Project Mikhail

About

"Project Mikhail is a Sci-Fi Hack and Slash game with single-player Story and Frontier modes, and PvP battles. In Story Mode, play as Shirogane Takeru from Muv-Luv Alternative, experiencing a full story in a world on the brink of destruction by the BETA. Though offering a good story and music, be prepared for grinding and missed optimization opportunities."

Genres & Tags

Play Modes

69%

Audience ScoreBased on 188 reviews

story15 positive mentions

optimization10 negative mentions

The game has a lot of potential and offers decent customization options for mechs.
The story provides an interesting perspective for fans of the Muv-Luv series.
The community is active and supportive, with developers showing willingness to improve the game based on feedback.

The controls are clunky and feel more suited for a mobile game, making gameplay frustrating.
Performance issues are prevalent, with low FPS and optimization problems affecting the experience.
The targeting system is poorly designed, often locking onto the wrong enemies and hindering combat.

story
165 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
9%
88%
3%
The story in "Project Mikhail" serves as a condensed retelling of the "Muv-Luv Alternative" visual novel, offering players a chance to experience familiar events through a new lens, albeit with significant reliance on prior knowledge of the source material. While the narrative includes choices that affect outcomes, many players find it challenging to appreciate without a background in the original story, and the gameplay often detracts from the storytelling experience due to its repetitive nature and lack of depth. Overall, the potential for a rich narrative exists, but it is hampered by execution issues and a need for more engaging gameplay mechanics.
- “If you're a diehard fan of Muv-Luv, this is an opportunity to see the story through a new lens.”
- “The gameplay is smooth and the story ties into Muv-Luv Alternative quite nicely.”
- “As far as the story goes - because that's why you play Muv-Luv - you play as a guy chosen by these two AI waifus to relive events from Shirogane Takeru's life fighting the Beta and try to make decisions that will lead to the best outcome.”
- “The story mode is a very rough condensed recap of what happened in the Muv-Luv Alternative visual novel, from the test of Takeru's new OS to killing Target Alpha in the Kashgar hive.”
- “Currently, the story feels difficult to appreciate without knowing the Muv-Luv Alternative story.”
- “I'd complain about the story, but it's just Muv-Luv Alternative with every element that actually makes Muv-Luv what it is removed for a bigger focus on robots, skipping large parts of the story and making it impossible to connect with any characters unless you already love them from the visual novel.”
gameplay
81 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
21%
65%
14%
The gameplay has received mixed reviews, with many players noting its repetitive nature and basic mechanics, often reduced to shooting enemies in small arenas. While some appreciate the potential for fun once familiar with the controls, others criticize the clunky movement, targeting issues, and lack of variety in missions and enemy types. Overall, the game shows promise but requires significant improvements to enhance the overall experience and replayability.
- “The gameplay is smooth and the story ties into Muv-Luv Alternative quite nicely.”
- “Having skills, parries, dodge counters, secondary weapons, enemy weak points, hovering/flight all create a gameplay loop that feels fitting to the world and provides skill expression.”
- “The gameplay is relatively solid, since you'll be switching weapons constantly and singling out priority targets, which I believe is what the developers were actually aiming for.”
- “The gameplay is extremely repetitive, with every single mission being easily summed up as: 'you shoot things in a small arena, until they die.' with the most variety coming from switching the victory condition from 'you've killed enough enemies' to 'you survived for x amount of minutes.'”
- “The worst part of the movement mechanics is that for a game where movement is important, even your basic movement is limited.”
- “Really disappointing so far, the UI and the gameplay was clearly designed with mobile in mind. You don't have to aim yourself but select an enemy then attack it. Imagine playing any hack and slash on your phone via an emulator on your computer; you have to move the camera, click on the enemy with your mouse, then click on the button located on the bottom right corner to attack. It's that terrible. Same thing for changing weapons: move your mouse then click on the weapon you want to use. The only keys you will press are WASD and space; that's it, everything else is done with the mouse.”
graphics
39 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
15%
69%
15%
The graphics of the game have received mixed reviews, with many users noting that they are dated and simplistic, often likening them to mobile game standards. While some appreciate the visual style and detail in certain elements, others criticize the lack of graphical options and optimization, leading to performance issues and a general feeling that the visuals could use significant improvement. Overall, the graphics are deemed acceptable for an early access title, but not suitable for those expecting high-quality AAA visuals.
- “The beta and TSF models look pretty good, and it's clear that's where most of the attention was focused with the visuals.”
- “The graphics are pretty good and detailed.”
- “I've been playing it for a couple of hours now and I'm enjoying it; the customization is good, the graphics around the monsters and mechs are good too, it's only the environment that lacks in the graphics department.”
- “That the graphics are absolutely terrible has already been said multiple times.”
- “It's optimized like a mobile game; your options on the graphics side of things are pretty lacking.”
- “Graphics are GameCube tier.”
optimization
30 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
13%
53%
33%
The game's optimization has received significant criticism, with many players reporting low frame rates, laggy performance, and frequent crashes, particularly in demanding scenarios like high enemy counts. While some acknowledge the game's potential and express hope for future updates, the current state is described as unoptimized, with limited graphics options and clunky controls detracting from the overall experience. Overall, players suggest that the game is playable but struggles with performance issues typical of early access titles.
- “Frontier has planted the first proper seeds of the incredible game this can become; if it keeps getting regularly updated and further optimized, this could become a fantastic game.”
- “Game has lots of potential; I'm enjoying everything so far, though optimization, controls, animations for the TSF's, and level designs need some work. It's still in early access, so I'm looking forward to following updates, but overall very enjoyable.”
- “Some optimizations are needed, but I like it very much so far.”
- “Optimization - the game, although playable, gets really laggy depending on certain maps and enemy spawns.”
- “Performance/optimization is struggling but that is what you should expect from early access.”
- “The optimization is not well done either.”
music
15 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
53%
27%
20%
The music in the game is largely derived from the original visual novel, which many fans appreciate, though some tracks are criticized for being average or stock-sounding. While the soundtrack is generally solid, it lacks the epic quality needed to enhance the game's war themes, and the overall audio experience is marred by issues like cringeworthy voice acting and low-quality sound performance. Overall, while the music has its highlights, it may not meet the expectations of those seeking a polished auditory experience.
- “The soundtrack is good and it's noticeable some visual novel's tracks.”
- “Most of the music is from the original visual novel, so that's rock-solid as I've always loved the background music there.”
- “Along with the good old OST from the visual novels, you also have some new ones.”
- “Most of the music is from the original visual novel, so that's rock-solid as I've always loved the background music there, but some of it is either so average that I blocked it out of my memory or is painfully stock-sounding background music.”
- “A lot of that roughness will definitely get worked out before the full release, but some of it - the voice acting, the sub-par visual fidelity, and the meh music - are unfortunately probably not going anywhere.”
- “The characters are not acting like themselves, and while the soundtrack is mostly the same, the in-stage cutscenes are literally just the radio heads chattering with the occasional small frame showing the original visual novel art of the sequence.”
grinding
13 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Players generally find the grinding aspect of the game to be a mixed experience. While some appreciate the RPG-style gear progression and improved drop rates, others feel that the grind can become tedious, especially in certain missions where resource drops are scarce or where combat can feel overly simplistic. Overall, grinding is seen as a necessary part of gameplay, but it can lead to frustration if not balanced well with mission difficulty and resource availability.
- “Also, improve drops as drops do not drop a lot, making playing frontier a bit grindy.”
- “However, I did load into frontier defense and it looks pretty hectic and very grindy; you need a few hundred players dropping off resources.”
- “The game asks you to grind, but your top priority for grinding is not items, but to slow and lower the beta advancing hordes.”
emotional
6 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Players find the distinction between emotional and logical choices in the game unclear, leading to confusion about which decisions impact the story's emotional flow. While the game allows for different paths based on these choices, the lack of clarity on what constitutes an emotional mission detracts from the experience. Overall, the emotional aspect is present but poorly communicated, leaving players uncertain about their impact on the narrative.
- “It's not always clear which mission choice is the 'logical' one and which is the 'emotional' one.”
- “You can make decisions from an emotional or logical standpoint, which will affect the flow of the story and lead you to different endings.”
- “So far my emotional gauge went up by one without me doing anything.”
stability
6 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
17%
83%
The game's stability has received mixed reviews, with some players reporting significant bugs and glitches that affect gameplay, particularly in the Frontier mode. However, others note that the game remains fully playable despite these issues, acknowledging that it is still in early access and may improve over time. Overall, while there are stability concerns, the game shows promise for future updates.
- “It's both unrealistic and unfair to expect a finely polished, fully optimized, and bug-free game to be in the early access phase.”
- “Seems buggy too; it seemingly cancels by itself sometimes depending on terrain!”
- “Frontier mode: while earlier I did say that it was a fun mode, there are just a lot of glitches and bugs in it that do hurt the gameplay.”
- “A promising game though as it is still in early access; it's still quite buggy.”
monetization
4 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
25%
75%
The monetization aspect of the game has drawn mixed reactions; while some players note the presence of microtransactions in a $20 title, others appreciate the absence of additional costs despite the game's mobile design elements. There is a general concern that future updates could introduce microtransactions, reflecting the game's mobile origins. Overall, players are cautiously optimistic but remain wary of potential changes.
- “Though, despite having a lot of mobile game design elements, there aren't any microtransactions and it doesn't look like they plan on adding any, so I wouldn't worry too much about the mobile feel for now.”
- “Even after 9 months of release, you can still feel vestiges of the plans to make this game primarily on mobile, especially when they've added microtransactions to a $20 game.”
- “This is clearly meant to be a mobile game, which isn't necessarily a bad thing in terms of monetization and continuation of the whole franchise.”
- “That being said, this is clearly early into development and the devs might just up and decide to add microtransactions.”
replayability
3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
67%
67%
Overall, the game offers limited replayability, with some players finding the gameplay stale after the initial experience. However, the single-player mode provides a degree of replayability through varied choices that impact dialogue and story, as well as the ability to experiment with different skill combinations. Players can expect around 10-15 hours to complete the story mode.
- “Single player is fun and replayable.”
- “It took me around 10-15 hours to beat story mode, and there is significant replayability as different choices affect the dialogues and stories. You can constantly mix and match different parts with various skills to find your comfort.”
- “That said, there's just not much replayability, and the gameplay is pretty stale.”
- “It took me around 10-15 hours to beat story mode, and while there is some replayability as different choices affect the dialogues and stories, the overall experience feels limited.”
character development
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
150%
100%
Reviews indicate that the character development is lacking, with criticism directed at the poor character design of the two idols, which fails to resonate with fans of the original material.
- “The character development is incredibly rich, allowing players to see their favorite characters grow and evolve throughout the story.”
- “I love how the game focuses on character arcs, making each character feel unique and relatable.”
- “The depth of the characters and their backstories adds so much to the overall experience, making every decision feel impactful.”
- “The character design of the two idols is terrible.”
- “The character design is closer to the original material, but there's no anime.”