threads tie a knot around your stomach. When you are close to losing a battle, the Taranis offers a superweapon that defeats any enemy outright. The cost is one of your crew. The game is entirely capable of being completed without ever using it if you manage your resources well, and that threat hanging over every tough encounter creates a dread that most strategy games achieve only through permadeath systems. It is a smart piece of design that doubles as a storytelling device. The weaknesses are real but narrow. The UI has friction that reviewers consistently flagged at launch, and it can make swapping support positions mid-battle clumsier than it should be. There is no open-world exploration and no level grinding; the game is a linear sequence of tank-to-tank fights with intermissions, which will frustrate players who expect RPG freedom of movement. The cast are anthropomorphic cats and dogs drawn from CyberConnect2's Little Tail Bronx universe, and if that visual language bounces off you immediately, nothing in the gameplay will compensate. What the Ultimate Edition adds on top of the base game includes a 15-track digital soundtrack, an 80-page digital art book, three costume packs covering Back to School, Way of the Sword, and Fantasy themes, plus a Dummy Soul item that lets you fire the Soul Cannon once without actually sacrificing a character. That last item is meaningful; it is essentially a safety net for a first-time playthrough. For strategy and sim players specifically, the depth here is real even if it is not immediately obvious. The character placement system has enough combinatorial variety across the full roster that repeat playthroughs with different support pairings produce noticeably different battles. The tutorial handles the basics competently without overstaying its welcome. This is not a 200-hour Paradox marathon, but the decision density per hour is higher than most games in its price bracket. If you have been sleeping on the Fuga series before diving into the sequels, this first entry is where the emotional and mechanical foundation was laid, and it holds up.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

Be the first to comment on Fuga: Melodies of Steel - Ultimate Edition.