elmagicochrisg wrote:Damn, didn't even know there was more than one Assault Suits Valken... lol
Don't get your hopes up for Valken 2, it's actually a decent but mediocre tactical RPG/Front Mission clone.
Leynos/Target Earth on the Genesis is the cruder, insanely difficult game that Valken and its many imitators (I use that word affectionately) evolved from. Seriously this game will make even Ninja Gaiden veterans sweat bullets.
Leynos 2 has more in common with Leynos than Valken as far as level structure goes but it's not nearly as hard and probably the best choice in the series to go to if you liked ASV. The Valken itself is one of the unlockable mechs in that game which is cool.
Front Mission: Gun Hazard and Metal Warriors were also mentioned and are both tangentially related to the series.
Gun Hazard was made by many of the same people who made Valken including that game's director so it shares a lot of similarities in the controls and graphical style only with added RPG elements and story. There's a rom translation out there and I highly recommend it to anyone who digs Assault Suits Valken or even Square fans. It's a fantastic game and exemplifies everything that was great about SNES era Squaresoft.
Metal Warriors is also great. It was developed by Lucas Arts, the same team responsible for Zombies Ate My Neighbors, and published by Konami in the US as a kinda-sorta followup to Cybernator. A GBA port was in the works but unfortunately never surfaced.
The levels and gameplay are not as tight or polished as Valken but it expands upon the idea in a few ways such as letting you get out of your mech (something Gun Hazard does too). It's got a few interesting features like having no health bar, instead the mech itself becomes visibly more damaged as you fight. The game also has one of the best two-player versus modes on the SNES.
A lot more info on the series here if you're interested:
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/assaul ... tsuits.htm
