Battle Suit Aces Review

Battle Suit Aces is a card-battling RPG developed by Trinket Studios and published in collaboration with Outersloth. You might know Trinket Studios for their 2017 title Battle Chef Brigade, which is similarly animesque. However, while that game was all about puzzles, hunting, and cooking, this adventure is basically a classic space mecha visual novel and card game rolled into one. Will I binge this entire title, or will I drop it like it was Naruto?

"Battle Suit Aces!"

The story is about Captain Heathcliff of the USS Zephyr and his Patchworks crew as they battle the Frenized and save all Earthkin (humanity) through the use of ancient fighting robots: the Relic Suits. But what exactly are the Relic Suits? What happened to the aliens that built them? And why are the Frenized so hellbent on destroying everything? Suit up, because the answers are out there.

From the art style and music (composed by Carlos “insaneintherain” Eiene, who also arranged some music for Pokémon Legends: Z-A), to the story and tone, Battle Suit Aces draws inspiration from such classics as Cowboy Bebop, Full Metal Alchemist, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Gurran Lagann (and other shows that I haven't watched). It can be funny, awesome, and dramatic without missing a beat. I felt immersed in the world — erm, galaxy, despite basically throwing you into it without warning, having exposition about the universe being naturally intertwined throughout the dialogue. It also doesn't pull punches all that much, either, as some missions end on a bittersweet note that actually hurt.

Space! The final frontier... where everyone has a mech suit.

You can see how much love and respect for the mecha anime genre there is in every corner of this game. Heck, from the way it's structured, every mission is an episode, and every act is a season. That being said, there are some inconsistencies when it comes to some of the art. One can be a properly done piece, while others can look like rough storyboards. It's kind of jarring and makes it feel rushed in places, but I still loved the direction they went with, especially when it comes to the voice acting.

No matter how minor a role they play, everyone is voiced by a talented actor, and all 50 of them do some pretty good jobs of portraying their characters; I’ve totally recruited some of them based on their personality alone. Not only that, they interact during battle, giving tactical information, encouraging each other, or just joking around. It's actually really cool and makes you feel like you're watching a real fight… even if the fight is just missiles and laser beams being shot between cards.

Suit up!

There's also a lot of talking. Like, after every mission, there are at least five crew interactions. Though often short, it still does a lot to endear you to whoever you're recruiting. It's bonkers how much fluff there is here, and that's not counting all the character missions you can unlock. Just make sure to turn on Auto Progress Dialogue because it gets wordy and it makes the pacing a lot better.

But enough about me gushing over the presentation and narrative, how about the gameplay? Well, it’s just as important as the politics of saving the galaxy. If you want to win a fight, you have to destroy the Commander, destroy all their cards, or just kill the biggest unit on their field. There are some variations and special conditions to the battle system to keep things exciting (playing a sport via cards threw me through a loop), but that’s generally how things go.

On your orders, Commander.

In order to do any of that, you’ll need to have units on the field. Every turn, you’re free to choose either a Suit or a Drone to put into the board. Suits are more powerful with unique attacks and abilities, but Drones are cheaper and more expendable, which is important as once a unit loses all its health, they are out of the battle. Although they can be played or switched out for free, it’ll cost (red, green, or blue) energy for them to attack. There is no separate resource card, as each unit generates its own colour energy per turn.

But, if you want to help your crew a little more directly, you can use Command cards: special cards drawn once you have three Command points. Although you can’t control what you get, they can be played for free at any time and can turn the tides of a losing battle. You can also use Command points to redraw your hand.

Through these systems, battles are engaging, strategic matches that will test you on how to adapt to each situation the game throws at you. Maybe the Commander is too well-protected by armoured fields, but their deck is thin, so you go for the eradication of their forces. Maybe you poked a hole into their defences, allowing you to finish the battle in one attack. With abilities triggering, special attacks charging, and various avenues to win or lose, it's exciting to play these battles out in their entirety. It also made me actually have a strategy that I constantly tried to improve throughout the story, which brings me to the next aspect of the game: what you do outside of the battlefield.

Welcome home.

Between missions, you’ll be in the USS Zephyr, seeing interactions between crew members, crafting mods using the resources you earned from battle, and equipping them to your army of Suits and the ship itself to make them more effective in combat. You can even take on battle puzzles and bounties to keep your skills fresh and learn new strategies. It’s fun to see all the talks, even when they’re about nothing too important, and I went out of my way to do as much as I could before starting my next mission. The more you do, the better your crew and ship become.

However, Patchworks can't save the galaxy alone, and must ally with the five Factions in order to have the manpower needed to end the Frenzied threat. By taking bounties, doing missions, or having one of their pilots be the MVP in a battle, you’ll earn points for that Faction, and leveling them up allows you to choose a reward such as better drones, new mods, or bring aboard a new pilot onto the Zephyr and add them to your ever growing deck. You can’t please everyone, though, and you’ll often have to choose amongst them on who to help.

A crew full of misfits, sports superstars, puckish rogues, monster hunters, scientists, and suitsmiths.

It makes deckbuilding a slow but satisfying process. Building up reputation, browsing through the rewards, and choosing which Faction to help is something I always put serious thought into. Each Faction has different play styles, so it's important to figure out who you like most. However, be warned; you can't take back what you’ve chosen, anything added to your deck cannot be removed, and you can’t take every reward, so choose wisely.

Overall, Battle Suit Aces strikes the right balance of gripping storytelling and addictive gameplay that made me keen to play each section, eagerly awaiting what else may come. There weren’t any glitches I could see, framerate stayed at a consistent 60 FPS, and the load times were incredibly short that never broke the pacing.

Battle Suit Aces is a must-have for any fan of the mecha genre or card games, and if you’re in both camps, you’re in for a treat! Every aspect felt lovingly crafted and more people should play it! Go and get this because it’s a contender for my personal Game of the Year.