Developed By: KAMINARI GAMES Inc.
Published By: Red Art Games
Categories: Shootemup
Release Date: 02.07.25
Price: $39.99

Here we are in the year 2025 and it seems we’re finally getting Macross on a widespread scale thanks to the effort of Big West. For decades, we’d mostly been having to deal with Harmony Gold squashing any attempts at a global takeover, due to their handling and ownership of the Robotech franchise, which was somewhat of a Frankenstein’s Monster of a franchise. But now, the series is mostly on Hulu in the US, there’s BDs coming out, and we have a brand new game. Macross- Shooting Insight.

Shooting Insight is a disappointment. On, quite a few fronts. This isn’t the grand return that the franchise needed, especially in game form. But it’s not because it doesn’t seem like a celebration of the IP, or even a game with bad mechanics. It goes a bit deeper.

Lets be clear. Shooting Insight at it’s core, feels fine, if not great. There’s a good idea. You can just shoot at enemies, that’ll do you fine. But you’re probably better off, especially if you’re score hunting, by using your homing misiles. They’re stronger, you can get more enemies at once, and if you’re doing this consistently, your score is going to jump. But consider this, you can’t just normally shoot anymore. You’ll be aiming at the targets, which itself is fine, but while you concentrate on that, what’s going on behind you? Infact, this highlights the biggest issue with Shooting Insight I have. The game feels too busy and you can never focus on one thing at a time.

Each level is segmented into three parts, a sidescroller, a top down arena, and a boss. On that top down segment, you have enemies firing at you, some with homing shots, then you have targets and terminals that emit enemies unless you destroy them. Then you have bigger targets that let out shockwaves that you can only dodge by using a very poor dodge move that barely moves you and don’t feel like you’re doing anything at all. If you took damage during this, well tough shit, because we’re onto the next section. I hope you like not being able to see enemies or their fire because you’re in an asteroid field. Keep in mind you didn’t heal during this, and if you die, you’ll just start over again in the first phase. Same with the boss phase too. So lets say you beat all of this, but you’re close too death. Cool, you’ll heal a little bit, then you’re off to the next stage…hope you can go without damage.

Oh, I forgot to mention that you’ll deal with the occasional supply drop, for collectables and to unjam radio signals for j-pop idols to serenade your impending death to enemy fire. So on top of a noisy background, near bullet hell patterns, and a crappy dodge, you have collectables on top of that. It’s too much going on. Oh, also there’s tiny subtitles at the bottom of the screen for the Japanese audio that plays from your crewmates, which you’ll never be able to pay attention to.

Final Thoughts

This review might seem short. But as much as I tried, I had absolutely no fun with this game. I love shootemups, I love mecha, and I do enjoy Macross. But this game needs more fixes, especially when it comes to checkpoints or the dodge mechanic. There’s hard and then there’s just poor design. This is the latter.