Welcome to our review of Galak-Z: Variant S, a new free game on Nintendo Switch with microtransactions and a lot of fun!
GALAK-Z: Variant S is a brand new, one-of-a-kind, space-shooting action-RPG that is specially crafted to take advantage of all of the unique features of the Nintendo Switch.
Experience stunning space combat from the cockpit of a sleek spaceship or a giant Mech! Battle space pirates, squish giant bugs, challenge Dark Bot bosses, and crush the evil Baron’s army of nasty Imperial troops through more than a hundred endlessly replayable missions in a full-scale story campaign. Fight against player-created squads in the Bot Battle League and earn Trophies to reap better rewards. Collect upgrades, salvage, relics, and Bots to make your spaceship and Mech even stronger, and fight to become the highest ranked pilot in the galaxy!
This game has 2 basic modes, with the spaceship and in mech mode. As a mech, you have a short reach of your weapon, but a more easily used one. You hack and slash the enemies and can do this at a more rapid rate. Use your grappling hook once it is fully charged and draw in the enemy combatant and hopefully deal enough damage.
As the spaceship, you gain a lot more maneuverability as you have trusters to speedbump you away from harm and a wider reach for the main guns. Not forgetting the big homing missiles that once charged, can fire at a set angle. So if you are being hunted by a few, pin them down in the right angle and fire away.
All throughout the game, you are managing so many things, in almost an RPG fashion. You grab parts, you grab money, you grab weapon parts, … All to upgrade or stay alive. You can do so much, the game is quite overwhelming at first. The tutorial was very “information-heavy” and let’s not forget you are still learning to make due with the space in which you fight. Galak-Z uses some sort of gravity system that I would consider to be realistic. When you don’t use your counter speed, you just keep drifting.
Fighting at first will be tedious and it does take a few tries to really get a hang of it. My biggest problem was insisting on using my throttle instead of just letting go. I must be honest, I did this way too long, thinking that I’d be avoiding more enemy projectiles, but honestly, every type of enemy is different.
It is important to take note of that simple fact. Some fire right at you, others fire in two directions but never a straight line directed at you. So stand still for some and just destroy em, but soar and swerve around others. Using your second thumbstick to move the guns and good luck on surviving the battles once you reach levels that throw multiple different enemies at you.
Very important to know is that it is totally ok to run and hide. Once you have been hit, you auto-regenerate your shields so you can run away just to heal up. Once you die, you have 2 options, spend some dough to revive or restart the level. Especially when you have the item with upgrade parts is when you want to revive. This is where the microtransactions come to play.
Microtransactions in Galak-z are not very intrusive and it is 100% possible to play the game without, they just facilitate things. Buying new bots or the ability to get more XP, just to name a few. Without them, you will just have a harder/longer time to finish the game. But depending on how you look at it, that might actually be a good thing. You get more out of a free game and if you really can’t pass that one specific battle…. You can just buy a revive.
In conclusion, it took me a while to get used to the fighting but lately, I have been playing this game every night before going to sleep. I love how the levels are short but energetic and I admit I am having a lot more fun now than I thought I would when I was just 30 minutes into the game. I also love how it is basically free if you really want it to be.
My rating is 80%
