Welcome back to Save State, the land of both milk and honey. If there’s any one thing I greatly enjoy, it’s a mecha combat game. MechWarrior, MechAssault, Zone of the Enders, Armored Core, and Chromehounds, honestly if you name a third-person action title where you’re in a mech, odds are I’ve at least played it. You could say that I find them especially RAD. In the last couple weeks, I discovered a random hidden gem that recently went on sale: Megaton Musashi W: Wired. With fantastically drawn anime visuals out of combat, this is a title with gorgeous presentation and loads of customizability.

Going into Megaton Musashi W: Wired, I wasn’t sure what to expect as I hadn’t heard of this game at all. Whatever developer and publisher Level5’s advertising strategy for Megaton Musashi W: Wired was, I don’t think there was any advertising for it in English-speaking markets. That’s a shame since I am exactly the target market for this kind of mecha title: I’m a massive sucker for any robot battling game, and Megaton Musashi has a lot in common with some of my favorite robot battler titles like Gundam Breaker and Custom Robo, so if you like trying out a myriad of weapons and robot parts, this might be for you.

Metagon Musashi W: Wired combines visual novel story segments told to you by anime style artwork with 3D hack and slash combat in a mission-based progression structure. Your first hour in this will be largely interacting with the story as Yamato Ichidaiji, a young delinquent that lives alone as most of his family passed in a tragic accident. It doesn’t take long for Yamato’s understanding of his world to be completely flipped on its head as he and his newfound friends become humanity’s final hope to combat an alien force that succeeded in wiping out the vast majority of humanity. While many who survived live in ignorant bliss after having their memories wiped so they could peacefully live under a false sky, Yamato and his compatriots choose to fight for the desolate remains of their planet.

The visual novel segments of Megaton Musashi can go on for quite a bit: it will likely be an hour or so before you actually get to control a robot and beat on some alien creatures. The good news is that the story isn’t bad at all, and the well-drawn character art does a lot to keep your interest in the various scenes. The story isn’t as incredible or as involved as what you’d get from a dedicated visual novel, but for a title that likes to do cheesy throwbacks to Saturday morning anime and cartoons, Megaton Musashi presents its story well and has multiple moments throughout that are very interesting.

For gameplay, that’s where Megaton Musashi really shines. As you progress through story events, you’ll be able to take on new story missions that will require you to cut through swaths of alien baddies to finally tackle a boss at the end of the stage. Stages are relatively simple, with crates laying around that can repair your mech or give some useful power ups, and for the most part you’ll venture through the zones until a barrier is put up by the enemies- just like old school beat ’em ups, you have to kill all the enemies to proceed. At the end of the zone will be some enemies and a boss you’ll need to defeat and defeating them clears the mission.

For the most part, combat is very easy to approach in Megaton Musahi. You can shoot down enemies with ranged weapons or engage them up close and personal with dual blades, gauntlets, and great swords. You also have up to four special moves you can use because what’s a giant robot anime without a special attack where you can fire a laser from your mech’s chest? You’ll be rapidly switching parts on your Rogues as you rank up and find new parts with better passives that you can use, especially at the beginning. There are even giant robots from popular media like Grendizer, Mazinger Z, and Getter Robo, so if you’ve been a fan of Japanese giant robot shows for a long time, it can be fun to see classic robots annihilating alien forces.

There are a ton of story missions, but you also get side missions and treasure hunt quests that will yield different types of mech parts that you can attach to your favorite robot. The amount of customization in Megaton Musashi is, quite frankly, insane. You have your primary mech parts, like the body, arms, and legs, but you can also carry multiple melee and ranged weapons of which there’s also a huge variety. You can fabricate chips that can be socketed into your mech’s motherboard, which can give a wide variety of small bonuses. You can attach up to three mods to each part on your large robot, as well, giving you even more customizable passive bonuses.

The basic gameplay loop for Megaton Musashi is that you play through some story events until the next story mission unlocks, clear that, and do side missions and other quests in case you need to rank up and find more powerful parts all while heavily customizing your giant robot of choice. Parts that drop from missions or that you craft can have different passive abilities, which gives loads of replay value if you’re hunting for multiples of the same strong passives to complement your play style. You also find and build up resources from disassembling parts you don’t need and can then in turn use those to fabricate new parts, aiding in your quest to find the perfect robot arms with the right bonuses so you can spam special attacks more.

Towards the end of the game, around chapter 20 or so, I found myself needing to do a little bit of grinding in order to keep up with the power requirements for end game dreadnought missions, but as far as the campaign goes, it was simple enough to get by using the parts that were dropping from story, side, and treasure mission completion. However, if you’re a hardcore grind lover, you’re going to have so much to do here to completely optimize your mech. Grinding for high level and high rarity parts is one thing, but there’s also finding the correct affixes on gear. Which, thankfully, you can craft and target specific affixes and parts, because each mission has its own loot pool. With the right knowledge, you can target farm the parts and components that you’re looking for.

Apparently, Megaton Musashi was going to be one of Level5’s big online multiplayer titles, as you can co-op with other players to complete missions or even participate in 1v1 fights to determine who is the best pilot. Unfortunately, the online multiplayer component of the game is as desolate a wasteland as the surface of the Earth in Megaton Musashi’s story, so don’t expect to coordinate an online match without playing with your friends or people through Discord. The missions-based structure really works well for playing online, but it’s just a shame that this was created with such attention to detail, but then published without much effort to advertise it.

That being said, in terms of just single player content, Megaton Musashi W: Wired offers an amazing time. There’s so much to do and so much to tinker with to find the right combination of mech parts, mods, and chips to make your perfect fighting robot. The visual novel segments actually give Megaton Musashi W: Wired a story to tell, rather than so many others that only have a story for the sake of having one, while the action combat and heavy customization can sate the thirsts of both fun action game fiends and hardcore RPG grind-lovers alike.