Metal Wolf Chaos XD guide: five quick tips to help you blow stuff up

Always be investing

Metal Wolf Chaos XD is out this week in the west after spending 15 years in the “Japan only” phantom zone, and the powers that be decided that they shouldn’t mess with greatness: keeping the spirit of the 2004 release alive.

With that in mind there’s a lot of 2004 mechanics you’ll need to account for, so here’s some help.

• Invest invest invest! Here’s how investing works:

  Basically you have two currencies to account for with cold hard cash and upgrade materials. Both are earned via missions, and both are needed to both upgrade and purchase weaponry. To “unlock” a new tier you need to invest, so make sure you’re doing that very early on as cash is more plentiful than upgrade materials. Find a weapon you like, upgrade that tier, and then buy the next available item. It’s smart to start off with scale: don’t go overboard upgrading one category as the tiers get more expensive after each purchase. Spread the love around to two or three different types.

• That said you will need to pick up new weapons, and here’s the secret: each weapon has an individual ammo allotment. So if you really like assault rifles and feel like handguns are useless, you can equip two (or more) different rifles and they won’t share the same ammo pool. Once you have this revelation it completely opens up the amount of builds you can aim for.

• Keep your loadouts simple. I try to keep them clean with “constant use” weapons on the right and big hitters on the left. If you have something that requires two slots, put it at the bottom of your loadout. In that same vein, equip your “go-tos” in the first slots on each side so you’ll instantly start with them without having to switch: a virtue when a mission puts you right in the action.

• If you hate a certain level or are struggling, leave it and come back. You don’t necessarily have to “grind” out upgrades, but you can leave a stage you aren’t clicking with and come back later. Also make a note of shorter missions in case you do want to go back and grind.

• This is something I even mentioned in our review: use the stomp attack (jump + Triangle/Y on PS4 or Xbox respectively) a lot. Like, a whole lot. I can’t stress enough how crucial it is in the early game when you have a limited arsenal and a lower ammo supply, as it can take out entire structures in just a few hits compared to 50-100 rounds of ammunition.