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Thanks for playing and writing this honest feedback, I appreciate it greatly.

If you want to do the former, boost the movement speed of the mech - even when not dashing - let the player plow through buildings, remove the ammo mechanic for the primary weapons, and widen the streets so it’s easier to move around without hitting your head against a building constantly. 

The current city level is a test for the most part. I'm not sure I'm going to leave it as an actual stage in the game, it's mostly there to serve as a tech demo. I agree the roads could be a little bit wider, but I think the claustrophobia adds to some of the gameplay style I developed. Originally it was much wider and open - I ended up downsizing it three times since it just felt too empty and enemies didn't really pose as much of a threat to the player.

As for the ammo, it's just my preference but I like that the player actually runs out and has to find reloads. I think with the firing rate of some of the guns and the level of destruction they can do, giving the player unlimited ammo would make them too powerful and have less of a reason to play strategically.

 Also, make enemies occasionally (say, a 5% chance per armor layer missing) drop repair pickups and ammo pickups. Then the (seemingly) endless hordes of enemies become something you can actually enjoy fighting instead of just a slow inevitable grinding down of your resources and health.

Similarly, I also felt that because the player's health is so limited it adds a level of tension to the combat, especially nearing the end of a mission if you're really low. It makes you have to care about what you're doing and not always run into things Rambo style. That said, I agree and I'll try to implement armor upgrades and pickups on some levels. I understand that the low health can make things pretty frustrating when there's a lot of enemies.

On the other hand, if you’re going for more of a stealth-focused gameplay style, you NEED to fix the enemy AI behavior. They spawn way out in the corners of the map and then seem to automatically know where you are and head in your direction long before they’re even visible on your main screen.

I realize this isn't immediately clear to the player but when you blow up buildings specifically, enemies on patrol will actually head to the area to check out what's happening. You can even bait them like this by blowing things up and waiting for them to come looking around and then ambush every one. In the city mission they have about a 10% chance of spawning with the last known player's position loaded, so only a few should really be looking in your immediate area.

Give the enemy mechs a visible vision cone ala Metal Gear Solid so you can get them from the side and behind and ambush them.

Can do.

Also, reduce the spawn rate and maximum spawn count, since this play style would be less about taking out hordes of enemies and more about sneakily ambushing and killing enemies Hotline Miami-style. This doesn’t sound as personally fun to me, but it would at least be a way to do the “tactical stealth” concept properly.

I'm thinking missions will vary quite a bit. Ideally I'd like to do both horde stuff and stealth depending on the area you're in with the game's world. Really I'm trying to keep things as fresh as possible since I think if every mission was like the three in this demo, the game would get repetitive very fast even with more weapons and upgrades.

The cursor/crosshairs for targeting are really hard to see in a firefight. They blend into the explosions and motion way too easily, especially since they’re RED and your HUD turns RED when you take damage and enemies light up with a RED outline when they spot you. 

Yeah I've seen some other people having trouble with the reticule too, I'm going to probably change it to be white with black outlines for better readability.

Also darken the environments a touch - bright grey-white streets and buildings, bright white and orange explosions, bright orange and red fires, they all make it hard to focus on the crosshairs.

There'll be darker environments too, maybe even some night time missions (depending on how badly it affects game performance.)

On the topic of weapons, maybe I’m just not privy to the underlying mechanics, but I can’t tell much of a difference between the Autocannon and the Rotary Cannon.

Originally the rotary cannon was single fire and pretty bad, but now it's dual fire like the autocannon. The rotary cannon has a higher firing rate, maximum ammo, and a larger bullet spread, but also faster ammo depletion and half the damage on impact. It's better for crowd control on lower HP enemies like mechs and grubs on mission 2.

My advice would be to replace one of them with either a melee weapon, like a sword or katana, or with a slow-firing, high-damage, sniper rifle-like Railgun. Or add both!

There'll be a sniper-like railgun, high energy laser, and also a "pilebunker" which will basically serve as a really close range 1-hit kill dash weapon, kind of like a knife.

Also, do the missiles have lock on? I don’t think they do, but sometimes the enemies would develop a red box around them that made it LOOK like I was locking on. I’m actually inclined to believe that was intended to convey to me that the enemies were aware of my presence and going into attack/alert mode

If you hold the right mouse button it'll draw a laser line and if you mouse over an enemy while holding it (you need to have clear line of sight) it'll lock onto them and show the red square. You can lock onto as many as 15 enemies with it, and when you let go of the right mouse button it should launch a salvo.

 I couldn’t tell a meaningful difference between attack/alert enemies and unaware enemies, so maybe instead of a red box, the enemies should physically change somehow to indicate they’re alert and coming after you. Like having panels open up to make them look more spiky and aggressive. Assuming that even matters and you don’t decide to retool to more of a fast-paced shooter like the first suggestion.

You mentioned MGS earlier; they actually do make a little ! when they see you, but it's very tiny - about 8 pixels in size. I think I'll eventually add a sound effect like a radio chirp to indicate that you've been sighted.

I like the idea of panels opening up or lights though, that sounds pretty cool.

That’s all I can think of for now; I hope these ideas are helpful for you! They’re just my opinion, and you’re free to take or leave them. This game certainly has promise, and I’d love to see it refined and rebalanced as a complete game someday!

This was great, thank you again for your in depth critique and feedback, it's very helpful and I'll definitely take it into account. I hope to make the final game much more refined and rebalanced as you said!