Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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Soooooo... as a joint project between "Japan Studio" and "Omiya Soft", "Kikou Souhei Armodyne" is one of many PS2 games that probably should've gotten localized back in the day, and not just cause it's a swanky game (the main story overview is in English and the setting has a lot of Western elements integrated into it). As a mid-life PS2 release in 2007, it's one of the few games Omiya Soft has worked on that isn't "Culdcept" (they've also worked on "Lord Monarch: Tokoton Sentou Densetsu", "Front Mission: Gun Hazard" and did some work on "Dragon Force II") and is an interesting departure for them, going from collectible card-battling fantasy to fast-paced strategy mecha combat (known as a "Administration & Strategy SLG). Immediate highlights include character designs by the prolific Naoyuki Onda (best known for "Sol Bianca", "Psycho-Pass", "Ergo Proxy", "Dandadan", etc.) and music by the legendary Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono Series, Shadow Hearts Series, Xeno Series, Inazuma Eleven Series, etc.).

In the mid-21st century, humanity has successfully moved forward with plans to begin colonizing Mars in the hopes of a better future. During this time, a single unified government was formed in an attempt to avert conflicts and war that would arise from this arrangement known as the GU (Global Union). The GU created an arms treaty to quell the super powers of Earth and Mars which required both parties to dismantle many of the old-fashioned armaments of aggression in the hopes of peace, but this is short-lived. Economic turmoil, abuses of power and inter-state friction pushed both sides towards reform and the rise of anti-government forces created the birth of a "humanitarian weapon" to protect order. These humanoid machines, called Armodynes, were intended to aid in the development of Mars but were diverted to Earth and repurposed for battle... unbeknownst to the masses at the time, these new weapons would plunge the galaxy into unfathomable chaos.

Earth's turmoil caused the Mars colonization plan to be scaled back and ultimately cancelled, causing millions of Martian colonists to fend for themselves. These displaced people were ultimately led by a genius scientist, Dr. Voct, who they developed intense loyalty towards. Under his leadership, major breakthroughs in technology were born and a highly organized society was created. Within half a century, Mars flourished while Earth remained in turmoil... the GU, now seeing Mars as the only future, attempt to continue their colonization plan which causes the current Martian regime to become very hostile in response (they were left to rot for 50 years after all) and saw it as Earth attempting to overthrow the current system on Mars. The story features a nameless commander and his ragtag group of soldiers who are fighting back against a Martian conspiracy and searching for the truth between the Earth and Martian conflict.

Armodyne is a tile-based strategy game at its core but it functions a little differently as it has a management portion akin to a simulation game and battles are semi-automated. What I mean is that you CAN move characters to certain spots by setting markers and target enemies, and there IS turn order, gear, terrain effects and all that fun stuff, but combat is cleverly streamlined. When moving, a mech's parameters are automatically calculated and the game will tell you how many turns it takes to reach your destination. When making a determination for each character, you can give them general guidelines to follow such as "Quick Attack", "Evade", "Pursuit", etc. While characters will still move to markers, different commands will determine when and how they get there and what tactics they use to engage the enemy. Once you set them, they will follow your commands indefinitely until they reach their goal or destroy their target; you can intervene at any time, change the preferred weapon a mech is using with the square button, and trigger linkage when multiple attacks are aimed on the same enemy as well as skills with different classes such as Sniper, Gunner, Fighter, etc.

The sim and management portion also has various wrinkles. For example, you can buy and sell different Armodynes, Armodynes of different ranks require pilots with the appropriate rank (ranks are raised with training the humans at camp as well as in combat), gear has to be balanced between mobility and performance, things of that nature. You can set training programs for your characters, hire new characters, build trust and morale, and get random perks (and negative effects) as well; this is important as characters are forced to "retire" once they reach rank 20, so you can't overly rely on one batch and need to train up other characters from time to time. The soundtrack, as expected, is great and the visuals are smooth as silk with almost no loading. This is a video of the game in action. Enjoy.

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