Metal Gear Acid 2

2025-06-29
Let me tell you about the Tony Redwood Deagle Special (TRDS). The ingredients are as follows: 4x Desert Eagle+, 4x Tony Redwood+, and as many cost reduction cards as you can afford split evenly between Snake and Venus. The starting rifle you get at the beginning of the game, the M4, hits for 80 damage with 70% chance to hit. The Desert Eagle+ hits for 500 with a 35% chance to hit. But when Tony Redwood's swaggering ass comes out everyone's hit-rate gets bumped to 100% for two full turns. That's 1000-2000 guaranteed damage per turn. And the whole time you're slapping down -12/-8 cost cards that effectively make it so you can move so fast the enemy never gets a chance to go. This combo is the equivalent of going Super Saiyan on a group of toddlers. The final boss lasted four turns. It is inelegant, it is ruthless, it is delightful.

This is all to say Metal Gear Acid 2 lived up to my high expectations as one of the few Acid-likers on this site. Acid 2 is sequel-crafting at is finest. Every single one of my complaints with the original has been addressed. Movement is fixed, tutorials are added, and all the faff with door keys and mission-required cards that made Acid 1 feel like molasses is removed. Things I didn't even know I wanted got added. Cards can be upgraded offering a path of continual improvement and new surprises vs. the slow, staggered accrual of new cards. The art direction got a shot in the arm which means Snake is an absolute fashion icon rocking some electric blue combat boots that I will lust for till the day I die. Levels and enemies are more varied, music is (still) great, and there's bonus missions to grind for more cards. The train mission in particular seems built for grinding with enemies grouped up closely just asking to be rocket-launcher'd like one of the bonus levels from Disgaea. I played that shit so much Snake went in with some rinky-dink rifles and came out with a deck full of Metal Gears raining absolute annihilation on every map afterwards.

And yet I'm not fully enraptured. As much as the levels are more varied, they also feel a bit more restrictive. You have levels with robots resistant to normal damage early on which basically force a stealthy approach. It also commits the same sin as its forebear by starting you off with an incredibly boring set of cards, holding off the more interesting combos and powerful cards for several hours into the game. Just like with Acid 1 I'm sure a bunch of people bounce off because it isn't fun till you start getting some busted ass cards and start one-shotting mercs right and left. And while overall the bosses are better than Acid 1, the final Metal Gear fight is basically copy-pasted from 1. Yet it's even worse because it has a move that will one shot one of your characters and if you're unlucky with RNG will trigger for both teammates before you get a chance to react giving you an instant game over. Even with the power of TRDS I had to resort to having Snake cower in a corner while Venus clapped the Gear's cheeks. Oh and just like Acid 1 if you're here for the story you're in the wrong place. It's simultaneously less cringe and more coherent than the original's due to not having weird telepathic-little-girl bullshit but also more cringe because they decided a turn-based, card-collecting strategy game was a good place to include jiggle physics for women's bodies.

It's a tragedy we'll probably never get an Acid 3. It's an incredibly odd but compelling mix of Metal Gear drama-bullshit paired with card collecting, deck building, and blowing motherfuckers up with rocket launchers. Just like I've said since I was teenager getting into the Grateful Dead, everyone should try acid once.