This is a thumbs up exclusively for archival reasons.

I think companies releasing non-live-service ports of their shuttered live service games is important for games preservation, and may end up being the only remaining fragment of this particular design era. I also don't like seeing good stories and art and mechanics get lost forever when a live service game dips below its requisite profitability thresholds, and I think offering these types of ports is a reasonable way to get one last burst of value out of an IP.

That said I do not think Metal Slug Attack Reloaded is good.

Steps have been taken to minimize its grind, but dear god they aren't enough. And the game, story, and art that's left behind when you downplay the grind is nothing. It's asset flips and the skeleton of an idea.

And the grind is impossibly miserable.

A standard army for a faction is about 12 units. And there are about five factions. And each unit's level is capped to your level and needs to be leveled manually. And each unit needs 24 item drops of increasing rarity to unlock its abilities. And each drop requires at least one replay of a stage where you can't just lazy farm it because the item drop system is tied to attacking nothing.

The game also randomly restricts its good units to endgame content, forcing you to build up two and three stars first, and then build up four stars, and then build up five stars, going through drop farm hell every time.

This is a modification to the offline version that actively makes it worse.

Metal Slug is a franchise that's had a lot of love put into it over the years, and it's also a franchise that's had a corporate hand up its butt so far it's touching teeth, puppeteering it for money, for about half that time.

I think the concept here, a Metal Slug autobattler TD, could have been fun if it was built as a game. But MSAR doesn't feel like they allowed the designers to do that.

Edit: Four POWs triumphantly revealing the poop that they found for you is actually a pretty poignant metaphor for the game itself.

NEW DLC PLS!

It's great to have MSA back! I've played the original version on mobile, and there certainly are differences such as the need to grind A LOT. Even so, the game is still as fun (and more stressful) as ever.

The game would be much better and enjoyable with occasional unit updates, QoL improvements for easier navigation and upgrading, and modes that complement the PvE aspect of the game.