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As a kid, it was tough to get information on video games outside of word of mouth or buying games on my own. I didn’t have cable TV, and even when I eventually got it, there were no channels that reviewed games. On some rare occasions, I’d have the chance to get a gaming magazine, and I’d read those over and over again, imagining how each game would look like in motion, how it sounded, how it played. I only had one console to play at the time, so even if I could get some of the games that I’d seen in the magazines, I’d still daydream about the games from other consoles.
That brings me to Armada on the Dreamcast. The magazine only had a short preview that described the game as a mix between Asteroids and an RPG, which seemed like an interesting concept—and it still does.
What really caught my eye, however, were two things: how short the preview was compared to the others and that it was the only game with a negative impression. In the same issue, there was also a preview for Slave Zero on the Dreamcast. It’s a good game, don’t get me wrong, but the Dreamcast port is a really rough one (I’ve completed that version, and it gets really hard to play on the last missions).
As time passed, I got a PC and was introduced to the world of emulation. I'm finally able to play all those games that I’ve seen so many times but couldn’t play. When the time comes to try Armada, just one more issue arises: it’s a Windows CE game. Some Dreamcast games were developed for Windows CE (like the Resident Evil 2 port), and Dreamcast emulators at the time couldn’t handle those games. So once again, I found myself unable to try this game.
Finally, I was able to get my hands on an actual Dreamcast and try the game that had eluded me for so long. What did I think of it? Oh, that’s cool… Okay, let’s try the next game in this burned CD pile. What? I finally saw it in motion, that’s all I wanted to see.
That brings us to the present. In an impulsive moment, I decided to finally sit down and see this game through. So let’s go ahead and talk about it!
The setup is pretty straightforward: Humanity knows that Earth’s days are numbered, so they decide to fly to outer space and find better luck on another planet. 10,000 years later, humans are scattered all around the universe and have been shaped by the environments each group had to inhabit. Amidst this division, the Armada appears. A biomechanical threat with only one goal in mind: destroy humanity. And so, humanity and the Armada are entangled in an endless war for supremacy.
Armada is a combination of Diablo and Asteroids. You have your classic Asteroids gameplay: you have a thruster and you shoot down stuff. This time, you are not shooting asteroids, but the eponymous Armada.
Comparing this to Diablo would be a little disingenuous, though. The game is an action RPG, and you can play locally with up to 4 players, but one of the most fun aspects of Diablo is barely present: the loot.
The game has a really small pool of ship upgrades to buy, and what’s worse is that these upgrades lack modifiers. If an item improves your fire rate, that’s it—that’s the only type of item you get. You want to improve your fire rate even more? Well, then equip a second copy of the same item. Later in the game, you get items that upgrade two stats simultaneously, but it won’t go any deeper than that. Finally, enemy ships barely drop any items, so for most of the game, you’ll be collecting only money and experience from killing them.
Calling it an RPG is also a bit of a stretch. You get experience, you level up, and every 4th level, you get a ship upgrade. You only have 9 slots to carry items, four of which are used to equip any upgrades you get your hands on, and that’s pretty much it. There’s not much else you can do for your build.
Even if the RPG part is lacking, at least the Asteroids part of the game is fun, right? Well, actually, yes, it is. The game controls exactly like Asteroids: you have a thruster button, a shoot button, and you fly around space shooting things. Simple fun. Adding to this, you also have a hyper-thruster button to fly at greater speeds when you have to travel across space. You also have a bomb and a shield button that drain from the same resource for those sticky situations.
To start the game, you can pick from one of the six human races from this universe: Terran, Nomad, Eldered, Scarab, Drakken, and Vorgan. Each race has a unique type of ship that will evolve over time and three distinctive stats to start. Outside of the stats and the ship's appearance, not much else changes for picking a race.
You are dropped in Allied City in the middle of an Armada attack. After you repel the forces with the help of the locals, you are able to talk to each of them using your scanner. They will share some info on the current situation, and two of them, in particular, can repair your ship and restock your Power Pods (these can be spent to use bombs or shields). One of them will give you a story mission, and then you can be on your way to the vastness of space.
That’s the entire loop of the game: you go to the coordinates of the mission you are given, complete whatever task was given to you (most of the time, it’s just to destroy specific Armada targets), and then you go back to Allied City to get more missions.
You can travel around space, which, of course, feels almost endless. This sounds cool in theory, but there are barely any landmarks to travel to. If you follow the story, you will see all of them, so there is no real incentive to just go on and explore outside of destroying ships to get experience.
There are some planets that you will be able to land on. However, these planets work exactly like space, just with a different background. It’s just a void for you to fly and shoot aliens. At least they are a good place to grind since ships destroyed on these give you way more Credits than in space. There are also the Starbases of each race, where you can buy upgrades, plus two secret starbases. Wormholes appear halfway through the game. These can help you fast-travel if you need to; however, each one of them is connected to another wormhole, so you can’t travel wherever you want. They act more like shortcuts rather than the fast-travel points we are used to these days.
If you decide to fight to the end of this war, the game will have one more surprise up its sleeve for you: the game is unfinished. There are a total of 31 missions for you to complete. Once you complete that last mission, everyone in Allied City will congratulate you and give you some pointers to possible Armada threats, but the game at that point is basically over. All ships will be leveled up to a higher level so you can continue powering yourself up, but there is no point since there is not much else to do.
So that’s basically it, that’s Armada. An incomplete game from the first year of the Dreamcast’s lifespan. Do I recommend it? Well, I can’t really recommend it as a must-play or even a hidden gem of sorts. But if you are in the right mindset and just want to unwind for a bit while having something else in the background, the game is actually fun in short bursts. I wish the team at Metro3D had more time to actually finish the game. The foundation is solid, but so much is lacking for it to be interesting that it’s almost frustrating.
That brings me to Armada on the Dreamcast. The magazine only had a short preview that described the game as a mix between Asteroids and an RPG, which seemed like an interesting concept—and it still does.
What really caught my eye, however, were two things: how short the preview was compared to the others and that it was the only game with a negative impression. In the same issue, there was also a preview for Slave Zero on the Dreamcast. It’s a good game, don’t get me wrong, but the Dreamcast port is a really rough one (I’ve completed that version, and it gets really hard to play on the last missions).
As time passed, I got a PC and was introduced to the world of emulation. I'm finally able to play all those games that I’ve seen so many times but couldn’t play. When the time comes to try Armada, just one more issue arises: it’s a Windows CE game. Some Dreamcast games were developed for Windows CE (like the Resident Evil 2 port), and Dreamcast emulators at the time couldn’t handle those games. So once again, I found myself unable to try this game.
Finally, I was able to get my hands on an actual Dreamcast and try the game that had eluded me for so long. What did I think of it? Oh, that’s cool… Okay, let’s try the next game in this burned CD pile. What? I finally saw it in motion, that’s all I wanted to see.
That brings us to the present. In an impulsive moment, I decided to finally sit down and see this game through. So let’s go ahead and talk about it!
The setup is pretty straightforward: Humanity knows that Earth’s days are numbered, so they decide to fly to outer space and find better luck on another planet. 10,000 years later, humans are scattered all around the universe and have been shaped by the environments each group had to inhabit. Amidst this division, the Armada appears. A biomechanical threat with only one goal in mind: destroy humanity. And so, humanity and the Armada are entangled in an endless war for supremacy.
Armada is a combination of Diablo and Asteroids. You have your classic Asteroids gameplay: you have a thruster and you shoot down stuff. This time, you are not shooting asteroids, but the eponymous Armada.
Comparing this to Diablo would be a little disingenuous, though. The game is an action RPG, and you can play locally with up to 4 players, but one of the most fun aspects of Diablo is barely present: the loot.
The game has a really small pool of ship upgrades to buy, and what’s worse is that these upgrades lack modifiers. If an item improves your fire rate, that’s it—that’s the only type of item you get. You want to improve your fire rate even more? Well, then equip a second copy of the same item. Later in the game, you get items that upgrade two stats simultaneously, but it won’t go any deeper than that. Finally, enemy ships barely drop any items, so for most of the game, you’ll be collecting only money and experience from killing them.
Calling it an RPG is also a bit of a stretch. You get experience, you level up, and every 4th level, you get a ship upgrade. You only have 9 slots to carry items, four of which are used to equip any upgrades you get your hands on, and that’s pretty much it. There’s not much else you can do for your build.
Even if the RPG part is lacking, at least the Asteroids part of the game is fun, right? Well, actually, yes, it is. The game controls exactly like Asteroids: you have a thruster button, a shoot button, and you fly around space shooting things. Simple fun. Adding to this, you also have a hyper-thruster button to fly at greater speeds when you have to travel across space. You also have a bomb and a shield button that drain from the same resource for those sticky situations.
To start the game, you can pick from one of the six human races from this universe: Terran, Nomad, Eldered, Scarab, Drakken, and Vorgan. Each race has a unique type of ship that will evolve over time and three distinctive stats to start. Outside of the stats and the ship's appearance, not much else changes for picking a race.
You are dropped in Allied City in the middle of an Armada attack. After you repel the forces with the help of the locals, you are able to talk to each of them using your scanner. They will share some info on the current situation, and two of them, in particular, can repair your ship and restock your Power Pods (these can be spent to use bombs or shields). One of them will give you a story mission, and then you can be on your way to the vastness of space.
That’s the entire loop of the game: you go to the coordinates of the mission you are given, complete whatever task was given to you (most of the time, it’s just to destroy specific Armada targets), and then you go back to Allied City to get more missions.
You can travel around space, which, of course, feels almost endless. This sounds cool in theory, but there are barely any landmarks to travel to. If you follow the story, you will see all of them, so there is no real incentive to just go on and explore outside of destroying ships to get experience.
There are some planets that you will be able to land on. However, these planets work exactly like space, just with a different background. It’s just a void for you to fly and shoot aliens. At least they are a good place to grind since ships destroyed on these give you way more Credits than in space. There are also the Starbases of each race, where you can buy upgrades, plus two secret starbases. Wormholes appear halfway through the game. These can help you fast-travel if you need to; however, each one of them is connected to another wormhole, so you can’t travel wherever you want. They act more like shortcuts rather than the fast-travel points we are used to these days.
If you decide to fight to the end of this war, the game will have one more surprise up its sleeve for you: the game is unfinished. There are a total of 31 missions for you to complete. Once you complete that last mission, everyone in Allied City will congratulate you and give you some pointers to possible Armada threats, but the game at that point is basically over. All ships will be leveled up to a higher level so you can continue powering yourself up, but there is no point since there is not much else to do.
So that’s basically it, that’s Armada. An incomplete game from the first year of the Dreamcast’s lifespan. Do I recommend it? Well, I can’t really recommend it as a must-play or even a hidden gem of sorts. But if you are in the right mindset and just want to unwind for a bit while having something else in the background, the game is actually fun in short bursts. I wish the team at Metro3D had more time to actually finish the game. The foundation is solid, but so much is lacking for it to be interesting that it’s almost frustrating.
