When it comes to mech-shooters, players will talk about Hawken, Mech Warriors, Armored Core and the more recent mech-fighting/FPS game series, Titanfall. Each of these games or series had their ups and downs, some more than others. Where Galahad 3093 fits into the ranking against the aforementioned games is a puzzling one—solely since it has a fair number of positive fixes to issues in the older mech-shooting games.
At first glance, Galahad 3093 seems like an overwhelming game with customization and trying to find the perfect build before jumping into matches. I took an unorthodox method of just trying out everything, and I think this is the best way to really gauge what works for each player. The game is based in a sci-fi world where King Arthur is back, but he is good at using mechs now. He calls the mechs Lances and each character is known as a Knight—like the Knights of the Round Table in stories of old.
I found the whole story kind of cheesy, but I was not complaining when I was trying out all the different Knights’ abilities. Each Knight had a passive and active ability, similar to the concept of Champions in League of Legends. Then, there are different classes of Lances: Light, Medium, Heavy and Super Heavy. For me, I like the battle brawlers so the healers or snipers were not for me.
At first, I kept playing Light Lances and customizing the various weapons because I wanted to get into the action faster. The Light Lances are great for scouting and pinging enemies for the Heavies to support in cleaning the enemies up. However, I find the Light Lances great for dishing out some heavy damage since they are so fast and quick to manoeuvre—definitely lots of movement mechanics competency needed.
On movement mechanics in Galahad 3093, the mech-shooter begins to feel bogged down in terms of movement capabilities. I understand the limitations of manoeuvrability, but from my personal view, mech-fighting mechanics should utilize every single dimension of movement. Otherwise, what is the point of thrusters if a mech cannot go in all directions. I found myself always constricted in the big jumps and thinking I wish I could be less clunky to move in other directions in midair.
Skimming (or using the thrusters to boost forward back and side-to-side) is a great option that allows me to move in any direction on a horizontal plane, but it would have been interesting to see more 4-D verticality functions. I like pressing E for the huge jump as a ‘get-out-the-fight-free’ card but can really take me out of the fight for too long once I run away. I do like the option of playing in either first-person or third-person—personally, I like third-person in this case. The fights are in a massive arena, so I like to see more of my surroundings while keeping an eye on the mini-map.
Customization is massive in Galahad 3093 and I will admit I did not go through hundreds of different layouts—maybe somewhere between 90-120 but who is counting?! While I was feeling overwhelmed at first, I spent a sizable amount of time tricking out my Lances with the colours I wanted and with the guns that felt good to me. Some could say the customizations are a bit over the top, but I feel like Tony Stark/Iron Man every time I am trying to re-jig my Lances’ outfits. It really is a matter of trial-and-error.
“In the grand scheme of Galahad 3093, I like the direction it is taking for the mech-shooting genre.”
As someone who has been playing more FPS games in the last couple of years like Apex Legends and Valorant, tracing and tracking enemies with guns that require the skill is still a learning curve for me. So, even for this game, I tried to avoid using those types of weapons and opted for more explosive, wider radius attacks. Although, the weapons in this game had an easy hit box to track on enemies.
In the grand scheme of Galahad 3093, I like the direction it is taking for the mech-shooting genre. I would have liked to see a better refinement of graphics, but it is not required. I just want to see cool things in super high HD quality sometimes—but then again, I have an RTX 3060 to run it on ultra graphics. So, the game itself is very accessible for all players with different PC builds. Most of the GPU usage is probably on the constant shooting and use of abilities flying left and right.
Speaking on the pandemonium of the matches I played, I enjoyed playing on the maps that changed as the match progressed. Some maps had comets raining down at a certain time—not sure yet if it is a timed event or random. Another map had sand worms trying to eat me. The game really creates an environment where everything is trying to kill you. For 12v12 action, I found the maps adequate to move around in and were spacious enough to use as cover and manoeuvre to kill enemies.
Galahad 3093 is an awesome online mech-shooting game for all players. It spares players the barrier of costing a full triple-A game that is somewhere around $79.99 or more. The graphics are universal and not a strain on the GPU. And while there are a few kinks to work on the gameplay, I choose to believe the developers at Simutronics will fine-tune it more as it fully releases from Early Access.
