Macross Shooting Insight Review (PlayStation 5)

by Jim Smale · Published February 7, 2025 · Updated February 12, 2025

Macross Shooting Insight Review, Introducing an all-new Macross game, the latest entry in the landmark science fiction franchise!
Embark upon a galaxy-spanning mission to rescue the missing songstresses! Pilots, songstresses, and characters from throughout Macross’ history take center stage in a completely original story. When multiple-dimensional folds suddenly occur across space-time, pilots and songstresses alike find themselves inexplicably transported to Battle 7! From there, six stories unfold with the fate of the galaxy at stake.

Macross Shooting Insight Review Pros:

Beautiful graphics.
3.68GB Download size.
Platinum trophy.
You get the PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation 5 versions of the game.
Shmup gameplay.
Five game modes – Story, Arcade, Ace Battle, Boss Rush, and Area Survey.
Online leaderboards for each game mode.
The gallery houses – Valkyries, Artwork, Macross memories, Akashic collection, and replay files.
Game settings – HP amount slider, support strike slider, vibration, illustrations (songstress animations when singing), and replays.
Three-button controls – shoot, support strike, and evade.
You can remap the controls.
Japanese voice with English subtitles.
Sound settings – BGM, sound effects, voice, and song.
Five playable characters – each has unique shooting patterns and lock-on along with stats for HP, Atk, speed, lock range, lock-on, missile dmg, and evasion.
Five game difficulties – Very easy to very hard.
Story settings let you change – difficulties, auto recovery, cutscenes, and replay.
Every option has a brief description and tells you if changing settings invalidates your leaderboard score.
Enemies and canisters can drop items that go into your Akashic collection, its items, and lore from the different shows with an overall collection completion bar.
Covers five shows – Macross Zero, Macross Plus, Macross 7, Macross Frontier, and Macross Delta.
During gameplay, the view and play field can change from portrait to landscape, and to different speeds of autoscrolling.
Full 3D animated backgrounds.
You play on a 2D field but your ship and the enemies are all 3D.
Go into a frenzy-like sequence where enemy bullets do less damage, the Hud changes as does the music and it’s all very mental.
Massive boss fights at the end of a stage.
When you die you can save your replay which can act as a save point and you can reload the replay.
Health bar system and you can earn health back.
End of la evel breakdown showing a rank, score, and bonus HP earned.
A fun frantic shooter that is visually stunning.
Anime character portrait encounters and interactions that are integrated into the gameplay.
Fast loading times.
Unlock new Valkyrie (ships) to use and view in the 3D character viewer.
Tons of replay value.

Macross Shooting Insight Review Cons:

The game doesn’t do a dedicated tutorial and it’s very confusing as to what is going on and what to do.
You only have the story mode unlocked and you have to earn the others.
Steep learning curve.
I never found the story that engaging and despite always popping up text and cutscenes I found it to just slow the game pace down and break you out of the excellent shooting.
Characters for me came down to the shooting style as I have no real history with the franchise.
Despite finishing the game I never fully felt like I knew how the game mechanics all worked and it felt like I was missing out on what could be a real game changer.