In 2042, a scientist invented a new powered mobility system for vehicles that made them faster and more agile than anything before. These evolved into the [GEAR System] or [GEAR] for short, and they were used in the fourth World War. Fast forward to 2097, and the [GEAR] have turned on their human creators. Now called [Rage], these out-of-control mechs are quickly moving to destroy humanity, forcing those that did survive — estimated at around 20% — underground for safety.
Enter Freya, a militaristic human force working from underground that are using and maintaining [GEAR] to save humanity from the [Rage]. Based out of Tokyo, their intention is to first take back the city of Tokyo by going to the surface to run various missions including eliminating key [Rage] or delivering goods to human shelters scattered about Tokyo. At the start of the game, your character (which you can name) is a new recruit to Freya’s 4th Division. You’ll meet a handful of other Freya agents as you progress, including Mirai, the pessimistic yet helpful operator who provides info at the start of each mission and progress updates. She does not believe humanity stands a chance to survive, yet she’s dedicated to her work and is very supportive of you. Kotetsu, Takuma, Joachim, Licht, Lilia, The Colonel, and several other Freya allies will fight along with you in some missions, but others have you going solo against the [Rage]. Each character has a facial avatar but no voiceovers are used, nor any cutscenes. During (very) brief dialog sequences at the start and end of missions, you can see the relationships of the characters evolve a bit and the individuals in general get a little more developed. For the short exchanges that are used, I thought Arc Systems Works did a fine job of making both the story and the characters interesting and memorable.
The flow of the game involves four areas. From the main menu, you can go to the Shop to buy and sell items. At the Dock you view and change out the parts of your [GEAR], and you can also change the color of each region your [GEAR]. The mission lobby shows you a list of all available missions including the name, description, and your current rank. This is complimented by a screen shown just before mission start that has Clear and Defeat criteria and the Reward (usually a single, possibly new item). The end of mission screen includes a little chatter between characters, a list of all of the items you got during play, and your rank. The fourth area I was referring to is of course the mission itself.
So at the Shop, the most important item are the Repair Kits, which restore your [GEAR] to full ‘health’ during a battle. I always keep a good stock of these. The other items are all parts for your [GEAR] — there are over 500 parts, or items, to be discovered, the Shop usually has at least five for each region of your [GEAR] and gets new items every so often. But, most times these items are of lower quality than what you can find in-mission. [GEAR] regions are include the head, torso, arms, shoulder, back, and weapons for your left and right arm. It’s not really important to pay too much attention to the part names, but there are several stats that you can easily compare to determine which is better than the next. Power Required, Attack Power, Evade, Armor, and a few other stats help define these individual parts, and a color code scheme (blue is better than orange) makes finding the right parts quick. This is key because you can quickly build up a large stock of multiple item types. I always moved to sell old parts, most of which I never used, to build up a large stock of currency and Repair Kits. Eventually — somewhere around being half through the B-Rank chapter — I had a massive surplus of funds which disrupted the buy/sell gameplay element.
Equipping your [GEAR] is done at the Dock, but it’s not like you have to go here in between every mission. Usually a particular load-out will last you a few missions before you might want to consider upgrading, and if you’re struggling particularly hard with a certain boss fight, it’s probably time to examine what you have. I’ll add that I really liked that, even from the very first mission, I felt like I was piloting a very capable mech. You’re really mobile thanks to a generous boost meter and the weapons felt like they had impact from the start. This all gets progressively better and more satisfying as you unlock new items and weapon types. Weapon types vary appreciably; you’ll have shotgun/spread-fire type weapons, rockets, massive energy beams that can fill up an entire street, fire-based weapons, short-range blunt force or sharp weapons, and so on. For the longest time I kept a melee weapon on my left arm and a ranged one on my right, with the weapon on my back being the most powerful (yet also having the longest cooldown timer). This type of loadout has changed a few times as I worked through the story chapters, facing new and tougher challenges.
Speaking of challenges, Damascus Gear is certainly not the hardest game I have played, but it has its moments. For the most part, it’s pretty smooth sailing, especially given that you can have any number of Repair Kits with you at anytime. Granted, sometimes you can get, or very nearly get, insta-killed by a very strong enemy, making a Repair Kit useless. It’s also important to know that you cannot use a Kit while you’re shooting, nor can you boost around and shoot at the same time — you have to have that slight pause in between those actions. If that sounds really bad, it’s actually not, and it took me no time to get used to that design.
The missions are split into chapters that are based on Rank; you start in the E Rank missions, do about five of those, and then move up to the D, C, B, A, and S Ranks. There are over fifty missions all told, including some DLC that came with the digital version I was provided for review. Each Chapter ends with an ‘Exam’ mission that pits you against anew type of [Rage], and these battles as well as the ‘friendly’ arena tournament battles, can be challenging, but not all that much. Other times you have an escort mission (there are pretty rare though) and the AI does not always do the safe or right thing, and they get stomped by a Agate [Rage] or a Mantis type [Rage], and it’s mission over then, too. The friendly AI that deploy with you on some missions are not too skilled either, at least half of the time they would get defeated (in the flow of the story, they would abort mission safely just before being destroyed), leaving you to deal with whatever is left. But even those moments are not bad, making the game perhaps a little too easy for some. Personally, I didn’t mind — it was fun being able to clear missions and boss encounters usually on the first try and very often getting an S-Rank. I have enough games that require lots of re-tries and layers of strategy, playing Damascus Gear with its difficulty level was somewhat refreshing as it was usually enough just to use a good loadout, maintain some Repair Kits, and use good in-game strategy to succeed.
That style of difficulty and the mission types — seek and destroy, retrieve, escort, all under a time limit — work really well for a portable title. Many missions can be completed in five to ten minutes, others will take longer obviously, but these self-contained missions are fun and split into satisfying chunks. Progress is steady in how the story advances and in how you routinely have new weaponry to use and the appearance of your [GEAR] evolves with new parts, too. With no multiplayer and little reason to go back (other than to S-Rank everything), I still felt like there was plenty of quality content here, especially at the price of $15.
With that, let’s get to the summary…
