Ares: The Iron Vanguard has you swapping suits while mechs fall from the sky
That's a lot of firepower
- Switch between two suits mid-fight
- Pilot mechs and take to the skies
- Team up for raids and end-game bosses
Back when pre-registration opened, Iwan reckoned this one had shades of Planetside about it, with a bit of Titanfall in the way the big suits come crashing in. He wasn't far off. Ares: The Iron Vanguard gives you two power-armour suits and has you switch between them in real time, mid-fight, and mid-combo. And the combat is built around you doing exactly that.
That means the two suits you carry don't have to agree with each other. The Engineer fights with heavy gauntlets and drone assaults, the Warlock throws cosmic AoE around, the Warlord turns up on the front line with a rocket-hammer and shield, and the Hunter goes in with dual blades. You can mix across all of them, which is going to be hella chaotic and fun.
There’s a big hardware component in here too. You glide across the battlefield on a hoverboard, call down the Goliath mech and pilot it yourself, and reclaim the airspace in the Valkyrie. Foot combat, then a mech, then aerial fighting, all inside the same mission, is quite a lot to ask of a phone. Com2uS has been consistently pushing the console-quality line since the early preview in May.
Co-op covers raids, strike missions and end-game bosses, so the back half of the content assumes you have people to call on. The moment-to-moment stuff involves parries, perfect dodges, and combo chains, which puts a fair bit of pressure on how the controls feel on a touchscreen.
The global launch check-in and mission events are handing out an S Grade Operator Capsule, Suit Summon Tickets and an S Grade mount named Cybertron Black.
Ares: The Iron Vanguard is live worldwide now on the App Store and Google Play.
If you fancy something else to fight through in the meantime, our list of the best RPGs on Android has plenty more going.
