7/10. It's kinda rare for me to enjoy a game but still find it mediocre, but this is it.

The bad
- Too much on the screen to dodge attacks: your equipment may fire projectiles, and more often than not, they fire a lot of big projectiles that look just like your enemies', and they sometimes even cover the enemy's projectile. This makes it very hard to dodge anything because sometimes you either can't even see what's going on or you don't know if that projectile belongs to you or the enemy.
- Story is convoluted, dialogue is cringe: I looked at all the reviews dumping on the story and thought to myself "eh it's anime it can't be that bad.". It is that bad lol. I tried to appreciate the story through my multiple playthroughs but frankly speaking, it's worse than wattpad fanfic. I don't want to talk about specifics because there's just too much to critique. There's way too many plot holes and unexplained things going on. The delivery is cringe, confusing, incomplete. The story is incoherent and inconsistent and the same applies to the characters in general. To be brutally honest, the story adds literally negative value. If you just gave me the game with like an extremely simple story like "okay guys, aliens are bad, let's kill them" I'd have enjoyed it much more. The game ending is literally a feels-bad ending with you dying as you have died several times across the game because you are clones of a sick girl, which is how the game justifies the rogue-like gameplay concept, but there are many plot-hole problems with that. Like that's it. You beat the final boss and you gotta let your "Master" inject some anti-alien thing into the boss because the final boss fused with your friend but turns out your master is a mastermind and it's a bomb with a 2min timer which somehow manages to explode and it kills you and your friend and presumably the final boss or something I don't even know lmao. Then 10 years down the road everyone pays their respects to all of your dead clones. Like I'm not making this up lol the story is much more incoherent than how I'm describing it right now. The story should not rely on sequels that probably will never come to make sense. .

The ugly
- The crafting system was just a gachapon to me lol. It's a lot easier to unlock stronger weapons by fusion / exploration rather than actually participating in the crafting system. Even though the strongest weapons are craftable-only, there wasn't anything hard enough in the game to warrant that. It's only until after I've finished the game a few times did I start looking into the crafting system to try and clear up the stuff I missed.
- The upgrades you can get for your character and metal unit is kinda unexciting; the only exciting upgrades were healing on stage complete and the extra weapon slot. The big ticket upgrades come with big weaknesses that just make the upgrade unappealing. For example, your last melee hit in the combo chain deals 100% more damage but your cooldowns are 25% longer. That doesn't even matter because your biggest source of damage/invulnerability is ultimate charge & ultimate usage and that 25% is going to hurt that. Another example is being able to reload immediately after a successful dodge, but that doesn't matter because dodging sucks because there's too much going on on the screen.
- No incentive to continue playing after you beat the game and explored the secret areas. The story doesn't change after you complete challenges for example, so there's no reason to grind for anything unless you really really enjoy the combat. Idk, I'd personally prefer to play something else at that point.
- Cannot reduce NG+ difficulty, so best to complete any NG+ challenges early on.

The good
+ Combat was fun: For all the bashing I did above I actually like this game. It's fun and combat is fluid and solid (with the exception that there's so much going on it's really hard to figure out when you should be dodging). The game coerces you to try out all the different weapons in the game because by doing so, you unlock "mastery points" which allow you to select in your load-out weapons of higher tiers the next time you return to base. This honestly kept the game pretty fresh because you're almost always running a different set of weapons until you figure out what your favourite equipment and playstyle is like. There's also ways to become completely invulnerable (i.e. broken) for veterans of the game which I found quite entertaining.
+ It's pretty cheap.

7/10. It's kinda rare for me to enjoy a game but still find it mediocre, but this is it. The bad - Too much on the screen to dodge attacks: your equipment may fire projectiles, and more often than not, they fire a lot of big projectiles that look just like your enemies', and they sometimes even cover the enemy's projectile. This makes it very hard to dodge anything because sometimes you either can't even see what's going on or you don't know if that projectile belongs to you or the enemy. - Story is convoluted, dialogue is cringe: I looked at all the reviews dumping on the story and thought to myself "eh it's anime it can't be that bad.". It is that bad lol. I tried to appreciate the story through my multiple playthroughs but frankly speaking, it's worse than wattpad fanfic. I don't want to talk about specifics because there's just too much to critique. There's way too many plot holes and unexplained things going on. The delivery is cringe, confusing, incomplete. The story is incoherent and inconsistent and the same applies to the characters in general. To be brutally honest, the story adds literally negative value. If you just gave me the game with like an extremely simple story like "okay guys, aliens are bad, let's kill them" I'd have enjoyed it much more. The game ending is literally a feels-bad ending with you [spoiler] dying as you have died several times across the game because you are clones of a sick girl, which is how the game justifies the rogue-like gameplay concept, but there are many plot-hole problems with that. Like that's it. You beat the final boss and you gotta let your "Master" inject some anti-alien thing into the boss because the final boss fused with your friend but turns out your master is a mastermind and it's a bomb with a 2min timer which somehow manages to explode and it kills you and your friend and presumably the final boss or something I don't even know lmao. Then 10 years down the road everyone pays their respects to all of your dead clones. Like I'm not making this up lol the story is much more incoherent than how I'm describing it right now. The story should not rely on sequels that probably will never come to make sense. [/spoiler]. The ugly - The crafting system was just a gachapon to me lol. It's a lot easier to unlock stronger weapons by fusion / exploration rather than actually participating in the crafting system. Even though the strongest weapons are craftable-only, there wasn't anything hard enough in the game to warrant that. It's only until after I've finished the game a few times did I start looking into the crafting system to try and clear up the stuff I missed. - The upgrades you can get for your character and metal unit is kinda unexciting; the only exciting upgrades were healing on stage complete and the extra weapon slot. The big ticket upgrades come with big weaknesses that just make the upgrade unappealing. For example, your last melee hit in the combo chain deals 100% more damage but your cooldowns are 25% longer. That doesn't even matter because your biggest source of damage/invulnerability is ultimate charge & ultimate usage and that 25% is going to hurt that. Another example is being able to reload immediately after a successful dodge, but that doesn't matter because dodging sucks because there's too much going on on the screen. - No incentive to continue playing after you beat the game and explored the secret areas. The story doesn't change after you complete challenges for example, so there's no reason to grind for anything unless you really really enjoy the combat. Idk, I'd personally prefer to play something else at that point. - Cannot reduce NG+ difficulty, so best to complete any NG+ challenges early on. The good + Combat was fun: For all the bashing I did above I actually like this game. It's fun and combat is fluid and solid (with the exception that there's so much going on it's really hard to figure out when you should be dodging). The game coerces you to try out all the different weapons in the game because by doing so, you unlock "mastery points" which allow you to select in your load-out weapons of higher tiers the next time you return to base. This honestly kept the game pretty fresh because you're almost always running a different set of weapons until you figure out what your favourite equipment and playstyle is like. There's also ways to become completely invulnerable (i.e. broken) for veterans of the game which I found quite entertaining. + It's pretty cheap.