It's obvious the dev team had a lot of passion for Metal Slug and the game is so much better for it, even if it's still a little under baked.

The backgrounds are often bland and lacking detail compared to earlier titles and I'm not in love with the new enemy designs, but it doesn't spoil the game for me.

The enemy encounters are a huge step up from 4 and some of the bosses are among my favorite in the series. It was cut very short on dev time and it shows, especially late in the game. 4 is my vote for the weakest in the series.ĥ is a vast improvement though not without its flaws. The enemy encounters in general aren't great. The bosses are often nails-hard and not well designed. They tried to fix the scoring system but their fix isn't great. 4 has many reused assets and is often slammed for it. For now you're probably safe skipping it.Īfter 3, ownership changed hands and things haven't been great. Some players prefer 2 though, and if you do get really into the series you should check it out at some point. I think X is a vast improvement over 2, which runs poorly and feels obviously unfinished to me. X has the same levels as 2, but they are retooled in terms of enemy placement and visuals. MS2 had a lot of problems on launch, so they made X as kind of an apology. While you will definitely enjoy it on its own, the game has many callbacks to earlier games that are a lot of fun when you know the context. The game kind of feels like a love letter to everything that came before it. The third game was made on the cusp of SNK's bankruptcy, so I think the team realized it was their last chance to work on the series.

It's fine that you started with X, but I would recommend going back and playing the games in order. I'm unfamiliar with the Playstation ports, so maybe they're great - I dunno. It has excellent support for save states which makes it much easier to practice difficult sections. I prefer emulation myself, specifically MAME.

Reddit metal slug 1