Project MIKHAIL: A Muv-Luv War Story

About

"Project MIKHAIL" is a war story set in a world where humanity is under threat from alien invaders called the BETA. In this game, players can experience a playable story mode and a survival mode, where they play as Shirogane Takeru from Muv- Alternative. The story mode allows players to make choices that affect the outcome, and even create their own Tactical Surface Fighter mecha. Survival mode combines action and strategy gameplay elements. The game aims to put the fate of humanity in the players' hands.

Genres & Tags

Play Modes

Single-Player Play through the game's story or campaign solo

Project MIKHAIL: A Muv-Luv War Story screenshot

63%

Audience ScoreBased on 416 reviews

story30 positive mentions

graphics12 negative mentions

The game offers a fun experience for MuvLuv fans, following the storyline of MuvLuv: Alternative.
Customization options for TSFs (mechs) are extensive, allowing players to create unique builds.
The Frontier mode provides an engaging multiplayer experience where players can work together against BETA.

Controls are clunky and unresponsive, making gameplay frustrating, especially with keyboard and mouse.
The game suffers from poor optimization, leading to low frame rates and performance issues.
The targeting system is problematic, often locking onto the wrong enemies and hindering combat effectiveness.

story
372 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
8%
89%
3%
The story of "Project Mikhail" is primarily a condensed retelling of "Muv-Luv Alternative," which many fans find lacks originality and depth, often feeling like a rehash of the original visual novel without significant new content or character development. While the game attempts to incorporate player choices through a "logic vs. emotion" system, many players feel that these choices lead to minimal narrative variation, and the absence of cutscenes and returning voice actors detracts from the overall experience. Overall, the story is seen as a mixed bag, appealing mainly to die-hard fans of the franchise, but failing to engage newcomers or those seeking a rich narrative experience.
- “If you're a diehard fan of muv-luv, this is an opportunity to see the story through a new lens.”
- “It also allows you to explore many 'what if' scenarios in the muv-luv alternative story that are definitely worth exploring and will delight true fans of the franchise.”
- “The story mode, despite the level flaws and clear indie game implementation, is a fairly fun, challenging, and authentic retelling of the muv-luv alternative universe.”
- “The story is just a reuse of 'Alternative' without any originality.”
- “No new storylines, characters, or any nuance.”
- “The story, despite being themed around changing the path that our protagonist is on, shows very little deviation from the visual novel where relevant; characters that die in the visual novel, even when saved in best possible scenarios, are kind of just shuffled off stage immediately and may as well just have stayed dead.”
gameplay
162 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
20%
67%
14%
The gameplay has received mixed reviews, with many players finding it sluggish, repetitive, and lacking depth, often reducing missions to simple shooting in small arenas. While some appreciate the potential for improvement and the satisfaction of unlocking new parts, others criticize the clunky controls, poor targeting mechanics, and a lack of engaging content. Overall, the game feels half-baked, with a need for significant refinement to enhance the experience.
- “The gameplay starts out a little jank, but as you get used to everything it gets better.”
- “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.”
- “Bad stuff out of the way, once you get the snowball rolling and unlock the nice and shiny parts, the gameplay loop feels very nice.”
- “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.'”
- “Overall, this does not feel like high-speed combat that you expect from Muv-Luv due to clunky controls and bad combat mechanics.”
- “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 'n' 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.”
graphics
82 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
12%
73%
15%
The graphics of the game have received mixed reviews, with many users describing them as dated, simplistic, and reminiscent of older console titles. While some appreciate the visual design of specific elements like models and artwork, the overall optimization and lack of graphical settings have been criticized, particularly for a game that seems to cater to mobile platforms. Players have noted performance issues, including low frame rates and limited resolution options, which detract from the visual experience.
- “I like that the game automatically sets the graphics to whatever your computer can handle.”
- “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.”
- “The optimization is atrocious; I hit the minimum spec requirements and it barely runs at 30 fps on 'normal' graphics.”
- “Graphics could use a tune-up; it's obvious the game's graphics were watered down so that it would be accessible on mobile.”
- “Graphics are gamecube tier.”
optimization
60 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
7%
57%
37%
The game's optimization has received significant criticism, with many players reporting poor performance, low frame rates, and frequent lag, especially in demanding scenarios like large enemy encounters. While some acknowledge the potential for improvement, the overall consensus is that the game feels unpolished and reminiscent of older titles, with optimization issues that hinder the experience. Players express hope for future updates to address these performance concerns, particularly given its early access status.
- “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.”
- “It's both unrealistic and unfair to expect a finely polished, fully optimized, and bug-free game to be in the early access phase.”
- “My only complaints as of now are the lack of full screen support, proper resolution scaling, and optimization.”
- “The optimization is terrible; I'm having issues hitting 60 fps in 1080p with a 1070.”
- “Performance-wise, the game does not run well.”
- “It's optimized like a mobile game; your options on the graphics side of things are pretty lacking.”
grinding
36 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
6%
94%
The grinding aspect of the game is a mixed bag; while it offers opportunities for upgrading and customizing equipment, players often find the drop rates for essential items frustratingly low, leading to extensive grinding sessions. Many users report spending hundreds of hours on repetitive tasks, particularly in frontier mode, which can feel tedious and poorly designed. However, some players appreciate the RPG-style gear progression and find the grind addictive, especially when farming for legendary items.
- “If you go for 100% completion, the majority of your gameplay will be grinding out random drops and getting XP on those random drops.”
- “I have 600 hours in this because most of it was spent AFK farming the frontier mode, which is arguably this game's biggest selling point and its biggest display of incompetent design I have ever witnessed in a game.”
- “The game asks you to grind, but your top priority for grinding is not items, but to slow and lower the beta advancing hordes.”
music
32 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50%
41%
9%
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 overall soundtrack is considered solid, there are concerns about the lack of epicness in certain pieces, particularly in relation to the game's themes. Some users suggest that the soundtrack could benefit from a remaster to enhance its quality.
- “The soundtrack is good and it's noticeable some visual novel's tracks.”
- “Music is on point (well they reused old tracks so I wasn't expecting anything less).”
- “Along with the good ol' OST from the VNs, 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 mediocre 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.”
emotional
12 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Players find the distinction between emotional and logical choices in the game unclear, leading to confusion about the impact of their decisions on the story's progression and endings. While the game allows for emotional engagement, many feel that the lack of guidance on which missions are emotional versus rational detracts from the experience. Overall, the emotional aspect seems underdeveloped, leaving players uncertain about the significance of their choices.
- “So far my emotional gauge went up by one without me doing anything.”
- “You can make decisions from an emotional or logical standpoint, which will affect the flow of the story and lead you to different endings.”
- “It's not always clear which mission choice is the 'logical' one and which is the 'emotional' one.”
stability
12 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
17%
83%
The game is reported to be quite buggy, with users experiencing glitches that can disrupt gameplay, particularly in the Frontier mode. While some players find it fully playable, many express a desire for improved stability and polished mechanics, acknowledging that it is still in early access and may not be fully optimized yet.
- “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
8 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
13%
50%
38%
The monetization strategy of the game has drawn mixed reactions, with some players noting the presence of microtransactions in a $20 title, suggesting a mobile game influence. However, others appreciate that, despite its mobile design elements, the game currently lacks microtransactions, indicating a potential for future changes as development progresses. Overall, there is a sense of uncertainty regarding the game's monetization direction.
- “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 (just look at the touch control, the UI, and that third-party account), 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
6 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
33%
33%
33%
Overall, the game offers some replayability through varied dialogue choices and skill combinations, making single-player experiences enjoyable. However, many users feel that the gameplay can become stale, limiting the overall replay value. The story mode typically takes around 10-15 hours to complete.
- “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.”
- “Single player is fun and replayable.”
- “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
4 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50%
50%
Reviews indicate that the character development is lacking, particularly criticizing the character design of the two idols as poor and not faithful to the original material, which is notable since there is no anime adaptation to reference.
- “The character design of the two idols is terrible.”
- “Character design is closer to the original material, but there's no anime.”
humor
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The humor in the game is generally perceived as lacking, with players describing it as unfunny and ineffective. This sentiment suggests that the comedic elements do not resonate well with the audience, leading to a disappointing experience in this aspect.