Lets start this review out right: Fuck Harmony Gold.
Robotech: Battlecry is a game that wants to, and for a time it succeeds at, fly above the cursed name it carries but after a point it loses the lift and crashes. This was Vicious Cycle's first game, and for a first game it is a pretty good attempt at it, but Vicious Cycle wouldn't see much better after this game. Vicious Cycle would go on to be mostly a Children's IP Game Dev and their only original IP are the contentious Matt Hazard games. Vicious would be in part responsible for Puzzle Quest (and worked on two of the ports) and was given a shot at making an Earth Defense Force game, but said Earth Defense Force game was considered very mid by the EDF fanbase. Vicious Cycle would go under in 2016 with their last two games being an Adventure Time game and a Kung Fu Panda game; frankly a whimper of a way out.
Now lets talk about the major elephant in the room that usually gets discussed when you breathe the word Robotech. Remember how I said Fuck Harmony Gold? Lets get into that weed patch. Now when it comes to Robotech a lot of people consider Carl Macek Histories Greatest Evil due to his and his companies methods of localizing anime. Granted most of the anime he brought over was fairly niche that many other companies would not even glance at, but that came with the monkey paw of "Erase anything that sounds Japanese" and just staple things together and call it a show. Despite being a double edged sword in the anime community before his death, Carl Macek was not a lawsuit happy entity like Harmony Gold was; when someone used something that vaguely looked like a mech from Robotech/Macross Harmony Gold would break out the lawyers. This is why Harmony Gold is considered the Ultimate Evil when it comes down to Macross as a whole. You see, Harmony Gold was super convinced that their licensing deal with Tatsunoko for Macross meant that they essentially owned all Macross imagery outside of Japan when the reality was more so they owned all distribution rights to Macross outside of Japan. In their delusions Harmony Gold would go after BattleTech, Hasbro and Tatsunoko themselves over Robotech/Macross and the concept of a "mech". On top of that, Harmony Gold never wanted to bother with releasing any other Macross series (with the exception of Macross Plus apparently but I am not familiar with that story) and just forever focus on Robotech. Macross fans outside of Japan had to rely on fansubs and shipping out of Japan to get their Macross fix. There was a recent spark of good news in this regard, it ended up being negotiated that the only publishing rights Harmony Gold has now is to anything named Robotech and Big West can distribute Macross as they see fit. The All Powerful Saviors That Be Diskotek were the first to take advantage of this and soon will release the Macross series thought to be utterly impossible to license: Macross 7
Finally, let’s talk about the video game. Robotech Battlecry has very nice looking cell shading going for it, the game controls competently and they did manage to get as many of the original voice actors in from Robotech so the presentation is on point. All three Valkyrie fighter modes (Fighter, Gerwalk and Battroid) are in the game and you can switch between them at any time. All three modes have different properties to them: Fighter is primary used in space or air missions since ground missions in the game tend to be too cramped for the speed at which fighter mode flies at, but flying into terrain just forces you into Battroid mode so there is no real negatives of using fighter mode in tight spaces to move between short distances quickly. Gerwalk mode is the mode you live in for most of the game since majority of the missions take place on the ground in winding areas; a halfway between fighter and Battroid. You can go fast, you have misses, you can strafe, Gerwalk mode has it all! Frankly the only real negatives to Gerwalk mode is that its goofy looking and the only way to get any momentum is by using the infinite boost the game gives you. Battroid mode is very situational; its clunky, the gun fires slow and you have no missiles. The real standout for Battroid mode is that it has a sniper mode which if you position yourself well enough you can take out stationary, unawares targets. The game will have you make use of all three modes as you progress, so it is a nice bit of variety to it even if, as I said, you're mostly in Gerwalk mode. Outside of a few tough boss fights the missions are fun, even the defense/escort missions, however once the last third game comes around, the fun comes to a stop.
The last third of the game is made in a way to punish players who were having too much fun with the game. The missions become painfully hard after painfully hard escort/defense missions in which your escort and or defense targets are made of wet paper AND you are constantly swarmed by enemies in a game with no health refills. I turned on cheat codes after the Nth time I failed an escort mission and even while I was unkillable, unable to run out of ammo and was able to kill enemies in a single hit I still had high difficulty winning these missions! Because the targets are frail, insanely fast response was needed and sometimes too many enemies would spawn to take care of; it became memorization at a point in order to win. When a game is no longer fun even with cheat codes then something went very wrong and I wanted to be done with the game when I hit chapter 4, but I still had two more chapters of teeth gritting missions to go through. Robotech Battlecry did not stick the landing and I get annoyed and feeling like I was tricked when this happens; I was having fun with the game, why did it have to go to badly and make me have a bad time! This isn't me protesting against progressive difficulty increases, I think this is necessary for a fun game, but there is a balance to this and Robotech Battlecry missed this balance
Overall, Robotech Battlecry starts out as an impressive entry in a cursed pedigree but then cannot overcome the curse and just gets frustrating and non-fun by the last quarter of the game. I can't recommend this and suggest going to find one of the myriad of other Macross games (most untranslated alas) and play those.