Has it's fun moments, but a cluttered UI and poor early tutorials spoil it. The tutorials agonize over very basic, obvious things and then leave you to discover critical mechanics all on your own.

I don't play a ton of TBS, but I find it counterintuitive that holding the high ground yields you no apparent advantage. Particularly for Eri. In fact, taking high ground often costs you, because we all know it's physically impossible to shoot a guy if you're standing above him...

Most of the boss fights are unfun.

Speeding up your enemy's turn with space should be a toggle, not a hold. I don't know how you ♥♥♥♥ that up.

The game encourages you to sprint forward at all times, but also randomly transforms maps and spawns enemies, which make me want to play defensively. But playing defensively gets you killed because you gain less dodge. It does everything in its power to disincentivize the playstyle it claims to reward.

Decent game, amazing artwork, so many detailed animations, a lot of effort went into it.

But there's not really a proper introduction, just a short tutorial that lists the buttons and then you're dropped into the barracks without further explanation. So I'm going to explain best I can here:

Barracks: Despite being behind "New Game", it represents your overall progress and available load-outs.

Campaign: A new campaign is started from the barracks, or resumed from "Continue" on the title screen.
The game is played over multiple campaigns, trying new paths, characters, load-outs and difficulty levels.
A campaign ends either if all characters die on a mission, or upon defeating the final boss. Upgrades are not carried over from previous campaigns, the characters only start with whatever is in their selected load-outs. But it's not that difficult to pick up your favorites most of the time.

Regions: Each campaign has regions that can be played in different order. Each region consists of a number of missions with an additional "Enemy Response" countdown. When the countdown finishes, the region's boss appears and the region is locked for the rest of the current campaign. Don't aim for missions that you won't be able to reach in time.

Mission: Each mission is turn-based strategy. Moving long distances to the dark green squares builds Adrenaline which is the fuel for using Special Actions. When characters are within attacking range of the same enemy, this can trigger sync attacks, causing additional damage. At the top is a health bar called "Reinforcements". If a character dies, they can be revived using a reinforcement. Ammo and reinforcements can be replenished over a campaign by completing specific missions or special events. Ammo can also be bought at the mid-region shops.

Boss: As with any boss-fight, the subordinates are the bane of your existence. The boss must be attacked while defending off the regular soldiers. The bosses do special attacks that completely change the terrain (insta-killing anything not taking cover as instructed) and sync attacks only work on a boss once per round.

Bugs: Time of writing, still game-breaking bugs when it comes to saving/loading during missions, so it's best not to start one if you don't have the time to finish it. There are also other lesser bugs that people are very vocal about.

Overall, the game is very much trial and error, expect a lot of game-overs at first.

I only have one real criticism: Metal Slugs can't jump over gaps. Which is a defining feature of these tanks in the original games and lore. Found this out the hard way.

The more I play the game and understand its mechanics, the more I enjoy how well made this game is. Excellent gameplay coupled with the classic metal slug sprite animation we all know and love is honestly the perfect combination. It was definitely worth the wait!

Playing on the Steam Deck (Latest Proton) for 6.5 hours as of writing, I have only encountered one bug that was simply fixed by resetting the game. All in all, no problems.