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First Dreamcast Sleeper Hit

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 11, 1999
Author: Amazon User

Armada is a really great game. All the internet reviews said it wasn't that good, but i think it depends on who plays it that determines how good it is. The worst part about this game is the graphics, and they don't even look that bad, they just don't wow people like soul calibur did. the best part of this game is how they mixed the genres together. Shooter, rpg, action, drama, they're all here. this is a really great game. get it if you like rpgs, shooters, or want to start.

Are You Old School?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: March 27, 2000
Author: Amazon User

When you first play Armada, it seems like an interesting return to old-school, top-down shoot-em-ups. Then you play for a while, and realize that it is basically an old game with better graphics. Remember Life Force for 8-bit NES? More fun than Armada. I can think of others...basically, you'd be better off going out and getting an NES and some old games for less money than this costs. Basically, Armada was fun for about 2 days, then it got boring.

Awful!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: April 25, 2000
Author: Amazon User

What an awful excuse for a game! What could possibly haveposessed Sega to put forth a game of such low quality as this one? Theonly good thing was the short FMV intro. After that, everything sucked.

I know Armada was one of the 1st Dreamcast games and as such, would not exactly be perfect. But come on, this game is just ridiculous!

This game was so bad that I could not even tell what the objective/s were. I never knew what I was supposed to do, how I was supposed to do it, where I was supposed to go, or why I was to go there. You do little more than fly around areas that have no interesting features and that all look identical, all the while shooting at ridiculously large and difficult waves of enemies which all look nearly the same and seem to just keep coming and never stop.This gets very boring rather quickly. Aside from the high frame rate and the somewhat good graphics, there isn't any aspect of Armada's gameplay that could not be duplicated on any of the old 16 bit systems. Some say this is good, but I don't think so. If Sega wanted to release one of these re-hashed 2D shooters a couple years from now, ok, fine. But since this is one of the games that premiered with the Dreamcasts' lauch, it should have been something new and interesting. If this game would have been 3 dimensional, it would have somewhat increased its interesting qualities ( though the repetitive, virtually identical looking enemies and levels would not help matters any ). But as it is, this game is just terrible. Whatever you do, stay away from this awful excuse for a videogame!

En Fuego

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: December 05, 1999
Author: Amazon User

This is the best game I have played in a long time. I like RPG's and I also like shooters and this game does both splendidly. It has my vote for sleeper of the year.

Not an RPG game, not much of a shooter, either.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: April 07, 2000
Author: Amazon User

When I bought this game for my Dreamcast, I was craving an RPG. I hoped that Armada would be able to tide me over untill a more traditional role-playing game came out. There is practically no RPG element to this game, however, and the shooter aspect gets boooooring fast. If you want a role-player, buy a role-player, if you want a shooter, buy a shooter. This game is not much of either. ...I'm going to the pawn shop.

This game is so dull...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: March 16, 2000
Author: Amazon User

If you take asteroids, remove the cool sounds, remove the awesome control, and add some mediocre graphics and RPG elements, you get this game. We played this for about three hours, waiting for it to get good. I really need to start renting games before I purchase them; reviewers suck at rating games like this.

Addictive

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: December 29, 1999
Author: Amazon User

Ok, I am going to make this short and sweet. The game may not have the best graphics, or use the Dreamcast's amazing rendering abilities, but the gameplay of this game is truly addictive. You just can't leave it. It is a must play game, even if the only time you ever touch it is as a rental from Blockbuster.

Armada

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: February 14, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I agree with another reviewer.

The missions are a little too easy, but luckily, once you get through them, there remains the sheer joy of just blasting stuff.

Armada - A good game that could have been much better.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: September 16, 2002
Author: Amazon User

No genre goes back as far as the shooter. The first computer game, the 2 player Space War, was a shooter, with subsequent titles, such as the classic Asteroids, being more complete versions of that original concept. In many ways, Armada could be seen as a successor to those two titles. Indeed, control is handled much the same way, as is the perspective, but Metro3D intended for it to be much more. In essence, Armada could be said to be 2 parts Asteroids & 1 part Populous. If this is the combination Metro3D was going for, they did not entirely succeed.

While everything looks very crisp and clean, nothing ever really looks quite good enough to impress the fact upon you that you're playing a Dreamcast game. There's nothing here that couldn't be done on the Playstation, albeit with a bit of texture warping. That said, the lighting and translucency effects are easy on the eyes, and the textures are clean. Add to that the fact that there are quite a few enemies on-screen at any given time, and you have a game that looks good, even if it doesn't exactly tax the Dreamcast hardware.

Armada has an adequate sound package. The music is quite good, consisting of the usual orchestral science-fiction scores, that stack up quite well. Whether you complete a mission, get your ship upgraded or get defeated in space (at which time you're transported back to Earth) you are awarded with appropriate music, fitting each particular mood, as the soundtrack tries its best to give the game an epic feel. Voice acting is also quite competent, and in most cases sounds better than 90% of the B-Movie dialogue most companies seem to be going for (probably by accident). As far as the usual bells and whistles, there all there too. Explosions, weapons, alien screams, etc. all sound very good, not to mention quite loud. Another invaluable aspect is that allies can and will make themselves known, at which point you can choose whether or not to assist them in their mission (you will be awarded appropriately with a sum of credits). Whenever you manage to get the audio aspects of a game to assist in the actual gameplay, rather than just supply a mood, you know you've done something right. Armada delivers on both counts.

Armada's controls are simple and straightforward. You use the Analog stick to rotate your ship, and the analog triggers for acceleration (energy-draining warp engines, or standard sub-light engines). The D-Pad also is used, but not for out and out control. By pressing down on the D-Pad over an appropriate site (planet, space station, etc.), you will enter other areas for combat, or in the case of Earth, refuel and rearm your Power Pods (smart bombs). Pressing up on the D-Pad while in these sites will of course cause you to blast back out into space. While the system quickly becomes second nature, and is never too cumbersome to drain from the game, the amount of actions is probably a bit too limited (scan/converse, shoot, smart bomb, accelerate) for a game trying to be a "Shooter RPG."

While not a bad game by any means, the promise of a "Shooter RPG" seems to get hopes up a little too high, because when all is said and done, Armada is basically just an overhead, mission-based shooter with a few elements of role- playing, such as conversing with NPC's and levelling-up thrown in for good measure. The multiplayer aspects of the game add some much-needed life into a game that can get extremely repetitive rather quickly, but oftentimes it also can become frustrating when you have players who choose not to cooperate. Another downer is the open-ended gameplay, because as soon as every mission is completed, you basically have nothing more to do, and it seems more like a way to cheat the player out of a proper ending, than a "feature." As a shooter alone, Armada would have been a passable title, but throw the letters "RPG" in there, and you have a game that cannot possibly live up to the hype.

Armada, if a bit of a let down, was and is a good idea in concept, if falls a bit short in execution. Don't get me wrong, Armada is an enjoyable game, especially if you like shooters, but it simply doesn't deliver the role-playing experience Metro3D seemed to promise. Multiplayer is a nice touch, when used properly, but the open-ended game cheats the avid gamer who completes the game, from a more fulfilling experience. Unless Metro3D plans to have additional missions for download into a VMU or the upcoming ZIP Drive, this is a mistake. Rumor has it that Metro3D is already planning to correct the mistakes and provide a more thorough role-playing experience in the sequel. If this is true, perhaps then gamers will get the overall experience they deserved with this game. As it is, Armada is a welcome, if somewhat disappointing addition to the US Dreamcast library.

disappointing game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 22
Date: December 10, 1999
Author: Amazon User

If you've seen the screenshots then you know that it's a top-down shooter, much like asteroids. Of course every review touts Armada as an RPG-- but why are all the screenshots of a shoot-em-up-space-action game? Because that IS the game.

It's not like Star Control! It's not like the other Star ... game where I learned the word obsequious!

I think there's a rumor that this game was written with sega's online multiplayer network in mind and that's part of why it sucks. (since there is no online network)

As disappointed as I was with NBA2K, go play that instead.

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