Review: Alice Gear Aegis CS (PS4|5 - Switch) (2025)

PROJECT REVIEWER (EPISODE XXII)
AN ACTRESS FIGHT

Time for something different, and this time its gonna be the combat game Alice Gear Aegis CS: Concerto of Simulatrix.

Basic decisions are all what it needs to make a game work.

you can decide one of the three modes: Story, Free Battle and Training.
Training is already self explainatory as it introduces you to the Actress controls and basic game mechanics, so let's start with "Story", OK?

However, those two new drones buzzing around have royally screwed up our plans.
The Osean and Erusean coalition's air forces are in a sorry state thanks to them.
We might not even have any viable aircraft left.

For those who are new, I've heard that Alice Gear Aegis is a smartphone "Action Shooting" game where you take control of a girl in a leotard (or in short-shorts) equipped with body revealing armor and go on fights against an alien force called "Vice" in combats that evoke titles such as Z.O.E.: Zone Of the Enders, Virtual On and Armored Core with an incredible soundtrack by Taito's in-home band Zuntata, which was an unexpected move since they're a "Taito-Only" band. Another "charm" behind the success of this game comes from having nice character designs courtesy of Shimada Fumikane, famous for Strike Witches/Brave Witches (World Witches Series), Vividred Operation, the Kan-Musu Taihou from KanColle: Kantai Collection, illustrator for Konami's Sky Girls and of course, the character designer of Dariusburst, which, along with the Witches, Frame Arms Girl, and Koei-Tecmo's Dead or Alive, the original Alice Gear Aegis had a collaboration. Speaking of Dariusburst, Kanetake Ebikawa (Iron Fossil, Great Thing), Takayuki Yanase (Thousand Knives), and Kazuhiko Kakoi/GRA (Triggerheart Exelica, Dariusburst Hungry/Heavy/Brute Gluttons) also worked with Fumikane in the character mechanical designs along with Pyramid Inc.'s "In-house" artists, giving the game a sudden burst in popularity since that's one hell of a hit game, mostly on the plenty of soundtrack album collections. Of course, the popularity didn't stopped on the Smartphone, so Pyramid Inc. took the game and is currently working on an anime of it and of course, made a game for the PlayStations and Switch, and that's Alice Gear Aegis CS: Concerto of Simulatrix.

In the case of Concerto of Simulatrix, the "Girls VS Aliens" premise is ditched and the story goes like this: You're assigned as the captain of the Actress Alliance, in a similar way to the Producer from Namco's The Idolmaster games or the Admiral from Kantai Collection. But to put it simple and in a more "Nintensive" term, you're gonna be pretty much like a Pokemon Trainer; you're assigned to select one of the girls and guide her and her team to victory in simulated CS System combats before hitting the tournaments. Despite being part of an "Alliance", each Actress has their own agenda with their own personal goals besides winning the tournament.

You've made your choice, a lovely choice.

After the prologue you'll be selecting one of the 19 characters available in the game. Keep in mind, 3 of them (Mari, Serina and Raiya) are locked until you clear Story Mode once with any Actress, giving a total of 22. But one thing is clear, this game will require you to play with all the ladies of the game if you want to get all the trophies.

Be on your guard.

One of the things that made the original Alice Gear Aegis famous was the length of its branching stages. This is carried in Concerto of Simulatrix where you have to decide where to go, learning what they're in these Hexagons is important in this game, so here's a guide for each Hex.

AEGiS/ACTRESS ALLIANCE (AEGiS Logo): This "Hex" (short for "Hexagon") covers the introduction, the prologue with Team Narukozaka, the Actress Select screen and the introductory cutscene of the selected Actress on the office of either Narukozaka Manufacturing, Empire Nakano or the lounge of Nightclub Nirvana where Yumi works, all of this depending on which Actress you pick. Regardless of the choice, you'll start automatically on Day 02.

BATTLE HEX (Sight with triangle): Like its name implies, Battle Hexes will pit your Actress on a 1-VS-1 battle against another Actress. Clearing a Battle Hex grants you money and experience to increase the Actress Rank. Clearing Battle Hexes is required for Story progression.

WARP HEX (Black Hole): Warps you to a different region where the situation will vary, leading you to either a Item Hex, a Battle Hex or go directly to a Mock 3 VS 3 Battle Hex.

ITEM HEX (Treasure Chest): You can get a free item for your Actress (either Accessory or Costume) by picking these. There's no combats to be fought in order to get the item, automatically skipping the day once you acquire the item.

MOCK 3-VS-3 BATTLE HEX (3 Blue figures): Similar to the standard Battle Hex, but this time you'll be sent to a 3 VS 3 Actresses team fight in the CS System. Clearing this Battle Hex grants experience for the three Actresses of your team.

TOURNAMENT EVENT BATTLE HEX (3 Red figures): While the Mock one was a simulation in the Concerto Simulatrix System, this time is "Real" combat as it takes place on the Tournament Arena and is the pivotal part of the Actress story. The rules are the same as in the "Mock" Battle Hex.

Some Battle Hexes have colored emblems based on a specific element. These are called "Elemental Battles" and that will put you in one-on-one fights against an Actress that uses one the four elements (Electricity, Fire, Gravity and Ice) rather than the standard training Gear. Clearing Elemental Battle Hexes gives you more money and experience than a standard Battle Hex. In fighting games, clearing the match unharmed means "Perfect" (or "Flawless Victory" if you're more of a Mortal Kombat fan) and grants you a bonus, right? Alice Gear Aegis CS has that feature and implements new ones. Clearing Battle Hexes in specific conditions such as no damage, clearing in less than 35 seconds, unleashing an attack strong enough to deal 500 HP damage, accumulate a total amount of 10,000 HP damage with Clash and Firearm Gear and winning 5 battles in a row grants you bonus rewards. Passing through a Warp Hex or through 4 Item Hexes also unlocks bonus rewards as well.

Shut Up and Fight!

The Battle Hex is your standard and most common battle throughout the whole game, this is where you can get easily used to the game's controls. While most fighting games require special inputs (The Hadoken "Half U and Punch", Sektor's "Right-Right-Punch" Missile for example), Alice Gear Aegis CS gives you four different attacks assigned to a button.

SHOT GEAR (ショットギア): The Shot Gear is your firearm weapon. Depending on which Actress you're using, you will be firing a specific weapon like a standard strength rifle shot with moderate firing rate, a sniper rifle with considerable damage but low fire rate, Rocket launchers with the lowest rate and short-to-mid range, but dealing devastating blast-radius damages and machine guns with weak offensive power but high firing rates. These ones have their specific amounts of ammunition, so you can't go around firing like crazy, but the good news is that you have to wait a few seconds for the ammo to refill. Another exploit of the Shot Gear is the ability of firing "Charged Shots" which can provide you an advantage in your battle, being the "X Buster" like charged shots from the rifles which have a great firing range that can be compared with the standard sniper-type shots. Sniper rifles can fire a two or three volley fire as their charged attack and the machine guns can fire fast and powerful versions of their regular shots.

CROSS GEAR (クロスギア): The Melee weapon. Like the Shot Gear, you will be using a variety of weapons. The swords with moderate speed and strength, slow but lethal hammers, fast striking spears and shield carrying rapiers with fast attack capabilities. One interesting detail of the Cross Gears is that you can throw different strikes with them when you combine a direction in the Analog Stick with the button for example Down+Triangle can perform a strong hammer attack, or a fast spear combo (Asuka's 9-hit combo). Left+Triangle is a sweep-like lateral attack. The delay between the button press and the attack performed depends on the weapon your Actress is using. This is vital to learn with hammer/mace wielding Actresses.

TOPS GEAR (トップスギア): Not to be confused with Top Gear, the Kemco racing game or the BBC car show. The Tops Gear is the shoulder part of the Actress' Gear. While both Shot and Cross Gears are focused exclusively on offensive capabilities, Tops Gears can be either defensive or offensive since they can utilize homing lasers, missiles or attacks that act as HP leeches draining the opponent's life while restoring yours.

BOTTOMS GEAR (ボトムスギア): The Leg part of the Alice Gear. Like the Tops Gear, this can carry either offensive or defensive weaponry, but in some of them, the HP recovery capabilities don't require to damage your opponent (Example, Fumika's Brigantia #D/B)

To complete the capabilities of your character, pressing Circle will activate the shield which provides protection, dropping the damage received until the barrier breaks. If that happen, the pink gauge behind your HP will be gone, preventing you from recovering HP with any Gear equipment that allows you to do that.

Looks complex, but after your first fight you'll get used to the controls

Controls are a key player in any game, and fighting is no exception. Since this is a 360° field shooter, movement is important. Fortunately, there's no need to "rotate" to find your opponent since the game "Auto-locks" on the rival Actress, so you'll always be able to know where she is, allowing you to concentrate on maneuvering and firing. Your Analog Stick controls the Actress movements, while pressing X is the booster, which is the "Dash" of the game. While pressing L2 or R2 will control the altitude, you can climb or drop faster by holding L2/R2 with the X button. Truly functional as it utilizes the boost gauge due to the use of Emission Energy. Even moving drains energy but can be repleted by stopping, even if that couple of seconds mean to be almost like a sitting duck.

No fighting game is complete nowadays without having combo counters. Even if there's no "Score" like in Street Fighter or Fatal Fury, the game has a combo counter just for the sake of being a fighting game, and to add more power to the action, you have SP Gauges. Everytime you deal a hit or take one, your will be filling one of the three available gauges. These are your "Maximum" attacks (KOF fans will understand this reference). Like in Dino Rex, you can burn 3 in one shot or two of them. But I've better explain you what they do in a 1-VS-1 Battle Hex. To burn one SP Gauge in a Skill, you press down on the Right Analog Stick. This will automatically refill your ammo and the Boost Gauge at expense of 1 full SP Gauge. pressing Up on the Right Analog Stick will burn two of them on the SP Clash, and pressing R3 and consume all three SP Gauges at once will unleash the SP Attack, which is the special attack of the game. While the majority of Actresses have a devastating offensive attack as their SP Attack, others like Aika and Kaoruko can regain health even beyond the indicated by the mentioned pink gauge (and that was before the fan-hated Yajirobe in Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero).

One of those lucky situations you won't see on fighting.

While ALL the fighting games are open fields so you and your opponent won't hold any barriers, Alice Gear Aegis CS has combat zones with barriers that provide protection against enemy fire; from stadium debris to park lamp posts, and believe it or not, there are undestructible, giving you a chance to recover your Boost Gauge or reload your ammo with time, but just like you can use them, so your opponent. The number of barriers depend on which stage the fight takes place.

You lost!
Let’s rematch!
Are you ready for the next challenge?

One of the things I have to criticize of the Battle Hex is that 1-VS-1 battles are 1 round only. Lose once and its over. Believe it or not, 1 round fights are quite low for fighting game standards. ¿Why? Because when it comes to a basic formats and aspects of fighting games, "2 of 3 Rounds" condition is not a rule, it is a law, as immutable as gravity unless the game gives the adjustable option to the player. Yumesoft followed that rule on Densou Tenshi Valforce, and that was a small doujin game. So, why not Pyramid in Alice Gear Aegis CS? Its one of those decisions that baffles me and makes the game shorter than it should be.
Unlike most fighting games where giving up means Game Over, you are stucked on retrying or pick another Battle Hex unless you're defeated on either the 3-VS-3 or the single path where you're stuck in a path where there's no other way than winning the battle, rendering Quit as the option to go and customize your Actresses with different equipment in order to have a better chance. Fortunately, continuing the game doesn't affect the ending or unlocks something special for doing a "No Lose" run.

Another problem with this game is that the SP Gauge needs to take deliberate damage for fast charging. In most games you can charge your special gauge by holding three buttons (The King of Fighters or any of the Dragon Ball Z related fighting games for example), but here it can only racked fast by damaging your opponent and/or getting damaged. An attack will charge a minimal fraction of the gauge if it doesn't hit, forcing you to take a hit to rack a level 2 SP Clash, making it a risky strategy that can compromise the fight, especially in 1-VS-1 battles.

Thrice the action, thrice the fun.

The 3 VS 3 Battle Hexes are that instance where combat exploits its potential as you can switch between the characters of your team in the style of KID Corp/Taxan's G.I. Joe games or the Donkey Kong Country series, not by pausing and switching, but by pressing either left or right on the D-Pad. Remember the lack of use of pressing left or right in the Right Analog Stick? They got an exclusive use in the 3 VS 3 Battle Hexes. You can rely on special attacks called "SP Assist" with the help of your partners as long as they're active in the battle. Keep in mind, your opponents will also be able to switch characters and perform special skills and SP Assists. Switching partners will become tactical and a required technique to survive since the characters will regain HP as long as they're unactive covering the pink bar that indicates how much an "Actress in reserve" can restore her health. The SP Gauge will also get an improvement since you can use it to summon one or three SP Assists from your Actresses depending on how many bars are filled.

One additional detail to be careful about is that you'll be more exposed to Level 3 SP Clashes since the battle will last longer and the accumulated SP Gauge is the same regardless if you or the AI switch Actresses or not. A good idea is to keep your distance once your opponent has two SP Gauges filled because the Level 2 and 3 SP Clashes will initially make the character to chase you and in the case of most level 3 SP Clashes, the opponent will chase you from a mid-to-long distance and sometimes is unavoidable (Example: Ayaka's SP Skill) and worse: You can't override their attack with nothing. Its just like the Triceratops Slapping in Dino Rex where the attack keeps going despite you hit the opponent; you'll be taking the hit whether you like it or not. So, here's my strategy for these group battles. Try to use the long range firing characters (Charged Shot or Sniper type) and snipe your opponents as far as you can from them and wait until they consume their SP Gauge on an Assist or Reload. This trick is also good to obtain the 10,000 accumulated damage with Shot Gear.

Record of Fight

Finishing the game will grant you a reward, but it is not the end of the game yet. Apparently, these are related on how many "Bonuses" you unlocked through the Story, so the best strategy is to rack the most of them. Charged shots are good to rack up 10,000 points of damage with the Shot Gear, Spending and finishing the first 3-VS-3 combat with SP Assists is required to finish the fight with a total of 5 and deal the finishing blow with it. The only one which I have a problem is with the 100 Skills.

The "Suprise of the Day".

Nodding the random rewards from the mobile phone game, you'll be getting a treasure box which gives a boost to the Level/Actress Rank and adds money. Based on your Actress level and the achieved bonuses that I've mentioned before, you'll be getting from 4 to 6 random rewards for your Actresses. These rewards only cover costumes and accessories, so if you were trying to pick free Gear through this, your plan failed.

Percentage. Tool to encourage replay value.

Depending on the path you've went through the 21 days of the story, you'll be filling a percentage, adding a sense of progression beyond simply clearing levels.

At least you know which path you've took before.

How you can reach 100%? By clearing the game again and again with the same character. The game will indicate which Hexes were already visited and there's a new mechanic for the Item Hex on your revisits with the same character: If you've bought a few items and the Item Hex contains an already purchased item, the gift will be automatically sold for extra money. Also, revisiting an already unlocked Item Hex will grant you 500 credits.
To sum things up, you will need to clear Story Mode 3 or 4 times with a specific Actress until you obtain the 100% of explored Hexes, but you'll be repeating them even more times to obtain the costumes, Gears (the ones that cost more than 4000 Gold) and her accessories. Keep in mind, you'll have to repeat this process since the 53 trophies cover each Actress, Gear, costumes (including Rank 5 "Uniques") and accessories. A little grinding requiring, but not as much as Ginga Force, Sandlot's Earth Defense Force series or Omega Strikers. But if you don't want to do more grinding than the expected, here's my hint: Do your story mode path by picking the majority of Elemental Battles that you can find. That's one of the things that I like of trophy hunting. Easy requirements to unlock, but spending time to complete those requirements, and this game gives you a considerably good amount of trophies: 45 Bronze, 5 Silver, 2 Gold and the Platinum. 53 Trophies that, combined with some fun, yet easy to learn gameplay manages to justify the pick of this game.

Spot the difference.

One of the major weakness of the game resides on the total of combat zones. There's very, very little variety of arenas where the action takes place and the game designers relied on variations to increase its number:

Arena "Day" / Arena "Night" - DIFFERENCE: Night time (actually Evening), the debris barrier in the center of the field is down.
Space "Normal" / Space "Reverse" - DIFFERENCE: Green-ish colors and the asteroid base/Shard entrance is now upside down.
Park "Day" / Park "Night" - DIFFERENCE: Night time, haze/fog dissipated, falling sakura petals instead of snow.
Cave "Normal" / Cave "Alternate" - DIFFERENCE: Alternate dark blue and red colors, upper barriers are removed leaving the ones at the bottom.
Training (Cyberspace)
Wormhole - DIFFERENCE: If the level is selected on VS mode it will play the theme "Carmine Entanglement" instead of "Over The Future -Hi Beat ver.-".

In a playthrough with Virginia, this was the stage sequence I've got: Arena (Day) > Arena (Day) > Cave (Normal) > Training > Arena (Day) > Arena (Day) > Cave (Alternate) > Cave (Alternate) > Cave (Alternate) > Park (Night) > Park (Day) > Arena (Day) > Arena (Day) > Space (Normal) > Cave (Normal) > Cave (Normal) > Arena (Day) > [Item Hex] > Arena (Day) > Wormhole. If that doesn't sound repetitive, then I don't know what could be. I mean, for a game that has a total of 22 characters with the potential of having unique stages for each one of them that's pathetic, and the best way to describe that low variety is by quoting the debriefing speech of AWACS Galaxy from Project Wingman's mission "Consequence of Power", especially the "By God..." part at the end because Alice Gear Aegis fan or not, this laziness in stage design is to fall in shock and disbelief and you'll definitely end up saying "By God..." in disbelief just the same way as AWACS Galaxy when the game sends you to "Arena (Day)" or any of the "Cave" or "Park" stages for the 7th or 8th time in your playthrough.

Even in a franchise like Alice Gear Aegis, this quote from Project Wingman works quite well.

Yeah, I know I've mentioned that quote very, very, very, very, VERY OFTEN in my reviews at the point of being overdone and cliché, but the cold fact is that such quote feels appropiate on a videogame issue like this. You'll be saying "Calamity? You are exaggerating!" Well, no. Its an outrageous calamity and disgrace due to the low number of scenarios compared with the overwhelming number of Actresses which had the potential of having their respective stage along with the 3-VS-3 fights, and the minimal effort from Pyramid to address the issue is far worse. With the trick of making 2 levels using 1 with the "Night/Alternate" excuse, it will be too common to play on the same areas over and over and over again which becomes way too boring considering the game is 20 stages long, for example, the "Arena (Day)" 6 or more times on a Story Mode playthrough?, sounds outrageously absurd at the point of feeling like a demo.

THOUGHT EXERCISE: Imagine if in Megaman X you clear the introduction Highway stage, leave the Password screen, go to the Maverick select screen and select Storm Eagle as your first opponent. OK, then what? Does it sends you back to the Highway stage just replacing both Death Rogumer and Vile with Storm Eagle as the boss? Obviously "No!". Also, does picking Spark Mandrill stage after clearing Storm Eagle will send you to an alternate version of the Highway stage? Sounds dumb already. But believe it or not, that's the best explanation I can give you about this shit. If Megaman X did the same thing Alice Gear Aegis CS does, the result would be more than obvious; the game would be a failure.

I might be exaggerating but this repetitivity in combat zones is Alice Gear Aegis CS' main weakness. I don't know too much about the original Alice Gear Aegis game, but I know that the game had a lot of space battles, but even with that concept, I'm sure they've at least could throw way more locations to fight. A ruined stadium in a post-apocalyptic city, seriously? That sounds more like an idea for Shinzo or Fist of the North Star than a Sci-Fi Mecha-Shoujo game. I mean we're not talking about someone arriving and destroying the stadium like Goenitz did in The King of Fighters '96 as testimony of the character's overwhelming power, we're talking 2 or 6 Actresses fighting in an abandoned stadium in a centuries old desolated city.
Since the game takes place on the Earth-like Tokyo Shard, there way more chances of having a vast variety of places to use as combat zones like open skies, deserts, ice shelves, mountains, battle between buildings, open sea or above the beach (according to the in-game lore, there's Shards with tropical climates and to justify the optional swimsuits for the characters). So, the creativity for a vast variety of stages ranging from generic and thematic levels "meant for a specific character" was available all the god-damned time, but Pyramid didn't cared to exploit that. Even Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown had much more variety despite having 3 of its 20 missions taking place around the International Space Elevator.

Another problem with the game was the removal of characters, I know 22 Actresses is a good number and adds variety, but knowing there's more characters from the game, excluding the "Collaboration" (crossover) ones, for any Alice Gear Aegis fan leaves more to be desired. There's for example, 10 Actresses that didn't made it to the game and its a shame since that stabs the full potential of the game which Pyramid tries to patch their absence by slapping plot excuses such as "Misaki had to opt out for work, so we were looking for a third member anyway!" and because Misaki Kagome dropped out, the game drops the "improvise teams" as a result having Mari working on both Anna and Serina's teams. In a game like The King of Fighters '96 I can clearly understand the replacement of Takuma Sakazaki with Yuri, not just in plot narration (Robert suggesting Ryo the idea in KOF '95), but also because it worked since they're both characters from Art of Fighting. Too long didn't read: That would be like a KOF game having an Art of Fighting team with Ryo, Robert and Heidern as an official team.

While I understand Sitara's inclusion on Virginia's team (Tristella), the rest is basically patch-ups to fill the gaps. I mean if Sitara and Anna work on both teams, wouldn't be more convenient if they gave the player the option of select the team for her (think on a "A-Route or B-Route")? But I know why this didn't happened; that would mean writing two stories for them and that would take more time for the game development. Honestly, this makes me wish this game had more than one DLC 'cos the DLC of this game only gives you alternate costumes and accessories for Sitara and Kaede and nothing more, as if Pyramid didn't cared about its "Alice Gear Moneymaker" of a franchise.

One final thing that I have to criticize of Story Mode is the fact that regardless of which team you pick, there's only two possible outcomes for Day 21: Fight against Murakumo Ace Team (Kaede, Rin, Rei) or fight Team Narukozaka (Yotsuyu, Sitara, Fumika). I mean, this isn't Street Fighter, The King of Fighters or Mortal Kombat for the "All paths lead to M. Bison/Rugal/Shao Kahn" rule. Just take a look at the list of 3-VS-3 Hex Battles for each Actress and be the judge (although you might agree with me).

With so many characters struggling for Actress supremacy and no mastermind behind the tournament, why not letting others to become finalists with the team combinations out there? A final against Empire Nakano, Urbanites or even Anna's team would be interesting and will make each team story more varied and gave more use to the concept of branching paths (The Darius series and Night Striker gave us a lesson about it). Something that deserved to be included having would be having a "Mirror Match" in the CS System in both 1-VS-1 and 3-VS-3 Mock Battle Hexes. The game had the potential for all that, but Pyramid dropped the ball in the end relying on the "Who cares. It's Alice Gear Aegis, so fans will still buy it anyway" mentality.

Tournament or not, there's always battles to be fought.

Free Battle is the second option of the game and its divided in three modes: Team Battle which is just like the 3 VS 3 Battle Hexes. Before you can fight, you can assemble both teams for you and the CPU opponent along with customizing your characters. 1-V-1 Battle is the same as the regular Battle Hex where the customization options are the same as Story and so the victory conditions: Win a single round fight. However, the rewards are lower than Story Mode. Winning the match will give you 87 Gold and 11 Experience Points.

Think about it as a KOF fight but with flight capabilities and Centurions-like Assault Weapon Systems.

While in the normal one on one battle gives you a low amount of experience, in 3-V-3, the amount is still low, but it is reduced depending on how many Actresses of your team went down. Finishing the match with all your 3 Actresses alive will give you 123 Gold and 16 Experience points, finishing the match but losing 1 Actress will reduce your reward to 86G with 11XP and losing 2 will drop it to 82G and 10XP.

Welcome to the show, Actress. Engage at will.

Finally, there's the Battle Royale option where you will be fighting against 5 opponents which you can freely select in an all-out-war of "Everyone VS Everyone". Rule here: Take down the major number of opponents possible before time runs out. You can respawn if you're defeated and so your opponents. One detail that the game doesn't mention is that you can switch your targeted Actress with the D-Pad. Regardless of which mode you pick, you can also get experience and credits, but not as much as in the regular story.

The only thing to criticize here is the lack of a couch 2 player VS mode and 2 player Battle Royale for a little more competitive gameplay. The multiplayer only carries online matches, breaking with the traditional fighting formats.

Fully compatible and color customizable equipment for enhanced gameplay.

Before sortieing you can change the colors for your character equipment from Default, Actress and a custom one, By far this is as much as you can do right out of the start, because to unlock outfits and other stuff you'll have to buy them. Keep in mind, once you've buy the "Unique" Gear for each character (the most expensive armor parts), those cannot be customized. You can equip your actress with the Gears of other unrelated characters (Ex: Anna with Raiya's Firearm Gear, Virginia's Leg Gear, etc.) for personalized combinations. Speaking of those, your initial weaponry is not your typical "Start with one weapon and buy all of them" like most RPG's such as The Legend of Zelda or CrossCode. Here you're granted an assortment of Training Gear which is compatible with everyone, granting you a vast range of experimentation right out of the start. This also applies to the accessories, costumes and the Skill Modules. While the costumes and accessories are just cosmetic, you can equip up to 5 accessories, granting a wide range of combinations to give a try. It was kinda disappointing that costumes and accessories doesn't help to boost your status since it had the potential for that. Think on RPG's such as Xenosaga or the Atelier series which kinda explore that feature.

Plug-ins that enhances your character's combat capabilities.
Combine, give a try, combine, repeat the process as much as you like.

Skill Modules are meant to improve certain aspects of your character or her equipment. You can equip three of them, and the best strategy is to improve the HP and Shields of your characters, this hint comes in handy if you need to rack up SP Gauges by getting damaged like I've mentioned before.
Keep in mind, you have to level your characters on a specific Actress Rank in order to get their unique accessories (Rank 3), costumes (Rank 5) and their respective "Inherent" Skill Modules (Rank 7).

Each Actress equipment is unique already.
But you can make them more special with the color customization.

Like R-Type Final 2, you can customize the colors of your Actresses' Gears and you're given a very wide range of color options from the traditional palette to chrome effect kinda like in the Forza Horizon games. Seems like Pyramid and PQube had an idea about what makes Alice Gear Aegis so interesting and that's customization. Almost all the weapons and armor can be repaint with custom color combinations and you're given the option of save those combinations. Keep in mind, the only exceptions are the "Unique" Gear (most expensive Gears).

Its like "Photo Mode", minus the photo option.
The console's screen capture button does that job.

As and additional option, you can see how your Actress looks with the custom combination of Gear, costume and accessories you gave her as well as changing the action pose from holding her rifle/gun to melee weapon pose.

Battle Assault

Graphically, it feels like an in-betweener of PlayStation 3 and 4 in several aspects. While the character models are in the style of the original Alice Gear Aegis game which at the same time is on par with several anime-styled 3D RPG's such as the Hyperdimension Neptunia and Xenoblade series that feel like the final days of PS3 and PS4 transitional phase, the backgrounds are a bit blocky such as the trees in the Park stages are just like in the first days of the PlayStation 3, hence the cross-reference in styles. The cutscenes are done in the same format as the original game and some RPG's nowadays: The CG model in a 2D drawn background but at least the models are animated and are a bit more expressive than the original game as they talk much more.

Low-quality building textures.
2 Years before Raiden Nova.

Let's talk about the scenery, which fulfills their purpose on providing a combat ground for the characters quite well, but its not exempt of defects. I've already mentioned the repetitivity of the scenes and their respective lack of variety, but the majority of them are quite boring, since they look and feel more "generic" rather than "character themed". You know what I mean, having stages based on a specific character to make it fit properly. ¿Remember Street Fighter II? ¿Remember how each stage fitted with the character? ¿Want a good example? Guile and the military-themed Airforce runway with that stationed F-16C and pilots cheering as audience. That was a good example of making a stage fit on a character. Alice Gear Aegis CS fails on that aspect by going on the opposite direction (unless we consider "Park (Day)" as Eri's scene and "Park (Night)" as Raiya's stage) falling directly on the "cheap" "fast" and "generic" categories. As for the detailing part, some of them leaves a lot to be desired, especially the park levels which are the less detailed of them all, as the combat field is flat snow with four lamp posts as barriers, while the background has the trees and a structure in the background which would be useful as hideout in this concept of hiding behind barriers just for the sake of surprise attacking. Also, it looks odd to see sakura petals falling on the snow covered "Park (Night)" stage, but that's a consequence of recycling the same stage and doing cheap changes. The buildings in the background have the problem of low quality texture bitmap that makes them clash with the scenario, predating the first stage of Raiden Nova. I mean, if Pyramid cares a lot for Alice Gear Aegis ¿How could such flaw made its way into the game? It is quite ironic that the "Arena" levels that repeat SO often are the most detailed Earth-like levels, as they decided to put attention to the detailing of the grass and ruins taking over the once glorious stadium and you can notice the abandoned buildings on the distance in some camera angles. Why do they had to use an abandoned, ruined stadium instead of one in good conditions with a crowd cheering the Actresses? Isn't thrilling the crowd part of the magic of the spectacle? The space stages like the "Normal" version is your classic Alice Gear Aegis combat zone so fans will be instantly familiarized with it as we have a base on an asteroid (could be the exterior of a Shard too). The space backgrounds are a bit blurry as if they're stretched and then passed through the blur filter, you can notice that inconsistency on the starry sky in "Space" and "Wormhole".

The all renewed Dancitron invites you to the "High Energy and 90's Dance Club Night".
Guest Artists: La Bouche, Maxx and Scatman John.
Gek, Korvax and Vy'keen are now welcome!

As I'm running out of positive aspects of the game, I wanna talk about some of the quirky aspects about it, and one of them is the Tournament Arena. During the cutscenes it resembles more of a high-tech dance club straight out of a cheesy sci-fi movie more than an anime scenario. It looks exactly Sci-Fi since most of the billboards are written with weird alien-like, No Man's Sky-esque hieroglyphs, being two with the word "ATTACKER" the lone exception. This dance-club like location looks way too different from the combat scenarios in the game (2 Tournament battles in "Arena (Day)" and the final in "Wormhole") I know this must be a sci-fi holographic room which projects the image in the whole room, but the "default" setting would be an interesting combat zone. Such an opportunity missed.

I thank you for indulging me one final, glorious battle.
...But I did not... ...search the cosmos...
...for MILLENIA...
...to fail my divine mission.

Along with the disco-arena and the few and repetitive choices for the Earth-like levels, there's one detail that I've noticed and its when the player's Actress is defeated. No matter which Actress you pick, everytime you lose they have the same sad, pathetic pose of head's down, holding her arm in defeat. ¿Is this Alice Gear Aegis or Silver Surfer? I mean, the game designers could do a more elaborated, dramatic defeat sequence like having her Tops Gear detached and exploding (think both Metroid Fusion and Metroid Zero Mission) as the Actress tries to stand on her feet or something, but no, they went too lazy on doing that, giving us as a result, the anime equivalent of Silver Surfer's infamous life lost scene. It's like some sort of fucking joke! And what's even worse, they recycled the pose for all the Actresses in the game, so if you lose as Kaede, she will use the same defeated pose as Yotsuyu or Virginia.

It's like you touch the top of the building, you die. You touch the ceiling, you die.
You touch the floor, you die. Too far to the right, you die. Too far to the left, you die.
You die, you die, you die, die-die-die-die-die-die-die-die-die-DIE-DIE! DIE!

Not to mention, that pose looks terrible on an AEGiS instructor like Kaoruko unless you are looking for a denigrating image of her (¿Remember what the AVGN said about having Bruce Lee tripping over his own shoelaces?).
Also, when you decide to continue the game there's no "Recovery" animation, something that really makes you glad you've decided to return to battle? Like in Street Fighter II when the continue countdown had Ryu's wounded portrait and when you continue he instantly healed his wounds and shouted "SHOOORYUKEN!!". In Alice Gear Aegis CS' case, there's none of that, the game simply goes to the "cut-to-black" transition effect prior to the Loading "Black void with SD Actress" screen.

Clothes passes through the body, body through clothes.
Some rules of physics are unexistant within the Alice Gear Aegis universe.

Speaking of jokes, one of the most notorious and constant errors of the game is how some parts of the characters bodies, Gears and clothes passes through each other (hair through headphones and sometimes body, Sitara's Shanti "tusks" through arms, weapon bits through legs and skirts, hair through shoulders, etc.) as if the models had inconsistency errors. During cutscenes, when a character does a "Hand on hip" pose, you can see the hand is still in "mid air" rather than touching the hip. This is disastrous considering this game was done with Unity, yeah, the same Unity engine used by AlfaSystem on Sisters Royale which had more solid character models. ¿Does Pyramid was on a hurry to release the game on the scheduled date or something?

Censorship in mode "Oh No! It's a girl on a leotard!".

The overseas promotional artwork (and startup wallpaper) seems to be, for a lack of better term, "censored". For a "Clashing Swords" battle posing, both Yotsuyu and Kaede are "off center" for this kind of battle artwork and you might think this was because the Alice Gear Aegis CS logo was placed on the left like in some of the promotional art does, but the reason of this was because of the clothes the Actresses wear. To be more exact, the small "skirt" piece of Kaede's Serenity Armor doesn't cover her leotard bottom. Yeah, all this censorship because of a leotard (what a bunch of whiny SJW crybabies). Like I said in my review of Triggerheart Exelica, if there's a problem with girls in leotards, don't bring the game and characters "as is" to this side of the world. Give them the "Probotector treatment" replacing all the Actresses with something less "offensive" like robots or something, like acquiring the Gundam license and turn it into a Gundam Battle Assault game or something?. I mean damn, this sounds absurd, but who's to blame? I know that's how anime and game industry works nowadays; through fanservice and revealing clothes (a game featuring a girl in a leotard and few armor sells more than a game featuring the Super Hornet, robots or an entire space fleet), not to mention, that's a common aspect of Fumikane's works. But acting like 4Kids censoring it because of "¿What overprotective parents and SJW's would say?" won't fix a damn thing. Just take a look at Otomedius Excellent, no one complained about it and it was released uncensored on the American XBOX360. Fortunately, the localization artwork is the lone instance of censorship in the game since the soundtrack album has the "uncensored" artwork. I mean what's next? Halo with the guns censored with soft darts or those cartoon gag boxing gloves? Sounds dumb already.

Speaking of censorship, the Gear names were unable to dodge censorship. Anyone familiarized with Alice Gear Aegis will know that the equipment is Shot Gear, Cross Gear, Tops and Bottom Gear. For the localization, they were renamed as Firearm Gear, Clash Gear, Torso Gear and Leg Gear. Ironically in the customization and shop selectable options we can see the japanese names next to the localized ones. Seems like someone didn't made the censorship right.

Anyone who is familiarized with Zuntata will definitely won't be disappointed, and they brought the style of Taito's shmup magic and put them into action. They put the influence of shmups like RayForce and RayCrisis into the Actresses fray. "Valiant universe" (Space "Normal") is basically a fast-paced Ray series influenced tune combining a fast energetic rhythm with intense percussions and a few calmed "bridges". "SAKURA CADABRA PART 1" and "SAKURA CADABRA PART 2" are a couple of japanese instrument-based tracks for the "Park" arenas which fit perfectly on them and for some reason they sound like if they would fit much better on an action game like Legend of Kage, Kiki Kaikai/Pocky & Rocky and The Ninjawarriors than Alice Gear Aegis itself. There's also the mysterious "Cave" and "Cave ver careful" for the cave levels that go more into the Metal Black-esque, RayCrisis-ish (Con-Human to be exact) low note to fit the confined ambient of the asteroid interior. The Wormhole theme "Over The Future -Hi Beat ver.-" (Day 21) is more of your anime action fighting game, but still being an amazing theme that can't be described with words, "Break through" and "Break through (Alternate)" which fits incredibly well in Blazing Star (That goes for "The Canyon of Grand Shell" and "The Route of Nemesis"), but also on combat simulators such as Ace Combat 3 Electrosphere and Project Wingman as hard guitaring-electronic paces are combined with piano and electronic beats that bring some reminiscence to said games. And last but not least "Carmine Entanglement" which feels like a spiritual successor of "Urgent" from Blazing Star (Stage 4: "The Hollow Street"). In fact, a good portion of the soundtrack feels like "What if Zuntata composed the music for Blazing Star?". Yeah, Zuntata pulling a Harumi Fujita with gorgeous results. With such an incredible soundtrack, the game includes a sound test in the options (called "Casual Stats") to hear the tunes of this game without needing to fight a battle and pausing it, although you can do that if you want to.

The game completes the sound department with voiced dialogues for most of the time and I'm sure they're done by the original cast of the game reprising their roles. However, the game designers only cared to translate the cutscene dialogues, leaving the in-match talk without subtitles. I mean compare this with the latest Ace Combat games, you can see what they're saying, regardless if you've picked either japanese or english audio. Here is unless you have an interpreter or know the language, you're fucked, and all because they didn't added a box on either left or right side of your HUD (or top if you're more of an Ace Combat player).
One final detail to mention was the voiced interface when you select something ("Solo Play Mode!", "Option", etc.) because you can choose which Actress do you want to hear on the Main Menu, pretty much like Ginga Force, but in this case you can decide who talks in the menu instead of letting the game choose.

TRIVIA GEAR FUNFACTIS CC: CONCERTO OF CURIOSITIES

More than just an "A", there's hidden symbology on that logo.

- This is the first console game of the Alice Gear Aegis franchise.
- The word "Concerto" means "Concert" in Italian language.
- Simulatrix is a portmanteau of "Simulation" and "Matrix".
- It is unknown was AEGiS stands for, but the lower case "i" might imply a two-letter initial

Fan-servicey arcade fun. That's all.

For an arena combat based game, Alice Gear Aegis CS: Concerto of Simulatrix sometimes feels like a fun button masher where you will end up pushing all the buttons trying combinations. As an unexperienced player I won the first battles with ease. As a fighting game, its simple and easy to learn, but its still tactical enough for expert players and fans of the franchise as you make your way to the final day. It's mindless and sometimes simple, but much more functional and far more entertaining than Dino Rex, Blandia and Shaq Fu altogether. It's quite a shame that the original Alice Gear Aegis wasn't ported to the PS4 or Switch to give it a try, but I'm sure Pyramid would butcher it just like Taito did with the console ports of Arkanoid VS Space Invaders.

Anyway, if you're up to a long and fun trophy hunt and/or want to try something different and easy to learn, then this could easily be the game for you.

As a fighting game, I give it a score of 8 R-9's out of 10.

If you love fighting games, you won't regret on pick that one.
The "Eda Scale" can't get wrong.