Macross: Shooting Insight (Nintendo Switch) Review

Western Macross fans, or Robotech as it’s known to us here, tend to wait a long time for the games to hit our shores. And few of them ever do. The last Robotech game that I played was Robotech: Battlecry on the PlayStation 2 and I’ve been waiting for something similar ever since. Macross: Shooting Insight isn’t exactly the game I’ve been waiting for but, because it’s a Macross title, I had to check it out.

With Shooting Insight, the developers have gone for the tried and tested schmup template. The game draws from five different Macross epochs to tell its story, which involves space-time folding five time periods to intersect in one giant galactic war. It seems some mysterious lady has pulled these different generations together, intending to abduct the songsmiths and investigate their capabilities for warfare. Luckily for them, an assortment of Valkyrie pilots and support staff have been pulled through time as well, making for a rescue mission of epic proportions. Sadly, their various enemies have made the leap as well, putting a significant spanner in the works.

If you haven’t been religiously watching the unfolding Macross saga over the years, none of this will mean a thing to you, let alone who any of these characters are or why you should care. The story gives you a plethora of stereotypes to play with or listen to. There’s the aloof pilot, the reckless hot head, the disapproving lieutenant… well you get the idea. While the story is the games weakest aspect, there’s quite a lot of it in the games Story Mode as each pilot – with five to choose from – has their own little tale. Most of the roles are fully voice acted, though the cut-scenes are just static images and dialogue clips play over missions. For me this was a major issue as there is no English dub and it’s incredibly difficult to try to read the really tiny subtitles that pop up in the bottom right corner of the screen while getting shot at.

Gameplay wise, Shooting Insight is a pretty tough schmup to cut your teeth on, at least on the default medium difficulty. There are five pilots, each with an iconic Valkyrie housing different normal attacks and lock-on missile attacks. Each jet has its own stats as well, such as health and speed to consider, which can make a significant difference in gameplay.

Each mission is broken up into three parts, composed of different schmup play-styles. There are side-scrolling sequences, top-down sequences and, far too rarely, behind-your-Valkyrie sequences. You tackle two scrolling-type sequences that culminate in a boss fight before being graded on your performance.

Sadly, Shooting Insight makes a major faux pas here in that you have no control over your Valkyries modes in any of these sequences. In some you’ll be in jet form, in some Battroid, and others in GERWALK mode. There doesn’t seem to be a design ethos behind which form you take per sequence as you’re just as likely to be in Battroid form during a side scrolling sequence as you are jet mode. Not being able to manually swop modes is a major letdown for a series all about transformable jets. It’s kind of like playing a Transformers game where you have no control over your transformations.

Another issue is that you can’t use your lock-on missiles and your basic attack at the same time, which leaves you vulnerable to enemy shots while trying to manoeuvre your radar cone, controlled by the right stick, around the screen. Eventually, I stopped wasting my time with the missile attack on regular enemy waves and just used it for bosses. You can also power up your basic attack by collecting little yellow crystals that defeated enemies leave behind, powering up to level 5, which makes a huge difference to the strength of the attack and, if you’re using a Valkyrie with spread shots, how much more spread you get. Finally, there’s a Support attack that calls down a rain of missiles from your battleship and is a godsend at any time, wiping out enemies and their projectiles in one explosive spectacle.

Occasionally, the songstresses will chip in to help you, by boosting or negating stats and effects, or by playing a ditty during encounters. While the music is catchy, it bombards the screen with visual filters and effects that hugely impact your view of the action. It’s a nice idea, but visually chaotic to the detriment of gameplay. With Shooting Insight filling the later stages with tonnes of plasma fire and missile trails, you need to keep your eyes peeled at all times with nothing obscuring the view.

Sadly, mission design is incredibly repetitive. It’s a schmup, so I appreciate there isn’t much in the way you can change up the gameplay, but Shooting Insight makes the mistake of feeling very… non-descript and, dare I say it, uneventful. The first half of the campaign has you fighting through the same asteroid fields ad-nasuem, blowing up the same three generators – or whatever they are – over and over. It’s only in the second half of the game that the developers try to be creative with camera movement, different backdrops, enemy movement patterns, and more of that behind-your-Valkyrie play-style. It’s some much needed variety that comes too late.

It doesn’;’t help that the Valkyries move rather slow and missions felt like they started to drag on for too long even before I hit the halfway point; compounded by the fact default settings give you only one life and a little bit of health regeneration between stages. I enjoyed the game far more by simply dropping the difficulty a notch and turning on auto health regeneration – though bear in mind that doing this disables score uploading if that’s your goal.

Outside of the main campaign, Macross: Shooting Insight provides a plethora of modes to keep you busy. There’s an Arcade mode which is the story mode minus all the cut-scenes; an Ace Battle mode which puts you in tough fights against the other Valkyrie pilots; and a Boss Rush mode which is exactly what it says on the tin.

There’s also a Gallery mode which lets you view the 3D models of the different Valkyries that can be transformed at the touch of a button (unlike in-game), an Artwork section to view character profiles and artwork, and a Collection section that lets you view personal items related to the games various characters that can be collected during missions by blowing open specific crates.

Visually, Macross: Shooting Insight is a pretty game to look at with mostly great performance on the Nintendo Switch. Projectile effects are stunning and the mecha designs, specifically for the Valkyries themselves, are gorgeously modeled and animated. Slowdown does rear its ugly head during massive explosions though, usually when you defeat a boss and the screen fills with concentric circles of their flaming remnants.

Overall, Macross: Shooting Insight is a fun enough schmup on easier settings but is missing and novel or memorable feature to make it an essential in the genre. It’s beautiful visuals can’t entirely make-up for the various design missteps plaguing the title, while the various creative choices, such as the Collections section and the story choices, makes this feel more like a game for die-hard Macross fans.

Macross: Shooting Insight was reviewed on Nintendo Switch using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC, Xbox One/Series S|X, and PS4/5.